Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Elephants Can Remember: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Elephants Can Remember: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Elephants Can Remember: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Ebook246 pages4 hours

    Elephants Can Remember: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition

    By Agatha Christie

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A classic Hercule Poirot investigation, Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember has the expert detective delving into an unsolved crime from the past involving the strange death of a husband and wife.

    Hercule Poirot stood on the clifftop. Here, many years earlier, there had been a fatal accident followed by the grisly discovery of two bodies—a husband and wife who had been shot dead.

    But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion? Or cold-blooded murder? Poirot delves into the past and discovers that “old sins leave long shadows.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 3, 2006
    ISBN9780061741524
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

    Read more from Agatha Christie

    Related to Elephants Can Remember

    Titles in the series (45)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Mystery, Thriller & Crime Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Mystery Of Christie

      Dec 4, 2020

      The Mystery Of Christie
      4 min read

    • Article

      100 Years On, It’s No Mystery Why Agatha Christie’s Stories Endure

      Oct 2, 2020

      The Queen of Mystery’s legendary plot twists and beloved characters have inspired legions of fans – especially mystery authors.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Book Lover

      Jun 29, 2021

      The Book Lover
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Aug 9, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Jul 12, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Jul 12, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      How Dementia Saved Mum & Me

      Mar 31, 2021

      How Dementia Saved Mum & Me
      5 min read

    • Article

      The BRACELET

      Jan 30, 2024

      The BRACELET
      6 min read

    • Article

      Stay and Fight

      Jul 9, 2019

      Stay and Fight
      16 min read

    • Article

      Heave’s Whisky

      Feb 27, 2024

      Heave’s Whisky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      THE Dark Light

      Oct 21, 2020

      THE Dark Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      #book Of The Month

      Aug 15, 2022

      #book Of The Month
      2 min read

    • Article

      Night Visions

      Sep 10, 2022

      Night Visions
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Witch GIRL

      Oct 24, 2023

      The Witch GIRL
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Hampstead MYSTERY

      Oct 12, 2022

      A Hampstead MYSTERY
      9 min read

    • Article

      Redux: Reading About Mom

      May 15, 2018

      Redux: Reading About Mom
      2 min read

    • Article

      Clean SWEEP

      Aug 31, 2022

      Clean SWEEP
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Alpaca EXPERIENCE

      May 25, 2021

      The Alpaca EXPERIENCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Last Love

      Dec 8, 2023

      Last Love
      13 min read

    • Article

      As Irish as Paddy’s Pig

      Mar 5, 2020

      As Irish as Paddy’s Pig
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Girl on THE MOON

      Mar 10, 2021

      The Girl on THE MOON
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mummy, I Hardly Knew You

      Oct 20, 2021

      Mummy, I Hardly Knew You
      7 min read

    • Article

      Echoes

      Jun 22, 2022

      Echoes
      9 min read

    • Article

      The WITCH GIRL

      Oct 20, 2021

      The WITCH GIRL
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cherry Season

      Sep 3, 2020

      1. My mother’s mother kept a set of painted wooden nesting dolls on top of her television. When I was small and went to her house, I would take the set apart and line up the five dolls on her living room floor, side by side, from biggest to smallest.

