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

most admirably kept house. It was well furnished, it had carpets of excellent quality, everything was scrupulously polished and cleaned, and the fact that it had hardly any outstanding object of interest in it was not readily noticeable. One would not have expected it. The colours of the curtains and the covers were pleasant but conventional.
    It could have been let furnished at any moment for a high rent to a desirable tenant, without having to put away any treasures or make any alterations to the arrangement of the furniture.
    Mrs Drake greeted Mrs Oliver and Poirot and concealed almost entirely what Poirot could not help suspecting was a feeling of vigorously suppressed annoyance at the position in which she found herself as the hostess at a social occasion at which something as anti-social as murder had occurred. As a prominent member of the community of Woodleigh Common, he suspected that she felt an unhappy sense of having herself in some way proved inadequate. What had occurred should not have occurred. To someone else in someone else's house - yes. But at a party for children, arranged by her, given by her, organised by her, nothing like this ought to have happened. Somehow or other she ought to have seen to it that it did not happen. And Poirot also had a suspicion that she was seeking round irritably in the back of her mind for a reason.
    Not so much a reason for murder having taken place, but to find out and pin down some inadequacy on the part of someone who had been helping her and who had by some mismanagement or some lack of perception failed to realise that something like this could happen.
    “Monsieur Poirot,” said Mrs Drake, in her fine speaking voice, which Poirot thought would come over excellently in a small lecture room or the village hall, “I am so pleased you could come down here. Mrs Oliver has been telling me how invaluable your help will be to us in this terrible crisis.”
    “Rest assured, Madame, I shall do what I can, but as you no doubt realise from your experience of life, it is going to be a difficult business.”
    “Difficult?” said Mrs Drake. “Of course it's going to be difficult. It seems incredible, absolutely incredible, that such an awful thing should have happened. I suppose,” she added, “the police may know something? Inspector Raglan has a very good reputation locally, I believe. Whether or not they ought to call Scotland Yard in, I don't know. The idea seems to be that this poor child's death must have had a local significance. I needn't tell you, Monsieur Poirot after all, you read the papers as much as I do that there have been very many sad fatalities with children all over the countryside. They seem to be getting more and more frequent. Mental instability seems to be on the increase, though I must say that mothers and families generally are not looking after their children properly, as they used to do. Children are sent home from school alone, on dark evenings, go alone on dark early mornings. And children, however much you warn them, are unfortunately very foolish when it comes to being offered a lift in a smart-looking car. They believe what they're told. I suppose one cannot help that.”
    “But what happened here, Madame, was of an entirely different nature.”
    “Oh, I know -1 know. That is why I used the term incredible. I still cannot quite believe it,” said Mrs Drake. “Everything was entirely under control. All the arrangements were made. Everything was going perfectly, all according to plan. It just seems - seems incredible. Personally I consider myself that there must be what I call an outside significance to this. Someone walked into the house - not a difficult thing to do under the circumstances - someone of highly disturbed mentality, I suppose, the kind of people who are let out of mental homes simply because there is no room for them there, as far as I can see. Nowadays, room has to be made for fresh patients all the time. Anyone peeping in