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He worked so hard. Ten years – yes, it was a dangerous time. Even she herself, she remembered, had felt a certain restlessness … That rather wild-looking young man, that artist – what was his name now? Really she couldn’t remember. Hadn’t she been a little taken with him herself? She admitted to herself with a smile that she really had been – yes – just a little silly about him. He had been so earnest – had stared at her with such disarming intensity. Then he had asked if she would sit for him. An excuse, of course. He had done one or two charcoal sketches and then torn them up. He couldn’t ‘get’ her on canvas, he had said. Joan remembered her own subtly flattered, pleased feelings. Poor boy, she had thought, I’m afraid he really is getting rather fond of me … Yes, that had been a pleasant month … Though the end of it had been rather disconcerting. Not at all according to plan. In fact, it just showed that Michael Callaway (Callaway, that was his name, of course!) was a thoroughly unsatisfactory sort of person. They had gone for a walk together, she remembered, in Haling Woods, along the path where the Medaway comes twisting down from the summit of Asheldown. He had asked her to come in a rather gruff, shy voice. She had envisaged their probable conversation. He would tell her, perhaps, that he loved her, and she would be very sweet and gentle and understanding and a little – just a little – regretful. She thought of several charming things she might say, things that Michael might like to remember afterwards. But it hadn’t turned out like that. It hadn’t turned out like that at all! Instead, Michael Callaway had, without warning, seized her and kissed her with a violence and a brutality that had momentarily deprived her of breath, and letting go of her had observed in a loud and self-congratulatory voice: ‘My God, I wanted that!’ and had proceeded to fill a pipe, with complete unconcern and apparently deaf to her angry reproaches. He had merely said, stretching his arms and yawning, ‘I feel a lot better now.’ It was exactly, thought Joan, remembering the scene, what a man might say after downing a glass of beer on a thirsty day. They had walked home in silence after that – in silence on Joan’s part, that is. Michael Callaway seemed, from the extraordinary noises he made, to be attempting to sing. It was on the outskirts of the wood, just before they emerged on to the Crayminster Market Wopling high road, that he had paused and surveyed her dispassionately, and then remarked in a contemplative tone: ‘You know, you’re the sort of woman who ought to be raped. It might do you good.’ And, whilst she had stood, speechless with anger and astonishment, he had added cheerfully: ‘I’d rather like to rape you myself – and see if you looked the least bit different afterwards.’ Then he had stepped out on to the high road, and giving up trying to sing had whistled cheerfully. Naturally she had never spoken to him again and he had left Crayminster a few days later. A strange, puzzling and rather disturbing incident. Not an incident that Joan had cared to remember. In fact, she rather wondered that she had remembered it now … Horrid, the whole thing had been, quite horrid. She would put it out of her mind at once. After all, one didn’t want to remember unpleasant things when one was having a sun and sand rest cure. There was so much to think of that was pleasant and stimulating. Perhaps lunch would be ready. She glanced at her watch, but saw that it was only a quarter to one. When she got back to the rest house, she went to her room and hunted in her suitcase to see if she had any more writing paper with her. No, she hadn’t. Oh, well, it didn’t matter really. She was tired of writing letters. There wasn’t much to say. You couldn’t go on writing the same thing. What books had she got? Lady Catherine, of course. And a detective story that William had given her last thing. Kind of him, but she didn’t really care for detective stories. And The Power House by Buchan. Surely that was a very old book. She had read it years ago. Oh well, she would be able to buy some more books at the station at Aleppo. Lunch consisted of an omelette (rather tough and overcooked), curried eggs, and a dish of salmon (tinned) and baked beans and tinned peaches. It was rather a heavy meal. After it Joan went and lay down on her bed. She slept for three quarters of an hour, then woke up and read Lady Catherine Dysart until tea time. She had tea (tinned milk) and biscuits and went for a stroll and came back and finished Lady Catherine Dysart. Then she had dinner: omelette, curried salmon and rice, a dish of eggs and baked beans and tinned apricots. After that she started the detective story and finished it by the time she was ready for bed. The Indian said cheerfully: ‘Good night, Memsahib. Train come in seven-thirty tomorrow morning but not go out till evening, half past eight.’ Joan nodded. There would be another day to put in. She’d got The Power House still. A pity it was so short. Then an idea struck her. ‘There will be travellers coming in on the train? Oh, but they go straight off to Mosul, I suppose?’ The man shook his head. ‘Not tomorrow, I think. No cars arrive today. I think track to Mosul very bad. Everything stick for many days.’ Joan brightened. There would be travellers off the train in the rest house tomorrow. That would be rather nice – there was sure to be someone to whom it would be possible to talk. She went to bed feeling more cheerful than she had ten minutes ago. She thought, There’s something about the atmosphere of this place – I think it’s that dreadful smell of rancid fat! It quite depresses one. She awoke the next morning at eight o’clock and got up and dressed. She came out into the dining-room. One place only was laid at the table. She called, and the Indian came in. He was looking excited. ‘Train not come, Memsahib.’ ‘Not come? You mean it’s late?’ ‘Not come at all. Very heavy rain down line – other side Nissibin. Line all wash away – no train get through for three four five six days perhaps.’ Joan looked at him in dismay. ‘But then – what do I do?’ ‘You stay here, Memsahib. Plenty food, plenty beer, plenty tea. Very nice. You wait till train come.’ Oh dear, thought Joan, these Orientals. Time means nothing to them. She said, ‘Couldn’t I get a car?’ He seemed amused. ‘Motor car? Where would you get motor car? Track to Mosul very bad, everything stuck other side of wadi.’ ‘Can’t you telephone down the line?’ ‘Telephone where? Turkish line. Turks very difficult people – not do anything. They just run train.’ Joan thought, rallying with what she hoped was amusement, This really is being cut off from civilization! No telephones or telegraphs, no cars. The Indian said comfortingly: ‘Very nice weather, plenty food, all very comfortable.’ Well, Joan thought, it’s certainly nice weather. That’s lucky. Awful if I had to sit inside this place all day. As though reading her thoughts, the man said: ‘Weather good here, very seldom rain. Rain nearer Mosul, rain down the line.’ Joan sat down at the laid place at the table and waited for her breakfast to be brought. She had got over her momentary dismay. No good making a fuss – she had much too much sense for that. These things couldn’t be helped. But it was rather an annoying waste of time. She thought with a half smile: It looks as though what I said to Blanche was a wish that has come true. I said I should be glad of an interval to rest my nerves. Well, I’ve got it! Nothing whatever to do here. Not even anything to read. Really it ought to do me a lot of good. Rest cure in the desert. The thought of Blanche brought some slightly unpleasant association – something that, quite definitely, she didn’t want to remember. In fact, why think of Blanche at all? She went out after breakfast. As before, she walked a reasonable distance from the rest house and then sat down on the ground.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

For some time she sat quite still, her eyes half closed. Wonderful, she thought, to feel this peace and quiet oozing into her. She could simply feel the good it was doing her. The healing air, the lovely warm sun – the peace of it all. She remained so for a little longer. Then she glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes past ten. She thought: The morning is passing quite quickly … Supposing she were to write a line to Barbara? Really it was extraordinary that she hadn’t thought of writing to Barbara yesterday instead of those silly letters to friends in England. She got out the pad and her pen. ‘Darling Barbara,’ she wrote. ‘I’m not having a very lucky journey. Missed Monday night’s train and now I’m held up here for days apparently. It’s very peaceful and lovely sunshine so I’m quite happy.’ She paused. What to say next. Something about the baby – or William? What on earth could Blanche have meant – ‘ don’t worry about Barbara’. Of course! That was why Joan hadn’t wanted to think about Blanche. Blanche had been so peculiar in the things she had said about Barbara. As though she, Barbara’s mother, wouldn’t know anything there was to know about her own child. ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right now.’ Did that mean that things hadn’t been all right? But in what way? Blanche had hinted that Barbara was too young to have married. Joan stirred uneasily. At the time, she remembered, Rodney had said something, of the kind. He had said, quite suddenly, and in an unusually peremptory way: ‘I’m not happy about this marriage, Joan.’ ‘Oh, Rodney, but why? He’s so nice and they seem so well suited.’ ‘He’s a nice enough young fellow – but she doesn’t love him, Joan.’ She’d been astonished – absolutely astonished. ‘Rodney – really – how ridiculous! Of course she’s in love with him! Why on earth would she want to marry him otherwise?’ He had answered – rather obscurely: ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ ‘But, darling – really – aren’t you being a little ridiculous?’ He had said, paying no attention to her purposely light tone, ‘If she doesn’t love him, she mustn’t marry him. She’s too young for that – and she’s got too much temperament.’ ‘Well, really, Rodney, what do you know about temperament?’ She couldn’t help being amused. But Rodney didn’t even smile. He said, ‘Girls do marry sometimes – just to get away from home.’ At that she had laughed outright. ‘Not homes like Barbara’s! Why, no girl ever had a happier home life.’ ‘Do you really think that’s true, Joan?’ ‘Why, of course. Everything’s always been perfect for the children here.’ ‘He said slowly, ‘They don’t seem to bring their friends to the house much.’ ‘Why, darling, I’m always giving parties and asking young people! I make a point of it. It’s Barbara herself who’s always saying she doesn’t want parties and not to ask people.’ Rodney had shaken his head in a puzzled, unsatisfied way. And later, that evening, she had come into the room just as Barbara was crying out impatiently: ‘It’s no good, Daddy, I’ve got to get away. I can’t stand it any longer – and don’t tell me to go and take a job somewhere, because I should hate that.’ ‘What’s all this?’ Joan said. After a pause, a very slight pause, Barbara had explained, a mutinous flush on her cheek. ‘Just Daddy thinking he knows best! He wants me to be engaged for years. I’ve told him I can’t stand that and I want to marry William and go away to Baghdad. I think it will be wonderful out there.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Joan anxiously. ‘I wish it wasn’t so far away. I’d like to have you under my eye as it were.’ ‘Oh, Mother!’ ‘I know, darling, but you don’t realize how young you are, how inexperienced. I should be able to help you so much if you were living somewhere not too far away.’ Barbara had smiled and had said, ‘Well, it looks as though I shall have to paddle my own canoe without the benefit of your experience and wisdom.’ And as Rodney was going slowly out of the room, she had rushed after him and had suddenly flung her arms round his neck hugging him and saying, ‘Darling Dads. Darling, darling, darling …’ Really, thought Joan, the child is becoming quite demonstrative. But it showed, at any rate, how entirely wrong Rodney was in his ideas. Barbara was just revelling in the thought of going out East with her William – and very nice it was to see two young things in love and so full of plans for the future. Extraordinary that an idea should have got about Baghdad that Barbara had been unhappy at home. But it was a place that seemed absolutely full of gossip and rumours, so much so that one hardly liked to mention anyone. Major Reid, for instance. She herself had never met Major Reid, but he had been mentioned quite often in Barbara’s letters home. Major Reid had been to dinner. They were going shooting with Major Reid. Barbara was going for the summer months up to Arkandous. She and another young married woman had shared a bungalow and Major Reid had been up there at the same time. They had had a lot of tennis. Later, Barbara and he had won the mixed doubles at the club. So it had really been quite natural for Joan to ask brightly about Major Reid – she had heard so much about him, she said, that she was really longing to see him. It was quite ludicrous the embarrassment her question had caused. Barbara had turned quite white, and William had gone red, and after a minute or two he had grunted out in a very odd voice: ‘We don’t see anything of him now.’ His manner had been so forbidding that she really hadn’t liked to say anything more. But afterwards when Barbara had gone to bed Joan reopened the subject, saying smilingly, that she seemed to have put her foot in it. She’d had an idea that Major Reid was quite an intimate friend. William got up and tapped his pipe against the fireplace. ‘Oh, I dunno,’ he said vaguely. ‘We did a bit of shooting together and all that. But we haven’t seen anything of him for a long time now.’ It wasn’t, Joan thought, very well done. She had smiled to herself, men were so transparent. She was a little amused at William’s old-fashioned reticence. He probably thought of her as a very prim, strait-laced woman – a regular mother-in-law. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Some scandal.’ ‘What do you mean?’ William had turned on her quite angrily. ‘My dear boy!’ Joan smiled at him. ‘It’s quite obvious from your manner. I suppose you found out something about him and had to drop him. Oh, I shan’t ask questions. These things are very painful, I know.’ William said slowly, ‘Yes – yes, you’re right. They are painful.’ ‘One takes people so much at their own valuation,’ said Joan. ‘And then, when one finds out that one has been mistaken in them, it’s all so awkward and unpleasant.’ ‘He’s cleared out of this country, that’s one good thing,’ said William. ‘Gone to East Africa.’ And suddenly Joan remembered some scraps of conversation overheard one day at the Alwyah Club. Something about Nobby Reid going to Uganda. A woman had said, ‘Poor Nobby, it’s really not his fault that every little idiot in the place runs after him.’ And another, older, woman had laughed spitefully and said, ‘He takes a lot of trouble with them. Dewy innocents – that’s what Nobby likes. The unsophisticated bride. And I must say he has a wonderful technique! He can be terribly attractive. The girl always thinks he’s passionately in love with her. That’s usually the moment when he’s just thinking of passing on to the next one.’ ‘Well,’ said the first woman. ‘ We shall all miss him. He’s so amusing.’ The other laughed. ‘There’s a husband or two who won’t be sorry to see him go! As a matter of fact very few men like him.’ ‘He’s certainly made this place too hot to hold him.’ Then the second woman had said, ‘Hush,’ and lowered her voice and Joan hadn’t heard any more. She had hardly noticed the conversation at the time, but it came back to her now, and she felt curious.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

