'I suppose you got tied up with that awful woman, didn't you?' said her friend, looking over her shoulder at Mrs. Burton-Cox.
'She was asking me the most extraordinary questions,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'Oh. Didn't you know how to answer them?'
'No. They weren't any of my business anyway. I didn't know anything about them. Anyway, I wouldn't have wanted to answer them.'
'Was it about anything interesting?'
'I suppose,' said Mrs. Oliver, letting a new idea come into her head, 'I suppose it might be interesting, only-'
'She's getting up to chase you,' said her friend. 'Come along. I'll see you get out and give you a lift to anywhere you want to go if you haven't got your car here.'
'I never take my car about in London, it's so awful to park.'
'I know it is. Absolutely deadly.' Mrs. Oliver made the proper good-byes. Thanks, words of greatly expressed pleasure, and presently was being driven round a London square.
'Eaton Terrace, isn't it?' said the kindly friend.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'but where I've got to go now is-I think it's Whitefriars Mansions. I can't quite remember the name of it, but I know where it is.'
'Oh, flats. Rather modern ones. Very square and geometrical.'
'That's right,' said Mrs. Oliver.
Chapter II. First Mention Of Elephants
Having failed to find her friend Hercule Poirot at home, Mrs. Oliver had to resort to a telephone inquiry.
'Are you by any chance going to be at home this evening?' asked Mrs. Oliver.
She sat by her telephone, her fingers tapping rather nervously on the table.
'Would that be-?'
'Ariadne Oliver,' said Mrs. Oliver, who was always surprised to find she had to give her name because she always expected all her friends to know her voice as soon as they heard it.
'Yes, I shall be at home all this evening. Does that mean that I may have the pleasure of a visit from you?'
'It's very nice of you to put it that way,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I don't know that it will be such a pleasure.'
'It is always a pleasure to see you, chere madame.'
'I don't know,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I might be going to- well, bother you rather. Ask things. I want to know what you think about something.'
'That I am always ready to tell anyone,' said Poirot.
'Something's come up,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Something tiresome and I don't know what to do about it.'
'And so you will come and see me. I am flattered. Highly flattered.'
'What time would suit you?' said Mrs. Oliver.
'Nine o'clock? We will drink coffee together, perhaps, unless you prefer a grenadine or a Sirop de Cassis. But no, you do not like that. I remember.'
'George,' said Poirot to his invaluable manservant, 'we are to receive tonight the pleasure of a visit from Mrs. Oliver. Coffee, I think, and perhaps a liqueur of some kind. I am never sure what she likes.'
'I have seen her drink kirsch, sir.'
'And also, I think, a creme de menthe. But kirsch, I think, is what she prefers. Very well then,' said Poirot. 'So be it.' Mrs. Oliver came punctual to time. Poirot had been wondering, while eating his dinner, what it was that was driving Mrs. Oliver to visit him, and why she was so doubtful about what she was doing. Was she bringing him some difficult problem, or was she acquainting him with a crime? As Poirot knew well, it could be anything with Mrs. Oliver. The most commonplace things or the most extraordinary things. They were, as you might say, all alike to her. She was worried, he thought.
Ah, well, Hercule Poirot thought to himself, he could deal with Mrs. Oliver. He always had been able to deal with Mrs. Oliver. On occasion she maddened him. At the same time he was really very much attached to her. They had shared many experiences and experiments together. He had read something about her in the paper only that morning-or was it the evening paper? He must try and remember it before she came. He had just done so when she was announced.
She came into the room and Poirot deduced at once that his diagnosis of worry was true enough. Her hairdo, which was fairly elaborate, had been ruffled by the fact that she had been running her fingers through it in the frenzied and feverish way that she did sometimes. He received her with every sign of pleasure, established her in a chair, poured her some coffee and handed her a glass of kirsch.
'Ah!' said Mrs. Oliver with the sigh of someone who has relief. 'I expect you're going to think I'm awfully silly, but still…'
'I see, or rather, I saw in the paper that you were attending a literary luncheon today. Famous women writers. Something of that kind. I thought you never did that kind of thing.'
'I don't usually,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'and I shan't ever do it again.'
'Ah, You suffered much?' Poirot was quite sympathetic.
He knew Mrs. Oliver's embarrassing moments. Extravagant praise of her books always upset her highly because, as she had once told him, she never knew the proper answers.
'You did not enjoy it?'
'Up to a point I did,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'and then something very tiresome happened.'
'Ah. And that is what you have come to see me about.'
'Yes, but I really don't know why. I mean, it's nothing to do with you and I don't think it's the sort of thing you'd even be interested in. And I'm not really interested in it. At least, I suppose I must be or I wouldn't have wanted to come to you to know what you thought. To know what-well, what you'd do if you were me.'
'That is a very difficult question, that last one,' said Poirot. 'I know how I, Hercule Poirot, would act in anything, but I do not know how you would act, well though I know you.'
'You must have some idea by this time,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'You've known me long enough.'
'About what-twenty years now?'
'Oh, I don't know. I can never remember what years are, what dates are. You know, I get mixed up. I know nineteen thirty-nine because that's when the war started and I know other dates because of queer things, here and there.'
'Anyway, you went to your literary luncheon. And you did not enjoy it very much.'
'I enjoyed the lunch but it was afterwards…'
'People said things to you,' said Poirot, with the kindliness of a doctor demanding symptoms.
'Well, they were just getting ready to say things to me.
Suddenly one of those large, bossy women who always manage to dominate everyone and who can make you feel more uncomfortable than anyone else, descended on me. You know, like somebody who catches a butterfly or something, only she'd have needed a butterfly net. She sort of rounded me up and pushed me on to a settee and then she began to talk to me, starting about a goddaughter of mine.'
'Ah, yes. A goddaughter you are fond of?'
'I haven't seen her for a good many years,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I can't keep up with all of them, I mean. And then she asked me a most worrying question. She wanted me-oh, dear, how very difficult it is for me to tell this-'
'No, it isn't,' said Poirot kindly. 'It is quite easy. Everyone tells everything to me sooner or later. I'm only a foreigner, you see, so it does not matter. It is easy because I am a foreigner.'
'Well, it is rather easy to say things to you,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'You see, she asked me about the girl's father and mother. She asked me whether her mother had killed her father or her father had killed her mother,'
'I beg your pardon,' said Poirot.
'Oh, I know it sounds mad. Well, I thought it was mad.'
