Hallowe'en Party

Poirot crossed to the drawing-room window and surveyed the neat and pleasant garden. Well laid out, kept studiously in control. Rampant autumn michaelmas daisies still survived, tied up severely to sticks; chrysanthemums had not yet relinquished life. There were still a persistent rose or two scorning the approach of winter.

Poirot could discern no sign as yet of the preliminary activities of a landscape gardener. All was care and convention. He wondered if Mrs.

Drake had been one too many for Michael Garfield. He had spread his lures in vain. It showed every sign of remaining a splendidly kept suburban garden.

The door opened.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Monsieur Poirot," said Mrs.

Drake.

Outside in the hall there was a diminishing hum of voices as various people took their leave and departed.

"It's our church Christmas fete," explained Mrs. Drake.

"A Committee Meeting for arrangements for it and all the rest of it.

These things always go on much longer than they ought to, of course.

Somebody always objects to something, or has a good idea-the good idea usually being a perfectly impossible one."

There was a slight acerbity in her tone.

Poirot could well imagine that Rowena Drake would put things down as quite absurd, firmly and definitely. He could understand well enough from remarks he had heard from Spence's sister, from hints of what other people had said and from various other sources, that Rowena Drake was that dominant type of personality whom everyone expects to run the show, and whom nobody has much affection for while she is doing it. He could imagine, too, that her conscientiousness had not been the kind to be appreciated by an elderly relative who was herself of the same type. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, he gathered, had come here to live so as to be near to her nephew and his wife, and that the wife had readily undertaken the supervision and care of her husband's aunt as far as she could do so without actually living in the house. Mrs. LlewellynSmythe had probably acknowledged in her own mind that she owed a great deal to Rowena, and had at the same time resented what she had no doubt thought of as her bossy ways.

"Well, they've all gone now," said Rowena Drake, hearing the final shutting of the hall door.

"Now what can I do for you? Something more about that dreadful party?

I wish I'd never had it here. But no other house really seemed suitable. Is Mrs.

Oliver still staying with Judith Butler?"

"Yes. She is, I believe, returning to London in a day or two. You had not met her before?"

"No. I love her books."

"She is, I believe, considered a very good writer," said Poirot.

"Oh well, she is a good writer. No doubt of that. She's a very amusing person too. Has she any ideas herself-I mean about who might have done this awful thing?"

"I think not. And you, Madame?"

"I told you already. I've no idea whatever."

"You would perhaps say so, and yet-you might, might you not, have, perhaps, what amounts to a very good idea, but only an idea. A half-formed idea. A possibie idea."

"Why should you think that?"

She looked at him curiously.

"You might have seen something-something quite small and unimportant but which on reflection might seem more significant to you, perhaps, than it had done at first."

"You must have something in your mind. Monsieur Poirot, some definite incident."

"Well, I admit it. It is because of what someone said to me."

"Indeed! And who was that?"

"A Miss Whittaker. A schoolteacher."

"Oh yes, of course. Elizabeth Whit224 taker. She's the mathematics mistress, isn't she, at The Elms? She was at the party, I remember. Did she see something?"

"It was not so much that she saw something as she had the idea that you might have seen something."

Mrs. Drake looked surprised and shook her head.

"I can't think of anything I can possibly have seen," said Rowena Drake, "but one never knows."

"It had to do with a vase," said Poirot.

"A vase of flowers."

"A vase of flowers?" Rowena Drake looked puzzled. Then her brow cleared.

"Oh, of course. I know. Yes, there was a big vase of autumn leaves and chrysanthemums on the table in the angle of the stairs. A very nice glass vase. One of my wedding presents. The leaves seemed to be drooping and so did one or two of the flowers. I remember noticing it as I passed through the hall-it was near the end of the party, I think, by then, but I'm not sure-I wondered why it looked like that, and I went up and dipped my fingers into it and found that some idiot must have forgotten to put any water into it after arranging it. It made me very angry. So I took it into the bathroom and filled it up.

But what could I have seen in that bathroom?

There was nobody in it. I am quite sure of that. I think one or two of the older girls and boys had done a little harmless, what the Americans call 'necking'3 there during the course of the party, but there was certainly nobody when I went into it with the vase."

"No, no, I do not mean that," said Poirot.