Elephants Can Remember

"That I should say about long sins?" "Not so much that. It was your mention of elephants that interested me." Superintendent Garroway looked at Poirot with some surprise. He seemed to be waiting for more. Spence also cast a quick glance at his old friend.

"Something that happened in India, perhaps," he suggested.

"I mean-well, that's where elephants come from, isn't it? Or from Africa. Anyway, who's been talking to you about elephants?" he added.

"A friend of mine happened to mention them," said Poirot.

"Someone you know," he said to Superintendent Spence. "Mrs.

Oliver." "Oh, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver. Well!" He paused.

"Well what?" said Poirot.

"Well, does she know something, then?" he asked.

"I do not think so as yet," said Poirot, "but she might know something before very long." He added thoughtfully, "She's that kind of person. She gets around, if you know what I mean." "Yes," said Spence. "Yes. Has she got any ideas?" he asked.

"Do you mean Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, the writer?" asked Garroway with some interest.

"That's the one," said Spence.

"Does she know a good deal about crime? I know she writes crime stories. I've never known where she got her ideas from or her facts." "Her ideas," said Poirot, "come out of her head. Her facts- well, that's more difficult." He paused for a moment.

"What are you thinking of, Poirot? Something in particular?" "Yes," said Poirot. "I ruined one of her stories once, or so she tells me. She had just had a very good idea about a fact, something that had to do with a long-sleeved woolen vest. I asked her something over the telephone and it put the idea for the story out other head. She reproaches me at intervals." "Dear, dear," said Spence. "Sounds rather like that parsley that sank into the butter on a hot day. You know. Sherlock Holmes and the dog who did nothing in the nighttime." "Did they have a dog?" asked Poirot.

"I beg your pardon?" "I said did they have a dog? General and Mrs. Ravenscroft.

Did they take a dog for that walk with them on the day they were shot? The Ravenscrofts." "They had a dog-yes," said Garroway. "I suppose, I suppose they did take him for a walk most days." "If it had been one of Mrs. Oliver's stories," said Spence, "you ought to have found the dog howling over the two dead bodies. But that didn't happen." Garroway shook his head.

"I wonder where the dog is now?" said Poirot.

"Buried in somebody's garden, I expect," said Garroway.

"It's fourteen years ago." "So we can't go and ask the dog, can we?" said Poirot. He added thoughtfully, "A pity. It's astonishing, you know, what dogs can know. Who was there exactly in the house? I mean on the day when the crime happened?" "I brought you a list," said Superintendent Garroway, "in case you like to consult it. Mrs. Whittaker, the elderly cookhousekeeper.

It was her day out, so we couldn't get much from her that was helpful. A visitor was staying there who had been governess to the Ravenscroft children once, I believe.

Mrs. Whittaker was rather deaf and slightly blind. She couldn't tell us anything of interest, except that recently Lady Ravenscroft had been in hospital or in a nursing home-for nerves but not illness, apparently. There was a gardener, too." "But.a stranger might have come from outside. A stranger from the past. That's your idea, Superintendent Garroway?" "Not so much an idea as just a theory." Poirot was silent, he was thinking of a time when he had asked to go back into the past, had studied five people out of the past who had reminded him of the nursery rhyme "Five little pigs." Interesting it had been, and in the end rewarding, because he had found out the truth.

Chapter VI. An Old Friend Remembers

When Mrs. Oliver returned to the house the following morning, she found Miss Livingstone waiting for her.

"There have been two telephone calls, Mrs. Oliver." "Yes?" said Mrs. Oliver.

"The first one was from Crichton and Smith. They wanted to know whether you had chosen the lime-green brocade or the pale blue one." "I haven't made up my mind yet," said Mrs. Oliver. "Just remind me tomorrow morning, will you? I'd like to see it by night light." "And the other was from a foreigner, a Mr. Hercules Poirot, I believe." "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Oliver. "What did he want?" "He asked if you would be able to call and see him this afternoon." "That will be quite impossible," said Mrs. Oliver. "Ring him up, will you? I've got to go out again at once, as a matter of fact. Did he leave a telephone number?" "Yes, he did." "That's all right, then. We won't have to look it up again.

All right. Just ring him. Tell him I'm sorry that I can't but that I'm out on the track of an elephant." "I beg your pardon?" said Miss Livingstone, "Say that I'm on the track of an elephant." "Oh, yes," said Miss Livingstone, looking shrewdly at her employer to see if she was right in the feelings that she sometimes had that Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, though a successful novelist, was at the same time not quite right in the head.