“It was all so different,” said Norma.
“My father isn’t at all like I remember him when I was five years old. He used to play with me, all the time, and be so gay.
He’s not gay now. He’s worried and rather fierce and — oh quite different.” “That must be nearly fifteen years ago, I presume. People change.” “But ought people to change so much?” “Has he changed in appearance?” “Oh no, no, not that. Oh no! If you look at his picture just over his chair, although it’s of him when he was much younger, it’s exactly like him now. But it isn’t at all the way I remembered him.” “But you know, my dear,” said Poirot gently, “people are never like what you remember them. You make them as the years go by, more and more the way you wish them to be, and as you think you remember them. If you want to remember them as agreeable and gay and handsome, yw make them far more so than they actually were.” “Do you think so? Do you really think so?” She paused and then said abruptly, “But why do you think I want to kill people?” The question came out quite naturally. It was there between them.
They had, Poirot felt, got at last to a crucial moment.
“That may be quite an interesting question,” said Poirot, “and there may be quite an interesting reason. The person who can probably tell you the answer to that will be a doctor. The kind of doctor who knows.” She reacted quickly.
“I won’t go to a doctor. I won’t go near a doctor! They wanted to send me to a doctor, and then I’ll be shut up in one of those loony places and they won’t let me out again. I’m not going to do anything like that.” She was struggling now to rise to her feet.
“It is not I who can send you to one!
You need not be alarmed. You could go to a doctor entirely on your own behalf if you liked. You can go and say to him the things you have been saying to me, and you may ask him why, and he will perhaps tell you the cause.” “That’s what David says. That’s what David says I should do but I don’t think — I don’t think he understands. I’d have to tell a doctor that I — I might have tried to do things…” “What makes you think you have?” “Because I don’t always remember what I’ve done — or where I’ve been. I lose an hour of time — two hours — and I can’t remember. I was in a corridor once — a corridor outside a door, her door. I’d something in my hand — I don’t know how I got it. She came walking along towards me — But when she got near me, her face changed. It wasn’t her at all.
She’d changed into somebody else.” “You are remembering, perhaps, a nightmare. There people do change into somebody else.” “It wasn’t a nightmare. I picked up the revolver — It was lying there at my feet —” “In a corridor?” “No, in the courtyard. She came and took it away from me.” “Who did?” “Claudia. She took me upstairs and gave me some bitter stuff to drink.” “Where was your stepmother then?” “She was there, too— No, she wasn’t.
She was at Crosshedges. Or in hospital.
That’s where they found out she was being poisoned — and that it was me.” “It need not have been you — It could have been someone else.” “Who else could it have been?” “Perhaps — her husband.” “Father? Why on earth should Father want to poison Mary. He’s devoted to her.
He’s silly about her!” “There are others in the house, are there not?” “Old Uncle Roderick? Nonsense!” “One does not know,” said Poirot, “he might be mentally afflicted. He might think it was his duty to poison a woman who might be a beautiful spy. Something like that.” “That would be very interesting,” said Norma, momentarily diverted, and speaking in a perfectly natural manner. “Uncle Roderick was mixed up a good deal with spies and things in the last war. Who else is there? Sonia? I suppose she might be a beautiful spy, but she’s not quite my idea of one.” “No, and there does not seem very much reason why she should wish to poison your stepmother. I suppose there might be servants, gardeners?” “No, they just come in for the day.