Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online

realise its true significance. That might apply to a lot of things you know, mon cher. Some rather peculiar car accident. A car where it appeared that the driver drove straight at the person who was injured or perhaps killed. A child might not realise it was deliberate at the time. But something someone said, or something she saw or heard a year or two later might awaken her memory and she'd think perhaps: 'A or  or X did it on purpose.' Perhaps it was really a murder, not just an accident.” And there are plenty of other possibilities. Some of them I will admit suggested by my friend, Mrs Oliver, who can easily come up with about twelve different solutions to everything, most of them not very probable but all of them faintly possible. Tablets added to a cup of tea administered to someone. Roughly that sort of thing. A push perhaps on a dangerous spot. You have no cliffs here, which is rather a pity from the point of view of likely theories. Yes, I think there could be plenty of possibilities. Perhaps it is some murder story that the girl reads which recalls to her an incident. It may have been an incident that puzzled her at the time, and she might, when she reads the story, say: 'Well, that might have been so-and-so and so-and-so. I wonder if he or she did it on purpose?' Yes, there are a lot of possibilities."
    “And you have come here to inquire into them?”
    “It would be in the public interest, I think, don't you?” said Poirot.
    “Ah, we're to be public spirited, are we, you and I?”
    “You can at least give me information,” said Poirot. “You know the people here.”
    “I'll do what I can,” said Spence. “And I'll rope in Elspeth. There's not much about people she doesn't know.”

Hallowe'en Party

Chapter 6
    Satisfied with what he had achieved, Poirot took leave of his friend.
    The information he wanted would be forthcoming - he had no doubt as to that.
    He had got Spence interested. And Spence, once set upon a trail, was not one to relinquish it. His reputation as a retired high-ranking officer of the CID would have won him friends in the local police departments concerned.
    And next - Poirot consulted his watch - he was to meet Mrs Oliver in exactly ten minutes' time outside a house called Apple Trees. Really, the name seemed uncannily appropriate.
    Really, thought Poirot, one didn't seem able to get away from apples. Nothing could be more agreeable than a juicy English apple - And yet here were apples mixed up with broomsticks, and witches, and old-fashioned folklore, and a murdered child.
    Following the route indicated to him, Poirot arrived to the minute outside a red brick Georgian style house with a neat beech hedge enclosing it, and a pleasant garden showing beyond.
    He put his hand out, raised the latch and entered through the wrought iron gate which bore a painted board labelled “Apple Trees”. A path led up to the front door. Looking rather like one of those Swiss clocks where figures come out automatically of a door above the clock face, the front door opened and Mrs Oliver emerged on the steps.
    “You're absolutely punctual,” she said breathlessly. “I was watching for you from the window.”
    Poirot turned and closed the gate carefully behind him. Practically on every occasion that he had met Mrs Oliver, whether by appointment or by accident, a motif of apples seemed to be introduced almost immediately. She was either eating an apple or had been eating an apple - witness an apple core nestling on her broad chest - or was carrying a bag of apples. But today there was no apple in evidence at all. Very correct, Poirot thought approvingly. It would have been in very bad taste to be gnawing an apple here, on the scene of what had been not only a crime but a tragedy. For what else can it be but that? thought Poirot. The sudden death of a child of only thirteen years old. He did not like to think of it, and because he did not like to think of it he was all the more decided in his mind