      16 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Elephants Can Remember

    3.5/5

    72 ratings27 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This is the worse of Mrs. Christie’s book I have read—and I love her books. Three or four chapters through the book I started wondering if Agatha Christie wrote it during a period of crisis in her life; or maybe she was considering quitting writing or was tired of Hercule Poirot… (Conan Doyle comes to mind!) I wonder what was going on in her life at that specific time. The dialogues are endlessly long and often times boring, repetitive, wooden. Poirot has very little of his charm—it comes back spasmodically, erratically. And the constant reference to elephants drove me nuts! Ariadne is the same from other books, but just way more long dialogues to her—more like monologues—when Poirot just injects a few monosyllables. It was relatively easy to extricate the plot at one point, but it was quite intelligent nevertheless.
    • 3/5
      Hercule Poirot must dig deep into the past to solve a crime (or was it?) over a decade old.I don't think this is the best story Christie wrote, but it suited me at the moment. It is quite repetitive, sentimental at the end, not a difficult mystery to solve, and the timeline and people involved are confusing. Yet somehow it was still a comfort read because I enjoy spending time with Mrs. Oliver and Hercule Poirot.
    • 4/5
      I am on an Agatha Christie run right now. This book is a Hercule Poirot mystery. This is a story of a woman,Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, that is approached while at a literary luncheon by some one unknown to her, Mrs. Burton-Cox, about Mrs. Oliver's goddaughter's parents deaths fifteen years earlier. Mrs. Burton-Cox is curious to learn the truth about the murder/suicide of Celia Ravenscroft's parents.This was a different type of mystery that was interesting to follow. You already know who the victims are you are just trying to learn who was killed first. Who was the actual person to murder and then commit suicide. Mrs. Burton-Cox is concerned because her son and Celia are planning to get married. She doesn't want her son marrying some one who may decide to kill her son. As the story progresses you start to feel that there is an underlying reason for Mrs. Burton-Cox's true concerns.
    • 3/5
      A whole investigation only to find out at the end that one person had the entire story and was willing to tell anyone that would listen. Frankly disappointing. The only redeemable features are Poirot and Olivier's eccentricities.
    • 4/5
      It's an interesting subgenre of the English mystery, where the protagonist must uncover clues to solve a mystery or murder that happened in the past. ("Long past?" asked Scrooge. "No," returned the ghost. "Your past.") Generally it relates to the present-day characters - other examples might be Ambler's Coffin For Demetrios or Sayers' Nine Tailors - but really historical mysteries come along occasionally too. It's generally not a particularly thrilling genre, but sometimes the past does prefer not to be unburied and comes buzzing back for revenge on its tormentors. Not in Elephants, though - it's a quiet little read with a peaceful puzzle. But yes, the identical twin sisters are a bit hackneyed even for 1972.
    • 2/5
      When Mrs Oliver's god-daughter needs to know whether her father killed her mother or her mother killed her father, Poirot must investigate the 20-year-earlier deaths of the couple. Just enough misdirection to make the story interesting, although it seems to be more about Mrs Oliver and her work and relationships than it does about the mystery itself.
    • 2/5
      I adore Christie, but this book sadly shows a loss of her trademark wit. The reader who is new to Agatha Christie should steer away from this one until they have read her earlier works.
    • 2/5
      Elephants Can Remember is a sad read. It's not just that the subject matter of this very late Poirot/Ariadne Oliver novel is so inherently tragic, it's more the spectacle of the decline of Agatha Christie's skills as a writer displayed on page after page. It's like watching Muhammed Ali at the end of his boxing career -- all the old sparkle and snap are gone, and you'd rather it all had ended in a more dignified way.I'll not belabor this review with a laundry list of this book's faults, other than to say that it's remarkably repetitious, and that the dialog is very bad indeed. Even the inimitable Poirot loses his voice here; he sounds more like an aging upper class British lady than a Belgian private eye.The one point I can recommend is that at least this novel improves at about two-thirds of the way through. If you can bear with it that far, at least a shadow of Christie's former brilliance is in evidence.Recommended only to Christie fans looking to complete their tour of the corpus.
    • 4/5
