“Mother, would you do me a favor?” I said. “Do you remember, when you were trying to persuade me to come here for Christmas, you told me all kinds of things about everybody at Frellingsloe House? Could you tell me those things again, in as much detail as you are able to provide? I did not give it my full attention first time round.”
“I have no intention of indulging in gossip,” Mother said primly.
It took some effort for me not to laugh at this. She was as keen on gossip as I was on swimming in cold water.
“I am not a fool, Edward. You are trying to trick me into telling you things. It won’t work. Anything I tell you, you will twist in order to justify your belief that the answer to the mystery of Stanley Niven’s death is to be found here at Frelly. It is not. It is to be found at St. Walstan’s hospital.”
“Mr. Hurt-His-Head might know the answer,” I said casually, testing her.
She looked relieved. “Yes, he might. He very well might, but you try making the Norfolk police pay attention. Goodness knows how Inspector Gerald Mackle has ended up in a supervisory role. I would not leave him in charge of a jar of jam, let alone a murder investigation.” With that, she took off, and I made my way down to the sea.
I both survived and enjoyed my swim, then returned to the house and undertook the climb to the top floor, where I ran myself a bath. There is nothing better than a hot bath after the kind of swim that seems to embed the essence of cold deep inside you; you believe you will never be warm again and then, hey presto, you are.
The bath water was too hot for me to stay in for long, so I climbed out and returned to my bedroom, thinking about Mother’s refusal to help me. To the devil with her. I had not paid full attention to her witterings about the people I would meet if I accompanied her to Munby, but I was sure that, if I tried, I would be able to remember most of what she had said.
Some minutes later I was dressed and sitting at the desk in my room, which was perfectly positioned beneath a large sash window that offered a splendid view of the sea. I opened the window to let in some fresh air—my preference even in winter, and one that Poirot claims he will never understand—and then wrote down every snippet of information I could recall from Mother’s original description of the residents of Frellingsloe House. Each time I thought I had finished, I stared at the rolling waves and said to myself, “What else? There is more. There must be more.” This approach proved so fruitful that I would earnestly recommend it to anyone who wishes to improve the function of their mental faculties.
By the time I had finished, my list was substantial. The only thing I could not judge with any accuracy was how much of what I had written down was hard fact and howmuch was mere opinion, gossip or mistaken speculation. The list read as follows:
What Mother said about the people at Frellingsloe House
The illness killing Arnold Laurier is a rare kind of cancer. Hardly anybody suffers from it or dies of it.
The doctor lodger, Robert Osgood, is engaged to be married to somebody. (Who? Mother probably knows, and so, I am sure, do most people at Frellingsloe House.) Dr. Osgood is not in love with this person and does not really want to marry her. Rather, he is in love with Vivienne Laurier.
NB: might the Osgood and Rawcliffe “Romeo and Rosaline” discussion be related to the above? My best recollection of that conversation is as follows: Osgood seemed a little irritated with Rawcliffe, and his manner grew increasingly heated as they talked. Poirot is right: Osgood ended the discussion abruptly. Everything Rawcliffe said seemed to enrage him, and he did not want to have a row in front of Poirot and me. From what I could gather, his argument was thatRomeo and Juliet, the play, is only as beloved as it is because the characters Romeo and Juliet adore each other. That is what makesit a great love story. If Romeo had lost interest in Juliet as he did in Rosaline, no one would have cared about them as a pair at all. There would have been no great love to ruin. Anyone sensible would think that Rosaline was far better off without Romeo, because his love for her had proved to be so transitory and fickle.
Could this have been Osgood trying to persuade Rawcliffe that the woman he is expected to marry would be better off without him? That, since he is not especially keen on her, there is no great love to be destroyed? Is Vivienne Laurier the “Juliet” in this picture? Did Osgood stop loving his fiancée when he fell in love with Vivienne?
Vivienne Laurier and Felix Rawcliffe are involved in some kind of secret business together, which is not of a romantic nature. But they are certainly hiding something, or conspiring together in some way. (This is likely to be what lies behind the conversation I overheard between Vivienne and Rawcliffe last night.)
