Elephants Can Remember Read Free Page A

good idea how it all came about. Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?”
    Whatever Mrs. Oliver had expected, it was certainly not that. She stared at Mrs. Burton-Cox unbelievingly.
    “But I don't -” She stopped. “I - I can't understand. I mean - what reason -”
    “Dear Mrs. Oliver, you must know... I mean, such a famous case... Of course, I know it's a long time ago now, well, I suppose ten - twenty years at least, but it did cause a lot of attention at the time. I'm sure you'll remember, you must remember.”
    Mrs. Oliver's brain was working desperately. Celia was her goddaughter. That was quite true. Celia's mother - yes, of course, Celia's mother had been Molly Preston-Grey, who had been a friend of hers, though not a particularly intimate one, and of course she had married a man in the Army, yes - what was his name? - Sir Something Ravenscroft. Or was he an ambassador? Extraordinary, one couldn't remember these things. She couldn't even remember whether she herself had been Molly's bridesmaid. She thought she had. Rather a smart wedding at the Guards Chapel or something like that. But one did forget so. And after that she hadn't met them for years - they'd been out somewhere - in the Middle East? In Persia? In Iraq? One time in Egypt? India? Very occasionally, when they had been visiting England, she met them again. But they'd been like one of those photographs that one takes and looks at. One knows the people vaguely who are in it, but it's so faded that you really can't recognize them or remember who they were. And she couldn't remember now whether Sir Something Ravenscroft and Lady Ravenscroft, born Molly Preston Grey, had entered much into her life. She didn't think so. But then... Mrs. Burton-Cox was still looking at her. Looking at her as though disappointed in her lack of savoir-faire, her inability to remember what had evidently been a cause célèbre.
    “Killed? You mean - an accident?”
    “Oh, no. Not an accident. In one of those houses by the sea. Cornwall, I think. Somewhere where there were rocks. Anyway, they had a house down there. And they were both found on the cliff there and they'd been shot, you know. But there was nothing really that the police could tell whether the wife shot the husband and then shot herself, or whether the husband shot the wife and then shot himself. They went into the evidence of the - you know - of the bullets and the various things, but it was very difficult. They thought it might be a suicide pact and - I forget what the verdict was. Something - it could have been misadventure or something like that. But of course everyone knew it must have been meant, and there were a lot of stories that went about, of course, at the time -”
    “Probably all invented ones,” said Mrs. Oliver hopefully, trying to remember even one of the stories if she could.
    “Well, maybe. Maybe. It's very hard to say, I know. There were tales of a quarrel either that day or before, there was some talk of another man, and then of course there was the usual talk about some other woman. And one never knows which way it was about. I think things were hushed up a good deal because General Ravenscroft's position was rather a high one, and I think it was said that he'd been in a nursing home that year, and he'd been very rundown or something, and that he really didn't know what he was doing.”
    “I'm really afraid,” said Mrs. Oliver, speaking firmly, “that I must say that I don't know anything about it. I do remember, now you mention it, that there was such a case, and I remember the names and that I knew the people, but I never knew what happened or anything at all about it. And I really don't think I have the least idea...”
    And really, thought Mrs. Oliver, wishing she was brave enough to say it, how on earth you have the impertinence to ask me such a thing, I don't know.
    “It's very important that I should know,” Mrs. Burton-Cox said.
    Her eyes,