Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41)

by Agatha Christie

I suspect that girls have always been partial to the bad lots, as you say, but in the past there were safeguards.” “That’s right. People were looking after them.

Their mothers looked after them. Their aunts and their older sisters looked after them. Their younger sisters and brothers knew what was going on. Their fathers were not averse to kicking the wrong young men out of the house. Sometimes, of course, the girls used to run away with one of the bad lots. Nowadays there’s no need even to do that. Mother doesn’t know who the girl’s out with, father’s not told who the girl is out with, brothers know who the girl is out with but they think ‘more fool her.’ If the parents refuse consent, the couple go before a magistrate and manage to get permission to marry, and then when the young man who everyone knows is a bad lot proceeds to prove to everybody, including his wife, that he is a bad lot, the fat’s in the fire! But love’s love; the girl doesn’t want to think that her Henry has these revolting habits, these criminal tendencies, and all the rest of it. She’ll lie for him, swear black’s white for him and everything else. Yes, it’s difficult. Difficult for us, I mean. Well, there’s no good going on saying things were better in the old days. Perhaps we only thought so.

“Can’t see what she saw in him.” “It is difficult,” said Poirot, “but it is one of the great consolations in nature that a man, however unattractive, will find that he is attractive—to some woman.

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 doctors 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 like to 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.”

You know what people are like.” “One thinks one does—but sometimes—well—we do not really know at all.”

Ever had a bite at a nice red juicy apple and there, down by the core, something rather nasty rears itself up and wags its head at you? Plenty of human beings about like that. More than there used to be, I’d say nowadays.”

“You and I have a principle in common. We do not approve of murder.” Miss Emlyn looked at him for a moment or two. Her expression did not change, but Poirot had an idea that he was being sized up with a great deal of care. “I like the way you put it,” she said. “From what you read and hear nowadays, it seems that murder under certain aspects is slowly but surely being made acceptable to a large section of the community.”

“All this is past history.” “Old sins have long shadows,” quoted Poirot. “As we advance through life, we learn the truth of that saying.

“There is always a brave new world,” said Poirot, “but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves.”

“You seem to be very perturbed by the past altogether.” “The past is the father of the present,” said Poirot sententiously.

Rowena Drake was that dominant type of personality whom everyone expects to run the show, and whom nobody has much affection for while she is doing it. He could imagine, too, that her conscientiousness had not been the kind to be appreciated by an elderly relative who was herself of the same type.

For himself, Poirot did not agree. He was a man who thought first always of justice. He was suspicious, had always been suspicious, of mercy—too much mercy, that is to say. Too much mercy, as he knew from former experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second. “I see,” said Poirot. “I see.”

Even the people who wreck telephone boxes, or who slash the tyres of cars, do all sorts of things just to hurt people, just because they hate—not anyone in particular, but the whole world.