If William didn’t want to talk about it, perhaps Barbara might be less reticent. But instead of that Barbara had said quite clearly and rather disagreeably: ‘I don’t want to talk about him, Mother, do you mind?’ Barbara, Joan reflected, never did want to talk about anything. She had been quite incredibly reticent and touchy about her illness, and its cause. Some form of poisoning had started it all, and naturally Joan had taken it to be food poisoning of some kind. Ptomaine poisoning was very common in hot climates, so she believed. But both William and Barbara had been most unwilling to go into details – and even the doctor to whom she had naturally applied for information as Barbara’s mother, had been taciturn and uncommunicative. His principal care was to stress the point that young Mrs Wray must not be questioned or encouraged to dwell on her illness. ‘All she needs now is care and building up. Whys and wherefores are very unprofitable subjects of discussion and talking about all that will do the patient no good. That’s just a hint I’m giving you, Mrs Scudamore.’ An unpleasant, dour kind of man, Joan had found him, and not at all impressed, as he easily might have been, by the devotion of a mother in rushing out from England post haste. Oh well, Barbara had been grateful, at all events. At least Joan supposed so … She had certainly thanked her mother very prettily. William, too, had said how good of her it was. She had said how she wished she could have stayed on, and William had said, Yes, he wished so too. And she had said now they mustn’t press her – because it was really too tempting and she’d love to have a winter in Baghdad – but after all there was Barbara’s father to consider, and it wouldn’t be fair on him. And Barbara, in a faint little voice had said, ‘Darling Dads,’ and after a moment or two had said, ‘Look here, Mother, why don’t you stay?’ ‘You must think of your father, darling.’ Barbara said in that rather curious dry voice she used sometimes that she was thinking of him, but Joan said, no, she couldn’t leave poor dear Rodney to servants. There was a moment, a few days before her departure, when she had almost changed her mind. She might, at any rate, stay another month. But William had pointed out so eloquently the uncertainties of desert travel if she left it too late in the season that she had been quite alarmed and had decided that it was best to stick to her original plan. After that William and Barbara had been so nice to her that she almost changed her mind again – but not quite. Though really, however late in the season she had left it, nothing could be much worse than this. Joan looked at her watch again. Five minutes to eleven. One seemed to be able to think a great deal in quite a short space of time. She rather wished she’d brought The Power House out here with her, though perhaps as it was the only thing she had to read it was wise to keep it back – something in reserve. Two hours to put in before lunch time. She had said she would have lunch at one o’clock today. Perhaps she had better walk on a little, only it seemed rather silly just walking aimlessly with nowhere particular to walk to. And the sun was quite hot. Oh well, how often she had wished she could have just a little time to herself, to think things out. Now, if ever, was her opportunity. What things were there that she had wanted to think out so urgently? Joan searched her mind – but they seemed mostly to have been matters of local importance – remembering where she had put this, that or the other, deciding how to arrange the servants’ summer holidays, planning the redecorating of the old schoolroom. All these things seemed now rather remote and unimportant. November was rather far in advance to plan the servants’ holidays, and besides, she had to know when Whitsuntide was and that needed next year’s almanac. She could, however, decide about the schoolroom. The walls a light shade of beige and oatmeal covers with some nice bright cushions? Yes, that would do very well. Ten minutes past eleven. Redecorating and doing up the schoolroom hadn’t taken long! Joan thought vaguely, If I’d only known, I could have brought along some interesting book on modern science and discoveries, something that would explain things like the quantum theory. And then she wondered what had put the quantum theory into her head and thought to herself, Of course – the covers – and Mrs Sherston. For she remembered that she had once been discussing the vexed questions of chintzes or cretonnes for drawing-room covers with Mrs Sherston, the bank manager’s wife – and right in the middle of it Mrs Sherston had said in her abrupt way, ‘I do wish I was clever enough to understand the quantum theory. It’s such a fascinating idea, isn’t it, energy all done up in little parcels.’ Joan had stared at her, for she really couldn’t see what scientific theories had to do with chintzes, and Mrs Sherston had got rather red and said, ‘Stupid of me, but you know the way things come into your head quite suddenly – and it is an exciting idea, isn’t it?’ Joan hadn’t thought the idea particularly exciting and the conversation had ended there. But she remembered quite well Mrs Sherston’s own cretonne – or rather hand-printed linen covers. A design of leaves in browns and greys and reds. She had said, ‘These are very unusual, were they very expensive?’ And Mrs Sherston had said yes, they were. And she had added that she had got them because she loved woods and trees and the dream of her life was to go somewhere like Burma or Malaya where things grew really fast! Really fast, she had added, in an anxious tone, and making a rather clumsy gesture with her hands to express impatience. Those linens, reflected Joan now, must have cost at least eighteen and six a yard, a fantastic price for those days. One ought, by realizing what Captain Sherston gave his wife for housekeeping and furnishing, to have had at least an inkling of what was to come out later. She herself had never really liked the man. She remembered sitting in his office at the bank, discussing the reinvestment of some shares, Sherston opposite her, behind his desk – a great big breezy man exuding bonhomie. A rather exaggeratedly social manner … ‘I’m a man of the world, dear lady,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘don’t think of me as just a money machine – I’m a tennis player, a golfer, a dancer, a bridge player. The real me is the chap you meet at a party, not the official who says “no further overdraft”.’ A great overblown windbag, thought Joan indignantly. Crooked, always crooked. Even then he must have started on his falsification of the books, or whatever the swindle was. And yet nearly everyone had liked him, had said what a good sort old Sherston was, not at all the usual type of bank manager. Well, that was true enough. The usual type of bank manager doesn’t embezzle bank funds. Well, Leslie Sherston had, at any rate, got her handprinted linen covers out of it all. Not that anyone had ever suggested that an extravagant wife had led to Sherston’s dishonesty. You only had to look at Leslie Sherston to see that money meant nothing particularly to her. Always wearing shabby green tweeds and grubbing around in her garden or tramping through the countryside. She never bothered much about the children’s clothes, either. And once, much later, Joan remembered an afternoon when Leslie Sherston had given her tea, fetching a big loaf and a roll of butter and some homemade jam and kitchen cups and teapots – everything bundled anyhow on a tray and brought in. An untidy, cheerful, careless sort of woman, with a one-sided slouch when she walked and a face that seemed all on one side too, but that one-sided smile of hers was rather nice, and people liked her on the whole. Ah, well, poor Mrs Sherston. She’d had a sad life, a very sad life. Joan moved restlessly. Why had she let that phrase, a sad life, come into her mind? It reminded her of Blanche Haggard (though that was quite a different kind of sad life!) and thinking of Blanche brought her back again to Barbara and the circumstances surrounding Barbara’s illness. Was there nothing one could think of that did not lead in some painful and undesired direction? She looked at her watch once more.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

She looked at her watch once more. At any rate, hand-printed linens and poor Mrs Sherston had taken up nearly half an hour. What could she think about now? Something pleasant, with no disturbing sidelines. Rodney was probably the safest subject to think about. Dear Rodney. Joan’s mind dwelt pleasurably on the thought of her husband, visualizing him as she had last seen him on the platform at Victoria, saying goodbye to her just before the train pulled out. Yes, dear Rodney. Standing there looking up at her, the sun shining full on his face and revealing so mercilessly the network of little lines at the corners of his eyes – such tired eyes. Yes, tired eyes, eyes full of a deep sadness. (Not, she thought, that Rodney is sad. It’s just a trick of construction. Some animals have sad eyes.) Usually, too, he was wearing his glasses and then you didn’t notice the sadness of his eyes. But he certainly looked a very tired man. No wonder, when he worked so hard. He practically never took a day off. (I shall change all that when I get back, thought Joan. He must have more leisure. I ought to have thought of it before.) Yes, seen there in the bright light, he looked as old or older than his years. She had looked down on him and he up at her and they had exchanged the usual idiotic last words. ‘I don’t think you have to go through any Customs at Calais.’ ‘No, I believe one goes straight through to the Simplon express.’ ‘Brindisi carriage, remember. I hope the Mediterranean behaves.’ ‘I wish I could stop off a day or two in Cairo.’ ‘Why don’t you?’ ‘Darling, I must hurry to Barbara. It’s only a weekly air service.’ ‘Of course. I forgot.’ A whistle blew. He smiled up at her. ‘Take care of yourself, little Joan.’ ‘Goodbye, don’t miss me too much.’ The train started with a jerk. Joan drew her head in. Rodney waved, then turned away. On an impulse she leaned out again. He was already striding up the platform. She felt a sudden thrill at seeing that well-known back. How young he looked suddenly, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared. It gave her quite a shock … She had an impression of a young, carefree man striding up the platform. It reminded her of the day she had first met Rodney Scudamore. She had been introduced to him at a tennis party and they had gone straight on to the court. He had said: ‘Shall I play at the net?’ And it was then that she had looked after him as he strode up to take his place at the net and thought what a very attractive back he had … the easy confident way he walked, the set of his head and neck … Suddenly she had been nervous. She had served two lots of double faults running and had felt all hot and bothered. And then Rodney had turned his head and smiled at her encouragingly – that kind, friendly smile of his. And she had thought what a very attractive young man … and she had proceeded straight away to fall in love with him. Looking out from the train, watching Rodney’s retreating back until the sight of it was blotted out by the people on the platform, she relived that summer’s day so many years ago. It was as though the years had fallen away from Rodney, leaving him once more an eager, confident young man. As though the years had fallen away … Suddenly, in the desert, with the sun pouring down on her, Joan gave a quick uncontrollable shiver. She thought, No, no – I don’t want to go on – I don’t want to think about this … Rodney, striding up the platform, his head thrown back, the tired sag of his shoulders all gone. A man who had been relieved of an intolerable burden … Really, what was the matter with her? She was imagining things, inventing them. Her eyes had played a trick on her. Why hadn’t he waited to see the train pull out? Well, why should he? He was in a hurry to get through what business he had to do in London. Some people didn’t like to see trains go out of stations bearing away someone they loved. Really it was impossible that anyone could remember so clearly as she did exactly how Rodney’s back had looked! She was imagining – Stop, that didn’t make it any better. If you imagined a thing like that, it meant that such an idea was already in your head. And it couldn’t be true – the inference that she had drawn simply could not be true. She was saying to herself (wasn’t she?) that Rodney was glad she was going away … And that simply couldn’t be true! Chapter Four Joan arrived back at the rest house definitely overheated. Unconsciously she had increased her pace so as to get away from that last unwelcome thought. The Indian looked at her curiously and said: ‘Memsahib walk very fast. Why walk fast? Plenty time here.’ Oh God, thought Joan, plenty time indeed! The Indian and the rest house and the chickens and the tins and the barbed wire were all definitely getting on her nerves. She went on into her bedroom and found The Power House. At any rate, she thought, it’s cool in here and dark. She opened The Power House and began to read. By lunch time she had read half of it. There was omelette for lunch and baked beans round it, and after it there was a dish of hot salmon with rice, and tinned apricots. Joan did not eat very much. Afterwards she went to her bedroom and lay down. If she had a touch of the sun from walking too fast in the heat, a sleep would do her good. She closed her eyes but sleep did not come. She felt particularly wide awake and intelligent. She got up and took three aspirins and lay down again. Every time she shut her eyes she saw Rodney’s back going away from her up the platform. It was insupportable! She pulled aside the curtain to let in some light and got The Power House. A few pages before the end she dropped asleep. She dreamt that she was going to play in a tournament with Rodney. They had difficulty in finding the balls but at last they got to the court. When she started to serve she found that she was playing against Rodney and the Randolph girl. She served nothing but double faults. She thought, Rodney will help me, but when she looked for him she could not find him. Everyone had left and it was getting dark. I’m all alone, thought Joan. I’m all alone. She woke up with a start. ‘I’m all alone,’ she said aloud. The influence of the dream was still upon her. It seemed to her that the words she had just said were terribly frightening. She said again, ‘I’m all alone.’ The Indian put his head in. ‘Memsahib call?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Get me some tea.’ ‘Memsahib want tea? Only three o’clock.’ ‘Never mind, I want tea.’ She heard him going away and calling out, ‘Chai-chai!’ She got up from the bed and went over to the fly-spotted mirror. It was reassuring to see her own normal, pleasant-looking face. ‘I wonder,’ said Joan addressing her reflection, ‘whether you can be going to be ill? You’re behaving very oddly.’ Perhaps she had got a touch of the sun? When the tea came she was feeling quite normal again. In fact the whole business was really very funny. She, Joan Scudamore, indulging in nerves! But of course it wasn’t nerves, it was a touch of the sun. She wouldn’t go out again until the sun was well down. She ate some biscuits and drank two cups of tea. Then she finished The Power House. As she closed the book, she was assailed by a definite qualm. She thought, Now I’ve got nothing to read. Nothing to read, no writing materials, no sewing with her. Nothing at all to do, but wait for a problematical train that mightn’t come for days. When the Indian came in to clear tea away she said to him: ‘What do you do here?’ He seemed surprised by the question. ‘I look after travellers, Memsahib.’ ‘I know.’ She controlled her impatience. ‘But that doesn’t take you all your time?’ ‘I give them breakfast, lunch, tea.’ ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. You have helpers?’ ‘Arab boy – very stupid, very lazy, very dirty – I see to everything myself, not trust boy. He bring bath water – throw away bath water – he help cook.’ ‘There are three of you, then, you, the cook, the boy?

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

You must have a lot of time when you aren’t working. Do you read?’ ‘Read? Read what?’ ‘Books.’ ‘I not read.’ ‘Then what do you do when you’re not working?’ ‘I wait till time do more work.’ It’s no good, thought Joan. You can’t talk to them. They don’t know what you mean. This man, he’s here always, month after month. Sometimes, I suppose, he gets a holiday, and goes to a town and gets drunk and sees friends. But for weeks on end he’s here. Of course he’s got the cook and the boy … The boy lies in the sun and sleeps when he isn’t working. Life’s as simple as that for him. They’re no good to me, not any of them. All the English this man knows is eating and drinking and ‘Nice weather.’ The Indian went out. Joan strolled restlessly about the room. ‘I mustn’t be foolish. I must make some kind of plan. Arrange a course of – of thinking for myself. I really must not allow myself to get – well – rattled.’ The truth was, she reflected, that she had always led such a full and occupied life. So much interest in it. It was a civilized life. And if you had all that balance and proportion in your life, it certainly left you rather at a loss when you were faced with the barren uselessness of doing nothing at all. The more useful and cultured a woman you were, the more difficult it made it. There were some people, of course, even at home, who often sat about for hours doing nothing. Presumably they would take to this kind of life quite happily. Even Mrs Sherston, though as a rule she was active and energetic enough for two, had occasionally sat about doing nothing. Usually when she was out for walks. She would walk with terrific energy and then drop down suddenly on a log of wood, or a patch of heather and just sit there staring into space. Like that day when she, Joan, had thought it was the Randolph girl … She blushed slightly as she remembered her own actions. It had, really, been rather like spying. The sort of thing that made her just a little ashamed. Because she wasn’t, really, that kind of woman. Still, with a girl like Myrna Randolph … A girl who didn’t seem to have any moral sense … Joan tried to remember how it had all come about. She had been taking some flowers to old Mrs Garnett and had just come out of the cottage door when she had heard Rodney’s voice in the road outside the hedge. His voice and a woman’s voice answering him. She had said goodbye to Mrs Garnett quickly and come out into the road. She was just able to catch sight of Rodney and, she felt sure, the Randolph girl, swinging round the corner of the track that led up to Asheldown. No, she wasn’t very proud of what she had done then. But she had felt, at the time, that she had to know. It wasn’t exactly Rodney’s fault – everyone knew what Myrna Randolph was. Joan had taken the path that went up through Haling Wood and had come out that way on to the bare shoulder of Asheldown and at once she had caught sight of them – two figures sitting there motionless staring down over the pale, shining countryside below. The relief when she had seen that it wasn’t Myrna Randolph at all, but Mrs Sherston! They weren’t even sitting close together. There were four feet at least between them. Really, a quite ridiculous distance – hardly friendly! But then Leslie Sherston wasn’t really a very friendly person – not, that is, a demonstrative one. And she certainly could not be regarded as a siren – the mere idea would have been ludicrous. No, she had been out on one of her tramps and Rodney had overtaken her and with his usual friendly courtesy, had accompanied her. Now, having climbed up Asheldown Ridge, they were resting for a while and enjoying the view before going back again. Astonishing, really, the way that neither of them moved nor spoke. Not, she thought, very companionable. Oh well, presumably they both had their own thoughts. They felt, perhaps, that they knew each other well enough not to have to bother to talk or to make conversation. For by that time, the Scudamores had got to know Leslie Sherston very much better. The bombshell of Sherston’s defalcations had burst upon a dismayed Crayminster and Sherston himself was by now serving his prison sentence. Rodney was the solicitor who had acted for him at the trial and who also acted for Leslie. He had been very sorry for Leslie, left with two small children and no money. Everybody had been prepared to be sorry for poor Mrs Sherston and if they had not gone on being quite so sorry that was entirely Leslie Sherston’s own fault. Her resolute cheerfulness had rather shocked some people. ‘She must, I think,’ Joan had said to Rodney, ‘be rather insensitive.’ He had replied brusquely that Leslie Sherston had more courage than anyone he had ever come across. Joan had said, ‘Oh, yes, courage. But courage isn’t everything!’ ‘Isn’t it?’ Rodney had said. He’d said it rather queerly. Then he’d gone off to the office. Courage was a virtue one would certainly not deny to Leslie Sherston. Faced with the problem of supporting herself and two children, and with no particular qualifications for the task she had managed it. She’d gone to work at a market gardener’s until she was thoroughly conversant with the trade, accepting in the meantime a small allowance from an aunt, and living with the children in rooms. Thus, when Sherston had come out of prison, he’d found her established in a different part of the world altogether, growing fruit and vegetables for the market. He’d driven the truck in and out from the nearby town, and the children had helped and they’d managed somehow to make not too bad a thing of it. There was no doubt that Mrs Sherston had worked like a Trojan and it was particularly meritorious because she must, at that time, have begun to suffer a good deal of pain from the illness that eventually killed her. Oh well, thought Joan, presumably she loved the man. Sherston had certainly been considered a good-looking man and a favourite with women. He looked rather different when he came out of prison. She, Joan, had only seen him once, but she was shocked by the change in him. Shifty-eyed, deflated, still boastful, still attempting to bluff and bluster. A wreck of a man. Still, his wife had loved him and stuck by him and for that Joan respected Leslie Sherston. She had, on the other hand, considered that Leslie had been absolutely wrong about the children. That same aunt who had come to the rescue financially when Sherston was convicted had made a further offer when he was due to come out of prison. She would, she said, adopt the younger boy, and an uncle, persuaded by her, would pay the school fees of the elder boy and she herself would take them both for the holidays. They could take the uncle’s name by deed poll and she and the uncle would make themselves financially responsible for their future. Leslie Sherston had turned this offer down unconditionally and in that Joan thought she had been selfish. She was refusing for her children a much better life than she could give them and one free from any taint of disgrace. However much she loved her boys, she ought, Joan thought, and Rodney agreed with her, to think of their lives before her own. But Leslie had been quite unyielding and Rodney had washed his hands of the whole matter. He supposed, he had said with a sigh, that Mrs Sherston knew her own business best. Certainly, Joan thought, she was an obstinate creature. Walking restlessly up and down the rest house floor, Joan remembered Leslie Sherston as she had looked that day sitting on Asheldown Ridge. Sitting hunched forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin supported on her hands. Sitting curiously still. Looking out across the farmland and the plough to where slopes of oaks and beeches in Little Havering wood were turning golden red. She and Rodney sitting there – so quiet – so motionless – staring in front of them. Quite why she did not speak to them, or join them, Joan hardly knew. Perhaps it was the guilty consciousness of her suspicions of Myrna Randolph? Anyhow she had not spoken to them. Instead she had gone quietly back into the shelter of the trees and had taken her way home. It was an incident that she had never liked very much to think about – and she had certainly never mentioned it to Rodney.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

