HALLOWEEN PARTY [185-011-3.5]
By: AGATHA CHRISTIE
Category: fiction mystery
Synopsis:
No synopsis available.
Complete and Unabridged
ULVERSCROFT
Leicester First published in Great Britain in 1969 by William Collins
Sons & Co. Ltd., London First Large Print Edition published August
1987 by arrangement with William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London and
Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., New York Copyright 1969 by Agatha Christie
All rights reserved
Christie, Agatha Hallowe'en party.--Large printed.-Ulverscroft large
print series: mystery I. Title
823'.912[F] PR6005.H66
ISBN 0-7089-1666-X
Set by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd. Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by T. J. Press (Padstow) Ltd."
Padstow, Cornwall To P. G. Wodehouse whose books and stories have
brightened my life for many years. Also to show my pleasure in his
having been kind enough to tell me that he enjoys my books MRS.
ARIADNE OLIVER had gone with the friend with whom she was staying,
Judith Butler, to help with the preparations for a children's party
which was to take place that same evening.
At the moment it was a scene of chaotic activity. Energetic women came
in and out of doors moving chairs, small tables, flower vases, and
carrying large quantities of yellow pumpkins which they disposed
strategically in selected spots.
It was to be a Hallowe'en party for invited guests of an age group
between ten and seventeen years old.
Mrs. Oliver, removing herself from the main group, leant against a
vacant background of wall and held up a large yellow pumpkin, looking
at it critically--"The last time I saw one of these," she said,
sweeping back her grey hair from her prominent forehead, "was in the
United States last year--hundreds of them. All over the house. I've
never seen so many pumpkins. As a matter of fact," she added
thoughtfully, "I've never really known the difference between a pumpkin
and a vegetable marrow. What's this one?"
"Sorry, dear," said Mrs. Butler, as she fell over her friend's feet.
Mrs. Oliver pressed herself closer against the wall.
"My fault," she said.
"I'm standing about and getting in the way. But it was rather
remarkable, seeing so many pumpkins or vegetable marrows, whatever they
are. They were everywhere, in the shops, and in people's houses, with
candles or night lights inside them or strung up. Very interesting
really. But it wasn't for a Hallowe'en party, it was Thanksgiving.
Now I've always associated pumpkins with Hallowe'en and that's the end
of October.
Thanksgiving comes much later, doesn't it? Isn't it November, about
the third week in November? Anyway, here, Hallowe'en is definitely the
31st of October, isn't it? First Hallowe'en and then, what comes next?
All Souls' Day?
That's when in Paris you go to cemeteries and put flowers on graves.
Not a sad sort of feast. I mean, all the children go too, and enjoy
themselves. You go to flower markets first and buy lots and lots of
lovely flowers. Flowers never look so lovely as they do in Paris in
the market there."
A lot of busy women were falling over Mrs. Oliver occasionally, but
they were not listening to her. They were all too busy with what they
were doing.
They consisted for the most part of mothers, one or two competent
spinsters;
there were useful teenagers, boys of sixteen and seventeen climbing up
ladders or standing on chairs to put decorations, pumpkins or vegetable
marrows or brightly coloured witch balls at a suitable elevation; girls
from eleven to fifteen hung about in groups and giggled.
"And after All Souls' Day and cemeteries," went on Mrs. Oliver,
lowering her bulk on to the arm of a settee, "you have All Saints' Day.
I think I'm right?"
Nobody responded to this question.
Mrs. Drake, a handsome middle-aged woman who was giving the party,
made a pronouncement.
"I'm not calling this a Hallowe'en party, although of course it is one
really. I'm calling it the Eleven Plus party. It's that sort of age
group. Mostly people who are leaving The Elms and going on to other
schools."
"But that's not very accurate, Rowena, is it?" said Miss Whittaker,
resetting her pince-nez on her nose disapprovingly.
Miss Whittaker as a local schoolteacher was always firm on accuracy.
"Because we've abolished the eleven plus some time ago."
Mrs. Oliver rose from the settee apologetically.
"I haven't been making myself useful. I've just been sitting here
saying silly things about pumpkins and vegetable marrows"--And resting
my feet, she thought, with a slight pang of conscience, but without
sufficient feeling of guilt to say it aloud.