Maddie and Janet Laurier hate each other. Before meeting the Laurier family, the sisters were close. Maddie, the elder of the two, met and married Douglas first. Later, Janet married Jonathan, the younger Laurier brother. Maddie and Douglas had not been happy about this development and the two couples had remained at loggerheads ever since.
Enid and Terence Surtees are angry (both of them, or only one of them?) with Arnold Laurier, and their anger is somehow linked to the marriage of Jonathan and Janet. Because they believe Arnold encouraged it? Cannot remember. Maybe Mother did not tell me.
Enid Surtees and Vivienne Laurier have something in common. Enid views it as a tragedy that her girls no longer love one another as much as she loves both of them. She cannot believe, having brought them up in the way she did, that they have allowed two men to come between them. Vivienne, for her part, lost all of her family at a relatively young age. She came from a large clan and had always hoped she and Arnold might have at least five children. She has always fretted about the lack of a strong bond between Douglas and Jonathan. They do not seem to love each other unconditionally in the way that she loves them, and she wishes they did.
Enid Surtees is disappointed that neither of her daughters has yet given her a grandchild. She believes there is something wrong with the Laurier brothers—that the lack of progeny can be laid at their door and has nothing to do with either of her daughters. (Mother disagrees, and blames Enid’s appalling cooking. Maddie and Janet must have been malnourished as children,she believes, and are infertile as a result. She has no evidence whatever for this claim.)
Happy Men—a recurring theme. Mother said that Arnold Laurier was irrepressibly happy despite being terminally ill. An optimistic and cheery nature is something he has in common with the late Stanley Niven. Does Vivienne think Arnold might be the next victim of a killer targeting happy men? Surely not; that would be ridiculous. Yet both Vivienne and Poirot seem to think Arnold might be the killer’s next victim.Why?
Arnold Laurier inherited much family wealth. He and his wife Vivienne agreed that they would spend as little of it as possible in order to leave their sons with as much as they could after their deaths. This was a joint decision made long ago. A much later, more recent decision was then made to let all the domestic servants go and to replace them with Terence and Enid Surtees. This (I am almost certain Mother implied) was Arnold’s doing, and Vivienne had not been happy about it initially, though she had accepted it.
Twice I read through what I had written. Satisfied that I had made all the progress I could for the time being, I stood up and readied myself to go downstairs and decorate the various Christmas trees of Frellingsloe House.
Chapter 13
Inspector Mackle’s Own Two Hands
I had assumed the car that came to collect Poirot that morning was sent by Gerald Mackle of the Norfolk police. In fact, Poirot told me later, Mackle had not sent the vehicle; rather, he had driven it himself. “There is one sure way to know that a task will get done, and that is to do it with your own two hands,” he had said to Poirot. Having made his point, Mackle elaborated upon it unnecessarily with an extended soliloquy about seeing with one’s own two eyes what one’s own two hands were doing, and walking on one’s own two feet in order to sniff out a puzzle with one’s own nose.
“I am sure you feel as I do, Mr. Prarrow,” the inspector concluded, after the crime-solving responsibilities of all relevant parts of his anatomy had been inventoried.
“Not at all, inspector. Myself, I favor the opposite approach. If dashing from place to place is required, I am happy to rely on those who are kind enough to help me. I prefer not to travel back and forth like the ping-pong ball. Once everything I have requested has been told orbrought to me, that is when I rely entirely upon my little grey cells. They have not yet let me down.”
“Is that so, Mr. Prarrow? Well, fancy that.” Mackle was a tall young man—thirty at most, Poirot estimated—with a long, rectangular face and the sort of fair hair that was as close to the primary color of yellow as it is possible for hair to be. Even for someone of his height, the inspector’s hands and feet looked excessively large. It was no wonder, Poirot thought wryly, that he had decided to make trusted colleagues of them, since they took up so much space in his immediate vicinity.
