Hallowe'en Party Read Online Free PDF

murder stories and Joyce said ‘I saw a murder once’ and her mother or somebody said ‘Don’t be silly, Joyce, saying things like that’ and one of the older girls said ‘You’re just making it up’ and Joyce said ‘I did. I saw it I tell you. I did. I saw someone do a murder,’ but no one believed her. They just laughed and she got very angry.”
    â€œDid you believe her?”
    â€œNo, of course not.”
    â€œI see,” said Poirot, “yes, I see.” He was silent for some moments, tapping a finger on the table. Then he said: “I wonder—she gave no details—no names?”
    â€œNo. She went on boasting and shouting a bit and being angry because most of the other girls were laughing at her. The mothers, I think, and the older people, were rather cross with her. But the girls and the younger boys just laughed at her! They said things like ‘Go on, Joyce, when was this? Why did you never tell us about it?’ And Joyce said, ‘I’d forgotten all about it, it was so long ago.’”
    â€œAha! Did she say how long ago?”
    â€œâ€˜Years ago,’” she said. You know, in rather a would-be grown-up way.
    â€œâ€˜Why didn’t you go and tell the police then?’ one of the girls said. Ann, I think, or Beatrice. Rather a smug, superior girl.”
    â€œAha, and what did she say to that? ”
    â€œShe said: ‘Because I didn’t know at the time it was a murder.’”
    â€œA very interesting remark,” said Poirot, sitting up rather straighter in his chair.
    â€œShe’d got a bit mixed up by then, I think,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You know, trying to explain herself and getting angry because they were all teasing her.
    â€œThey kept asking her why she hadn’t gone to the police, and she kept on saying ‘Because I didn’t know then that it was a murder. It wasn’t until afterwards that it came to me quite suddenly that that was what I had seen.’”
    â€œBut nobody showed any signs of believing her—and you yourself did not believe her—but when you came across her dead you suddenly felt that she might have been speaking the truth?”
    â€œYes, just that. I didn’t know what I ought to do, or what I could do. But then, later, I thought of you.”
    Poirot bowed his head gravely in acknowledgement. He was silent for a moment or two, then he said:
    â€œI must pose to you a serious question, and reflect before you answer it. Do you think that this girl had really seen a murder? Or do you think that she merely believed that she had seen a murder?”
    â€œThe first, I think,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I didn’t at the time. I just thought that she was vaguely remembering something she had once seen and was working it up to make it sound important and exciting. She became very vehement, saying, ‘I did see it, I tell you. I did see it happen.’”
    â€œAnd so.”
    â€œAnd so I’ve come along to you,” said Mrs. Oliver, “because the only way her death makes sense is that there really was a murder and that she was a witness to it.”
    â€œThat would involve certain things. It would involve that one of the people who were at the party committed the murder, and that that same person must also have been there earlier that day and have heard what Joyce said.”
    â€œYou don’t think I’m just imagining things, do you?” said Mrs. Oliver. “Do you think that it is all just my very far-fetched imagination?”
    â€œA girl was murdered,” said Poirot. “Murdered by someone who had strength enough to hold her head down in a bucket of water. An ugly murder and a murder that was committed with what we might call, no time to lose. Somebody was threatened, and whoever it was struck as soon as it was humanly possible.”
    â€œJoyce could not have known who it was who did the