"Now what can I do next?" she asked, and added, "What lovely
apples!"
Someone had just brought a large bowl of apples into the room. Mrs.
Oliver was partial to apples.
"Lovely red ones," she added.
"They're not really very good," said Rowena Drake.
"But they look nice and partified. That's for bobbing for apples.
They're rather soft apples, so people will be able to get their teeth
into them better.
Take them into the library, will you, Beatrice? Bobbing for apples
always makes a mess with the water slopping over, but that doesn't
matter with the library carpet, it's so old. Oh! thank you, Joyce."
Joyce, a sturdy thirteen-year-old, seized the bowl of apples. Two
rolled off it and stopped, as though arrested by a witch's wand, at
Mrs. Oliver's feet.
"You like apples, don't you?" said Joyce.
"I read you did, or perhaps I heard it on the telly. You're the one
who writes murder stories, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Oliver.
"We ought to have made you do something connected with murders. Have a
murder at the party to-night and make people solve it."
"No, thank you," said Mrs. Oliver.
"Never again."
"What do you mean, never again?"
"Well, I did once, and it didn't turn out much of a success," said Mrs.
Oliver.
"But you've written lots of books," said Joyce, "you make a lot of
money out of them, don't you?"
"In a way.," said Mrs. Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland
Revenue.
"And you've got a detective who's a Finn."
Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs.
Oliver would have thought, arrived at the seniority of the eleven-plus,
said sternly, "Why a Finn?"
"I've often wondered," said Mrs. Oliver truthfully.
Mrs. Hargreaves, the organist's wife, came into the room breathing
heavily, and bearing a large green plastic pail.
"What about this," she said, "for the apple bobbing? Kind of gay, I
thought."
Miss Lee, the doctor's dispenser, said, "Galvanised bucket's better.
Won't tip over so easily. Where are you going to have it, Mrs.
Drake?"
"I thought the bobbing for apples had better be in the library. The
carpet's old there and a lot of water always gets spilt, anyway."
"All right. We'll take 'em along.
Rowena, here's another basket of apples."
"Let me help," said Mrs. Oliver.
She picked up the two apples at her feet.
Almost without noticing what she was doing, she sank her teeth into one
of them and began to crunch it. Mrs. Drake abstracted the second
apple from her firmly and restored it to the basket. A buzz of
conversation broke out.
"Yes, but where are we going to have the Snapdragon?"
"You ought to have the Snapdragon in the library, it's much the darkest
room."
"No, we're going to have that in the dining-room."
"We'll have to put something on the table first."
"There's a green baize cloth to put on that and then the rubber sheet
over it."
"What about the looking-glasses? Shall we really see our husbands in
them?"
Surreptitiously removing her shoes and still quietly champing at her
apple, Mrs.
Oliver lowered herself once more on to the settee and surveyed the room
full of people critically. She was thinking in her authoress's mind:
"Now, if I was going to make a book about all these people, how should
I do it? They're nice people, I should think, on the whole, but who
knows?"
In a way, she felt, it was rather fascinating not to know anything
about them.
They all lived in Woodleigh Common, some of them had c faint tags
attached to them in her memory because of what Judith had told her.
Miss Johnson--something to do with the church, not the vicar's sister.
Oh no, it was the organist's sister, of course. Rowena Drake, who
seemed to run things in Woodleigh Common. The puffing woman who had
brought in the pail, a particularly hideous plastic pail. But then
Mrs. Oliver had never been fond of plastic things. And then the
children, the teenage girls and boys.
So far they were really only names to Mrs. Oliver. There was a Nan
and a Beatrice and a Cathie, a Diana and a Joyce, who was boastful and
asked questions.
I don't like Joyce much, thought Mrs. Oliver. A girl called Arm, who
looked tall and superior. There were two adolescent boys who appeared
to have just got used to trying out different hair styles, with rather
unfortunate results.
^ smallish boy^ entered in some condition of shynesss.
"Mummy sent these mirrors to see if they'd do," he said ; in a slightly
breathless voice, Ats. Drake took them from him. "^hank you so
irouch. Eddy," she said.
"They're just ordinary looking hand"^"ors," said the Ain called Arm.
"Shall we r^ny see our fuflture husbands' faces in them "Some of you
may and some may not," said Judith Butler.
"Aid you ever sese your husband's face whe^ you went to a party--I mean
this kinA of a party?" ^Of course she diidn't," said Joyce. ^he might
have," said the superior Beatdce.
"ESP. they call it. Extra sensory perception,"" she added in the tone
^ of one pleased with being thoroughly conversant with the; terms of
the times.
^ read one of your books," said Arm to Mrs. Oliver.
"The JDying Goldfish. It was quit^ good," she said kindly.
^ didn't like titi at one," said Joyce. Aere wasn't enouigh blood in
it. I like "^ders to have lotfs of blood."
Hr.
"A bit messy," said Mrs. Oliver, "don't you think?"
"But exciting," said Joyce.
"Not necessarily," said Mrs. Oliver.
"I saw a murder once," said Joyce.
"Don't be silly, Joyce," said Miss Whittaker, the schoolteacher.
"I did," said Joyce.
"Did you really," asked Cathie, gazing at Joyce with wide eyes, "really
and truly see a murder?"
"Of course she didn't," said Mrs.
Drake.
"Don't say silly things, Joyce."
"I did see a murder," said Joyce.
"I did.
I did. I did."
A seventeen-year-old boy poised on a ladder looked down interestedly.
"What kind of a murder?" he asked.
"I don't believe it," said Beatrice.
"Of course not," said Cathie's mother.
"She's just making it up."
"I'm not. I saw it."
"Why didn't you go to the police about it?" asked Cathie.
"Because I didn't know it was a murder when I saw it. It wasn't really
till a long time afterwards, I mean, that I began to know that it was a
murder. Something that somebody said only about a month or two ago
suddenly made me think: Of course, that was a murder I saw."
"You see," said Arm, "she's making it all up. It's nonsense."
"When did it happen?" asked Beatrice.
"Years ago," said Joyce.
"I was quite young at the time," she added.
"Who murdered who?" said Beatrice.
"I shan't tell any of you," said Joyce.
"You're all so horrid about it."
Miss Lee came in with another kind of ^bucket. Conversation shifted to
a comparison of buckets or plastic pails as most suitable for the sport
of bobbing for sapples. The majority of the helpers ire paired to the
library for an appraisal on the spot. Some of the younger members, lit
may be said, were anxious to demongstrate, by a rehearsal of the
difficulties and their own accomplishment in the sport.
lHair got wet, water got spilt, towels were ssent for to mop it up. In
the end it was odecided that a galvanised bucket was prefeerable to the
more meretricious charms of aa plastic pail which overturned rather too
eeasily.
Mrs. Oliver, setting down a bowl of apples which she had carried in
to replenish the store required for tomorrow, once more helped herself
to one.
"I read in the paper that you were fond of eating apples," the accusing
voice of Arm or Susan--she was not quite sure which--spoke to her."
"It's my besetting sin," said Mrs.
"It would be more fun if it was melons," objected one of the boys.
"They're so juicy. Think of the mess it would make," he said,
surveying the carpet with pleasurable anticipation.
Mrs. Oliver, feeling a little guilty at the public arraignment of
greediness, left the room in search of a particular apartment, the
geography of which is usually fairly easily identified. She went up
the staircase and, turning the corner on the half landing, cannoned
into a pair, a girl and a boy, clasped in each other's arms and leaning
against the door which Mrs. Oliver felt fairly certain was the door to
the room to which she herself was anxious to gain access. The couple
paid no attention to her. They sighed and they snuggled. Mrs.
Oliver wondered how old they were. The boy was fifteen, perhaps, the
girl little more than twelve, although the development of her chest
seemed certainly on the mature side.
Apple Trees was a house of fair size. It had, she thought, several
agreeable nooks and corners. How selfish people are, thought Mrs.
Oliver. No consideration for others. That well-known tag from the
past came into her mind. It had been said to her in succession by a
nursemaid, a nanny, a governess, her grandmother, two great aunts her
mother and a few others.
"Excuse me," said Mrs. Oliver in a loud, clear voice.
The boy and the girl clung closer than ever, their lips fastened on
each other's.
"Excuse me," said Mrs. Oliver again, "do you mind letting me pass? I
want to get in at this door."
...
PanavPaul