      The story begins with Hercule Poirot's writer-friend, Ariadne Oliver, attending a literary luncheon. A woman approaches Mrs Oliver to ask her about the parents of Ariadne's god-daughter Celia Ravenscroft. She wants to know which of Celia's parents killed the other.Ariadne Oliver takes the problem to her old friend Hercule Poirot who ferrets out the answer.He thinks it is a problem worth solving and so they both begin their own line of enquiry. Mrs Oliver tracks down old friends who might remember the incident at the time, and Poirot consults some professionals, in particular ex-Superintendent Spence and Mr Goby.The novel explores the nature of collective memory, particularly when some people are under the impression they've learnt facts, but in actual fact what they "know" is hearsay, second hand information. And little by little Poirot uncovers what actually happened.I don't really think I have read this novel before, but I actually managed to solve the puzzle a little ahead of Poirot. It is a mystery tinged with romance, a teasing out of the nature of love. I think Christie was desperate to get some ideas across, like whether a woman was likely to kill her husband and then kill herself.In terms of her writing life, this is the second last novel that Christie ever wrote. I was particularly interested to find out whether she still had her writing powers. Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) was after all 82 years old when this was published. It is the last Poirot she wrote (although not the last published).For the most part the novel is well plotted and the characters are interestingly drawn. But the ending is a bit flat, almost like an amateur theatrical performance where the actors wave their goodbyes.
    • 1/5
      Worst mystery ever? Worst Agatha Christie book? Worst post-modernism? Worst book about having tea with people? Spoiler: they were twins!!
    • 2/5
      A trivial effort by Agatha Christie. The solution was obvious about halfway through the book and the young lovers were tedious. Mrs. Oliver, an elderly writer of successful mystery novels brings the mystery and Hercule Poirot together. The book is improved somewhat by Mrs. Oliver's reflections on life as a mystery writer and by some of the interviews that she conducts. It was written in the 1970s and refers to pop stars and long hair.
    • 3/5
      My second Christie after Crooked House. I thank her for helping me to get into the reading world. Always, hence, a good book.
    • 4/5
      A classic little stroll through Poirot-land, with Mrs. Oliver leading the way through a re-investigation of an old suicide. I guessed way before the end what the situation had been and was rewarded by a precise confirmation, but it was a fun read.
    • 3/5
      I was intrigued by this case, and I had some idea of who the killer or killers were by the end. It is definitely one of the classic Poirot mysteries.
    • 3/5
      This was a case where Poirot gets to dive into the past for his friend Mrs. Oliver. Mrs Oliver is approached by an 'Odious' women and asked about a event that had happened many years ago, wanting to know some specific insider information. Mrs Oliver is loath to give the woman any help in the matter but her interest is piqued and so she asks her friend Hercules Poirot for a hand in the matter.I wasn't real impressed with this one, it seemed that it went into many long rambling parts that could have been a little shorter. This is also possible that I have been reading to many Agatha Christie's of late and need to move on to someone else for awhile. Overall not bad, good clues and a fun read.
    • 3/5
      Not the best of Agatha Christie, by a long shot, but still . . . it's an Agatha Christie, with the cozy trademark feel, and the quirky character of Ariadne Oliver, not to mention Poirot. Enjoy it for what it is--a lesser work by a great mystery writer--that's what I did.
    • 3/5
      I did & I didn't.... Endless prattling supposition for the purpose of confounding the reader not only bores me, but annoys the hell out of me.Mrs. Ariadne Oliver attends a Literary Luncheon where she is guest speaker. After the luncheon she is accosted by a nasty woman who insists that Mrs. Oliver look into the deaths of Mrs. Oliver's goddaughter Celia's parents, an apparent double suicide to determine exactly whom shot whom.... for the purpose of determining the possible mental health of Ceila who is long-time childhood friends with the woman's adopted son.Ceila's aunt, her mother's twin, has long been in & out of mental institutions for murdering young male children...Celia was away in Switzerland when her parents died, but there were others in the house, now elderly & retired ( Elephants) who remember bits & pieces of what went on.M. Poirot is brought into the investigation for his relationship w/ the police.I pretty figured out what actually happened, but not the overly sentimental & pseudo-romantic reasoning (which ruined the ending for me).
    • 3/5
      And even if they can't, Poirot will recall the small details that explain it all. Being about memory and written with a relatively smaller vocabulary (compared to her other books), this book makes it look as though Christie may have been suffering from some memory issues herself when she wrote this...
    • 3/5
      Slightly confused plot which again has Poirot investigating a past incident - here a potential double suicide, or murder/suicide - in the hope of finding out just what happened, which, of course, he does. Mrs Oliver ably assists.
    • 5/5
      Ah Poirot! He teams up yet again with mystery authoress Mrs. Oliver to solve a years-old mystery, and does it admirably. Entertaining.
    • 3/5
      Poirot's objective in this book is to uncover the truth of a crime that happened in the past. By asking questions and using his usual process of thinking, Poirot discovers the truth in the crime.

