Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘I thought you wrote novels,’ said Julian Harmon.

‘Well, so did I,’ said Edmund. ‘I began writing a novel. Rather good it was. Pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smelt like, and the grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy and a vicious young tart who dribbled down her chin—and they all talked interminably about the state of the world and wondered what they were alive for. And suddenly I began to wonder too…And then a rather comic idea occurred to me…and I jotted it down—and then I worked up rather a good little scene…All very obvious stuff. But somehow, I got interested…And before I knew what I was doing I’d finished a roaring farce in three acts.’

‘What’s it called?’ asked Patrick. ‘What the Butler Saw?’

‘Well, it easily might be…As a matter of I’ve called it Elephants Do Forget. What’s more, it’s been accepted and it’s going to be produced!’

‘Elephants Do Forget,’ murmured Bunch. ‘I thought they didn’t?’

The Rev. Julian Harmon gave a guilty start.

‘My goodness. I’ve been so interested. My sermon!’

‘Detective stories again,’ said Bunch. ‘Real-life ones this time.’

‘You might preach on Thou Shall Do No Murder,’ suggested Patrick.

‘No,’ said Julian Harmon quietly. ‘I shan’t take that as my text.’

‘No,’ said Bunch. ‘You’re quite right, Julian. I know a much nicer text, a happy text.’ She quoted in a fresh voice, ‘For lo the Spring is here and the Voice of the Turtle is heard in the Land—I haven’t got it quite right—but you know the one I mean. Though why a turtle I can’t think. I shouldn’t think turtles have got nice voices at all.’

‘The word turtle,’ explained the Rev. Julian Harmon, ‘is not very happily translated. It doesn’t mean a reptile but the turtle dove. The Hebrew word in the original is—’

Bunch interrupted him by giving him a hug and saying:

‘I know one thing—You think that the Ahasuerus of the Bible is Artaxerxes the Second, but between you and me it was Artaxerxes the Third.’

As always, Julian Harmon wondered why his wife should think that story so particularly funny.

‘Tiglath Pileser wants to go and help you,’ said Bunch. ‘He ought to be a very proud cat. He showed us how the lights fused.’

Epilogue

‘We ought to order some papers,’ said Edmund to Phillipa upon the day of their return to Chipping Cleghorn after the honeymoon. ‘Let’s go along to Totman’s.’

Mr Totman, a heavy-breathing, slow-moving man, received them with affability.

‘Glad to see you back, sir. And madam.’

‘We want to order some papers.’

‘Certainly sir. And your mother is keeping well, I hope? Quite settled down at Bournemouth?’

‘She loves it,’ said Edmund, who had not the faintest idea whether this was so or not, but like most sons, preferred to believe that all was well with those loved, but frequently irritating beings, parents.

‘Yes, sir. Very agreeable place. Went there for my holiday last year. Mrs Totman enjoyed it very much.’

‘I’m glad. About papers, we’d like—’

‘And I hear you have a play on in London, sir. Very amusing, so they tell me.’

‘Yes, it’s doing very well.’

‘Called Elephants Do Forget, soI hear. You’ll excuse me, sir, asking you, but I always thought that they didn’t—forget, I mean.’

‘Yes—yes, exactly—I’ve begun to think it was a mistake calling it that. So many people have said just what you say.’

‘A kind of natural-history fact, I’ve always understood.’

‘Yes—yes. Like earwigs making good mothers.’

‘Do they indeed, sir? Now, that’s a fact I didn’t know.’

‘About the papers—’

‘The Times, sir, I think it was?’ Mr Totman paused with pencil uplifted.

‘The Daily Worker,’ said Edmund firmly. ‘And the Daily Telegraph,’ said Phillipa. ‘And the New Statesman,’ said Edmund. ‘The Radio Times,’ said Phillipa. ‘The Spectator,’ said Edmund. ‘The Gardener’s Chronicle,’ said Phillipa.

They both paused to take breath.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mr Totman. ‘And the Gazette, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Edmund.

‘No,’ said Phillipa.

‘Excuse me, you do want the Gazette?’

‘No.’

‘No.’

‘You mean’—Mr Totman liked to get things perfectly clear—‘You don’t want the Gazette!’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘Certainly not.’