Elephants Can Remember

‘Why should I be angry with you?’

‘Well, because I’m going to tell you something, or repeat something, and you might say it’s no business of mine or I ought to keep quiet about it and not mention it.’

‘You’ve aroused my curiosity,’ said Celia.

‘Her name she mentioned to me. She was a Mrs Burton-Cox.’

‘Oh!’ Celia’s ‘Oh’ was rather distinctive. ‘Oh.’

‘You know her?’

‘Yes, I know her,’ said Celia. ‘Well, I thought you must because—’

‘Because of what?’

‘Because of something she said.’

‘What—about me? That she knew me?’

‘She said that she thought her son might be going to marry you.’

Celia’s expression changed. Her eyebrows went up, came down again. She looked very hard at Mrs Oliver.

‘You want to know if that’s so or not?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I don’t particularly want to know. I merely mention that because it’s one of the first things she said to me. She said because you were my goddaughter, I might be able to ask you to give me some information. I presume that she meant that if the information was given to me I was to pass it on to her.’

‘What information?’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you’ll like what I’m going to say now,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I didn’t like it myself. In fact, it gives me a very nasty feeling all down my spine because I think it was—well, such awful cheek. Awful bad manners. Absolutely unpardonable. She said, “Can you find out if her father murdered her mother or if her mother murdered her father.”’

‘She said that to you? Asked you to do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she didn’t know you? I mean, apart from being an authoress and being at the party?’

‘She didn’t know me at all. She’d never met me, I’d never met her.’

‘Didn’t you find that extraordinary?’

‘I don’t know that I’d find anything extraordinary that that woman said. She struck me,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘if I may say so, as a particularly odious woman.’

‘Oh yes. She is a particularly odious woman.’