He might think she had ideas in her head, ideas about him and Myrna Randolph. Rodney walking up the platform at Victoria … Oh goodness, surely she wasn’t going to begin that all over again? What on earth had put that extraordinary notion into her head? That Rodney (who was and always had been devoted to her) was enjoying the prospect of her absence? As though you could tell anything by the way a man walked! She would simply put the whole ridiculous fancy out of her mind. She wouldn’t think any more about Rodney, not if it made her imagine such curious and unpleasant things. Up to now, she’d never been a fanciful woman. It must be the sun. Chapter Five The afternoon and evening passed with interminable slowness. Joan didn’t like to go out in the sun again until it was quite low in the sky. So she sat in the rest house. After about half an hour she felt it unendurable to sit still in a chair. She went into the bedroom and began to unpack her cases and repack them. Her things, so she told herself, were not properly folded. She might as well make a good job of it. She finished the job neatly and expeditiously. It was five o’clock. She might safely go out now surely. It was so depressing in the rest house. If only she had something to read … Or even, thought Joan desperately, a wire puzzle! Outside she looked with distaste at the tins and the hens and the barbed wire. What a horrible place this was. Utterly horrible. She walked, for a change, in a direction parallel with the railway line and the Turkish frontier. It gave her a feeling of agreeable novelty. But after a quarter of an hour the effect was the same. The railway line, running a quarter of a mile to her right, gave her no feeling of companionship. Nothing but silence – silence and sunlight. It occurred to Joan that she might recite poetry. She had always been supposed as a girl to recite and read poetry very well. Interesting to see what she could remember after all these years. There was a time when she had known quite a lot of poetry by heart. The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven What came next? Stupid. She simply couldn’t remember. Fear no more the heat of the sun (That began comfortingly anyway! Now how did it go on?) Nor the furious winter’s rages Thou thy worldly task has done Home art gone and ta’en thy wages Golden lads and girls all must As chimney sweepers come to dust. No, not very cheerful on the whole. Could she remember any of the sonnets? She used to know them. The marriage of true minds and that one that Rodney had asked her about. Funny the way he had said suddenly one evening: ‘ And thy eternal summer shall not fade – that’s from Shakespeare, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, from the sonnets.’ And he had said: ‘ Let me not unto the marriage of true minds admit impediment? That one?’ ‘No, the one that begins, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.’ And then she had quoted the whole sonnet to him, really rather beautifully, with a lot of expression and all the proper emphasis. At the end, instead of expressing approbation, he had only repeated thoughtfully: ‘ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May … but it’s October now, isn’t it?’ It was such an extraordinary thing to say that she had stared at him. Then he had said: ‘Do you know the other one? The one about the marriage of true minds?’ ‘Yes.’ She paused a minute and then began: ‘ Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters where it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken, It is the star to every wandering bark Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov’d I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.’ She finished, giving the last lines full emphasis and dramatic fervour. ‘Don’t you think I recite Shakespeare rather well? I was always supposed to at school. They said I read poetry with a lot of expression.’ But Rodney had only answered absently, ‘It doesn’t really need expression. Just the words will do.’ She had sighed and murmured, ‘Shakespeare is wonderful, isn’t he?’ And Rodney had answered, ‘What’s really so wonderful is that he was just a poor devil like the rest of us.’ ‘Rodney, what an extraordinary thing to say.’ He had smiled at her, then, as though waking up. ‘Is it?’ Getting up, he had strolled out of the room murmuring as he went: ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.’ Why on earth, she wondered, had he said, ‘But it’s October now’? What could he have been thinking about? She remembered that October, a particularly fine and mild one. Curious, now she came to think of it, the evening that Rodney had asked her about the sonnets had been the actual evening of the day when she had seen him sitting with Mrs Sherston on Asheldown. Perhaps Mrs Sherston had been quoting Shakespeare, but it wasn’t very likely. Leslie Sherston was not, she thought, at all an intellectual woman. It had been a wonderful October that year. She remembered quite plainly, a few days later, Rodney asking her in a bewildered tone: ‘Ought this thing to be out this time of year?’ He was pointing to a rhododendron. One of the early flowering ones that normally bloom in March or the end of February. It had a rich blood red blossom and the buds were bursting all over it. ‘No,’ she had told him. ‘Spring is the time, but sometimes they do come out in autumn if it’s unusually mild and warm.’ He had touched one of the buds gently with his fingers and had murmured under his breath: ‘The darling buds of May.’ March, she told him, not May. ‘It’s like blood,’ he said, ‘heart’s blood.’ How unlike Rodney, she thought, to be so interested in flowers. But after that he had always liked that particular rhododendron. She remembered how, many years later, he had worn a great bud of it in his buttonhole. Much too heavy, of course, and it had fallen out as she knew it would. They’d been in the churchyard, of all extraordinary places, at the time. She’d seen him there as she came back past the church and had joined him and said, ‘Whatever are you doing here, Rodney?’ He had laughed and said, ‘Considering my latter end, and what I’ll have put on my tombstone. Not granite chips, I think, they’re so genteel. And certainly not a stout marble angel.’ They had looked down then at a very new marble slab which bore Leslie Sherston’s name. Following her glance Rodney had spelled out slowly: ‘Leslie Adeline Sherston, dearly beloved wife of Charles Edward Sherston, who entered into rest on 11th May, 1930. And God shall wipe away their tears.’ Then, after a moment’s pause, he had said: ‘Seems damned silly to think of Leslie Sherston under a cold slab of marble like that, and only a congenital idiot like Sherston would ever have chosen that text. I don’t believe Leslie ever cried in her life.’ Joan had said, feeling just a little shocked and rather as though she was playing a slightly blasphemous game: ‘What would you choose?’ ‘For her? I don’t know. Isn’t there something in the Psalms? In thy presence is the fullness of joy. Something like that.’ ‘I really meant for yourself.’ ‘Oh, for me?’ He thought for a minute or two – smiled to himself. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd. He leadeth me in green pastures. That will do very well for me.’ ‘It sounds rather a dull idea of Heaven, I’ve always thought.’ ‘What’s your idea of Heaven, Joan?’ ‘Well – not all the golden gates and that stuff, of course. I like to think of it as a state. Where everyone is busy helping, in some wonderful way, to make this world, perhaps, more beautiful and happier. Service – that’s my idea of Heaven.’ ‘What a dreadful little prig you are, Joan.’ He had laughed in his teasing way to rob the words of their sting.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Then he had said, ‘No, a green valley – that’s good enough for me – and the sheep following the shepherd home in the cool of the evening –’ He paused a minute and then said, ‘It’s an absurd fancy of mine, Joan, but I play with the idea sometimes that, as I’m on my way to the office and go along the High Street, I turn to take the alley into the Bell Walk and instead of the alley I’ve turned into a hidden valley, with green pasture and soft wooded hills on either side. It’s been there all the time, existing secretly in the heart of the town. You turn from the busy High Street into it and you feel quite bewildered and say perhaps, “Where am I?” And then they’d tell you, you know, very gently, that you were dead …’ ‘Rodney!’ She was really startled, dismayed. ‘You – you’re ill. You can’t be well.’ It had been her first inkling of the state he was in – the precursor of that nervous breakdown that was shortly to send him for some two months to the sanatorium in Cornwall where he seemed content to lie silently listening to the gulls and staring out over the pale, treeless hills to the sea. But she hadn’t realized until that day in the churchyard that he really had been overworking. It was as they turned to go home, she with an arm through his, urging him forward, that she saw the heavy rhododendron bud drop from his coat and fall on Leslie’s grave. ‘Oh, look,’ she said, ‘your rhododendron,’ and she stooped to pick it up. But he had said quickly: ‘Let it lie. Leave it there for Leslie Sherston. After all – she was our friend.’ And Joan had said quickly, what a nice idea, and that she would bring a big bunch of those yellow chrysanthemums herself tomorrow. She had been, she remembered, a little frightened by the queer smile he gave her. Yes, definitely she had felt that there was something wrong with Rodney that evening. She didn’t, of course, realize that he was on the edge of a complete breakdown, but she did know that he was, somehow, different … She had plied him with anxious questions all the way home but he hadn’t said much. Only repeated again and again: ‘I’m tired, Joan … I’m very tired.’ And once, incomprehensibly, ‘We can’t all be brave …’ It was only about a week later that he had, one morning, said dreamily, ‘I shan’t get up today.’ And he had lain there in bed, not speaking or looking at anyone, just lain there, smiling quietly. And then there had been doctors and nurses and finally the arrangements for him to go for a long rest cure to Trevelyan. No letters or telegrams and no visitors. They wouldn’t even let Joan come and see him. Not his own wife. It had been a sad, perplexing, bewildering time. And the children had been very difficult too. Not helpful. Behaving as though it was all her, Joan’s, fault. ‘Letting him slave and slave and slave at that office. You know perfectly well, Mother, Father’s worked far too hard for years.’ ‘I know, my dears. But what could I do about it?’ ‘You ought to have yanked him out of it years ago. Don’t you know he hates it? Don’t you know anything about Father?’ ‘That’s quite enough, Tony. Of course I know all about your father – far more than you do.’ ‘Well, sometimes I don’t think so. Sometimes I don’t think you know anything about anybody.’ ‘Tony – really!’ ‘Dry up, Tony –’ That was Averil. ‘What’s the good?’ Averil was always like that. Dry, unemotional, affecting a cynicism and a detached outlook beyond her years. Averil, Joan sometimes thought despairingly, had really no heart at all. She disliked caresses and was always completely unaffected by appeals to her better self. ‘Darling Daddy –’ It was a wail from Barbara, younger than the other two, more uncontrolled in her emotions. ‘It’s all your fault, Mother. You’ve been cruel to him – cruel – always.’ ‘Barbara!’ Joan quite lost patience. ‘What do you think you’re talking about? If there is one person who comes first in this house, it’s your father. How do you think you could all have been educated and clothed and fed if your father hadn’t worked for you? He’s sacrificed himself for you – that’s what parents have to do – and they do it without making any fuss about it.’ ‘Let me take this opportunity of thanking you, Mother,’ said Averil, ‘for all the sacrifices you have made for us.’ Joan looked at her daughter doubtfully. She suspected Averil’s sincerity. But surely the child couldn’t be so impertinent … Tony distracted her attention. He was asking gravely: ‘It’s true, isn’t it, that Father once wanted to be a farmer?’ ‘A farmer? No, of course he didn’t. Oh well, I believe years ago – just a kind of boyish fancy. But the family have always been lawyers. It’s a family firm, and really quite famous in this part of England. You ought to be very proud of it, and glad that you’re going into it.’ ‘But I’m not going into it, Mother. I want to go to East Africa and farm.’ ‘Nonsense, Tony. Don’t let’s have this silly nonsense all over again. Of course you’re going into the firm! You’re the only son.’ ‘I’m not going to be a lawyer, Mother. Father knows and he’s promised me.’ She stared at him, taken aback, shaken by his cool certainty. Then she sank into a chair, tears came to her eyes. So unkind, all of them, browbeating her like this. ‘I don’t know what’s come over you all – talking to me like this. If your father were here – I think you are all behaving very unkindly!’ Tony had muttered something and, turning, had slouched out of the room. Averil, in her dry voice, said, ‘Tony’s quite set on being a farmer, Mother. He wants to go to an agricultural college. It seems quite batty to me. I’d much rather be a lawyer if I was a man. I think the law is jolly interesting.’ ‘I never thought,’ sobbed Joan, ‘that my children could be so unkind to me.’ Averil had sighed deeply. Barbara, still sobbing hysterically in a corner of the room, had called out: ‘I know Daddy will die. I know he will – and then we’ll be all alone in the world. I can’t bear it. Oh, I can’t bear it!’ Averil sighed again, looking with distaste from her frenziedly sobbing sister to her gently sobbing mother. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if there isn’t anything I can do –’ And with that she had quietly and composedly left the room. Which was exactly like Averil. Altogether a most distressing and painful scene, and one that Joan hadn’t thought of for years. Easily understandable, of course. The sudden shock of their father’s illness, and the mystery of the words ‘nervous breakdown’. Children always felt better if they could feel a thing was someone’s fault. They had made a kind of scapegoat of their mother because she was nearest to hand. Both Tony and Barbara had apologized afterwards. Averil did not seem to think that there was anything for which she needed to apologize, and perhaps, from her own point of view, she was justified. It wasn’t the poor child’s fault that she really seemed to have been born without any heart. It had been a difficult, unhappy time altogether while Rodney was away. The children had sulked and been bad tempered. As far as possible they had kept out of her way and that had made her feel curiously lonely. It was, she supposed, the effect of her own sadness and preoccupation. They all loved her dearly, as she knew. Then, too, they were all at difficult ages – Barbara at school still, Averil a gawky and suspicious eighteen. Tony spent most of his time on a neighbouring farm. Annoying that he should have got this silly idea about farming into his head, and very weak of Rodney to have encouraged him. Oh, dear, Joan had thought, it seems too hard that I should always have to do all the unpleasant things.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