      While not predictable from the beginning, I found this book to be the only one of Christie's that I've read so far that I've been able to guess the ending of. Still a good mystery and the answers that everyone seek are not what they expect.
    • 3/5
      2.5 StarsThis is not Christie's best work. Here she teams two memorable characters – Hercule Poirot and Mrs Ariadne Oliver to investigate a decades-old mystery. Did General Ravenscroft kill his wife and them himself, or did Lady Ravenscroft shoot her husband before committing suicide? Their daughter wants some answers, and she asks her godmother, Mrs Oliver, to try to find the truth for her. The audio version is narrated quite capably by John Moffatt.I have a hardback of this book (because of my elephant collection), but I don’t remember ever reading it before.
    • 3/5
      If you have read a lot of Agatha Christie, you will know that it is usually the portly Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who does all of the sleuthing but in this particular cold case, his good friend and celebrated author Ariadne Oliver takes charge. Some nosey old biddy comes up to Ariadne at a literary luncheon and starts asking about an apparent double suicide that occurred decades ago.I’m personally not sure what to think about this book. Ariadne Oliver has always been a fun character; I assume she is a parody of the author Agatha Christie in real life. Her character was certainly the best part of the novel; the other characters seemed dull and very much the same as one another. Even Poirot himself (his dialogue at least) was beginning to blend in to the cast of elderly British ladies present. He seemed to have lost his usual foreign mannerisms that make him so unique.As well as the characters, I’m also in two minds about the plot. Initially I was taken in as with every other Christie novel but around halfway through I worked out the remainder of the plot completely (don’t let this put you off Christie novels, this is the first and probably the only time I’ve worked out the solution by myself). However, I was nearly shaken from my theory once or twice by a few of those red herrings Christie is famous for.Overall, I would say that this is a sub-par Christie. The characters were a little dull, the plot was unusually simple and Poirot seemed to morph into an old woman. However, the atmosphere, if a little subdued, was still there and Ariadne’s role in the story was, as always, good fun. Recommended for completists and dedicated Agatha Christie fans.
    • 4/5
      Hercule Poirot and his friend Ariadne Oliver go on a quest to shake up the memories of people connected to the double suicide of General and Lady Ravenscroft in 1960s English countryside. As Poirot digs deeper, people contribute new information and this cold case changes entirely.Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by Agatha Christie is about the married couple who seemed to have shot each other with the husband’s revolver lying beside the bodies. The police were never able to establish who killed who, as motive seemed to be nonexistent at the time. Many years later Mrs Oliver dives into a truck load of old hearsay to get to the truth. She wants to protect the Ravenscrofts’ daughter.Main character, Hercule Poirot, seems to be sharing his main character role in this story, helping his longtime friend Ariadne with her case. I enjoyed that the author describes Poirot as a man with an egg-shaped head, a small stature and a monstrous mustache. She interestingly portrays him as a comic and strange looking personality. He seems very different from David Suchet in the TV adaptations.Ariadne Oliver, is the narrator and supporting main character of this story. She comes at problem solving from unexpected and creative angles, like comparing people’s memories to those of elephants. I find it refreshing and different from Poirot’s strictly analytical approach. She seems a kind hearted person with an amusing habit of brushing her hands through her hair messing it all up, even if she is very focused on hair style.The wonderfully descriptive writing takes me back to the 70s. In Agatha Christie’s universe every home seems to come with a set of servants for all domestic chores. I find it very entertaining to read her books as they give a glimpse into opulent environments and people’s interactions back in the day.Hercule Poirot is the main character in 38 of Christie’s stories. He is an absolute longtime favorite of mine and I have followed him both in books and in TV series. Ariadne Oliver appears in a smaller number of stories as a supporting character, being an interesting and well crafted character I love to read about. In this story she is the one who alerts Poirot to the case.There were plenty of references to old fashioned lifestyle of the 1970s, like keeping an address book for all contacts, something we stopped doing decades ago. I find it fascinating to be reminded how life worked before the digital age, and this is my favorite part of the story.Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by Agatha Christie is the captivating and entertaining story of Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver solving a cold case from 1960, and is one of several works I have read by Agatha Christie. References are made to other books in the Hercule Poirot Mysteries Series in a clever way which triggers my curiosity. As a longtime fan, I am reading most of them.Fans of Agatha Christie will love Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37), as will readers of crime fiction. Similar works to explore might be the Sherlock Holmes Series by Arthur Conan Doyle. All opinions in this review are completely my own.
    • 1/5
      In which Mrs. Oliver uncovers a long-dead murder, and Poirot sets out to solve it.

