tendencies?'
'Not quitte as crude as that, but that might be the main idea, I should think.'
'But he wasn't rich, was he? An adopted child.'
'He didn't know his real mother's name or who she was, but it seems that his mother, who was an actress and a singer and who maanaged to make a great deal of money before she became ill and died, wanted at one time to get her child returned too her, and when Mrs. Burton-Cox would not agree to that, I should imagine she thought about this boy a great deal and daecided that she would leave her money to him. He will inherit this money at the age of twenty-five, but it is held in trust for him until then. So of course Mrs. Burton-Cox doesn't warnt him to marry, or only to marry someone that she really apprroves of or over whom she might have influence.'
'Yes, that seems to me fairly reasonable. She's not a nice woman, though, is she?'
'No,' said Poirot, 'I did not think her a very nice woman.'
'And that's why she didn't want you coming to see her and messing about with things and finding out what she was up to.'
'Possibly,' said Poirot.
'Anything else you have learned?'
'Yes, I have learned-that is, only a few hours ago really- when Superintendent Garroway happened to ring me up about some other small matters, but I did ask him and he told me that the housekeeper, who was elderly, had very bad eyesight.'
'Does that come into it anywhere?'
'It might,' said Poirot. He looked at his watch. 'I think,' he said, 'it is time that I left.'
'You are on your way to catch your plane at the airport?'
'No. My plane does not leave until tomorrow morning. But there is a place I have to visit today-a place that I wish to see with my own eyes. I have a car waiting outside now to take me there-'
'What is it you want to see?' Mrs. Oliver asked with some curiosity.
'Not so much to see-to feel. Yes, that is the right word-to feel and to recognize what it will be that I feel…'
Chapter XVIII. Interlude
Hercule Poirot passed through the gate of the churchyard.
He walked up one of the paths, and presently, against a mossgrown wall, he stopped, looking down on a grave. He stood there for some minutes looking first at the grave, then at the view of the Downs and sea beyond. Then his eyes came back again. Flowers had been put recently on the grave. A small bunch of assorted wild flowers, the kind of bunch that might have been left by a child, but Poirot did not think that it was a child who had left them. He read the lettering on the grave.
TO THE MEMORY OF DOROTHEA JARROW Died Sept. 15th, 1952 ALSO OF MARGARET RAVENSCROFT Died Oct. 3rd, 1952 SISTER OF ABOVE ALSO OF ALISTAIR RAVENSCROFT Died Oct. 3rd, 1952 HER HUSBAND In their Death they were not divided Forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those that trespass against us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Poirot stood there a moment or two. He nodded his head once or twice. Then he left the churchyard and walked by a footpath that led out on to the cliff and along it. Presently he stood still again, looking out to the sea. He spoke to himself.
'I am sure now that I know what happened and why. I understand the pity of it and the tragedy. One has to go back such a long way. In my end is my beginning, or should one put it differently? 'In my beginning was my tragic end'? The Swiss girl must have known-but will she tell me? The boy believes she will. For their sakes-the girl and the boy. They cannot accept life unless they know.'
Chapter XIX. Maddy And Zelie
'Mademoiselle Rouselle?' said Hercule Poirot. He bowed.
Mademoiselle Rouselle extended her hand. About fifty, Poirot thought. A fairly imperious woman. Would have her way.
Intelligent, intellectual, satisfied, he thought, with life as she had lived it, enjoying the pleasures and suffering the sorrows life brings.
'I have heard your name,' she said. 'You have friends, you know, both in this country and in France. I do not know exactly what I can do for you. Oh, I know that you explained, in the letter that you sent me. It is an affair of the past, is it not?
Things that happened. Not exactly things that happened, but the clue to things that happened many, many years ago. But sit down. Yes. Yes, that chair is quite comfortable, I hope.
There are some petits fours and the decanter is on the table.' She was quietly hospitable without any urgency. She was unworried but amiable.
'You were at one time a governess in a certain family,' said Poirot. 'The Ravenscrofts. Perhaps now you hardly remember them.'
'Oh, yes, one does not forget, you know, things that happen when you were young. There was a girl, and a boy about four or five years younger in the family I went to. They were nice children. Their father was a general in the Army.'
'There was also another sister.'
'Ah, yes, I remember. She was not there when I first came.
I think she was delicate. Her health was not good. She was having treatment somewhere.'
'You remember their mother's Christian name?'
'Margaret, I think was one. The other one I am not sure of by now.'
'Dorothea.'
'Ah, yes. A name I have not often come across. But they called each other by shorter names. Molly and Dolly. They were identical twins, you know, remarkably alike. They were both very handsome young women.'
'And they were fond of each other?'
'Yes, they were devoted. But we are, are we not, becoming slightly confused? Preston-Grey is not the name of the children I went to teach. Dorothea Preston-Grey married a major-ah, I cannot remember the name now. Arrow? No, Jarrow.'
'Ravenscroft,' said Poirot.
'Ah, that. Yes. Curious how one cannot remember names. The Preston-Greys are a generation older. Margaret Preston-Grey had been in a pensionnat in this part of the world, and when she wrote after her marriage asking Madame Benoit, who ran that pensionnat, if she knew of someone who would come to her as nursery- governess to her two children, I was recommended. That is how I came to go there. I spoke only of the other sister because she happened to be staying there during part of my time of service with the children. The children were a girl, I think then of six or seven. She had a name out of Shakespeare, I remember. Rosalind or Celia.'
'Celia,' said Poirot.
'And the boy was only about three or four. His name was Edward. A mischievous but lovable child. I was happy with them.'
'And they were happy, I hear, with you. They enjoyed playing with you and you were very kind in your playing with them.'
'Moi, j'aime les enfants,' said Mademoiselle Rouselle.
'They called you Maddy, I believe.' She laughed.
'Ah, I like hearing that word. It brings back past memories.'