When there are such nice girls at Miss Harley’s, I really cannot think why Barbara has to make friends with such undesirable specimens. I shall have to make it quite plain to her that she can only bring girls here that I approve of. And then I suppose there will be another row and tears and sulks. Averil, of course, is no help to me, and I do hate that funny sneering way she has of talking. It sounds so badly to outside people. Yes, thought Joan, bringing up children was a thankless and difficult business. One didn’t really get enough appreciation for it. The tact one had to use, and the good humour. Knowing exactly when to be firm and when to give way. Nobody really knows, thought Joan, what I had to go through that time when Rodney was ill. Then she winced slightly – for the thought brought up a memory of a remark uttered caustically by Dr McQueen to the effect that during every conversation, sooner or later somebody says, ‘Nobody knows what I went through at that time!’ Everybody had laughed and said that it was quite true. Well, thought Joan, wriggling her toes uneasily in her shoes because of the sand that had got in, it’s perfectly true. Nobody does know what I went through at that time, not even Rodney. For when Rodney had come back, in the general relief, everything had swung back to normal, and the children had been their own cheerful, amiable selves again. Harmony had been restored. Which showed, Joan thought, that the whole thing had really been due to anxiety. Anxiety had made her lose her own poise. Anxiety had made the children nervous and bad tempered. A very upsetting time altogether and why she had got to select those particular incidents to think about now – when what she wanted was happy memories and not depressing ones – she really couldn’t imagine. It had all started – what had it started from? Of course – trying to remember poetry. Though really could anything be more ridiculous, thought Joan, than to walk about in a desert spouting poetry! Not that it mattered since there wasn’t anybody to see or hear. There wasn’t anybody – no, she adjured herself, no, you must not give way to panic. This is all silliness, sheer nerves … She turned quickly and began to walk back towards the rest house. She found that she was forcing herself not to break into a run. There was nothing to be afraid of in being alone – nothing at all. Perhaps she was one of those people who suffered from – now, what was the word? Not claustrophobia, that was the terror of confined spaces – the thing that was the opposite of that. It began with an A. The fear of open spaces. The whole thing could be explained scientifically. But explaining it scientifically, though reassuring, didn’t at the moment actually help. Easy to say to yourself that the whole thing was perfectly logical and reasonable, but not so easy to control the curious odds and ends of thoughts that popped in and out of your head for all the world like lizards popping out of holes. Myrna Randolph, she thought, like a snake – these other things like lizards. Open spaces – and all her life she’d lived in a box. Yes, a box with toy children and toy servants and a toy husband. No, Joan, what are you saying – how can you be so silly? Your children are real enough. The children were real, and so were Cook and Agnes, and so was Rodney. Then perhaps, thought Joan, I’m not real. Perhaps I’m just a toy wife and mother. Oh dear, this was dreadful. Quite incoherent she was getting. Perhaps if she said some more poetry. She must be able to remember something. And aloud, with disproportionate fervour, she exclaimed: ‘ From you have I been absent in the Spring.’ She couldn’t remember how it went on. She didn’t seem to want to. That line was enough in itself. It explained everything, didn’t it? Rodney, she thought, Rodney … From you have I been absent in the Spring. Only she thought, it’s not spring, it’s November … And with a sudden sense of shock – But that’s what he said – that evening … There was a connection there, a clue, a clue to something that was waiting for her, hiding behind the silence. Something from which, she now realized, she wanted to escape. But how could you escape with lizards popping out of holes all round? So many things one mustn’t let oneself think of. Barbara and Baghdad and Blanche (all Bs, how very curious). And Rodney on the platform at Victoria. And Averil and Tony and Barbara all being so unkind to her. Really – Joan was exasperated with herself – why didn’t she think of the pleasant things? So many delightful memories. So many – so very many … Her wedding dress, such a lovely oyster-shell satin … Averil in her bassinette, all trimmed with muslin and pink ribbons, such a lovely fair baby and so well behaved. Averil had always been a polite, well-mannered child. ‘You bring them up so beautifully, Mrs Scudamore.’ Yes, a satisfactory child, Averil – in public, at any rate. In private life given to interminable argument, and with a disconcerting way of looking at you, as though she wondered what you were really like. Not at all the sort of way a child ought to look at its mother. Not, in any sense of the word, a loving child. Tony, too, had always done her credit in public though he was incurably inattentive and vague over things. Barbara was the only difficult child in the family, given to tantrums and storms of tears. Still, on the whole, they were three very charming, nice-mannered, well- brought-up children. A pity children had to grow up and start being difficult. But she wouldn’t think of all that. Concentrate on them in their childhood. Averil at dancing class in her pretty pink silk frock. Barbara in that nice little knitted dress from Liberty’s. Tony in those cheery patterned rompers that Nannie made so cleverly – Somehow, thought Joan, surely she could think of something else except the clothes the children wore! Some charming, affectionate things that they had said to her? Some delightful moments of intimacy? Considering the sacrifices one made, and the way one did everything for one’s children – Another lizard popping its head out of a hole. Averil inquiring politely, and with that air of reasonableness that Joan had learned to dread: ‘What do you really do for us, Mother? You don’t bathe us, do you?’ ‘No –’ ‘And you don’t give us our dinners, or brush our hair. Nannie does all that. And she puts us to bed and gets us up. And you don’t make our clothes – Nannie does that, too. And she takes us for walks –’ ‘Yes, dear. I employ Nannie to look after you. That is to say I pay her her wages.’ ‘I thought Father paid her her wages. Doesn’t Father pay for all the things we have?’ ‘In a way, dear, but it’s all the same thing.’ ‘But you don’t have to go to the office every morning, only Father. Why don’t you have to go to the office?’ ‘Because I look after the house.’ ‘But don’t Kate and Cook and –’ ‘That will do, Averil.’ There was one thing to be said for Averil, she always subsided when told. She was never rebellious nor defiant. And yet her submission was often more uncomfortable than rebellion would have been. Rodney had laughed once and said that with Averil, the verdict was always Non Proven. ‘I don’t think you ought to laugh, Rodney. I don’t think a child of Averil’s age ought to be so – so critical.’ ‘You think she’s too young to determine the nature of evidence?’ ‘Oh, don’t be so legal.’ He said, with his teasing smile, ‘Who made me into a lawyer?’ ‘No, but seriously, I think it’s disrespectful.’ ‘I call Averil unusually polite for a child. There’s none of the usual devastating frankness children can employ – not like Babs.’ It was true, Joan admitted. Barbara, in one of her states, would shout out, ‘You’re ugly – you’re horrible – I hate you. I wish I was dead. You’d be sorry if I was dead.’ Joan said quickly, ‘With Babs it’s just temper. And she’s always sorry afterwards.’ ‘Yes, poor little devil. And she doesn’t mean what she says.

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And she doesn’t mean what she says. But Averil has got quite a flair for detecting humbug.’ Joan flushed angrily. ‘Humbug! I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘Oh, come now, Joan. The stuff we feed them up with. Our assumption of omniscience. The necessity we are under of pretending to do what is best, to know what is best, for those helpless little creatures who are so absolutely in our power.’ ‘You talk as though they were slaves, not children.’ ‘Aren’t they slaves? They eat the food we give them and wear the clothes we put on them, and say more or less what we tell them to say. It’s the price they pay for protection. But every day they live they are growing nearer to freedom.’ ‘Freedom,’ Joan said scornfully. ‘Is there any such thing?’ Rodney said slowly and heavily, ‘No, I don’t think there is. How right you are, Joan …’ And he had gone slowly out of the room, his shoulders sagging a little. And she had thought with a sudden pang, I know what Rodney will look like when he is old … Rodney on Victoria platform – the light showing up the lines in his tired face – telling her to take care of herself. And then, a minute later … Why must she eternally come back to that? It wasn’t true! Rodney was missing her a great deal! It was miserable for him in the house alone with the servants! And he probably never thought of asking people in for dinner – or only somebody stupid like Hargrave Taylor – such a dull man, she never could think why Rodney liked him. Or that tiresome Major Mills who never talked of anything but pasture and cattle breeding … Of course Rodney was missing her! Chapter Six She arrived back at the rest house and the Indian came out and asked: ‘Memsahib have nice walk?’ Yes, Joan said, she had had a very nice walk. ‘Dinner ready soon. Very nice dinner, Memsahib.’ Joan said she was glad of that, but the remark was clearly a ritual one, for dinner was exactly the same as usual, with peaches instead of apricots. It might be a nice dinner, but its disadvantage was that it was always the same dinner. It was far too early to go to bed when dinner was over and once again Joan wished fervently that she had brought either a large supply of literature or some sewing with her. She even attempted to re-read the more entertaining passages of Lady Catherine Dysart’s Memoirs but the attempt was a failure. If there were anything to do, Joan thought, anything at all! A pack of cards, even. She could have played patience. Or a game – backgammon, chess, draughts – she could have played against herself! Any game – halma, snakes and ladders … Really a very curious fancy she had had out there. Lizards popping their heads out of holes. Thoughts popping up out of your mind … frightening thoughts, disturbing thoughts … thoughts that one didn’t want to have. But if so, why have them? After all one could control one’s thoughts – or couldn’t one? Was it possible that in some circumstances one’s thoughts controlled oneself … popping up out of holes like lizards – or flashing across one’s mind like a green snake. Coming from somewhere … Very odd that feeling of panic she had had. It must be agoraphobia. (Of course that was the word – agoraphobia. It showed that one could always remember things if one only thought hard enough.) Yes, that was it. The terror of open spaces. Curious that she had never known before that she suffered from it. But of course she had never before had any experience of open spaces. She had always lived in the midst of houses and gardens with plenty to do and plenty of people. Plenty of people, that was the thing. If only there was someone here to talk to. Even Blanche … Funny to think how she had been appalled by the possibility that Blanche might be making the journey home with her. Why, it would have made all the difference in the world to have had Blanche here. They could have talked over the old days at St Anne’s. How very long ago that seemed. What was it Blanche had said? You’ve gone up in the world and I’ve gone down.’ No, she had qualified it afterwards – she had said, ‘You’ve stayed where you were – a St Anne’s girl who’s been a credit to the school.’ Was there really so little difference in her since those days? Nice to think so. Well, nice in a way, but in another way not so nice. It seemed rather – rather stagnant somehow. What was it Miss Gilbey had said on the occasion of the leave-taking talk? Miss Gilbey’s leave-taking talks to her girls were famous, a recognized institution of St Anne’s. Joan’s mind swept back over the years and the figure of her old headmistress loomed immediately into her field of vision with startling clarity. The large, aggressive nose, the pince-nez, the mercilessly sharp eyes with their compelling gaze, the terrific majesty of her progress through the school, slightly preceded by her bust – a restrained, disciplined bust that had about it only majesty and no suggestion of softness. A terrific figure, Miss Gilbey, justly feared and admired and who could produce just as frightening an effect on parents as on pupils. No denying it, Miss Gilbey was St Anne’s! Joan saw herself entering that sacred room, with its flowers, its Medici prints; its implications of culture, scholarship and social graces. Miss Gilbey, turning majestically from her desk – ‘Come in, Joan. Sit down, dear child.’ Joan had sat down as indicated in the cretonne-covered armchair. Miss Gilbey had removed her pince-nez, had produced suddenly an unreal and distinctly terrifying smile. ‘You are leaving us, Joan, to go from the circumscribed world of school into the larger world which is life. I should like to have a little talk with you before you go in the hope that some words of mine may be a guide to you in the days that are to come.’ ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.’ ‘Here, in these happy surroundings, with young companions of your own age, you have been shielded from the perplexities and difficulties which no one can entirely avoid in this life.’ ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.’ ‘You have, I know, been happy here.’ ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.’ ‘And you have done well here. I am pleased with the progress you have made. You have been one of our most satisfactory pupils.’ Slight confusion – ‘Oh – er – I’m glad, Miss Gilbey.’ ‘But life opens out before you now with fresh problems, fresh responsibilities –’ The talk flowed on. At the proper intervals Joan murmured: ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.’ She felt slightly hypnotized. It was one of Miss Gilbey’s assets in her career to possess a voice that was, according to Blanche Haggard, orchestral in its compass. Starting with the mellowness of a cello, administering praise in the accents of a flute, deepening to warning in the tones of a bassoon. Then to those girls of marked intellectual prowess the exhortation to a career was proclaimed in terms of brass – to those of more domestic calibre the duties of wifehood and motherhood were mentioned in the muted notes of the violin. Not until the end of the discourse did Miss Gilbey, as it were, speak pizzicato. ‘And now, just a special word. No lazy thinking, Joan, my dear! Don’t just accept things at their face value – because it’s the easiest way, and because it may save you pain! Life is meant to be lived, not glossed over. And don’t be too pleased with yourself!’ ‘Yes – no, Miss Gilbey.’ ‘Because, just entre nous, that is a little your failing, isn’t it, Joan? Think of others, my dear, and not too much of yourself. And be prepared to accept responsibility.’ And then on to the grand orchestral climax: ‘Life, Joan, must be a continual progress – a rising on the stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things. Pain and suffering will come. They come to all. Even Our Lord was not immune from the sufferings of our mortal life. As he knew the agony of Gethsemane, so you will know it – and if you do not know that, Joan, then it will mean that your path has veered far from the true way. Remember this when the hour of doubt and travail comes.

