Elephants Can Remember

Twelve years ago or fourteen and I still remember the Ravenscroft case and wonder-well, just the one word, I think. Why-why-why? Did the husband really hate his wife, and had hated her for a long time? Did the wife really hate her husband and want to get rid of him? Did they go on hating each other until they could bear it no longer?" Garroway broke off another piece of bread and chewed at it.
"You got some idea. Monsieur Poirot? Has somebody come to you and told you something that has awakened your interest particularly? Do you know something that might explain the 'Why'?" "No. All the same," said Poirot, "you must have had a theory. Come now, you had a theory?" "You're quite right, of course. One does have theories. One expects them all, or one of them at least, to work out, but they don't usually. I think that my theory was in the end that you couldn't look for the cause, because one didn't know enough.
What did I know about them? General Ravenscroft was close on sixty; his wife was thirty-five. All I knew of them, strictly speaking, was the last five or six years of their lives. The General had retired on a pension. They had come back to England from abroad and all the evidence that came to me, all the knowledge, was of a brief period during which they had first a house at Bournemouth and then moved to where they lived in the home where the tragedy took place. They had lived there peacefully, happily, their children came home there for school holidays. It was a peaceful period, I should say, at the end of what one presumed as a peaceful life. But then I thought, but how much did I know of that peaceful life? I knew of their life after retirement in England, of their family. There was no financial motive, no motive of hatred, no motive of sexual involvement, of intrusive love affairs. No.
But there was a period before that. What did I know about that? What I knew was a life spent mostly abroad with occasional visits home, a good record for the man, pleasant remembrances of her from friends of the wife's. There was no outstanding tragedy, dispute, nothing that one knew of. But then I mightn't have known. One doesn't know. There was a period of, say, twenty-thirty years, years from childhood to the time they married, the time they lived abroad in India and other places. Perhaps the root of the tragedy was there.
There is a proverb my grandmother used to repeat: Old sins have long shadows. Was the cause of death some long shadow, a shadow from the past? That's not an easy thing to find out about. You find out about a man's record, what friends or acquaintances say, but you don't know any inner details.
Well, I think little by little the theory grew up in my mind that that would have been the place to look, if I could have looked. Something that had happened then, in another country, perhaps. Something that had been thought to be forgotten, to have passed out of existence, but which still perhaps existed.
A grudge from the past, some happening that nobody knew about, that had happened elsewhere, not in their life in England, but which may have been there. If one had known where to look for it." "Not the sort of thing, you mean," said Poirot, "that anybody would remember. I mean, remember nowadays. Something that no friends of theirs in England, perhaps, would have known about." "Their friends in England seem to have been mostly made since retirement, though I suppose old friends did come and visit them or see them occasionally. But one doesn't hear about things that happened in the past. People forget." "Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully. "People forget." "They're not like elephants," said Superintendent Garroway, giving a faint smile. "Elephants, they always say, remember everything." "It is odd that you should say that," said Poirot.
"That I should say about long sins?" "Not so much that. It was your mention of elephants that interested me." Superintendent Garroway looked at Poirot with some surprise. He seemed to be waiting for more. Spence also cast a quick glance at his old friend.
"Something that happened in India, perhaps," he suggested.
"I mean-well, that's where elephants come from, isn't it? Or from Africa. Anyway, who's been talking to you about elephants?" he added.
"A friend of mine happened to mention them," said Poirot.
"Someone you know," he said to Superintendent Spence. "Mrs.
Oliver." "Oh, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver. Well!" He paused.
"Well what?" said Poirot.
"Well, does she know something, then?" he asked.
"I do not think so as yet," said Poirot, "but she might know something before very long." He added thoughtfully, "She's that kind of person. She gets around, if you know what I mean." "Yes," said Spence. "Yes. Has she got any ideas?" he asked.
"Do you mean Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, the writer?" asked Garroway with some interest.
"That's the one," said Spence.
"Does she know a good deal about crime? I know she writes crime stories. I've never known where she got her ideas from or her facts." "Her ideas," said Poirot, "come out of her head. Her facts- well, that's more difficult." He paused for a moment.
"What are you thinking of, Poirot? Something in particular?" "Yes," said Poirot. "I ruined one of her stories once, or so she tells me. She had just had a very good idea about a fact, something that had to do with a long-sleeved woolen vest. I asked her something over the telephone and it put the idea for the story out other head. She reproaches me at intervals." "Dear, dear," said Spence. "Sounds rather like that parsley that sank into the butter on a hot day. You know. Sherlock Holmes and the dog who did nothing in the nighttime." "Did they have a dog?" asked Poirot.
"I beg your pardon?" "I said did they have a dog? General and Mrs. Ravenscroft.
Did they take a dog for that walk with them on the day they were shot? The Ravenscrofts." "They had a dog-yes," said Garroway. "I suppose, I suppose they did take him for a walk most days." "If it had been one of Mrs. Oliver's stories," said Spence, "you ought to have found the dog howling over the two dead bodies. But that didn't happen." Garroway shook his head.
"I wonder where the dog is now?" said Poirot.
"Buried in somebody's garden, I expect," said Garroway.
"It's fourteen years ago." "So we can't go and ask the dog, can we?" said Poirot. He added thoughtfully, "A pity. It's astonishing, you know, what dogs can know. Who was there exactly in the house? I mean on the day when the crime happened?" "I brought you a list," said Superintendent Garroway, "in case you like to consult it. Mrs. Whittaker, the elderly cookhousekeeper.
It was her day out, so we couldn't get much from her that was helpful. A visitor was staying there who had been governess to the Ravenscroft children once, I believe.
Mrs. Whittaker was rather deaf and slightly blind. She couldn't tell us anything of interest, except that recently Lady Ravenscroft had been in hospital or in a nursing home-for nerves but not illness, apparently. There was a gardener, too." "But.a stranger might have come from outside. A stranger from the past. That's your idea, Superintendent Garroway?" "Not so much an idea as just a theory." Poirot was silent, he was thinking of a time when he had asked to go back into the past, had studied five people out of the past who had reminded him of the nursery rhyme "Five little pigs." Interesting it had been, and in the end rewarding, because he had found out the truth.