These things have usually been said to me starting by: ‘Oh, yes, of course!’ ‘How sad it was, that whole story!’ ‘Of course, I think everyone knows really what happened.’ That’s the sort of thing.” “Yes.” “These people thought they knew what happened. But there weren’t really any very good reasons. It was just something someone had told them, or they’d heard either from friends or servants or relations or things like that. The suggestions, of course, are all the kind that you might think they were. A.
That General Ravenscroft was writing his memoirs of his Indian days and that he had a young woman who acted as his secretary and took dictation and typed things for him and was helping him, that she was a nice-looking girl and no doubt there was something there. The result being—well, there seemed to be two schools of thought. One school of thought was that he shot his wife because he hoped to marry the girl, and then when he had shot her, immediately was horror-stricken at what he’d done and shot himself…” “Exactly,” said Poirot. “A romantic explanation.” “The other idea was that there had been a tutor who came to give lessons to the son who had been ill and away from his prep school for six months or so—a good-looking young man.” “Ah, yes. And the wife had fallen in love with the young man. Perhaps had an affair with him?” “That was the idea,” said Mrs. Oliver. “No kind of evidence.
Just romantic suggestion again.” “And therefore?” “Therefore I think the idea was that the General probably shot his wife and then in a fit of remorse shot himself. There was another story that the General had had an affair, and his wife found out about it, that she shot him and then herself.
It’s always been slightly different every time. But nobody really knew anything. I mean, it’s always just a likely story every time. I mean, the General may have had an affair with a girl or lots of girls or just another married woman, or it might have been the wife who had an affair with someone.
It’s been a different someone in each story I’ve been told.
There was nothing definite about it or any evidence for it. It’s just the gossip that went around about twelve or thirteen years ago, which people have rather forgotten about now. But they remember enough about it to tell one a few names and get things only moderately wrong about what happened. There was an angry gardener who happened to live on the place, there was a nice elderly cook-housekeeper who was rather blind and rather deaf, but nobody seems to suspect that she had anything to do with it. And so on. I’ve got all the names and possibilities written down. The names of some of them wrong and some of them right. It’s all very difficult. His wife had been ill, I gather, for some short time. I think it was some kind of fever that she had. A lot of her hair must have fallen out because she bought four wigs. There were at least four new wigs found among her things.” “Yes. I, too, heard that,” said Poirot.
“Who did you hear it from?” “A friend of mine in the police. He went back over the accounts of the inquest and the various things in the house.
Four wigs! I would like to have your opinion on that, madame.
Do you think that four wigs seems somewhat excessive?” “Well, I do really,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I had an aunt who had a wig, and she had an extra wig, but she sent one back to be redressed and wore the second one. I never heard of anyone who had four wigs.” Mrs. Oliver extracted a small notebook from her bag, ruffled the pages of it, searching for extracts.
“Mrs. Carstairs, she’s seventy-seven and rather gaga. Quote from her: ‘I do remember the Ravenscrofts quite well. Yes, yes, a very nice couple. It’s very sad, I think. Yes. Cancer it was!’ I asked then which of them had cancer,” said Mrs.
Oliver, “but Mrs. Carstairs had rather forgotten about that.