Elephants Can Remember

"Completely exhausted." "Ah. Qui va a la chasse-oh, I cannot remember the saying." "I remember it," said Mrs. Oliver. "I learned it as a child. 'Qui va a la chasse perd sa place.' " "That, I am sure, is not applicable to the chase you have been conducting. I am referring to the pursuit of elephants, unless that was merely a figure of speech." "Not at all," said Mrs. Oliver. "I have been pursuing elephants madly. Here, there and everywhere. The amount of petrol I have used, the amount of trains I have taken, the amount of letters I've written, the amount of telegrams I've sent-you wouldn't believe how exhausting it all is." "Then repose yourself. Have some coffee." "Nice, strong, black coffee-yes, I will. Just what I want." "Did you, may I ask, get any results?" "Plenty of results," said Mrs. Oliver. "The trouble is, I don't know whether any of them are any use." "You learned facts, however?" "No. Not really. I learned things that people told me were facts, but I strongly doubt myself whether any of them were facts." "They were heresay?" "No. They were what I said they would be. They were memories. Lots of people who had memories. The trouble is, when you remember things, you don't always remember them right, do you?" "No. But they are still what you might describe perhaps as results. Is not that so?" "And what have you done?" said Mrs. Oliver.

"You are always so stern, madame," said Poirot. "You demand that I run about, that I also do things." "Well, have you run about?" "I have not run about, but I have had a few consultations with others of my own profession." "It sounds far more peaceful than what I have been doing," said Mrs. Oliver. "Oh, this coffee is nice. It's really strong.

You wouldn't believe how tired I am. And how muddled." "Come, come. Let us have good expectancy. You have got things. You have got something, I think." "I've got a lot of different suggestions and stories. I don't know whether any of them are true." "They could be not true, but still be of use," said Poirot.

"Well, I know what you mean," said Mrs. Oliver, "and that's what I think too. I mean, that's what I thought when I went about it. When people remember something and tell you about it-I mean, it's often not quite actually what occurred, but it's what they themselves thought occurred." "But they must have had something on which to base it," said Poirot.

"I've brought you a list of a kind," said Mrs. Oliver. "I don't need to go into details of where I went or what I said or why, I went out deliberately for-well, information one couldn't perhaps get from anybody in this country now. But it's all from people who knew something about the Ravenscrofts, even if they hadn't known them very well." "News from foreign places, do you mean?" "Quite a lot of them were from foreign places. Other people who knew them here rather slightly or from people whose aunts or cousins or friends knew them long ago." "And each one that you've noted down had some story to tell-some reference to the tragedy or to people involved?" "That's the idea," said Mrs. Oliver. "I'll tell you roughly, shall I?" "Yes. Have a petit four." "Thank you," said Mrs. Oliver.

She took a particularly sweet and rather bilious-looking one and champed it with energy.

"Sweet things," she said, "really give you a lot of vitality, I always think. Well, now, I've got the following suggestions.

These things have usually been said to me starting by: 'Oh, yes, of course!' 'How sad it was, that whole story!' 'Of course, I think everyone knows really what happened.' That's the sort of thing." "Yes." "These people thought they knew what happened. But there weren't really any very good reasons. It was just something someone had told them, or they'd heard either from friends or servants or relations or things like that. The suggestions, of course, are all the kind that you might think they were. A.

That General Ravenscroft was writing his memoirs of his Indian days and that he had a young woman who acted as his secretary and took dictation and typed things for him and was helping him, that she was a nice-looking girl and no doubt there was something there. The result being-well, there seemed to be two schools of thought. One school of thought was that he shot his wife because he hoped to marry the girl, and then when he had shot her, immediately was horror-stricken at what he'd done and shot himself…" "Exactly," said Poirot. "A romantic explanation." "The other idea was that there had been a tutor who came to give lessons to the son who had been ill and away from his prep school for six months or so-a good-looking young man." "Ah, yes. And the wife had fallen in love with the young man. Perhaps had an affair with him?" "That was the idea," said Mrs. Oliver. "No kind of evidence.