      The worst of the Poirot novels. There is a distinct drop in vocabulary and grammatical variety, consistent with old-age, in Christie’s final novels, and here she babbles on at length, reminiscing about things that have no bearing on the plot whatsoever. In fact, very little makes sense. The murder mystery isn’t wholly unbearable but it’s submerged beneath all of this silliness. Amazingly, even the usually reliable pairing of Poirot and Ariadne Oliver can’t salvage this. Mrs. Oliver had begun as a wry commentary on Agatha Christie’s own career, and had been utilised several times as a dynamic character – combining her love of amateur detectives with her gift for characters who could unsettle the exacting Poirot – and as a commentator on crime fiction as a genre. Here, she’s just a surrogate for the bemused Christie, still writing this Belgian detective decades after she tired of him. Unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, Christie considered her role as a storyteller to be more important than any kind of dispute with a fictional character, so refused to let go. Perhaps she should have.

      "Elephants" hasn’t been adapted by the David Suchet series, but if – God willing – the show returns for more, we should expect an adaptation. Good luck to them.

      Poirot ranking: 38th out of 38

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      A Poirot mystery rather spoiled by lengthy ramblings from a friend of his (a crime writer). Clever plot with unexpected twists, but too rambling and long-winded for my tastes.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A late work from Christie, among her very last. As a mystery the work is perfectly fine. In style it lacks the glamour and panache that characterize her works from the 30s and 40s.

    Book preview

    Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie

    One

    A LITERARY LUNCHEON

    Mrs. Oliver looked at herself in the glass. She gave a brief, sideways look towards the clock on the mantelpiece, which she had some idea was twenty minutes slow. Then she resumed her study of her coiffure. The trouble with Mrs. Oliver was—and she admitted it freely—that her styles of hairdressing were always being changed. She had tried almost everything in turn. A severe pompadour at one time, then a windswept style where you brushed back your locks to display an intellectual brow, at least she hoped the brow was intellectual. She had tried tightly arranged curls, she had tried a kind of artistic disarray. She had to admit that it did not matter very much today what her type of hairdressing was, because today she was going to do what she very seldom did, wear a hat.

    On the top shelf of Mrs. Oliver’s wardrobe there reposed four hats. One was definitely allotted to weddings. When you went to a wedding, a hat was a must. But even then Mrs. Oliver kept two. One, in a round bandbox, was of feathers. It fitted closely to the head and stood up very well to sudden squalls of rain if they should overtake one unexpectedly as one passed from a car to the interior of the sacred edifice, or as so often nowadays, a registrar’s office.

    The other, and more elaborate, hat was definitely for attending a wedding held on a Saturday afternoon in summer. It had flowers and chiffon and a covering of yellow net attached with mimosa.

    The other two hats on the shelf were of a more all-purpose character. One was what Mrs. Oliver called her country house hat, made of tan felt suitable for wearing with tweeds of almost any pattern, with a becoming brim that you could turn up or turn down.

    Mrs. Oliver had a cashmere pullover for warmth and a thin pullover for hot days, either of which was suitable in colour to go with this. However, though the pullovers were frequently worn, the hat was practically never worn. Because, really, why put on a hat just to go to the country and have a meal with your friends?

    The fourth hat was the most expensive of the lot and it had extraordinarily durable advantages about it. Possibly, Mrs. Oliver sometimes thought, because it was so expensive. It consisted of a kind of turban of various layers of contrasting velvets, all of rather becoming pastel shades which would go with anything.

    Mrs. Oliver paused in doubt and then called for assistance.

    Maria, she said, then louder, Maria. Come here a minute.

    Maria came. She was used to being asked to give advice on what Mrs. Oliver was thinking of wearing.

    Going to wear your lovely smart hat, are you? said Maria.

    Yes, said Mrs. Oliver. I wanted to know whether you think it looks best this way or the other way round.

    Maria stood back and took a look.

    Well, that’s back to front you’re wearing it now, isn’t it?

    Yes, I know, said Mrs. Oliver. I know that quite well. But I thought somehow it looked better that way.

    Oh, why should it? said Maria.

    Well, it’s meant, I suppose. But it’s got to be meant by me as well as the shop that sold it, said Mrs. Oliver.

    Why do you think it’s better the wrong way round?

    Because you get that lovely shade of blue and the dark brown, and I think that looks better than the other way which is green with the red and the chocolate colour.

    At this point Mrs. Oliver removed the hat, put it on again and tried it wrong way round, right way round and sideways, which both she and Maria disapproved of.

    You can’t have it the wide way. I mean, it’s wrong for your face, isn’t it? It’d be wrong for anyone’s face.

    No. That won’t do. I think I’ll have it the right way round, after all.

    Well, I think it’s safer always, said Maria.

    Mrs. Oliver took off the hat. Maria assisted her to put on a well cut, thin woollen dress of a delicate puce colour, and helped her to adjust the hat.

    You look ever so smart, said Maria.

