Elephants Can Remember

"This, I think, could be Celia," she said. "You're sure it's all right?" "By me, yes," said Poirot. "By her also, I hope." Mrs. Oliver came back a few minutes later. Celia Ravenscroft was with her. She had a doubtful, suspicious look.
"I don't know," she said, "if I-" She stopped, staring at Hercule Poirot.
"I want to introduce you," said Mrs. Oliver, "to someone who is helping me, and I hope is helping you also. That is, helping you in what you want to know and to find out. This is Monsieur Hercule Poirot. He has special genius in finding out things." "Oh," said Celia.
She looked very doubtfully at the egg-shaped head, the monstrous moustaches and the small stature.
"I think," she said rather doubtfully, "that I have heard of him." Hercule Poirot stopped himself with a slight effort from saying firmly, "Most people have heard of me." It was not quite as true as it used to be, because many people who had heard of Hercule Poirot and known him were now reposing with suitable memorial stones over them in churchyards. He said: "Sit down, mademoiselle. I will tell you this much about myself. That when I start an investigation I pursue it to the end. I will bring to light the truth and if it is, shall we say, truly the truth that you want, then I will deliver that knowledge to you. But it may be that you want reassuring.
That is not the same thing as the truth. I can find various aspects that might reassure you. Will that be enough? If so, do not ask for more." Celia sat down in the chair he had pushed towards her, and looked at him rather earnestly. Then she said: "You don't think I'd care for the truth, is that it?" "I think," said Poirot, "that the truth might be-a shock, a sorrow, and it might be that you would have said 'why did I not leave all this behind? Why did I ask for knowledge? It is painful knowledge about which I can do nothing helpful or hopeful.' It is a double suicide by a father and a mother that I-well, we'll admit it-that I loved. It is not a disadvantage to love a mother and father." "It seems to be considered so nowadays occasionally," said Mrs. Oliver. "New article of belief, shall we say." "That's the way I've been living," said Celia. "Beginning to wonder, you know. Catching on to odd things that people said sometimes. People who looked at me rather pityingly. But more than that. With curiosity as well. One begins to find out, you know, things about people, I mean. People you meet, people you know, people who used to know your family. I don't want this life. I want… you think I don't really want it, but I do-I want truth. I'm able to deal with truth. Just tell me something." It was not a continuation of the conversation. Celia had turned on Poirot with a separate question. Something which had replaced what had been in her mind just previously.
"You saw Desmond, didn't you?" she said. "He went to see you. He told me he had." "Yes. He came to see me. Did you not want him to do so?" "He didn't ask me." "If he had asked you?" "I don't know. I don't know whether I should have forbid128 den?iii11 to do s0'told ^lm on n0 account to do such a thing, or whether I should have encouraged it." "I would like to ask you one question, mademoiselle. I want to know if there is one clear thing in your mind that matters to you, that could matter to you more than anything else." "V^ell, what is that?" "as you say, Desmond Burton-Cox came to see me. A very attract^® ^d likeable young man, and very much in earnest over what he came to say. Now that-that is the really important thing. The important thing is if you and he really wish to marry--because that is serious. That is-though young people do not always think so nowadays-that is a link together for life. D° y011 want to enter into that state? It matters. What difference can it make to you or to Desmond whether the death of tw0 P^ple was a double suicide or something quite different?" "You think it is something quite different-or, it was?" "I do not as yet know," said Poirot. "I have reason to believe that it might be. There are certain things that do not accord with a double suicide, but as far as I can go on the opinion of the police-and the police are very reliable, Mademoiselle Celia, very reliable-they put together all the evidence and they thought very definitely that it could be nothing else but a double suicide." "But they never knew the cause of it? That's what you mean-" "Yes," said Poirot, "that's what I mean." "Afld don't you know the cause of it, either? I mean, from looking lnto things or thinking about them, or whatever you do?" "No, I am not sure about it," said Poirot. "I think there might be something very painful to learn and I am asking you whether you will be wise enough to say: The past is the past.
Here is a young man whom I care for and who cares for me.
This is the future we are spending together, not the past.' " "Did be tell you he was an adopted child?" asked Celia.
"Yes, he did." "You see, what business is it really, of hers? Why should she come worrying Mrs. Oliver here, trying to make Mrs.
Oliver ask me questions, find out things. She's not his own mother." "Does he care for her?" "No," said Celia. "I'd say on the whole he dislikes her. I think he always has." "She's spent money on him, schooling and on clothes and on all sorts of different things. And you think she cares for him'?" "I don't know. I don't think so. She wanted, I suppose, a child to replace her own child. She'd had a child who died in an accident, that was why she wanted to adopt someone, and her husband had died quite recently. All these dates are so difficult." "I know, I know. I would like perhaps to know one thing." "About her or about him?" "Is he provided for financially?" "I don't know quite what you mean by that. He'll be able to support me-to support a wife. I gather some money was settled on him when he was adopted. A sufficient sum, that is. I don't mean a fortune or anything like that." "There is nothing that she could-withhold?" "What, you mean that she'd cut off the money supplies if he married me? I don't think she's ever threatened to do that, or indeed that she could do it. I think it was all fixed up by lawyers or whoever arranges adoptions. I mean, they make a lot of fuss, these adoption societies, from all I hear." "I would ask you something else which you might know but nobody else does. Presumably Mrs. Burton-Cox knows it. Do you know who his actual mother was?" "You think that might have been one of the reasons for her being so nosey and all that? Something to do with, as you say, what he was really. I don't know. I suppose he might have been an illegitimate child. They're the usual ones that go for adoption, aren't they? She might have known something about his real mother or his real father, or something like that. If so, she didn't tell him. I gather she just told him the silly things they suggest you should say. That it is just as nice to be adopted, because it shows you really were wanted. There's a lot of silly slop like that." "I think some societies suggest that that's the way you should break the news. Does he or you know of any blood relations?" "I don't know. I don't think he knows, but I don't think it worries him at all. He's not that kind of a worrier." "Do you know if Mrs. Burton-Cox was a friend of your family, of your mother and father? Did you ever meet her, as far as you can remember, when you were living in your own home in the early days?" "I don't think so. I think Desmond's mother-I mean, I think Mrs. Burton-Cox went to Malaya. I think perhaps her husband died out in Malaya, and that Desmond was sent to school in England while they were out there and that he was boarded with some cousins or people who take in children for holidays. And that's how we came to be friends in those days.
I always remembered him, you know. I was a great heroworshiper.
He was wonderful at climbing trees and he taught me things about birds' nests and birds' eggs. So it seemed quite natural, when I met him again I mean, met him at the university, and we both talked about where we'd lived and then he asked me my name. He said, 'Only your Christian name I know,' and then we remembered quite a lot of things together. It's what made us, you might say, get acquainted. I don't know everything about him. I don't know anything. I want to know. How can you arrange your life and know what you're going to do with your life if you don't know all about the things that affect you, that really happened?" "So you tell me to carry on with my investigation?" "Yes, if it's going to produce any results, though I don't think it will, because in a way, well, Desmond and I have tried our hand at finding out a few things. We haven't been very successful. It seems to come back to this plain fact which isn't really the story of a life. It's the story of a death, isn't it? Of two deaths, that's to say. When it's a double suicide, one thinks of it as one death. Is it in Shakespeare or where does the quotation come from-"And in death they were not divided'?" She turned to Poirot again. "Yes, go on.