Hallowe'en Party

"One must accept facts," said Poirot, "and a fact that is expressed by modern biologists Western biologists " he hastened to add, " seems to suggest very strongly that the root of a person's actions lies in his genetic make-up. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer in potential at two or three or four years old. Or of course a mathematician or a musical genius."

"We are not discussing murderers," said Mrs. Drake.

"My bu^and died as a result of an accident. An accident caused by a careless and badly adjusted personality.

Whoever the boy or yo^S man was' there is always the hope of eventual adjustment to a belief and acceptance that it is a duty to consider others, W be twA to feel an abhorrence if you have taken life unawares, simply out of what may be described as criminal carelessness that was not really criminal in intent.

"You are quite sure? therefore, that it was not criminal intent?

"I should doubt it very much." Mrs.

Drake looked slightly surprised.

"I do not think that the police ever seriously considered that possibility. I certainly did not. It was an accident. A very tragic accident which altered the pattern of many lives, including my o^11' "You say we re not discussing murderers," said Poirot.

"But in the case of Joyce that is just what we are discussing. There was no accident about that. Deliberate hands pushed that child's head down into water, holding her there till death occurred. Deliberate intent."

"I know. I know. It's terrible. I don't like to think of it, to be reminded of it."

She got up, moving about restlessly.

Poirot pushed on relentlessly.

"We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find the motive involved."

"It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless."

"You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent of enjoying killing someone? Presumably killing someone young and immature."

"One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is difficult to find out. Even psychiatrists do not agree."

"You refuse to accept a simpler explanation?"

She looked puzzled.

"Simpler?"

"Someone not mentally disturbed, not a possible case for psychiatrists to disagree over. Somebody perhaps who just wanted to be safe."

"Safe? Oh, you mean "

"The girl had boasted that same day, some hours previously, that she had seen someone commit a murder."

"Joyce," said Mrs. Drake, with calm certainty, "was really a very silly little girl.

Not, I am afraid, always very truthful."

"So everyone has told me," said Hercuk Poirot.

"I am beginning to believe, you know, that what everybody has told me must be right," he added with a sigh.

"It usually is."

He rose to his feet, adopting a different manner.

"I must apologise, Madame. I have talked of painful things to you, things that do not truly concern me here. But it seemed from what Miss Whittaker told me "Why don't you find out more from her?"

"You mean-?"

"She is a teacher. She knows, much better than I can, what potentialities (as you have called them) exist amongst the children she teacher."

She paused and then said:

"Miss Ernlyn, too."

"The head-mistress?" Poirot looked surprised.

"Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is a natural psychologist. You said I might have ideas-half-formed ones-as to who killed Joyce. I haven't-but I think Miss Ernlyn might."

"This is interesting…"

"I don't mean has evidence. I mean she just knows. She could tell you-but I don't think she will."

"I begin to see," said Poirot, "that I have still a long way to go.

People know things-but they will not tell them to me."

He looked thoughtfully at Rowena Drake.

"Your aunt, Mrs. LlewellynSmythe, had an au pair girl who looked after her, a foreign girl."

"You seem to have got hold of all the local gossip." Rowena spoke dryly.

"Yes, that is so. She left here rather suddenly soon after my aunt's death."

"For good reasons, it would seem."

"I don't know whether it's libel or slander to say so-but there seems no doubt that she forged a codicil to my aunt's Will-or that someone helped her to do so."

"Someone?"

"She was friendly with a young man who worked in a solicitor's office in Medchester. He had been mixed up in a forgery case before. The case never came to court because the girl disappeared. She realised the Will would not be admitted to probate, and that there was going to be a court case. She left the neighbourhood and has never been heard of since."

"She too came, I have heard, from a broken home," said Poirot.

Rowena Drake looked at him sharply but he was smiling amiably.

"Thank you for all you have told me, Madame," he said.

When Poirot had left the house, he went for a short walk along a turning off the main road which was labelled "Helpsly Cemetery Road".