Hallowe'en Party

Shortly afterwards when I was talking to Mrs. Goodbody, I said I wondered where that girl had disappeared too, and she said "Ding dong dell, pussy's in the well" and then I was quite sure the girl's body was in the wishing well. I discovered it was in the wood, in the Quarry Wood, on an incline not far from Michael Garfield's cottage and I thought that Miranda could have seen either the actual murder or the disposal of the body later. Mrs. Drake and Michael feared that someone had been a witness-but they had no idea who it was -and as nothing happened they were lulled into security. They made their plans -they were in no hurry, but they set things in motion. She talked about buying land abroad-gave people the idea she wanted to get away from Woodleigh Common. Too many sad associations, referring always to her grief over her husband's death. Everything was nicely in train and then came the shock of Hallowe'en and Joyce's sudden assertion of having witnessed a murder. So now Rowena knew, or thought she knew, who it had been in the wood that day. So she acted quickly. But there was more to come. Young Leopold asked for money-there were things he wanted to buy, he said. What he guessed or knew is uncertain, but he was Joyce's brother, and so they probably thought he knew far more than he really did. And so-he, too, died."

"You suspected her because of the water clue," said Mrs. Oliver.

"How did you come to suspect Michael Garfield?"

"He fitted," said Poirot simply.

"And then-the last time I spoke to Michael Garfield, I was sure. He said to me, laughing- "Get thee beyond me, Satan.

Go and join your police friends." And I knew then, quite certainly. It was the other way round. I said to myself: t! am leaving you behind me, Satan," A Satan young and beautiful as Lucifer can appear to mortals…"

There was another woman in the room until now she had not spoken, but now she stirred in her chair.

"Lucifer," she said.

"Yes, I see now.

He was always that."

"He was very beautiful," said Poirot, "and he loved beauty. The beauty that he made with his brain and his imagination and his hands. To it he would sacrifice everything. In his own way, I think, he loved the child Miranda but he was ready to sacrifice her to save himself. He planned her death very carefully he made of it a ritual and, as one might put it, indoctrinated her with the idea. She was to let him know if she were leaving Woodleigh Common he instructed her to meet him at the Inn where you and Mrs. Oliver lunched. She was to have been found on Kilterbury Ring there by the sign of the double axe, with a golden goblet by her side a ritual sacrifice."

"Mad," said Judith Butler.

"He must have been mad."

"Madame, your daughter is safe but there is something I would like to know very much."

"I think you deserve to know anything I can tell you. Monsieur Poirot."

"She is your daughter-was she also Michael Garfield's daughter^ Judith was silent for a moment, and then she said: "Yes."

"But she doesn't know that?"

"No. She has no idea. Meeting him here was a pure coincidence. I knew him when I was a young girl. I fell wildly in love with him and then-and then I got afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Yes. I don't know why. Not of anything he would do or that sort of thing, just afraid of his nature. His gentleness, but behind it, a coldness and a ruthlessness.

I was even afraid of his passion for beauty and for creation in his work. I didn't tell him I was going to have a child.

I left him-I went away and the baby was born. I invented the story of a pilot husband who had had a crash. I moved about rather restlessly.

I came to Woodleigh Common more or less by chance. I had got contacts in Medchester where I could find secretarial work.

"And then one day Michael Garfield came here to work in the Quarry Wood. I don't think I minded. Nor did he. All that was over long ago, but later, although I didn't realise how often Miranda went there to the Wood, I did worry " "Yes," said Poirot, "there was a bond between them. A natural affinity. I saw the likeness between them only Michael Garfield, the follower of Lucifer the beautiful, was evil, and your daughter has innocence and wisdom, and there is no evil in her."

He went over to his desk and brought back an envelope. Out of it he drew a delicate pencil drawing.

"Your daughter," he said.

Judith looked at it. It was signed "Michael Garfield".

"He was drawing her by the stream," said Poirot, "in the Quarry Wood.

He drew it, he said, so that he should not forget. He was afraid of forgetting. It wouldn't have stopped him killing her, though."

Then he pointed to be pencilled word across the top left hand corner.

"Can you read that?"

She spelt it out slowly.

"Iphigenia."

"Yes," said Poirot, "Iphigenia.

Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, so that he should get a wind to take his ships to Troy. Michael would have sacrificed his daughter so that he should have a new Garden of Eden."

"He knew what he was doing," said Judith.

"I wonder if he would ever have had regrets?"