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Has a daughter. Rather nice-looking girl. Pretty manners. Mrs Butler's rather an attractive woman, don't
you think so?"
"I have as yet barely met her, but, yes, I thought she was very attractive." "And how does this concern
you, Poirot? You weren't here when it happened?"
"No. Mrs Oliver came to me in London. She was upset, very upset. She wanted me to do something."
A faint smile showed on Superintendent Spence's face.
"I see. Same old story. I came up to you, too, because I wanted you to do something."
"And I have carried things one step further," said Poirot. "I have come to you." "Because you want me
to do something? I tell you, there's nothing I can do."
"Oh yes there is. You can tell me all about the people. The people who live here. The people who went
to that party. The fathers and mothers of the children who were at the party. The school, the teachers, the
lawyers, the doctors. Somebody, during a party, induced a child to kneel down, and perhaps, laughing,
saying: 'I'll show you the best way to get hold of an apple with your teeth. I know the trick of it.' And
then he or she - whoever it was - put a hand on that girl's head. There wouldn't have been much struggle
or noise or anything of that kind."
"A nasty business," said Spence. "I thought so when I heard about it. What do you want to know? I've
been here a year. My sister's been here longer - two or three years. It's not a big community. It's not a
particularly settled one either. People come and go. The husband has a job in either Medchester or Great
Canning, or one of the other places round about. Their children go to school here. Then perhaps the
husband changes his job and they go somewhere else. It's not a fixed community. Some of the people
have been here a long time. Miss Emlyn, the schoolmistress, has. Dr Ferguson has. But on the whole, it
fluctuates a bit."
"One supposes," said Hercule Poirot, "that having agreed with you that this was a nasty business, I
might hope that you would know who are the nasty people here."
"Yes," said Spence. "It's the first thing one looks for, isn't it? And the next thing one looks for is a nasty
adolescent in a thing of this kind. Who wants to strangle or drown or get rid of a lump of a girl of
thirteen? There doesn't seem to have been any evidence of a sexual assault or anything of that kind,
which would be the first thing one looks for. Plenty of that sort of thing in every small town or village
nowadays. There again, I think there's more of it than there used to be in my young day. We had our
mentally disturbed, or whatever they call them, but not so many as we have now. I expect there are more
of them let out of the place they ought to be kept safe in. All our mental homes are too full;
overcrowded, so doctor's say 'Let him or her lead a normal life. Go back and live with his relatives,' etc.
And then the nasty bit of goods, or the poor afflicted fellow, whichever way you look at it, gets the urge
again and another young woman goes out walking and is found in a gravel pit, or is silly enough to take
lifts in a car. Children don't come home from school because they've accepted a lift from a stranger,
although they've been warned not to. Yes, there's a lot of that nowadays."
"Does that quite fit the pattern we have here?"
"Well, it's the first thing one thinks of," said Spence. "Somebody was at the party who had the urge,
shall we say. Perhaps he'd done it before, perhaps he'd only wanted to do it. I'd say roughly that there
might be some past history of assaulting a child somewhere. As far as I know, nobody's come up with
anything of that kind. Not officially, I mean. There were two in the right age group at the party. Nicholas
Ransom, nice-looking lad, seventeen or eighteen. He'd be the right age. Comes from the East Coast or
somewhere like that, I think. Seems all right. Looks normal enough, but who knows? And there's
Desmond, recommended once for a psychiatric report, but I wouldn't say there was much to it. It's got to
be someone at the party, though of course I suppose anyone could have come in from outside. A house
isn't usually locked up during a party. There's a side door open, or a side window. One of our half-baked
people, I suppose, could have come along to see what was on and sneaked in. A pretty big risk to take.
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