    That was what Mrs. Oliver liked so much about Maria. If given the least excuse for saying so, she always approved and gave praise.

    Going to make a speech at the luncheon, are you? Maria asked.

    A speech! Mrs. Oliver sounded horrified. No, of course not. You know I never make speeches.

    Well, I thought they always did at these here literary luncheons. That’s what you’re going to, isn’t it? Famous writers of 1973—or whichever year it is we’ve got to now.

    I don’t need to make a speech, said Mrs. Oliver. "Several other people who like doing it will be making speeches, and they are much better at it than I would be."

    I’m sure you’d make a lovely speech if you put your mind to it, said Maria, adjusting herself to the rôle of a tempter.

    No, I shouldn’t, said Mrs. Oliver. I know what I can do and I know what I can’t. I can’t make speeches. I get all worried and nervy and I should probably stammer or say the same thing twice. I should not only feel silly, I should probably look silly. Now it’s all right with words. You can write words down or speak them into a machine or dictate them. I can do things with words so long as I know it’s not a speech I’m making.

    Oh well. I hope everything’ll go all right. But I’m sure it will. Quite a grand luncheon, isn’t it?

    Yes, said Mrs. Oliver, in a deeply depressed voice. Quite a grand luncheon.

    And why, she thought, but did not say, why on earth am I going to it? She searched her mind for a bit because she always really liked knowing what she was going to do instead of doing it first and wondering why she had done it afterwards.

    I suppose, she said, again to herself and not to Maria, who had had to return rather hurriedly to the kitchen, summoned by a smell of overflowing jam which she happened to have on the stove, I wanted to see what it felt like. I’m always being asked to literary lunches or something like that and I never go.

    Mrs. Oliver arrived at the last course of the grand luncheon with a sigh of satisfaction as she toyed with the remains of the meringue on her plate. She was particularly fond of meringues and it was a delicious last course in a very delicious luncheon. Nevertheless, when one reached middle age, one had to be careful with meringues. One’s teeth? They looked all right, they had the great advantage that they could not ache, they were white and quite agreeable looking—just like the real thing. But it was true enough that they were not real teeth. And teeth that were not real teeth—or so Mrs. Oliver believed—were not really of high-class material. Dogs, she had always understood, had teeth of real ivory, but human beings had teeth merely of bone. Or, she supposed, if they were false teeth, of plastic. Anyway, the point was that you mustn’t get involved in some rather shame-making appearance, which false teeth might lead you into. Lettuce was a difficulty, and salted almonds, and such things as chocolates with hard centres, clinging caramels and the delicious stickiness and adherence of meringues. With a sigh of satisfaction, she dealt with the final mouthful. It had been a good lunch, a very good lunch.

    Mrs. Oliver was fond of her creature comforts. She had enjoyed the luncheon very much. She had enjoyed the company, too. The luncheon, which had been given to celebrated female writers, had fortunately not been confined to female writers only. There had been other writers, and critics, and those who read books as well as those who wrote them. Mrs. Oliver had sat between two very charming members of the male sex. Edwin Aubyn, whose poetry she always enjoyed, an extremely entertaining person who had had various entertaining experiences in his tours abroad, and various literary and personal adventures. Also he was interested in restaurants and food and they had talked very happily about food, and left the subject of literature aside.

    Sir Wesley Kent, on her other side, had also been an agreeable luncheon companion. He had said very nice things about her books, and had had the tact to say things that did not make her feel embarrassed, which many people could do almost without trying. He had mentioned one or two reasons why he had liked one or other of her books, and they had been the right reasons, and therefore Mrs. Oliver had thought favourably of him for that reason. Praise from men, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself, is always acceptable. It was women who gushed. Some of the things that women wrote to her! Really! Not always women, of course. Sometimes emotional young men from very far away countries. Only last week she had received a fan letter beginning Reading your book, I feel what a noble woman you must be. After reading The Second Goldfish he had then gone off into an intense kind of literary ecstasy which was, Mrs. Oliver felt, completely unfitting. She was not unduly modest. She thought the detective stories she wrote were quite good of their kind. Some were not so good and some were much better than others. But there was no reason, so far as she could see, to make anyone think that she was a noble woman. She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself.

    Well, all things considered, she had got through this ordeal very well. She had quite enjoyed herself, talked to some nice people. Now they were moving to where coffee was being handed round and where you could change partners and chat with other people. This was the moment of danger, as Mrs. Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren’t really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.

