“Ah, yes.” The doctor took it from him, opened it, read it and then, placing it beside him, looked at Poirot with some interest.
“I had already heard,” he said, “from Superintendent Garroway and also, I may say, from a friend of mine in the Home Office, who also begged me to do what I can for you in the matter that interests you.” “It is a rather serious favor to ask, I know,” said Poirot, “but there are reasons which make it important for me.” “Important for you after this number of years?” “Yes. Of course I shall quite understand if those particular events have passed out of your mind altogether.” “I can’t say they’ve done that. I am interested, as you may have heard, in special branches of my profession, and have been for many years.” “Your father, I know, was a very celebrated authority on them.” “Yes, he was. It was a great interest in his life. He had a lot of theories, some of them triumphantly proved right and some of them which proved disappointing. It is, I gather, a mental case you are interested in?” “A woman. Her name was Dorothea Preston-Grey.” “Yes. I was quite a young man at the time. I was already interested in my father’s line of thought although my theories and his did not always agree. The work he did was interesting and the work I did in collaboration interested me very much. I don’t know what your particular interest was in Dorothea Preston-Grey, as she was at the time, Mrs. Jarrow later.” “She was one of twins, I gather,” said Poirot.
“Yes. That was at that moment, I may say, my father’s particular field of study. There was a project on hand at that time to follow up the general lives of selected pairs of identical twins. Those who were brought up in the same environment, those who through various chances of life were brought up in entirely different environments. To see how alike they remained, how similar the things were that happened to them.
Two sisters, perhaps, or two brothers who had hardly spent any of their life together and yet in an extraordinary way the same things seemed to happen to them at the same time. It was all–indeed it has been all–extremely interesting. However, that is not your interest in the matter, I gather.” “No,” said Poirot, “it is a case, I think–the part of it that is to say that I’m interested in–of an accident to a child.” “That is so. It was in Surrey, I think. Yes, a very pleasant area, that, in which people lived. Not very far from Camberley, I think. Mrs. Jarrow was a young widow at that time and she had two small children. Her husband had recently died in an accident. She was, as a result–” “Mentally disturbed?” asked Poirot.
“No, she was not thought to be so. She was deeply shocked by her husband’s death and had a great sense of loss, but she was not recovering very satisfactorily in the impression of her own doctor. He did not quite like the way her convalescence was tending, and she did not seem to be getting over her bereavement in the way that he would have liked. It seemed to be causing her rather peculiar reactions. Anyway, he wanted a consultation and my father was asked by him to come and see what he could make of it. He found her condition interesting, and at the same time he thought it held very decided dangers, and he seemed to think that it would be as well if she was put under observation in some nursing home where particular care could be taken. Things like that. Even more so after the case when this accident to the child happened.
There were two children, and according to Mrs. Jarrow’s account of what happened, it was the older child, a girl, who attacked the little boy who was four or five years younger than she was, hitting him with a garden spade or hoe, so that he fell into an ornamental pond they had in the garden and was drowned. Well, these things, as you know, happen quite often among children. Children are pushed in a perambulator into a pond sometimes because an older child, being jealous, thinks that ‘Mummy will have so much less trouble if only Edward or Donald, or whatever his name is, wasn’t here,’ or, ‘It would be much nicer for her.’ It all results from jealousy.