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Remember this when the hour of doubt and travail comes. And remember, my dear, that I am glad to hear from my old girls at any time – and always ready to help them with advice if they should ask for it. God bless you, dear.’ And thereupon the final benediction of Miss Gilbey’s parting kiss, a kiss that was less a human contact than a glorified accolade. Joan, slightly dazed, was dismissed. She returned to her dormitory to find Blanche Haggard, wearing Mary Grant’s pince-nez, and with a pillow stuffed down the front of her gym tunic, giving an orchestral recital to an enraptured audience: ‘You are going,’ boomed Blanche, ‘from this happy world of school into the larger more perilous world of life. Life opens out before you with its problems, its responsibilities …’ Joan joined the audience. The applause grew as Blanche worked up to her climax. ‘To you, Blanche Haggard, I say but one word. Discipline. Discipline your emotions, practise self-control. Your very warmth of heart may prove perilous. Only by strict discipline can you attain the heights. You have great gifts, my dear. Use them well. You have a lot of faults, Blanche – a lot of faults. But they are the faults of a generous nature and they can be corrected. ‘Life –’ Blanche’s voice rose to a shrill falsetto, ‘is a continual progress. Rise on the stepping stones of our dead selves – (see Wordsworth). Remember the old school and remember that Aunt Gilbey gives advice and help at any time if a stamped addressed envelope is enclosed!’ Blanche paused, but to her surprise neither laughter nor applause greeted the pause. Everyone looked as though turned into marble and all heads were turned to the open doorway where Miss Gilbey stood majestically, pince-nez in hand. ‘If you are thinking of taking up a stage career, Blanche, I believe there are several excellent schools of dramatic art where they would teach you proper voice control and elocution. You seem to have some talents in that direction. Kindly return that pillow to its proper place at once.’ And with that she moved swiftly away. ‘Whew,’ said Blanche. ‘The old tartar! Pretty sporting of her – but she does know how to make you feel small.’ Yes, thought Joan, Miss Gilbey had been a great personality. She had finally retired from St Anne’s just a term after Averil had been sent there. The new headmistress had lacked her dynamic personality, and the school had started to go down in consequence. Blanche had been right, Miss Gilbey had been a tartar. But she had known how to make herself felt. And she had certainly, Joan reflected, been quite right about Blanche. Discipline – that was what Blanche had needed in her life. Generous instincts – yes, possibly. But self-control had been notably lacking. Still, Blanche was generous. That money, for instance, the money that Joan had sent her – Blanche hadn’t spent it on herself. It had bought a roll-top desk for Tom Holliday. A roll-top desk was the last thing in the world that Blanche would have wanted. A warm-hearted kindly creature, Blanche. And yet she had left her children, gone off callously and deserted the two little creatures she herself had brought into the world. It just showed that there were people who had simply no maternal instinct whatsoever. One’s children, thought Joan, should always come first. She and Rodney had always agreed on that. Rodney was really very unselfish – if it was put to him, that is, in the right way. She had pointed out to him, for instance, that that nice sunny dressing-room of his really ought to be the children’s day nursery and he had agreed quite willingly to move into the little room overlooking the stable yard. Children should have all the sun and light there was. She and Rodney had really been very conscientious parents. And the children had really been very satisfactory, especially when they were quite small – such attractive, handsome children. Much better brought up than the Sherston boys, for instance. Mrs Sherston never seemed to mind what those children looked like. And she herself seemed to join them in the most curious activities, crawling along the ground as a Red Indian – uttering wild whoops and yells – and once when they were attempting a reproduction of a circus, giving a most lifelike imitation of a sea lion! The fact was, Joan decided, that Leslie Sherston herself had never properly grown up. Still, she’d had a very sad life, poor woman. Joan thought of the time when she had so unexpectedly run across Captain Sherston in Somerset. She had been staying with friends in that part of the world and had had no idea the Sherstons were living there. She had come face to face with Captain Sherston as he emerged (so typical) from the local pub. She had not seen him since his release and it was really quite a shock to see the difference from the old days of the jaunty, confident bank manager. That curiously deflated look that big aggressive men got when they had failed in the world. The sagging shoulders, the loose waistcoat, the flabby cheeks, the quick shifty look of the eyes. To think that anyone could ever have trusted this man. He was taken aback by meeting her, but he rallied well, and greeted her with what was a painful travesty of his old manner: ‘Well, well, well, Mrs Scudamore! The world is indeed a small place. And what brings you to Skipton Haynes?’ Standing there, squaring his shoulders, endeavouring to put into his voice the old heartiness and self assurance. It was a pitiful performance and Joan had, in spite of herself, felt quite sorry for him. How dreadful to come down in the world like that! To feel that at any moment you might come across someone from the old life, someone who might refuse even to recognize you. Not that she had any intention herself of behaving that way. Naturally she was quite prepared to be kind. Sherston was saying, ‘You must come back and see my wife. You must have tea with us. Yes, yes, dear lady, I insist!’ And the parody of his old manner was so painful that Joan, albeit rather unwillingly, allowed herself to be piloted along the street, Sherston continuing to talk in his new uneasy way. He’d like her to see their little place – at least not so little. Quite a good acreage. Hard work, of course, growing for the market. Anemones and apples were their best line. Still talking he unlatched a somewhat dilapidated gate that needed painting and they walked up a weedy drive. Then they saw Leslie, her back bent over the anemone beds. ‘Look who’s here,’ Sherston called and Leslie had pushed her hair back from her face and had come over and said this was a surprise! Joan had noticed at once how much older Leslie looked and how ill. There were lines carved by fatigue and pain on her face. But, otherwise, she was exactly the same as usual, cheerful and untidy and terrifically energetic. As they were standing there talking, the boys arrived home from school, charging up the drive with loud howls and rushing at Leslie, butting at her with their heads, shouting out Mum, Mum, Mum, and Leslie after enduring the onslaught for some minutes suddenly said in a very peremptory voice, ‘Quiet! Visitors.’ And the boys had suddenly transformed themselves into two polite angels who shook hands with Mrs Scudamore, and spoke in soft hushed voices. Joan was reminded a little of a cousin of hers who trained sporting dogs. On the word of command the dogs would sit, dropping to their haunches, or on another word dash wildly for the horizon. Leslie’s children, she thought, seemed trained much on the same plan. They went into the house and Leslie went to get tea with the boys helping her and presently it came in on a tray, with the loaf and the butter and the homemade jam, and the thick kitchen cups and Leslie and the boys laughing. But the most curious thing that happened was the change in Sherston. That uneasy, shifty, painful manner of his vanished. He became suddenly the master of the house and the host – and a very good host. Even his social manner was in abeyance. He looked suddenly happy, pleased with himself and with his family. It was as though, within these four walls, the outer world and its judgment ceased to exist for him.

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The boys clamoured for him to help them with some carpentry they were doing, Leslie adjured him not to forget that he had promised to see to the hoe for her and ought they to bunch the anemones tomorrow or could they do it Thursday morning? Joan thought to herself that she had never liked him better. She understood, she felt, for the first time Leslie’s devotion to him. Besides, he must have been a very good-looking man once. But a moment or two later she got rather a shock. Peter was crying eagerly, ‘Tell us the funny story about the warder and the plum pudding!’ And then, urgently, as his father looked blank: ‘ You know, when you were in prison, what the warder said, and the other warder?’ Sherston hesitated and looked slightly shamefaced. Leslie’s voice said calmly: ‘Go on, Charles. It’s a very funny story. Mrs Scudamore would like to hear it.’ So he had told it, and it was quite funny – if not so funny as the boys seemed to think. They rolled about squirming and gasping with laughter. Joan laughed politely, but she was definitely startled and a little shocked, and later, when Leslie had taken her upstairs she murmured delicately: ‘I’d no idea – they knew!’ Leslie – really, Joan thought, Leslie Sherston must be most insensitive – looked rather amused. ‘They’d be bound to know some day,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t they? So they might just as well know now. It’s simpler.’ It was simpler, Joan agreed, but was it wise? The delicate idealism of a child’s mind, to shatter its trust and faith – she broke off. Leslie said she didn’t think her children were very delicate and idealistic. It would be worse for them, she thought, to know there was something – and not be told what it was. She waved her hands in that clumsy, inarticulate way she had and said, ‘Making mysteries – all that – much worse. When they asked me why Daddy had gone away I thought I might just as well be natural about it, so I told them that he’d stolen money from the bank and gone to prison. After all, they know what stealing is. Peter used to steal jam and get sent to bed for it. If grown-up people do things that are wrong they get sent to prison. It’s quite simple.’ ‘All the same, for a child to look down on its father instead of up to him –’ ‘Oh they don’t look down on him.’ Leslie again seemed amused. ‘They’re actually quite sorry for him – and they love to hear all about the prison life.’ ‘I’m sure that’s not a good thing,’ said Joan decidedly. ‘Oh don’t you think so?’ Leslie meditated. ‘Perhaps not. But it’s been good for Charles. He came back simply cringing – like a dog. I couldn’t bear it. So I thought the only thing to do was to be quite natural about it. After all, you can’t pretend three years of your life have never existed. It’s better, I think, to treat it as just one of those things.’ And that, thought Joan, was Leslie Sherston, casual, slack, and with no conception of any finer shades of feeling! Always taking the way of least resistance. Still, give her her due, she had been a loyal wife. Joan had said kindly, ‘You know, Leslie, I really think you have been quite splendid, the way you have stuck to your husband and worked so hard to keep things going while he was – er – away. Rodney and I often say so.’ What a funny one-sided smile the woman had. Joan hadn’t noticed it until this minute. Perhaps her praise had embarrassed Leslie. It was certainly in rather a stiff voice that Leslie asked: ‘How is – Rodney?’ ‘Very busy, the poor lamb. I’m always telling him he ought to take a day off now and again.’ Leslie said, ‘That’s not so easy. I suppose in his job – like mine – it’s pretty well full time. There aren’t many possible days off.’ ‘No. I daresay that’s true, and of course Rodney is very conscientious.’ ‘A full-time job,’ Leslie said. She went slowly towards the window and stood there staring out. Something about the outline of her figure struck Joan – Leslie usually wore things pretty shapeless, but surely – ‘Oh Leslie,’ Joan exclaimed impulsively. ‘Surely you aren’t –’ Leslie turned and meeting the other woman’s eyes slowly nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In August.’ ‘Oh my dear.’ Joan felt genuinely distressed. And suddenly, surprisingly, Leslie broke into passionate speech. She was no longer casual and slack. She was like a condemned prisoner who puts up a defence. ‘It’s made all the difference to Charles. All the difference! Do you see? I can’t tell you how he feels about it. It’s a kind of symbol – that he’s not an outcast – that everything’s the same as it always was. He’s even tried to stop drinking since he’s known.’ So impassioned was Leslie’s voice that Joan hardly realized until afterwards the implication of the last sentence. She said, ‘Of course you know your own business best, but I should have thought it was unwise – at the moment.’ ‘Financially, you mean?’ Leslie laughed. ‘Oh we’ll weather the storm. We grow pretty well all we eat anyway.’ ‘And, you know, you don’t look very strong.’ ‘Strong? I’m terribly strong. Too strong. Whatever kills me won’t kill me easily, I’m afraid.’ And she had given a little shiver – as though – even then – she had had some strange prevision of disease and racking pain … And then they had gone downstairs again, and Sherston had said he would walk with Mrs Scudamore to the corner and show her the short cut across the fields, and, turning her head as they went down the drive, she saw Leslie and the boys all tangled up and rolling over and over on the ground with shrieks of wild mirth. Leslie, rolling about with her young, quite like an animal, thought Joan with slight disgust, and then bent her head attentively to listen to what Captain Sherston was saying. He was saying in rather incoherent terms that there never was, never had been, never would be, any woman like his wife. ‘You’ve no idea, Mrs Scudamore, what she’s been to me. No idea. Nobody could. I’m not worthy of her. I know that …’ Joan observed with alarm that the easy tears were standing in his eyes. He was a man who could quickly become maudlin. ‘Always the same – always cheerful – seems to think that everything that happens is interesting and amusing. And never a word of reproach. Never a word. But I’ll make it up to her – I swear I’ll make it up to her.’ It occurred to Joan that Captain Sherston could best show his appreciation by not visiting the Anchor and Bell too frequently. She very nearly said so. She got away from him at last, saying, Of course, of course, and what he said was so true, and it had been so nice to see them both. She went away across the fields and looking back as she crossed the stile, she saw Captain Sherston at a standstill outside the Anchor and Bell, looking at his watch to decide how long it was to opening time. The whole thing, she said to Rodney, when she got back, was very sad. And Rodney, seemingly purposefully dense, had said, ‘I thought you said that they all seemed very happy together?’ ‘Well, yes, in a way.’ Rodney said that it seemed to him as though Leslie Sherston was making quite a success of a bad business. ‘She’s certainly being very plucky about it all. And just think – she’s actually going to have another child.’ Rodney had got up on that and walked slowly across to the window. He had stood there looking out – very much, now she came to think of it, as Leslie had stood. He said, after a minute or two, ‘When?’ ‘August,’ she said. ‘I think it’s extremely foolish of her.’ ‘Do you?’ ‘My dear, just consider. They’re living hand to mouth as it is. A young baby will be an added complication.’ ‘He said slowly, Leslie’s shoulders are broad.’ ‘Well, she’ll crack up if she tries to take on too much. She looks ill now.’ ‘She looked ill when she left here.’ ‘She looks years older, too.

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It’s all very well to say that this will make all the difference to Charles Sherston.’ ‘Is that what she said?’ ‘Yes. She said it had made all the difference.’ Rodney said thoughtfully, ‘That’s probably true. Sherston is one of those extraordinary people who live entirely on the esteem in which other people hold them. When the judge passed sentence on him he collapsed just like a pricked balloon. It was quite pitiful and at the same time quite disgusting. I should say the only hope for Sherston is to get back, somehow or other, his self respect. It will be a full-time job.’ ‘Still I really do think that another child –’ Rodney interrupted her. He turned from the window and the white anger of his face startled her. ‘She’s his wife, isn’t she? She’d only got two courses open to her – to cut loose entirely and take the kids – or to go back and damn well be a wife to him. That’s what she’s done – and Leslie doesn’t do things by halves.’ And Joan had asked if there was anything to get excited about and Rodney replied, ‘Certainly not,’ but he was sick and tired of a prudent, careful world that counted the cost of everything before doing it and never took a risk! Joan said she hoped he didn’t talk like that to his clients, and Rodney grinned and said, No fear, he always advised them to settle out of court! Chapter Seven It was, perhaps, natural that Joan should dream that night of Miss Gilbey. Miss Gilbey in a solar topee, walking beside her in the desert and saying in an authoritative voice, ‘You should have paid more attention to lizards, Joan. Your natural history is weak.’ To which, of course, she had replied, ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.’ And Miss Gilbey had said, ‘Now don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, Joan. You know perfectly well. Discipline, my dear.’ Joan woke up and for a moment or two thought herself back at St Anne’s. It was true the rest house was not unlike a school dormitory. The bareness, the iron beds, the rather hygienic-looking walls. Oh dear, thought Joan, another day to get through. What was it Miss Gilbey had said in her dream? ‘Discipline.’ Well, there was something in that. It had really been very foolish of her the day before to get into that queer state all about nothing! She must discipline her thoughts, arrange her mind systematically – investigate once and for all this agoraphobia idea. Certainly she felt quite all right now, here in the rest house. Perhaps it would be wiser not to go out at all? But her heart sank at the prospect. All day in the gloom, with the smell of mutton fat and paraffin and Flit – all day with nothing to read – nothing to do. What did prisoners do in their cells? Well, of course they had exercise and they sewed mail bags or something like that. Otherwise, she supposed, they would go mad. But there was solitary confinement … that did send people mad. Solitary confinement – day after day – week after week. Why, she felt as though she had been here for weeks! And it was – how long – two days? Two days! Incredible. What was that line of Omar Khayyam’s? ‘Myself with Yesterday’s Ten Thousand Years.’ Something like that. Why couldn’t she remember anything properly? No, no, not again. Trying to remember and recite poetry hadn’t been a success – not at all a success. The truth is there was something very upsetting about poetry. It had a poignancy – a way of striking through to the spirit … What was she talking about? Surely the more spiritual one’s thoughts were the better. And she had always been a rather spiritual type of person … ‘ You always were as cold as a fish … ’ Why should Blanche’s voice come cutting through to her thoughts? A very vulgar and uncalled for remark – really, just like Blanche! Well, she supposed that that was what it must seem like to someone like Blanche, someone who allowed themselves to be torn to pieces by their passions. You couldn’t really blame Blanche for being coarse – she was simply made that way. It hadn’t been noticeable as a girl because she had been so lovely and so well bred, but the coarseness must always have been there underneath. Cold as a fish indeed! Nothing of the kind. It would have been a good deal better for Blanche if she had been a little more fishlike in temperament herself! She seemed to have led the most deplorable life. Really quite deplorable. What had she said? ‘One can always think of one’s sins!’ Poor Blanche! But she had admitted that that wouldn’t give Joan occupation long. She did realize, then, the difference between herself and Joan. She had pretended to think that Joan would soon get tired of counting her blessings. (True, perhaps, that one did tend to take one’s blessings for granted!) What was it she had said after that? Something rather curious … Oh yes. She had wondered what, if you had nothing to do but think about yourself for days and days, you might find out about yourself … In a way, rather an interesting idea. In fact, quite an interesting idea. Only Blanche had said that she, herself, wouldn’t like to try it … She had sounded – almost – afraid. I wonder, thought Joan, if one would make any discoveries about oneself. Of course I’m not used to thinking of myself … I’ve never been a self-centred sort of woman. … I wonder, thought Joan, how I appear to other people? … I don’t mean in general – I mean in particular. She tried to remember any instances of things people had said to her … Barbara, for instance: ‘Oh, your servants, Mother, are always perfection. You see to that.’ Quite a tribute, in a way, showing that her children did consider her a good manager and housewife. And it was true, she did run her house well and efficiently. And her servants liked her – at least, they did what she told them. They weren’t, perhaps, very sympathetic if she had a headache, or wasn’t feeling well, but then she hadn’t encouraged them on those lines. And what was it that that very excellent cook had said when she had given her notice, something about not being able to go on for ever without any appreciation – something quite ridiculous. ‘Always being told when a thing’s wrong, Ma’am, and never a word of praise when it’s right – well, it takes the heart out of you.’ She had answered coldly, ‘Surely you realize, Cook, that if nothing is said it is because everything is all right and perfectly satisfactory.’ ‘That may be, Ma’am, but it’s disheartening. After all, I’m a human being – and I did take a lot of trouble over that Spanish Ragout you asked for, though it was a lot of trouble and I’m not one that cares for made-up dishes myself.’ ‘It was quite excellent, Cook.’ ‘Yes, Ma’am. I thought it must have been as you finished it all in the dining- room, but nothing was said.’ Joan said impatiently, ‘Don’t you think you are being rather silly? After all, you are engaged to do the cooking at a very good salary –’ ‘Oh, the wages are quite satisfactory, Ma’am.’ ‘– and therefore the understanding is that you are a sufficiently good cook. If anything is not satisfactory, I mention it.’ ‘You do indeed, Ma’am.’ ‘And apparently you resent the fact?’ ‘It’s not that, Ma’am, but I think we’d best say no more about it and I’ll leave at the end of my month.’ Servants, thought Joan, were very unsatisfactory. So full of feelings and resentments. They all adored Rodney, of course, simply because he was a man. Nothing was ever too much trouble to do for the Master. And Rodney would sometimes come out with the most unexpected knowledge concerning them. ‘Don’t pitch into Edna,’ he would say surprisingly. ‘Her young man’s taken up with another girl and it’s thrown her right out of gear. That’s why she’s dropping things and handing the vegetables twice and forgetting everything.’ ‘How on earth do you know, Rodney?’ ‘She told me this morning.’ ‘Very extraordinary that she should talk to you about it.’ ‘Well, I asked her what was wrong, as a matter of fact. I noticed her eyes were red as though she had been crying.’ Rodney, thought Joan, was an unusually kind person.