    Question: "I must tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are."

    Answer from flustered author, Well, that’s very kind. I am so glad.

    You must understand that I’ve been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful.

    Oh, it’s very nice of you. Very nice indeed.

    It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman’s books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren’t good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs. Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.

    I listen to you, Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice, I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got—no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say ‘Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.’ 

    But I don’t, Mrs. Oliver had said at that moment. I’m not bad, but—

    "Ah, do not say ‘I don’t’ like that. You must say you do; even if you do not think you do, you ought to say you do."

    I wish, Albertina, said Mrs. Oliver, that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well. Can’t you pretend to be me one day, and I’ll listen behind the door?

    "Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say ‘Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.’ You must say that to everybody. They should know it. They should announce it. Oh yes—it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are. It must not be like that."

    It had been rather, Mrs. Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there’d be not much difficulty here. There’d be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn’t matter much. She would go and smile and be nice and say So kind of you. I’m so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one’s books. All the stale old things. Rather as you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads. And then, before very long now, she could leave.

    Her eyes went round the table because she might perhaps see some friends there as well as would-be admirers. Yes, she did see in the distance Maurine Grant, who was great fun. The moment came, the literary women and the attendant cavaliers who had also attended the lunch, rose. They streamed towards chairs, towards coffee tables, towards sofas, and confidential corners. The moment of peril, Mrs. Oliver often thought of it to herself, though usually at cocktail and not literary parties because she seldom went to the latter. At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid. In this case it was the first dilemma that came to her. A large woman. Ample proportions, large white champing teeth. What in French could have been called une femme formidable, but who definitely had not only the French variety of being formidable, but the English one of being supremely bossy. Obviously she either knew Mrs. Oliver, or was intent on making her acquaintance there and then. The last was how it happened to go.

    Oh, Mrs. Oliver, she said in a high-pitched voice. What a pleasure to meet you today. I have wanted to for so long. I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never travelling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about.

    Oh well, thought Mrs. Oliver, not my favourite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.

    She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.

    There. Now we are settled. I don’t suppose you know my name. I am Mrs. Burton-Cox.

    Oh yes, said Mrs. Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs. Burton-Cox? Did she write books also? No, she couldn’t really remember anything about her. But she seemed to have heard the name. A faint thought came to her. A book on politics, something like that? Not fiction, not fun, not crime. Perhaps a highbrow intellectual with political bias? That ought to be easy, Mrs. Oliver thought with relief. I can just let her talk and say How interesting! from time to time.

    You’ll be very surprised, really, at what I’m going to say, said Mrs. Burton-Cox. But I have felt, from reading your books, how sympathetic you are, how much you understand of human nature. And I feel that if there is anyone who can give me an answer to the question I want to ask, you will be the one to do so.

    I don’t think, really . . . said Mrs. Oliver, trying to think of suitable words to say that she felt very uncertain of being able to rise to the heights demanded of her.

    Mrs. Burton-Cox dipped a lump of sugar in her coffee and crunched it in a rather carnivorous way, as though it was a bone. Ivory teeth, perhaps, thought Mrs. Oliver vaguely. Ivory? Dogs had ivory, walruses had ivory and elephants had ivory, of course. Great big tusks of ivory. Mrs. Burton-Cox was saying:

    Now the first thing I must ask you—I’m pretty sure I am right, though—you have a goddaughter, haven’t you? A goddaughter who’s called Celia Ravenscroft?

    Oh, said Mrs. Oliver, rather pleasurably surprised. She felt she could deal perhaps with a goddaughter. She had a good many goddaughters—and godsons, for that matter. There were times, she had to admit as the years were growing upon her, when she couldn’t remember them all. She had done her duty in due course, one’s duty being to send toys to your godchildren at Christmas in their early years, to visit them and their parents, or to have them visit you during the course of their upbringing, to take the boys out from school perhaps, and the girls also. And then, when the crowning days came, either the twenty-first birthday at which a godmother must do the right thing and let it be acknowledged to be done, and do it handsomely, or else marriage which entailed the same type of gift and a financial or other blessing. After that godchildren rather receded into the middle or far distance. They married or went abroad to foreign countries, foreign embassies, or taught in foreign schools or took up social projects. Anyway, they faded little by little out of your life. You were pleased to see them if they suddenly, as

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1