Read Online Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online Page B

nowadays and all that. But they wouldn’t do a thing like this, I’m sure. Joyce was only a child—thirteen years old.”
    â€œI don’t want to distress you by staying here too long, Madame, or to ask you difficult questions. That already, I am sure, the police are doing elsewhere, and I don’t want to upset you by dwelling on painful facts. It was just concerning a remark that your daughter made at the party. You were not there yourself, I think?”
    â€œWell, no, I wasn’t. I haven’t been very well lately and children’s parties can be very tiring. I drove them there, and then later I came back to fetch them. The three children went together, you know. Ann, that’s the older one, she is sixteen, and Leopold who is nearly eleven. What was it Joyce said that you wanted to know about?”
    â€œMrs. Oliver, who was there, will tell you what your daughter’s words were exactly. She said, I believe, that she had once seen a murder committed.”
    â€œJoyce? Oh, she couldn’t have said a thing like that. What murder could she possibly have seen committed?”
    â€œWell, everyone seems to think it was rather unlikely,” said Poirot. “I just wondered if you thought it likely. Did she ever speak to you about such a thing?”
    â€œSeeing a murder? Joyce?”
    â€œYou must remember,” said Poirot, “that the term murder might have been used by someone of Joyce’s age in a rather loose way. It might have been just a question of somebody being run over by a car, or of children fighting together perhaps and one pushing another into a stream or over a bridge. Something that was not meant seriously, but which had an unfortunate result.”
    â€œWell, I can’t think of anything like that happening here that Joyce could have seen, and she certainly never said anything about it to me. She must have been joking.”
    â€œShe was very positive,” said Mrs. Oliver. “She kept on saying that it was true and that she’d seen it.”
    â€œDid anyone believe her?” asked Mrs. Reynolds.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Poirot.
    â€œI don’t think they did,” said Mrs. Oliver, “or perhaps they didn’t want to—er—well, encourage her by saying they believed it.”
    â€œThey were inclined to jeer at her and say she was making it all up,” said Poirot, less kindhearted than Mrs. Oliver.
    â€œWell, that wasn’t very nice of them,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “Asthough Joyce would tell a lot of lies about things like that.” She looked flushed and indignant.
    â€œI know. It seems unlikely,” said Poirot. “It was more possible, was it not, that she might have made a mistake, that she might have seen something she did think could have been described as a murder. Some accident, perhaps.”
    â€œShe’d have said something about it to me, if so, wouldn’t she?” said Mrs. Reynolds, still indignant.
    â€œOne would think so,” said Poirot. “She did not say so at any time in the past? You might have forgotten. Especially if it wasn’t really important.”
    â€œWhen do you mean?”
    â€œWe don’t know,” said Poirot. “That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeks ago—or three years. She said she had been ‘quite young’ at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational happening round here that you can recall?”
    â€œOh, I don’t think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. You know, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that. But nothing important that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.”
    â€œBut if Joyce said positively she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t say so unless she