Elephants Can Remember

Same firm but went into business in Sloane Street. Here's the address, but it's a pet shop now. Two of their assistants retired some years ago now, but they were the top assistants serving people then, and Lady Ravenscroft was on their list.

Rosentelle lives in Cheltenham now. Still in the same line of business. Calls herself a hair stylist-that's the up-to-date term-and you add beautician. Same man, different hat, as one used to say in my young days." "Ah-ha!" said Poirot.

"Why ah-ha?" asked Garroway.

"I am immensely obliged to you," said Hercule Poirot. "You have presented me with an idea. How strange it is the way ideas arrive into one's head." "You've too many ideas in your head already," said the Superintendent. "That's one of your troubles-you don't need any more. Now then, I've checked up as well as I could on the family history-nothing much there. Alistair Ravenscroft was of Scottish extraction. Father was a clergyman-two uncles in the Army-both quite distinguished. Married Margaret Preston-Grey-well-born girl-presented at Court and all the rest of it. No family scandals. You were quite right about her being one of twin sisters. Don't know where you picked that up-Dorothea and Margaret Preston-Grey-known colloquially as Dolly and Molly. Preston-Gr^ys lived at Hatters Green in Sussex. Identical twins-usual kind of history of that kind of twin. Cut their first tooth the same day-both got scarlet fever the same month-wore the same kind of clothes-fell in love with the same kind of man-got married about the same time-both husbands in the Army. Family doctor who attended the family when they were young died some years ago, so there's nothing of interest to be got out of him. There was an early tragedy, though, connected with one of them." "Lady Ravenscroft?" "No, the other one-she married a Captain Jarrow-had two children; the younger one, a boy of four, was knocked down by a wheelbarrow or some kind of a child's garden toy-or a spade or a child's hoe. Hit him on his head and he fell into an artificial pond or something and drowned. Apparently it was the older child, a girl of nine, who did it. They were playing together and quarreled, as children do. Doesn't seem much doubt, but there was another story. Someone said the mother did it-got angry and hit him-and someone else said it was a woman who lived next door who hit him. Don't suppose it's of any interest to you-no bearing on a suicide pact entered into by the mother's sister and her husband years after." "No," said Poirot, "it does not seem to. But one likes to know background." "Yes," said Garroway, "as I told you, one has to look into the past. I can't say we'd thought of looking into the past as long ago as this. I mean, as I've said, all this was twenty years before the suicide." "Were there any proceedings at the time?" "Yes. I managed to look up the case. Accounts of it.

Newspaper accounts. Various things. There were some doubts about it, you know. The mother was badly affected. She broke down completely and had to go into hospital. They do say she was never the same woman again afterwards." "But they thought she had done it?" "Well, that's what the doctor thought. There was no direct evidence, you understand. She said that she had seen this happen from a window, that she'd seen the older child, the girl, hit the boy and push him in. But her account-well, I don't think they believed it at the time. She talked so wildly." "There was, I suppose, some psychiatric evidence?" "Yes. She went to a nursing home or hospital of some kind, she was definitely a mental case. She was a good long time in one or two different establishments having treatment, I believe under the care of one of the specialists from St. Andrew's Hospital in London. In the end she was pronounced cured, and released after about three years, and sent home to lead a normal life with her family." "And she was then quite normal?" "She was always neurotic, I believe-" "Where was she at the time of the suicide? Was she staying with the Ravenscrofts?" "No-she had died nearly three weeks before that. She was staying with them at Overcliffe when it happened. It seemed again to be an illustration of the identical twin destiny. She walked in her sleep-had suffered from that over a period of years, it seems. She had had one or two minor accidents that way. She sometimes took too many tranquilizers and that resulted in her walking round the house and sometimes out of it during the night. She was following a path along the cliff edge, lost her footing and fell over the cliff. Killed immediately.