"You could have written them in your ordinary handwriting," said Mr Fullerton, "and put a note at the end saying 'per secretary' or per initials if you liked."
"She did not want me to do that. She wanted it to be thought that she wrote the letters herself."
And that, Mr Fullerton thought, could be true enough. It was very like Louise Llewellyn-Smythe. She was always passionately resentful of the fact that she could no longer do the things she used to do, that she could no longer walk far or go up hills quickly or perform certain actions with her hands, her right hand especially. She wanted to be able to say "I'm perfectly well, perfectly all right, and there's nothing I can't do if I set my mind to it." Yes, what Olga was telling him now was certainly true, and because it was true it was one of the reasons why the codicil appended to the last Will properly drawn out and signed by Louise Llewellyn-Smythe had been accepted at first without suspicion. It was in his own office, Mr Fullerton reflected, that suspicions had arisen because both he and his younger partner knew Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's handwriting very well. It was young Cole who had first said, "You know, I really can't believe that Louise Llewellyn-Smythe wrote that codicil. I know she had arthritis lately but look at these specimens of her own writing that I've brought along from amongst her papers to show you. There's something wrong about that codicil."
Mr Fullerton had agreed that there was something wrong about it. He had said they would take expert opinion on this handwriting question. The answer had been quite definite. Separate opinions had not varied. The handwriting of the codicil was definitely not that of Louise Llewellyn-Smythe. If Olga had been less greedy, Mr Fullerton thought, if she had been content to write a codicil beginning as this one had done. 'Because of her great care and attention to me and the affection and kindness she has shown me, I leave -' That was how it had begun, that was how it could have begun, and if it had gone on to specify a good round sum of money left to the devoted au pair girl, the relations might have considered it over-done, but they would have accepted it without questioning. But to cut out the relations altogether, the nephew who had been his aunt's residuary legatee in the last four wills she had made during a period of nearly twenty years, to leave everything to the stranger Olga Seminoff - that was not in Louise Llewellyn-Smythe's character.
In fact, a plea of undue influence could upset such a document anyway. No. She had been greedy, this hot, passionate child. Possibly Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had told her that some money would be left her because of her kindness, because of her attention, because of a fondness the old lady was beginning to feel for this girl who fulfilled all her whims, who did whatever she asked her. And that had opened up a vista for Olga. She would have everything.
The old lady should leave everything to her, and she would have all the money. All the money and the house and the clothes and the jewels. Everything. A greedy girl. And now retribution had caught up with her.
And Mr Fullerton, against his will, against his legal instincts and against a good deal more, felt sorry for her. Very sorry for her. She had known suffering since she was a child, had known the rigours of a police state, had lost her parents, lost a brother and sister and known injustice and fear, and it had developed in her a trait that she had no doubt been born with but which she had never been able so far to indulge. It had developed a childish passionate greed.
"Everyone is against me," said Olga. "Everyone. You are all against me. You are not fair because I am a foreigner, because I do not belong to this country, because I do not know what to say, what to do. What can I do? Why do you not tell me what I can do?"
"Because I do not really think there is anything much you can do," said Mr Fullerton. "Your best chance is to make a clean breast of things."
"If I say what you want me to say, it will be all lies and not true. She made that Will. She wrote it down there. She told me to go out of the room while the others signed it."
"There is evidence against you, you know. There are people who will say that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe often did not know what she was signing. She had several documents of different kinds, and she did not always re-read what was put before her."
"Well, then she did not know what she was saying."
"My dear child," said Mr Fullerton, "your best hope is the fact that you are a first offender, that you are a foreigner, that you understand the English language only in a rather rudimentary form. In that case you may get off with a minor sentence or you may, indeed, get put on probation."
"Oh, words. Nothing but words. I shall be put in prison and never let out again." "Now you are talking nonsense," Mr Fullerton said.
"It would be better if I ran away, if I ran away and hid myself so that nobody could find me."
"Once there is a warrant out for your arrest, you would be found."
"Not if I did it quickly. Not if I went at once. Not if someone helped me. I could get away. Get away from England. In a boat or a plane. I could find someone who forges passports or visas, or whatever you have to have. Someone who will do something for me. I have friends. I have people who are fond of me. Somebody could help me to disappear. That is what is needed. I could put on a wig. I could walk about on crutches."
"Listen," Mr Fullerton had said, and he had spoken then with authority, "I am sorry for you. I will recommend you to a lawyer who will do his best for you. You can't hope to disappear. You are talking like a child."
"I have got enough money. I have saved money." And then she had said, "You have tried to be kind. Yes, I believe that. But you will not do anything because it is all the law - the law. But someone will help me. Someone will. And I shall get away where nobody will ever find me."
Nobody, Mr Fullerton thought, had found her. He wondered yes; he wondered very much where she was or could be now.
Chapter 14
Admitted to Apple Trees, Hercule Poirot was shown into the drawing-room and told that Mrs Drake would not be long.
In passing through the hall he heard a hum of female voices from behind what he took to be the dining-room door.
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 Llewellyn-Smythe 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-1 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 possible 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 Whittaker. 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 -1 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' - 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. "But I understood that there was an accident. That the vase slipped out of your hand and it fell to the hall below and was shattered to pieces."
"Oh yes," said Rowena. "Broken to smithereens. I was rather upset about it because as I've said, it had been one of our wedding presents, and it was really a perfect flower vase, heavy enough to hold big autumn bouquets and things like that. It was very stupid of me. One of those things. My fingers just slipped. It went out of my hand and crashed on the hall floor below. Elizabeth Whittaker was standing there. She helped me pick up the pieces and sweep some of the broken glass out of the way in case someone stepped on it. We just swept it into a corner by the Grandfather clock to be cleared up later."
She looked inquiringly at Poirot.
"Is that the incident you mean?" she asked.
"Yes," said Poirot. "Miss Whittaker wondered, I think, how you had come to drop the vase. She thought that something perhaps had startled you."
"Startled me?" Rowena Drake looked at him, then frowned as she tried to think again. "No, I don't think I was startled, anyway. It was just one of those ways things do slip out of your hands. Sometimes when you're washing up. I think, really, it's a result of being tired. I was pretty tired by that time, what with the preparations for the party and running the party and all the rest of it. It went very well, I must say. I think it was - oh, just one of those clumsy actions that you can't help when you're tired."
"There was nothing - you are sure - that startled you? Something unexpected that you saw."
"Saw? Where? In the hall below? I didn't see anything in the hall below. It was empty at the moment because everyone was in at the Snapdragon excepting, of course, for Miss Whittaker. And I don't think I even noticed her until she came forward to help when I ran down."
"Did you see someone, perhaps, leaving the library door?"
"The library door... I see what you mean. Yes, I could have seen that." She paused for quite a long time, then she looked at Poirot with a very straight, firm glance.
"I didn't see anyone leave the library," she said. "Nobody at all..."
He wondered. The way in which she said it was what aroused the belief in his mind that she was not speaking the truth, that instead she had seen someone or something, perhaps the door just opening a little, a mere glance perhaps of a figure inside. But she was quite firm in her denial. Why, he wondered, had she been so firm? Because the person she had seen was a person she did not want to believe for one moment had had anything to do with the crime committed on the other side of the door? Someone she cared about, or someone - which seemed more likely, he thought - someone whom she wished to protect. Someone, perhaps, who had not long passed beyond childhood, someone whom she might feel was not truly conscious of the awful thing they had just done.
