Hallowe'en Party

"Hasn't even got her husband to look after. She looked after him a good few years. That gave her a kind of object in life, as you might say. What with that and a lot of outside activities, she could be busy all the time. She's the type likes being busy all the time. And she's no children, more's the pity. So it's my view as she'll start all over again somewhere else."

"You may have something there. Where would she go?"

"I couldn't say as to that. One of these Riviery places, maybe-or there's them as goes to Spain or Portugal. Or Greece-I've heard her speak of Greece-Islands. Mrs.

Butler, she's been to Greece on one of them tours. Hellenic, they call them, which sounds more like fire and brimstone to me."

Poirot smiled.

"The isles of Greece," he murmured.

Then he asked: "Do you like her?"

"Mrs. Drake? I wouldn't say I exactly like her. She's a good woman.

Does her duty to her neighbour and all that-but she'll always need a power of neighbours to do her duty to-and if you ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty. Tells me how to prune my roses which I know well enough myself. Always at me to grow some newfangled kind of vegetable. Cabbage is good enough for me, and I'm sticking to cabbage."

Poirot smiled. He said, "I must be on my way. Can you tell me where Nicholas Ransome and Desmond Holland live?"

"Past the church, third house on the left. They board with Mrs. Brand, go into Medchester Technical every day to study.

They'll be home by now."

He gave Poirot an interested glance.

"So that's the way your mind is working, is it? There's some already as thinks the same."

"No, I think nothing as yet. But they were among those present that is all."

As he took leave and walked away, he mused, "Among those present I have come nearly to the end of my list." r | iWO pairs of eyes looked at Poirot | uneasily.

AL "I don't see what else we can tell you. We've both been interviewed by the police, M. Poirot."

Poirot looked from one boy to the other.

They would not have described themselves as boys; their manner was carefully adult.

So much so that if one shut one's eyes, their conversation could have passed as that of elderly club men Nicholas was eighteen. Desmond was sixteen.

"To oblige a friend, I make my inquiries of those present on a certain occasion. Not the Hallowe'en party itself-the preparations for that party. You were both active in these."

"Yes, we were."

"So far," Poirot said, "I have interviewed cleaning women, I have had the benefit of police views, of talks to a doctor -the doctor who examined the body first -have talked to a school-teacher who was present, to the headmistress of the school, to distraught relatives, have heard much of the village gossip-By the way, I understand you have a local witch here?"

The two young men confronting him both laughed.

"You mean Mother Goodbody. Yes, she came to the party and played the part of the witch." «I have come now," said Poirot, "to the younger generation, to those of acute eyesight and acute hearing and who have up-to-date scientific knowledge and shrewd philosophy. I am eager-very eager-to hear your views on this matter."

Eighteen and sixteen, he thought to himself, looking at the two boys confronting him. Youths to the police, boys to him, adolescents to newspaper reporters. Call them what you will. Products of to-day.

Neither of them, he judged, at all stupid, even if they were not quite of the high mentality that he had just suggested to them by way of a flattering sop to start the conversation. They had been at the party.

They had also been there earlier in the day to do helpful offices for Mrs. Drake.

They had climbed up step-ladders, they had placed yellow pumpkins in strategic positions, they had done a little electrical work on fairy lights, one or other of them had produced some clever effects in a nice batch of phoney photographs of possible husbands as imagined hopefully by teenage girls. They were also, incidentally, of the right age to be in the forefront of suspects in the mind of Inspector Raglan and, it seemed, in the view of an elderly gardener.

The percentage of murders committed by this age group had been increasing in the last few years. Not that Poirot inclined to that particular suspicion himself, but anything was possible. It was even possible that the killing which had occurred two or three years ago might have been committed by a boy, youth, or adolescent of fourteen or twelve years of age. Such cases had occurred in recent newspaper reports.