“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“I’m sending you forth on your voyage of discovery,” said Poirot. “A la recherche des elephants.” “I expect I’m mad,” said Mrs. Oliver sadly. She brushed her hands through her hair again so that she looked like the old picture books of Struwelpeter. “I was just thinking of starting a story about a golden retriever. But it wasn’t going well. I couldn’t get started, if you know what I mean.” “All right, abandon the golden retriever. Concern yourself only with elephants.”
Book One Elephants
CHAPTER III Great Aunt Alices Guide To Knowledge
“Can you find my address book for me, Miss Livingstone?” “It’s on your desk, Mrs. Oliver. In the left-hand corner.” “I don’t mean that one,” said Mrs. Oliver. “That’s the one I’m using now. I mean my last one. The one I had last year, or perhaps the one before that again.” “Has it been thrown away, perhaps?” suggested Miss Livingstone.
“No, I don’t throw away address books and things like that because so often you want one. I mean some address that you haven’t copied into the new one. I expect it may be in one of the drawers of the tallboys.” Miss Livingstone was a fairly new arrival, replacing Miss Sedgwick. Ariadne Oliver missed Miss Sedgwick. Sedgwick knew so many things. She knew the places where Mrs. Oliver sometimes put things, the kind of places Mrs. Oliver kept things in. She remembered the names of people Mrs. Oliver had written nice letters to, and the names of people that Mrs.
Oliver, goaded beyond endurance, had written rather rude things to. She was invaluable, or rather, had been invaluable.
She was like—what was the book called?” Mrs. Oliver said, casting her mind back. “Oh, yes, I know—a big brown book.
All Victorians had it. Enquire Within upon Everything. And you could, too! How to take iron mark stains off linen, how to deal with curdled mayonnaise, how to start a chatty letter to a bishop. Many, many things. It was all there in Enquire Within upon Everything.” Great-aunt Alice’s great standby.
Miss Sedgwick had been just as good as Aunt Alice’s book.
Miss Livingstone was not at all the same thing. Miss Livingstone stood there always, very long-faced, with a sallow skin, looking purposefully efficient. Every line of her face said, “I am very efficient.” But she wasn’t really, Mrs. Oliver thought.
She only knew all the places where former literary employers of hers had kept things and where she clearly considered Mrs. Oliver ought to keep them.
“What I want,” said Mrs. Oliver with firmness and the determination of a spoiled child, “is my nineteen seventy address book. And I think nineteen sixty-nine as well. Please look for it as quick as you can, will you?” “Of course, of course,” said Miss Livingstone.
She looked around her with the rather vacant expression of someone who is looking for something she has never heard of before but which efficiency may be able to produce by some unexpected turn of luck.
If I don’t get Sedgwick back, I shall go mad, thought Mrs.
Oliver to herself. I can’t deal with this thing if I don’t have Sedgwick.
Miss Livingstone started pulling open various drawers in the furniture in Mrs. Oliver’s so-called study and writing room.
“Here is last year’s,” said Miss Livingstone happily. “That will be much more up-to-date, won’t it? Nineteen seventy-one.” “I don’t want nineteen seventy-one,” said Mrs. Oliver.
Vague thoughts and memories came to her.
“Look in that tea caddy table,” she said.
Miss Livingstone looked round, looking worried.
“That table,” said Mrs. Oliver, pointing.
“A desk book wouldn’t be likely to be in a tea caddy,” said Miss Livingstone, pointing out to her employer the general facts of life.
“Yes, it could,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I seem to remember.” Edging Miss Livingstone aside, she went to the tea caddy table, raised the lid, looked at the attractive inlaid work inside. “And it is here,” said Mrs. Oliver, raising the lid of a papier-mache round canister, devised to contain Lapsang Souchong as opposed to Indian tea, and taking out a curled-up, small brown notebook.
“Here it is,” she said.