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She had said to him once, ‘I should think that with your experience as a lawyer, you would get tired of human tangles.’ And he had answered, thoughtfully, ‘Yes, one might think so. But it doesn’t work that way. I suppose a country family solicitor sees more of the seamy side of human relationships than almost anybody else, except a doctor. But it only seems to deepen one’s pity for the whole human race – so vulnerable, so prone to fear and suspicion and greed – and sometimes so unexpectedly unselfish and brave. That is, perhaps, the only compensation there is – the widening of one’s sympathies.’ It had been on the tip of her tongue to say,‘Compensation? What do you mean?’ But for some reason she hadn’t said it. Better not, she thought. No, better to say nothing. But she had been disturbed sometimes by the practical expression of Rodney’s easily awakened sympathies. The question, for instance, of old Hoddesdon’s mortgage. She had learned about that, not from Rodney, but from the garrulous wife of Hoddesdon’s nephew, and she had come home seriously perturbed. Was it true that Rodney had advanced the money out of his private capital? Rodney had looked vexed. He had flushed and answered heatedly: ‘Who’s been talking?’ She told him and then said, ‘Why couldn’t he borrow the money in the ordinary way?’ ‘Security isn’t good enough from the strictly business point of view. It’s difficult to raise mortgages on farmland just now.’ ‘Then why on earth are you lending it?’ ‘Oh, I shall be all right. Hoddesdon’s a good farmer really. It’s lack of capital and two bad seasons that have let him down.’ ‘The fact remains that he’s in a bad way and has to raise money. I really can’t feel that this is good business, Rodney.’ And quite suddenly and unexpectedly, Rodney had lost his temper. Did she understand the first thing, he had asked her, about the plight that farmers all over the country were in? Did she realize the difficulties, the obstacles, the short-sighted policy of the Government? He had stood there pouring out a welter of information concerning the whole agricultural position of England, passing from that to a warm, indignant description of old Hoddesdon’s particular difficulties. ‘It might happen to anyone. No matter how intelligent and hard-working he was. It might have happened to me if I’d been in his position. It’s lack of capital to begin with and bad luck following on. And anyway, if you don’t mind my saying so, it isn’t your business, Joan. I don’t interfere with your management of the house and the children. That’s your department. This is mine.’ She had been hurt – quite bitterly hurt. To take such a tone was most unlike Rodney. It was really the nearest they had come to having a quarrel. And all over that tiresome old Hoddesdon. Rodney was besotted about the stupid old man. On Sunday afternoons he would go out there and spend the afternoon walking round with Hoddesdon and come back full of information about the state of the crops and cattle diseases and other totally uninteresting subjects of conversation. He even used to victimize their guests with the same kind of talk. Why, Joan remembered how at a garden party she had noticed Rodney and Mrs Sherston sitting together on one of the garden seats, with Rodney talking, talking, talking. So much so that she had wondered what on earth he had been talking about and had gone up to them. Because really he seemed so excited, and Leslie Sherston was listening with such apparently tense interest. And apparently all he was talking about were dairy herds and the necessity of keeping up the level of pedigree stock in this country. Hardly a subject that could be of any interest to Leslie Sherston, who had no particular knowledge of or interest in such matters. Yet she had been listening with apparently deep attention, her eyes on Rodney’s eager, animated face. ‘Joan had said lightly, Really, Rodney, you mustn’t bore poor Mrs Sherston with such dull things.’ (For that had been where the Sherstons first came to Crayminster and before they knew them very well.) The light had died out of Rodney’s face and he had said apologetically to Leslie: ‘I’m sorry.’ And Leslie Sherston had said quickly and abruptly, in the way she always spoke: ‘You’re wrong, Mrs Scudamore. I found what Mr Scudamore was saying very interesting.’ And there had been a gleam in her eye which had made Joan say to herself, ‘Really, I believe that woman has got quite a temper …’ And the next thing that had happened was that Myrna Randolph had come up, just a little out of breath, and had exclaimed: ‘Rodney darling, you must come and play in this set with me. We’re waiting for you.’ And with that charming imperious manner that only a really good-looking girl can get away with, she had stretched out both hands, pulled Rodney to his feet and smiling up into his face, had simply swept him away to the tennis court. Whether Rodney had wanted to or not! She had walked beside him, her arm familiarly slipped through his, turning her head, gazing up into his face. And Joan had thought angrily to herself, It’s all very well, but men don’t like girls who throw themselves at their heads like that. And then had wondered, with a sudden queer cold feeling, whether perhaps men did like it after all! She had looked up to find Leslie Sherston watching her. Leslie no longer looked as though she had a temper. She looked, instead, as though she was rather sorry for her, Joan. Which was impertinence if nothing else. Joan stirred restlessly in her narrow bed. How on earth had she got back to Myrna Randolph? Oh, of course, wondering what effect she herself had on other people. Myrna, she supposed, had disliked her. Well, Myrna was welcome to do so. The kind of girl who would break up anybody’s married life if she got the chance! Well, well, no need getting hot and bothered about that now. She must get up and have breakfast. Perhaps they could poach an egg for her as a change? She was so tired of leathery omelettes. The Indian, however, seemed impervious to the suggestion of a poached egg. ‘Cook egg in water? You mean boil?’ No, Joan said, she didn’t mean boil. A boiled egg in the rest house, as she knew by experience, was always hard boiled. She tried to explain the science of the poached egg. The Indian shook his head. ‘Put egg in water – egg all go away. I give Memsahib nice fried egg.’ So Joan had two nice fried eggs, well frizzled outside and with hard, firm pale yolks. On the whole, she thought, she preferred the omelette. Breakfast was over all too soon. She inquired for news of the train, but there was no news. So there she was fairly and squarely up against it. Another long day ahead of her. But today, at any rate, she would plan her time out intelligently. The trouble was that up to now she had just tried to pass the time. She had been a person waiting at a railway station for a train, and naturally that engendered in one a nervy, jumpy frame of mind. Supposing she were to consider this as a period of rest and – yes, discipline. Something in the nature of a Retreat. That is what Roman Catholics called it. They went for Retreats and came back spiritually refreshed. There is no reason, thought Joan, why I should not be spiritually refreshed too. Her life had been, perhaps, too slack lately. Too pleasant, too easy going. A wraithlike Miss Gilbey seemed to be standing at her side and saying, in the well-remembered bassoonlike accents, ‘Discipline!’ Only actually that was what she had said to Blanche Haggard. To Joan she had said (really rather unkindly), ‘ Don’t be too pleased with yourself, Joan.’ It was unkind. For Joan never had been in the least bit pleased with herself – not in that fatuous sort of way. ‘ Think of others, my dear, and not too much of yourself.’ Well, that is what she had done – always thought of others. She hardly ever thought of herself – or put herself first. She had always been unselfish – thinking of the children – of Rodney. Averil! Why did she have suddenly to think of Averil? Why see so clearly her elder daughter’s face – with its polite, slightly scornful smile.

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Averil, there was no doubt of it, had never appreciated her mother properly. The things she said sometimes, quite sarcastic things, were really most irritating. Not exactly rude, but – Well, but what? That look of quiet amusement, those raised eyebrows. The way Averil would stroll gently out of a room. Averil was devoted to her, of course, all her children were devoted to her – Were they? Were her children devoted to her – did they really care for her at all? Joan half rose out of her chair, then sank back. Where did these ideas come from? What made her think them? Such frightening, unpleasant ideas. Put them out of her head – try not to think of them … Miss Gilbey’s voice – pizzicato – ‘ No lazy thinking, Joan. Don’t accept things at their face value, because that’s the easiest way, and because it may save you pain … ’ Was that why she wanted to force these ideas back? To save herself pain? Because they certainly were painful ideas … Averil … Was Averil devoted to her? Was Averil – come now, Joan, face it – was Averil even fond of her? Well, the truth was that Averil was rather a peculiar kind of girl – cool, unemotional. No, not perhaps unemotional. Actually Averil had been the only one of the three children to give them real trouble. Cool, well-behaved, quiet Averil. The shock it had given them! The shock it had given her! She had opened the letter without the least suspicion of its contents. Addressed in a scrawled, illiterate hand, she had taken it to be from one of her many charitable pensioners. She had read the words almost uncomprehendingly. ‘This is to let you know as how your eldest daughter is carrying on with the Dr up at the Saniturum. Kissing in the woods something shameful it is and ought to be stopped.’ Joan stared at the dirty sheet of paper with a definite feeling of nausea. What an abominable – what a disgusting – thing – She had heard of anonymous letters. She had never received one before. Really, it made one feel quite sick. Your eldest daughter – Averil? Averil of all people in the world? Carrying on (disgusting phrase) with the Dr up at the Saniturum. Dr Cargill? That eminent, distinguished specialist who had made such a success of his tubercular treatment, a man at least twenty years older than Averil, a man with a charming invalid wife. What rubbish! What disgusting rubbish. And at that moment, Averil herself had walked into the room and had asked, but with only mild curiosity, for Averil was never really curious, ‘Is anything the matter, Mother?’ Joan, the hand that held the letter shaking, had hardly been able to reply. ‘I don’t think I had better even show it to you, Averil. It’s – it’s too disgusting.’ Her voice had trembled. Averil, raising those cool, delicate eyebrows of hers in surprise, said, ‘Something in a letter?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘About me?’ ‘You’d better not even see it, dear.’ But Averil, walking across the room, had quietly taken the letter out of her hand. Had stood there a minute reading it, then had handed it back, and had said in a reflective, detached voice, ‘Yes, not very nice.’ ‘Nice? It’s disgusting – quite disgusting. People should be punished by law for telling such lies.’ Averil said quietly, ‘It’s a foul letter, but it’s not a lie.’ The room had turned a somersault and revolved round and round. Joan had gasped out: ‘What do you mean – what can you mean?’ ‘You needn’t make such a fuss, Mother. I’m sorry this has come to you this way, but I suppose you would have been bound to know sooner or later.’ ‘You mean it’s true? That you and – and Dr Cargill –’ ‘Yes.’ Averil had just nodded her head. ‘But it’s wicked – it’s disgraceful. A man of that age, a married man – and a young girl like you –’ Averil said impatiently, ‘You needn’t make a kind of village melodrama out of it. It’s not in the least like that. It’s all happened very gradually. Rupert’s wife is an invalid – has been for years. We’ve – well, we’ve simply come to care for each other. That’s all.’ ‘That’s all, indeed!’ Joan had plenty to say, and said it. Averil merely shrugged her shoulders and let the storm play round her. In the end, when Joan had exhausted herself, Averil remarked: ‘I can quite appreciate your point of view, Mother. I daresay I should feel the same in your place – though I don’t think I should have said some of the things you’ve chosen to say. But you can’t alter facts. Rupert and I care for each other. And although I’m sorry, I really don’t see what you can do about it.’ ‘Do about it? I shall speak to your father – at once.’ ‘Poor Father. Must you really worry him about it?’ ‘I’m sure he’ll know just what to do.’ ‘He really can’t do anything at all. And it will simply worry him dreadfully.’ That had been the beginning of a really shattering time. Averil, at the heart of the storm, had remained cool and apparently unperturbed. But also completely obdurate. Joan had repeated to Rodney again and again, ‘I can’t help feeling it’s all a pose on her part. It’s not as though Averil were given to really strong feelings of any kind.’ But Rodney had shaken his head. ‘You don’t understand Averil. With Averil it is less her senses than her mind and heart. When she loves, she loves so deeply that I doubt if she will ever quite get over it.’ ‘Oh, Rodney, I really do think that is nonsense! After all, I know Averil better than you do. I’m her mother.’ ‘That doesn’t mean that you really know the least thing about her. Averil has always understated things from choice – no, perhaps from necessity. Feeling a thing deeply she belittles it purposely in words.’ ‘That sounds very far-fetched to me.’ Rodney said slowly, ‘Well, you can take it from me that it isn’t. It’s true.’ ‘I can’t help thinking that you are exaggerating what is simply a silly schoolgirl flirtation. She’s been flattered and likes to imagine –’ Rodney had interrupted her. ‘Joan, my dear – it’s no good trying to reassure yourself by saying things that you yourself don’t believe. Averil’s passion for Cargill is serious.’ ‘Then it’s disgraceful of him – absolutely disgraceful …’ ‘Yes, that’s what the world will say all right. But put yourself in the poor devil’s place. A wife who’s a permanent invalid and all the passion and beauty of Averil’s young, generous heart offered to you on a platter. All the eagerness and freshness of her mind.’ ‘Twenty years older than she is!’ ‘I know, I know. If he were only ten years younger the temptation wouldn’t be so great.’ ‘He must be a horrid man – perfectly horrid.’ Rodney sighed. ‘He’s not. He’s a fine and very humane man – a man with an intense enthusiastic love for his profession – a man who has done outstanding work. Incidentally, a man who has always been unvaryingly kind and gentle to an ailing wife.’ ‘Now you are trying to make him out a kind of saint.’ ‘Far from it. And most saints, Joan, have had their passions. They were seldom bloodless men and women. No, Cargill’s human enough. Human enough to fall in love and to suffer. Human enough, probably, to wreck his own life – and to nullify his lifework. It all depends.’ ‘Depends on what?’ Rodney said slowly, ‘It depends on our daughter. On how strong she is – and how clear-sighted.’ Joan said energetically, ‘We must get her away from here. How about sending her on a cruise? To the northern capitals – or the Greek Islands? Something like that.’ Rodney smiled. ‘Aren’t you thinking of the treatment applied to your old school friend, Blanche Haggard?

