Elephants Can Remember

I would like to know. Because then, you see, I shouldn't have to think about it any more." "So you do? Think about it?" Celia looked at her for a moment. She seemed to be trying to come to a decision.

"Yes," she said, "I think about it nearly all the time. I'm getting to have a thing about it, if you know what I mean. And Desmond feels the same."

Chapter V. Old Sins Have Long Shadows

Helercule Poirot let the revolving door wind him round.

Arresting the swing of it with one hand, he stepped forward into the small restaurant. There were not many people there.

It was an unfashionable time of day, but his eyes soon saw the man he had come to meet. The square, solid bulk of Superintendent Spence rose from the table in one corner.

"Good," he said. "You have arrived here. You had no difficulty in finding it?" "None at all. Your instructions were most adequate," "Let me introduce you now. This is Chief Superintendent Garroway. Monsieur Hercule Poirot." Garroway was a tall, thin man with a lean, ascetic face, gray hair which left a small round spot like a tonsure, so that he had a faint resemblance to an ecclesiastic.

"This is wonderful," said Poirot.

"I am retired now, of course," said Garroway, "but one remembers. Yes, certain things one remembers, although they are past and gone, and the general public probably remembers nothing about them. But yes." Hercule Poirot very nearly said "Elephants do remember," but checked himself in time. That phrase was so associated in his mind now with Mrs. Ariadne Oliver that he found it difficult to restrain it from his tongue in many clearly unsuitable categories.

"I hope you have not been getting impatient," said Superintendent Spence.

He pulled forward a chair, and the three men sat down. A menu was brought. Superintendent Spence, who was clearly addicted to this particular restaurant, offered tentative words of advice. Garroway and Poirot made their choice. Then, leaning back a little in their chairs and sipping glasses of sherry, they contemplated each other for some minutes in silence before speaking.

"I must apologize to you," said Poirot, "I really must apologize to you for coming to you with my demands about an affair which is over and done with." "What interests me," said Spence, "is what has interested you. I thought first that it was unlike you to have this wish to delve in the past. Is it connected with something that has occurred nowadays, or is it sudden curiosity about a rather inexplicable, perhaps, case? Do you agree with that?" He looked across the table.

"Inspector Garroway," he said, "as he was at that time, was the officer in charge of the investigations into the Ravenscroft shooting. He was an old friend of mine and so I had no difficulty in getting in touch with him." "And he was kind enough to come here today," said Poirot, "simply because I must admit to a curiosity which I am sure I have no right to feel about an affair that is past and done with." "Well, I wouldn't say that," said Garroway. "We all have interests in certain cases that are past. Did Lizzie Borden really kill her father and mother with an ax? There are people who still do not think so. Who killed Charles Bravo and why? There are several different ideas, mostly not very well founded. But still people try to find alternative explanations."

His keen, shrewd eyes looked across at Poirot.

"And Monsieur Poirot, if I am not mistaken, has occasionally shown a leaning towards looking into cases, going back, shall we say, for murder, back into the past, twice, perhaps three times." "Three times, certainly," said Superintendent Spence.

"Once, I think I am right, by request of a Canadian girl." "That is so," said Poirot. "A Canadian girl, very vehement, very passionate, very forceful, who had come here to investigate a murder for which her mother had been condemned to death, although she died before sentence was carried out. Her daughter was convinced that her mother had been innocent." "And you agreed?" said Garroway.

"I did not agree," said Poirot, "when she first told me of the matter. But she was very vehement and very sure." "It was natural for a daughter to wish her mother to have been innocent and to try and prove against all appearances that she was mhocent," said Spence.