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

I don’t know if it was her father and mother or her uncle and aunt, but they went to India and she came back from those holidays with tall tales of how she’d been taken there with them. Made a good story of it, she did. A Maharajah and a tiger shoot and elephants—ah, it was fine hearing and a lot of those around her here believed it. But I said straight along, she’s telling more than ever happened. Could be, I thought at first, she was just exaggerating. But the story got added to every time. There were more tigers, if you know what I mean.

Far more tigers than could possibly happen. And elephants, too, for that matter. I’d known her before, too, telling tall stories.’

�Always to get attention?’

�Aye[68 - aye = yes], you’re right there. She was a great one for getting attention.’

�Because a child told a tall story about a travel trip she never took,’ said Superintendent Spence, �you can’t say that every tall tale she told was a lie.’

�It might not be,’ said Elspeth, �but I’d say the likelihood was that it usually would be.

’

�So you think that if Joyce Reynolds came out with a tale that she’d seen a murder committed, you’d say she was probably lying and you wouldn’t believe the story was true?’

�That’s what I’d think,’ said Mrs McKay.

�You might be wrong,’ said her brother.

�Yes,’ said Mrs McKay. �Anyone may be wrong. It’s like the old story of the boy who cried “Wolf, wolf,” and he cried it once too often, when it was a real wolf, and nobody believed him, and so the wolf got him.

’

�So you’d sum it up—’

�I’d still say the probabilities are that she wasn’t speaking the truth. But I’m a fair woman. She may have been. She may have seen something. Not quite so much as she said she saw, but something.’’

�And so she got herself killed,’ said Superintendent Spence. �You’ve got to mind that, Elspeth. She got herself killed.’

�That’s true enough,’ said Mrs McKay.

�And that’s why I’m saying maybe I’ve misjudged her. And if so, I’m sorry. But ask anyone who knew her and they’ll tell you that lies came natural to her. It was a party she was at, remember, and she was excited. She’d want to make an effect.’

�Indeed, they didn’t believe her,’ said Poirot.

Elspeth McKay shook her head doubtfully.

�Who could she have seen murdered?’ asked Poirot.

He looked from brother to sister.