She said she thought the wife came to London and consulted a doctor and had an operation and then came home and was very miserable, and her husband was very upset about her. So of course he shot her and himself.” “Was that her theory or did she have any exact knowledge?” “I think it was entirely theory. As far as I can see and hear in the course of my investigations,” said Mrs. Oliver, making rather a point of this last word, “when anybody has heard that any of their friends whom they don’t happen to know very well have sudden illnesses or consult doctors, they always think it’s cancer. And so do the people themselves, I think. Somebody else–I can’t read her name here, I’ve forgotten, I think it began with T–she said that it was the husband who had cancer. He was very unhappy, and so was his wife. And they talked it over together and they couldn’t bear the thought of it all, so they decided to commit suicide.” “Sad and romantic,” said Poirot.
“Yes, and I don’t think really true,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It is worrying, isn’t it? I mean, the people remembering so much and that they really mostly seem to have made it up themselves.” “They have made up the solution of something they knew about,” said Poirot. “That is to say, they know that somebody comes to London, say, to consult a doctor,*or that somebody has been in hospital for two or three months. That is a fact that they know.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and then when they come to talk about it a long time afterwards, they’ve got the solution for it which they’ve made up themselves. That isn’t awfully helpful, is it?” “It is helpful,” said Poirot. “You are quite right, you know, in what you said to me.” “About elephants?” said Mrs. Oliver rather doubtfully.
“About elephants,” said Poirot. “It is important to know certain facts which have lingered in people’s memories although they may not know exactly what the fact was, why it happened or what led to it. But they might easily know something that we do not know and that we have no means of learning. So there have been memories leading to theories– theories of infidelity, of illness, of suicide pacts, of jealousy.
All these things have been suggested to you. Further search could be made as to points if they seem in any way probable.” “People like talking about the past,” said Mrs. Oliver. “They like talking about the past really much more than they like talking about what’s happening now, or what happened last year. It brings things back to them. They tell you, of course, first about a lot of other people that you don’t want to hear about and then you hear what the other people that they’ve remembered knew about somebody else that they didn’t know but they heard about. You know, so that the General and Lady Ravenscroft you hear about is at once removed, as it were.
It’s like family relationships,” she said. “You know, first cousin once removed, second cousin twice removed, all the rest of it. I don’t think I’ve been really very helpful, though.” “You must not think that,” said Poirot. “I am pretty sure that you will find that some of these things in your agreeable little purple-colored notebook will have something to do with the past tragedy. I can tell you from my own inquiries into the official accounts of these two deaths that they have remained a mystery. That is, from the police point of view.
They were an affectionate couple, there was no gossip or hearsay much about them of any sex trouble, there was no illness discovered such as would have caused anyone to take their own lives. I talk now only of the time, you understand, immediately preceding the tragedy. But there was a time before that, further back.” “I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and I’ve got something about that from an old Nanny. An old Nanny who is now–I don’t know, she might be a hundred, but I think she’s only about eighty. I remember her from my childhood days. She wasn’t very young then. She used to tell me stories about people in the Services abroad–India, Egypt, Siam and Hong Kong and the rest.” “Anything that interested you?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “there was some tragedy that she talked about. She seemed a bit uncertain about what it was.