Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie Page B

me.”
    “Interesting,” said Poirot. “One might also say remarkable.” “Obviously no one took it seriously,” said Spence. Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
    “I must go now to keep my appointment with Dr Ferguson, after his surgery,” he said.
    He folded up Spence's list and put it in his pocket.

Hallowe'en Party

Chapter 9
    Dr Ferguson was a man of sixty, of Scottish extraction with a brusque manner. He looked Poirot up and down, with shrewd eyes under bristling eyebrows, and said: “Well, what's all this about? Sit down. Mind that chair leg. The castor's loose.”
    “I should perhaps explain,” said Poirot.
    “You needn't explain,” said Dr Ferguson. “Everybody knows everything in a place like this. That authoress woman brought you down here as God's greatest detective to puzzle police officers. That's more or less right, isn't it?”
    “In part,” said Poirot. “I came here to visit an old friend, ex-Superintendent Spence, who lives with his sister here.”
    “Spence? Hm. Good type, Spence. Bull-dog breed. Good honest police officer of the old type. No graft. No violence. Not stupid either. Straight as a die.”
    “You appraise him correctly.”
    “Well,” said Ferguson, “what did you tell him and what did he tell you?”
    “Both he and Inspector Raglan have been exceedingly kind to me. I hope you will likewise.”
    “I've nothing to be kind about,” said Ferguson. “I don't know what happened. Child gets her head shoved in a bucket and is drowned in the middle of a party. Nasty business. Mind you, doing in a child isn't anything to be startled about nowadays. I've been called out to look at too many murdered children in the last seven to ten years - far too many. A lot of people who ought to be under mental restraint aren't under mental restraint. No room in the asylums. They go about, nicely spoken, nicely got up and looking like everybody else, looking for somebody they can do in. And enjoy themselves. Don't usually do it at a party, though. Too much chance of getting caught, I suppose, but novelty appeals even to a mentally disturbed killer.”
    “Have you any idea who killed her?”
    “Do you really suppose that's a question I can answer just like that? I'd have to have some evidence, wouldn't I? I'd have to be sure.”
    “You could guess,” said Poirot.
    “Anyone can guess. If I'm called in to a case I have to guess whether the chap's going to have measles or whether it's a case of an allergy to shell-fish or to feather pillows. I have to ask questions to find out what they've been eating, or drinking, or sleeping on, or what other children they've been meeting. Whether they've been in a crowded bus with Mrs Smith's or Mrs Robinson's children who've all got the measles, and a few other things. Then I advance a tentative opinion as to which it is of the various possibilities, and that, let me tell you, is what's called diagnosis. You don't do it in a hurry and you make sure.”
    “Did you know this child?”
    “Of course. She was one of my patients. There are two of us here. Myself and Worrall. I happen to be the Reynolds' doctor. She was quite a healthy child, Joyce. Had the usual small childish ailments. Nothing peculiar or out of the way. Ate too much, talked too much. Talking too much hadn't done her any harm. Eating too much gave her what used to be called in the old days a bilious attack from time to time. She'd had mumps and chicken pox. Nothing else.”
    “But she had perhaps talked too much on one occasion, as you suggest she might be liable to do.”
    “So that's the tack you're on? I heard some rumour of that. On the lines of'what the butler saw' - only tragedy instead of comedy. Is that it?”
    “It could form a motive, a reason.”
    “Oh yes. Grant you that. But there are other reasons. Mentally disturbed seems the usual answer nowadays. At any rate, it does always in the Magistrates' courts. Nobody gained by her death, nobody hated her. But it seems to me with