Hallowe'en Party / Вечеринка на Хэллоуин. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Especially if it wasn’t really important.’

�When do you mean?’

�We don’t know,’ said Poirot. �That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeks ago—or three years. She said she had been “quite young” at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational happening round here that you can recall?’

�Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. You know, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that.

But nothing important that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.’

�But if Joyce said positively she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?’

�She wouldn’t say so unless she really did think so, would she?’ said Mrs Reynolds. �I think she must have got something mixed up really.’

�Yes, it seems possible. I wonder,’ he asked, �if I might speak to your two children who were also at the party?’

�Well, of course, though I don’t know what you can expect them to tell you.

Ann’s doing her work for her “A” levels[66 - “A” level – двухгодичная учебная программа в Британии, основная цель которой – подготовка учащегося к поступлению в университет] upstairs and Leopold’s in the garden assembling a model aeroplane.’

Leopold was a solid, pudgy faced boy entirely absorbed, it seemed, in mechanical construction.

It was some few moments before he could pay attention to the questions he was being asked.

�You were there, weren’t you, Leopold? You heard what your sister said. What did she say?’

�Oh, you mean about the murder?’ He sounded bored. �Yes, that’s what I mean,’ said Poirot. �She said she saw a murder once. Did she really see such a thing?’

�No, of course she didn’t,’ said Leopold. �Who on earth would she see murdered? It was just like Joyce, that.

’

�How do you mean, it was just like her?’

�Showing off,’ said Leopold, winding round a piece of wire and breathing forcefully through his nose as he concentrated. �She was an awfully stupid sort of girl,’ he added. �She’d say anything, you know, to make people sit up and take notice.’

�So you really think she invented the whole thing?’

Leopold shifted his gaze to Mrs Oliver.