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It didn’t work very well in her case, remember.’ ‘Do you mean that Averil would come rushing back from some foreign port?’ ‘I rather doubt whether Averil would even start.’ ‘Nonsense. We would insist.’ ‘Joan dear, do try and envisage realities. You cannot apply force to an adult young woman. We can neither lock Averil in her bedroom nor force her to leave Crayminster – and actually I don’t want to do either. Those things are only palliatives. Averil can only be influenced by factors that she respects.’ ‘And those are?’ ‘Reality. Truth.’ ‘Why don’t you go to him – to Rupert Cargill. Threaten him with the scandal.’ Again Rodney sighed. ‘I’m afraid, terribly afraid, Joan, of precipitating matters.’ What do you mean?’ ‘That Cargill will throw up everything and that they will go away together.’ ‘Wouldn’t that be the end of his career?’ ‘Undoubtedly. I don’t suppose it would come under the heading of unprofessional conduct, but it would completely alienate public opinion in his special circumstances.’ ‘Then surely, if he realizes that –’ Rodney said impatiently, ‘He’s not quite sane at the moment. Don’t you understand anything at all about love, Joan?’ Which was a ridiculous question to ask! She said bitterly: ‘Not that kind of love, I’m thankful to say …’ And then Rodney had taken her quite by surprise. He had smiled at her, had said, ‘Poor little Joan’ very gently, had kissed her and had gone quietly away. It was nice of him, she thought, to realize how unhappy she was over the whole miserable business. Yes, it had indeed been an anxious time. Averil silent, not speaking to anybody – sometimes not even replying when her mother spoke to her. I did my best, thought Joan. But what are you to do with a girl who won’t even listen? Pale, wearily polite, Averil would say: ‘Really, Mother, must we go on like this? Talking and talking and talking? I do make allowances for your point of view, but won’t you just accept the plain truth, that nothing you can say or do will make the least difference?’ So it had gone on, until that afternoon in September when Averil, her face a little paler than usual, had said to them both: ‘I think I’d better tell you. Rupert and I don’t feel we can go on like this any longer. We are going away together. I hope his wife will divorce him. But if she won’t it makes no difference.’ Joan had started on an energetic protest, but Rodney had stopped her. ‘Leave this to me, Joan, if you don’t mind. Averil, I must talk to you. Come into my study.’ Averil had said with a very faint smile, ‘Quite like a headmaster, aren’t you, Father.’ Joan burst out, ‘I’m Averil’s mother, I insist –’ ‘Please, Joan. I want to talk to Averil alone. Would you mind leaving us?’ There had been so much quiet decision in his tone that she had half turned to leave the room. It was Averil’s low, clear voice that stopped her. ‘Don’t go away, Mother. I don’t want you to go away. Anything Father says to me I’d rather he said in front of you.’ Well, at least that showed, thought Joan, that being a mother had some importance. What a very odd way Averil and her father had of looking at each other, a wary, measuring, unfriendly way, like two antagonists on the stage. Then Rodney smiled slightly and said, ‘I see. Afraid!’ Averil’s answer came cool and slightly surprised, ‘I don’t know what you mean, Father.’ Rodney said, with sudden irrelevance, ‘A pity you weren’t a boy, Averil. There are times when you are quite uncannily like your Great-Uncle Henry. He had a wonderful eye for the best way to conceal the weakness in his own case, or to expose the weakness of his opponent’s case.’ Averil said quickly, ‘There isn’t any weakness in my case.’ Rodney said deliberately, ‘I shall prove to you that there is.’ Joan exclaimed sharply,‘Of course you are not going to do anything so wicked or so foolish, Averil. Your father and I will not allow it.’ And at that Averil had smiled just a little and had looked not at her mother, but at her father, offering as it were her mother’s remark to him. Rodney said, ‘Please, Joan, leave this to me.’ ‘I think,’ said Averil, ‘that Mother is perfectly entitled to say just what she thinks.’ ‘Thank you, Averil,’ said Joan. ‘I am certainly going to do so. My dear child, you must see that what you propose is quite out of the question. You are young and romantic and you see everything in quite a false light. What you do on an impulse now you will bitterly regret later. And think of the sorrow you will cause your father and me. Have you thought of that? I’m sure you don’t want to cause us pain – we have always loved you so dearly.’ Averil listened quite patiently, but she did not reply. She had never taken her eyes from her father’s face. When Joan finished, Averil was still looking at Rodney and there was still a faint, slightly mocking smile on her lips. ‘Well, Father,’ she said. ‘Have you anything to add?’ ‘Not to add,’ said Rodney. ‘But I have something of my own to say.’ ‘Averil looked at him inquiringly. ‘Averil,’ said Rodney, ‘do you understand exactly what a marriage is?’ ‘Averil’s eyes opened slightly. She paused and then said, ‘Are you telling me that it is a sacrament?’ ‘No,’ said Rodney. ‘ I may consider it as a sacrament, or I may not. What I am telling you is that marriage is a contract.’ ‘Oh,’ said Averil. She seemed a little, just a little, taken aback. ‘Marriage,’ said Rodney, ‘is a contract entered into by two people, both of adult years, in the full possession of their faculties, and with a full knowledge of what they are undertaking. It is a specification of partnership, and each partner binds himself and herself specifically to honour the terms of that contract – that is, to stand by each other in certain eventualities – in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse. ‘Because those words are uttered in a church, and with the approval and benediction of a priest, they are none the less a contract, just as any agreement entered into between two people in good faith is a contract. Because some of the obligations undertaken are not enforcible in a court of law, they are none the less binding on the persons who have assumed them. I think you will agree that, equitably, that is so.’ There was a pause and then Averil said, ‘That may have been true once. But marriage is looked upon differently nowadays and a great many people are not married in church and do not use the words of the church service.’ ‘That may be so. But eighteen years ago Rupert Cargill did bind himself by using those words in a church, and I challenge you to say that he did not, at that time, utter those words in good faith and meaning to carry them out.’ Averil shrugged her shoulders. Rodney said, ‘Will you admit that, although not legally enforcible, Rupert Cargill did enter into such a contract with the woman who is his wife? He envisaged, at the time, the possibilities of poverty and of sickness, and directly specified them as not affecting the permanence of the bond.’ Averil had gone very white. She said, ‘I don’t know where you think you are getting by all this.’ ‘I want an admission from you that marriage is, apart from all sentimental feeling and thinking, an ordinary business contract. Do you admit that, or don’t you?’ ‘I’ll admit it.’ ‘And Rupert Cargill proposes to break that contract with your connivance?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘With no regard for the due rights and privileges of the other party to the contract?’ ‘She will be all right. It’s not as though she were so terribly fond of Rupert. All she thinks of is her own health and –’ ‘Rodney interrupted her sharply, ‘I don’t want sentiment from you, Averil. I want an admission of fact.’ ‘I’m not sentimental.’ ‘You are. You have no knowledge at all of Mrs.

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You have no knowledge at all of Mrs. Cargill’s thoughts and feelings. You are imagining them to suit yourself. All I want from you is the admission that she has rights.’ Averil flung her head back. ‘Very well. She has rights.’ ‘Then you are now quite clear exactly what it is you are doing?’ ‘Have you finished, Father?’ ‘No, I have one more thing to say. You realize, don’t you, that Cargill is doing very valuable and important work, that his methods in treating tuberculosis have met with such striking success that he is a very prominent figure in the medical world, and that, unfortunately, a man’s private affairs can affect his public career. That means that Cargill’s work, his usefulness to humanity, will be seriously affected, if not destroyed, by what you are both proposing to do.’ Averil said, ‘Are you trying to persuade me that it’s my duty to give Rupert up so that he can continue to benefit humanity?’ There was a faint sneer in her voice. ‘No,’ said Rodney. ‘I’m thinking of the poor devil himself …’ There was sudden vehement feeling in his voice. ‘You can take it from me, Averil, that a man who’s not doing the work he wants to do – the work he was made to do – is only half a man. I tell you as surely as I’m standing here, that if you take Rupert Cargill away from his work and make it impossible for him to go on with that work, the day will come when you will have to stand by and see the man you love unhappy, unfulfilled – old before his time – tired and disheartened – only living with half his life. And if you think your love, or any woman’s love, can make up to him for that, then I tell you plainly that you’re a damned sentimental little fool.’ He stopped. He leaned back in his chair. He passed his hand through his hair. Averil said, ‘You say all this to me. But how do I know –’ She broke off and began again, ‘How do I know –’ ‘That it’s true? I can only say that it’s what I believe to be true and that it is what I know of my own knowledge. I’m speaking to you, Averil, as a man – as well as a father.’ ‘Yes,’ said Averil. ‘I see …’ Rodney said, and his voice was tired now and sounded muffled: ‘It’s up to you, Averil, to examine what I have told you, and to accept or reject it. I believe you have courage and clear-sightedness.’ Averil went slowly towards the door. She stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back. Joan was startled by the sudden, bitter vindictiveness of her voice when she spoke. ‘Don’t imagine,’ she said, ‘that I shall ever be grateful to you, Father. I think – I think I hate you.’ And she went out and closed the door behind her. Joan made a motion to go after her, but Rodney stopped her with a gesture. ‘Leave her alone,’ he said. ‘Leave her alone. Don’t you understand? We’ve won …’ Chapter Eight And that, Joan reflected, had been the end of that. Averil had gone about, very silent, answering in monosyllables when she was spoken to, never spoke if she could help it. She had got thinner and paler. A month later she had expressed a wish to go to London and train in a secretarial school. Rodney had assented at once. Averil had left them with no pretence of distress over the parting. When she had come home on a visit three months later, she had been quite normal in manner and had seemed, from her account, to be having quite a gay life in London. Joan was relieved and expressed her relief to Rodney. ‘The whole thing has blown over completely. I never thought for a moment it was really serious – just one of those silly fancies girls get.’ Rodney looked at her, smiled, and said, ‘Poor little Joan.’ That phrase of his always annoyed her. ‘Well, you must admit it was worrying at the time.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was certainly worrying. But it wasn’t your worry, was it, Joan?’ ‘What do you mean? Anything that affects the children upsets me far more than it upsets them.’ ‘Does it?’ Rodney said. ‘I wonder …’ It was true, Joan thought, that there was now a certain coldness between Averil and her father. They had always been such friends. Now there seemed little except formal politeness between them. On the other hand, Averil had been quite charming, in her cool, noncommittal way, to her mother. I expect, thought Joan, that she appreciates me better now that she doesn’t live at home. She herself certainly welcomed Averil’s visits. Averil’s cool, good sense seemed to ease things in the household. Barbara was now grown up and was proving difficult. Joan was increasingly distressed by her younger daughter’s choice of friends. She seemed to have no kind of discrimination. There were plenty of nice girls in Crayminster, but Barbara, out of sheer perversity, it seemed, would have none of them. ‘They’re so hideously dull, Mother.’ ‘Nonsense, Barbara. I’m sure both Mary and Alison are charming girls, full of fun.’ ‘They’re perfectly awful. They wear snoods.’ Joan had stared, bewildered. ‘Really, Barbara – what do you mean? What can it matter?’ ‘It does. It’s a kind of symbol.’ ‘I think you’re talking nonsense, darling. There’s Pamela Grayling – her mother used to be a great friend of mine. Why not go about with her a bit more?’ Oh, Mother, she’s hopelessly dreary, not amusing a bit.’ ‘Well, I think they’re all very nice girls.’ ‘Yes, nice and deadly. And what does it matter what you think?’ ‘That’s very rude, Barbara.’ ‘Well, what I mean is, you don’t have to go about with them. So it’s what I think matters. I like Betty Earle and Primrose Deane but you always stick your nose in the air when I bring them to tea.’ ‘Well, frankly, darling, they are rather dreadful – Betty’s father runs those awful charabanc tours and simply hasn’t got an h.’ ‘He’s got lots of money, though.’ ‘Money isn’t everything, Barbara.’ ‘The whole point is, Mother, can I choose my own friends, or can’t I?’ ‘Of course you can, Barbara, but you must let yourself be guided by me. You are very young still.’ ‘That means I can’t. It’s pretty sickening the way I can’t do a single thing I want to do! This place is an absolute prison house.’ And it was just then that Rodney had come in and had said, ‘What’s a prison house?’ Barbara cried out, ‘Home is!’ And instead of taking the matter seriously Rodney had simply laughed and had said teasingly, ‘Poor little Barbara – treated like a black slave.’ ‘Well, I am.’ ‘Quite right, too. I approve of slavery for daughters.’ And Barbara had hugged him and said breathlessly, ‘Darling Dads, you are so – so – ridiculous. I never can be annoyed with you for long.’ Joan had begun indignantly, ‘I should hope not –’ But Rodney was laughing, and when Barbara had gone out of the room, he had said, ‘Don’t take things too seriously, Joan. Young fillies have to kick up their heels a bit.’ ‘But these awful friends of hers –’ ‘A momentary phase of liking the flamboyant. It will pass. Don’t worry, Joan.’ Very easy, Joan had thought indignantly, to say ‘Don’t worry.’ What would happen to them all if she didn’t worry? Rodney was far too easy going, and he couldn’t possibly understand a mother’s feelings. Yet trying as Barbara’s choice of girl friends had been, it was as nothing to the anxiety occasioned by the men she seemed to like. George Harmon and that very objectionable young Wilmore – not only a member of the rival solicitor’s firm (a firm that undertook the more dubious legal business of the town) but a young man who drank too much, talked too loudly, and was too fond of the race track. It was with young Wilmore that Barbara had disappeared from the Town Hall on the night of the Christmas Charity Dance, and had reappeared five dances later, sending a guilty but defiant glance towards where her mother was sitting.

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They had been sitting out, it seemed, on the roof – a thing that only fast girls did, so Joan told Barbara, and it had distressed her very much. ‘Don’t be so Edwardian, Mother. It’s absurd.’ ‘I’m not at all Edwardian. And let me tell you, Barbara, a lot of the old ideas about chaperonage are coming back into favour. Girls don’t go about with young men as they did ten years ago.’ ‘Really, Mother, anyone would think I was going off week-ending with Tom Wilmore.’ ‘Don’t talk like that, Barbara, I won’t have it. And I heard you were seen in the Dog and Duck with George Harmon.’ ‘Oh, we were just doing a pub crawl.’ ‘Well, you’re far too young to do anything of the kind. I don’t like the way girls drink spirits nowadays.’ ‘I was only having beer. Actually we were playing darts.’ ‘Well, I don’t like it, Barbara. And what’s more I won’t have it. I don’t like George Harmon or Tom Wilmore and I won’t have them in the house any more, do you understand?’ ‘O.K., Mother, it’s your house.’ ‘Anyway I don’t see what you like in them.’ Barbara shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re exciting.’ ‘Well, I won’t have them asked to the house, do you hear?’ After that Joan had been annoyed when Rodney brought young Harmon home to Sunday supper one night. It was, she felt, so weak of Rodney. She herself put on her most glacial manner, and the young man seemed suitably abashed, in spite of the friendly way Rodney talked to him, and the pains he took to put him at his ease. George Harmon alternately talked too loud, or mumbled, boasted and then became apologetic. Later that night, Joan took Rodney to task with some sharpness. ‘Surely you must realize I’d told Barbara I wouldn’t have him here?’ ‘I knew, Joan, but that’s a mistake. Barbara has very little judgment. She takes people at their own valuation. She doesn’t know the shoddy from the real. Seeing people against an alien background, she doesn’t know where she is. That’s why she needs to see people against her own background. She’s been thinking of young Harmon as a dangerous and dashing figure, not just a foolish and boastful young man who drinks too much and has never done a proper day’s work in his life.’ ‘ I could have told her that!’ Rodney smiled. ‘Oh, Joan, dear, nothing that you and I say is going to impress the younger generation.’ The truth of that was made plain to Joan when Averil came down on one of her brief visits. This time it was Tom Wilmore who was being entertained. Against Averil’s cool, critical distaste, Tom did not show to advantage. Afterwards Joan caught a snatch of conversation between the sisters. ‘You don’t like him, Averil?’ And Averil, hunching disdainful shoulders had replied crisply, ‘I think he’s dreadful. Your taste in men, Barbara, is really too awful.’ Thereafter, Wilmore had disappeared from the scene, and the fickle Barbara had murmured one day, ‘Tom Wilmore? Oh, but he’s dreadful.’ With complete and wide-eyed conviction. Joan set herself to have tennis parties and ask people to the house, but Barbara refused stoutly to co-operate. ‘Don’t fuss so, Mother. You’re always wanting to ask people. I hate having people, and you always will ask such terrible duds.’ Offended, Joan said sharply that she washed her hands of Barbara’s amusement. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you want!’ ‘I just want to be let alone.’ Barbara was really a most difficult child, Joan said sharply to Rodney. Rodney agreed, a little frown between his eyes. ‘If she would only just say what she wants,’ Joan continued. ‘She doesn’t know herself. She’s very young, Joan.’ ‘That’s just why she needs to have things decided for her.’ ‘No, my dear – she’s got to find her own feet. Just let her be – let her bring her friends here if she wants to, but don’t organize things. That’s what seems to antagonize the young.’ So like a man, Joan thought with some exasperation. All for leaving things alone and being vague. Poor, dear Rodney, he always had been rather vague, now she came to think of it. It was she who had to be the practical one! And yet everyone said that he was such a shrewd lawyer. Joan remembered an evening when Rodney had read from the local paper an announcement of George Harmon’s marriage to Primrose Deane and had added with a teasing smile: ‘An old flame of yours, eh, Babs?’ Barbara had laughed with considerable amusement. ‘I know. I was awfully keen on him. He really is pretty dreadful, isn’t he? I mean, he really is.’ ‘I always thought him a most unprepossessing young man. I couldn’t imagine what you saw in him.’ ‘No more can I now.’ Barbara at eighteen spoke detachedly of the follies of seventeen. ‘But really, you know, Dads, I did think I was in love with him. I thought Mother would try to part us, and then I was going to run away with him, and if you or Mother stopped us, then I made up my mind I should put my head in the gas oven and kill myself.’ ‘Quite the Juliet touch!’ With a shade of disapproval, Barbara said, ‘I meant it, Daddy. After all, if you can’t bear a thing, you just have to kill yourself.’ And Joan, unable to bear keeping silent any longer, broke in sharply. ‘Don’t say such wicked things, Barbara. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ ‘I forgot you were there, Mother. Of course, you wouldn’t ever do a thing like that. You’d always be calm and sensible, whatever happened.’ ‘I should hope so indeed.’ Joan kept her temper with a little difficulty. She said to Rodney when Barbara had left the room: ‘You shouldn’t encourage the child in such nonsense.’ ‘Oh, she might as well talk it out of her system.’ ‘Of course, she’d never really do any of these dreadful things she talks about.’ Rodney was silent and Joan looked at him in surprise. ‘Surely you don’t think –’ ‘No, no, not really. Not when she’s older, when she’s got her balance. But Barbara is very unstable emotionally, Joan, we might as well face it.’ ‘It’s all so ridiculous!’ ‘Yes, to us – who have a sense of proportion. But not to her. She’s always in deadly earnest. She can’t see beyond the mood of the moment. She has no detachment and no humour. Sexually, she is precocious –’ ‘Really, Rodney! You make things sound like – like one of those horrid cases in the police court.’ ‘Horrid cases in the police court concern living human beings, remember.’ ‘Yes, but nicely brought up girls like Barbara don’t –’ ‘Don’t what, Joan?’ ‘Must we talk like this?’ Rodney sighed. ‘No. No, of course not. But I wish, yes, I really do wish that Barbara could meet some decent young fellow and fall properly in love with him.’ And after that it had really seemed like an answer to prayer, when young William Wray had come home from Iraq to stay with his aunt, Lady Herriot. Joan had seen him first one day about a week after his arrival. He had been ushered into the drawing-room one afternoon when Barbara was out. Joan had looked up surprised from her writing table and had seen a tall, sturdily built young man with a jutting out chin, a very pink face, and a pair of steady blue eyes. Blushing still pinker, Bill Wray had mumbled to his collar that he was Lady Herriot’s nephew and that he had called – er – to return Miss Scudamore’s racket which she had – er – left behind the other day. Joan pulled her wits together and greeted him graciously. Barbara was so careless, she said. Left her things all over the place. Barbara was out at the moment, but probably she would be back before long. Mr Wray must stay and have some tea. Mr Wray was quite willing, it seemed, so Joan rang the bell for tea, and inquired after Mr Wray’s aunt. Lady Herriot’s health occupied about five minutes, and then conversation began to halt a little. Mr Wray was not very helpful.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Mr Wray was not very helpful. He remained very pink in the face and sat very bolt upright and had a vague look of suffering some internal agony. Luckily tea came and made a diversion. Joan was still prattling kindly, but with a slight sense of effort when Rodney, much to her relief, returned a little earlier than usual from the office. Rodney was very helpful. He talked of Iraq, drew the boy out with some simple questions, and presently some of Bill Wray’s agonized stiffness began to relax. Soon he was talking almost easily. Presently Rodney took him off to his study. It was nearly seven o’clock when Bill, still it seemed reluctantly, took his departure. ‘Nice lad,’ said Rodney. ‘Yes, quite. Rather shy.’ ‘Decidedly.’ Rodney seemed amused. ‘But I don’t think he’s usually quite so diffident.’ ‘What a frightfully long time he stayed!’ ‘Over two hours.’ ‘You must be terribly tired, Rodney.’ ‘Oh no, I enjoyed it. He’s got a very good headpiece, that boy, and rather an unusual outlook on things. The philosophic bent of mind. He’s got character as well as brains. Yes, I liked him.’ ‘He must have liked you – to stay talking as long as he did.’ Rodney’s look of amusement returned. ‘Oh, he wasn’t staying to talk to me. He was hoping for Barbara’s return. Come, Joan, don’t you know love when you see it? The poor fellow was stiff with embarrassment. That’s why he was as red as a beetroot. It must have taken a great effort for him to nerve himself to come here – and when he did, no glimpse of his lady. Yes, one of those cases of love at first sight.’ Presently when Barbara came hurrying into the house, just in time for dinner, Joan said: ‘One of your young men has been here, Barbara, Lady Herriot’s nephew. He brought back your racket.’ ‘Oh, Bill Wray? So he did find it? It seemed to have disappeared completely the other evening.’ ‘He was here some time,’ said Joan. ‘Pity I missed him. I went to the pictures with the Crabbes. A frightfully stupid film. Did you get awfully bored with Bill?’ ‘No,’ said Rodney. I liked him. We talked Near Eastern politics. You’d have been bored, I expect.’ ‘I like to hear about queer parts of the world. I’d love to travel. I get so fed up always staying in Crayminster. At any rate, Bill is different.’ ‘You can always train for a job,’ suggested Rodney. ‘Oh, a job!’ Barbara wrinkled up her nose. ‘You know, Dads, I’m an idle devil. I don’t like work.’ ‘No more do most people, I suspect,’ said Rodney. Barbara rushed at him and hugged him. ‘You work much too hard. I’ve always thought so. It’s a shame!’ Then, releasing her hold, she said, ‘I’ll give Bill a ring. He said something about going to the point to point over at Marsden …’ Rodney stood looking after her as she walked away towards the telephone at the back of the hall. It was an odd look, questioning, uncertain. He had liked Bill Wray, yes, undoubtedly he had liked Bill from the first. Why, then, had he looked so worried, so harassed, when Barbara had burst in and announced that she and Bill were engaged and they meant to be married at once so that she could go back to Baghdad with him? Bill was young, well connected, with money of his own, and good prospects. Why then, did Rodney demur, and suggest a longer engagement? Why did he go about frowning, looking uncertain and perplexed? And then, just before the marriage, that sudden outburst, that insistence that Barbara was too young? Oh well, Barbara had soon settled that objection, and six months after she had married her Bill and departed for Baghdad, Averil in her turn had announced her engagement to a stockbroker, a man called Edward Harrison-Wilmott. He was a quiet, pleasant man of about thirty-four and extremely well off. So really, Joan thought, everything seemed to be turning out splendidly. Rodney was rather quiet about Averil’s engagement, but when she pressed him he said, ‘Yes, yes, it’s the best thing. He’s a nice fellow.’ After Averil’s marriage, Joan and Rodney were alone in the house. Tony, after training at an agricultural college and then failing to pass his exams, and altogether causing them a good deal of anxiety, had finally gone out to South Africa where a client of Rodney’s had a big orange farm in Rhodesia. Tony wrote them enthusiastic letters, though not very lengthy ones. Then he had written and announced his engagement to a girl from Durban. Joan was rather upset at the idea of her son marrying a girl they had never even seen. She had no money, either – and really, as she said to Rodney, what did they know about her? Nothing at all. Rodney said that it was Tony’s funeral, and that they must hope for the best. She looked a nice girl, he thought, from the photographs Tony had sent, and she seemed willing to begin with Tony in a small way up in Rhodesia. ‘And I suppose they’ll spend their entire lives out there and hardly ever come home. Tony ought to have been forced to go into the firm – I said so at the time!’ Rodney had smiled and said that he wasn’t very good at forcing people to do things. ‘No, but really, Rodney, you ought to have insisted. He would soon have settled down. People do.’ Yes, Rodney said, that was true. But it was, he thought, too great a risk. Risk? Joan said she didn’t understand. What did he mean by risk? Rodney said he meant the risk that the boy mightn’t be happy. Joan said she sometimes lost patience with all this talk of happiness. Nobody seemed to think of anything else. Happiness wasn’t the only thing in life. There were other things much more important. Such as, Rodney had asked? Well, Joan said – after a moment’s hesitation – duty, for instance. Rodney said that surely it could never be a duty to become a solicitor. Slightly annoyed, Joan replied that he knew perfectly what she meant. It was Tony’s duty to please his father and not disappoint him. ‘Tony hasn’t disappointed me.’ But surely, Joan exclaimed, Rodney didn’t like his only son being far away half across the world, living where they could never see the boy. ‘No,’ said Rodney with a sigh. ‘I must admit that I miss Tony very much. He was such a sunny, cheerful creature to have about the house. Yes, I miss him …’ ‘That’s what I say. You should have been firm!’ ‘After all, Joan, it’s Tony’s life. Not ours. Ours is over and done with, for better or worse – the active part of it, I mean.’ ‘Yes – well – I suppose that’s so in a way.’ She thought a minute and then she said, ‘Well, it’s been a very nice life. And still is, of course.’ ‘I’m glad of that.’ He was smiling at her. Rodney had a nice smile, a teasing smile. Sometimes he looked as though he was smiling at something that you yourself didn’t see. ‘The truth is,’ said Joan, ‘that you and I are really very well suited to each other.’ ‘Yes, we haven’t had many quarrels.’ ‘And then we’ve been lucky with our children. It would have been terrible if they’d turned out badly or been unhappy or something like that.’ ‘Funny Joan,’ Rodney had said. ‘Well but, Rodney, it really would have been very upsetting.’ ‘I don’t think anything would upset you for long, Joan.’ ‘Well,’ she considered the point. ‘Of course I have got a very equable temperament. I think it’s one’s duty, you know, not to give way to things.’ ‘An admirable and convenient sentiment!’ ‘It’s nice, isn’t it,’ said Joan smiling, ‘to feel one’s made a success of things?’ ‘Yes.’ Rodney had sighed. ‘Yes, it must be very nice.’ Joan laughed and putting her hand on his arm, gave it a little shake. ‘Don’t be modest, Rodney. No solicitor has got a bigger practice round here than you have. It’s far bigger than in Uncle Henry’s time.’ ‘Yes, the firm is doing well.’ ‘And there’s more capital coming in with the new partner. Do you mind having a new partner?’ Rodney shook his head. ‘Oh no, we need young blood.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

‘Oh no, we need young blood. Both Alderman and I are getting on.’ Yes, she thought, it was true. There was a lot of grey in Rodney’s dark hair. Joan roused herself, and glanced at her watch. The morning was passing quite quickly, and there had been no recurrence of those distressing chaotic thoughts which seemed to force themselves into her mind so inopportunely. Well, that showed, didn’t it, that ‘discipline’ was the watchword needed. To arrange one’s thoughts in an orderly manner, recalling only those memories that were pleasant and satisfactory. That is what she had done this morning – and see how quickly the morning had passed. In about an hour and a half it would be lunch time. Perhaps she had better go out for a short stroll, keeping quite near the rest house. That would just make a little change before coming in to eat another of those hot, heavy meals. She went into the bedroom, put on her double felt hat and went out. The Arab boy was kneeling on the ground, his face turned towards Mecca, and was bending forward and straightening himself, uttering words in a high nasal chant. The Indian, coming up unseen, said instructively just behind Joan’s shoulder, ‘Him make midday prayer.’ Joan nodded. The information, she felt, was unnecessary. She could see perfectly well what the boy was doing. ‘Him say Allah very compassionate, Allah very merciful.’ ‘I know,’ said Joan and moved away, strolling gently towards the barbed wire conglomeration that marked the railway station. She remembered having seen six or seven Arabs trying to move a dilapidated Ford that had stuck in the sand, all pulling and tugging in opposite directions, and how her son-in-law, William, had explained to her that in addition to these well meant but abortive efforts, they were saying hopefully, ‘Allah is very merciful.’ Allah, she thought, had need to be, since it was certain that nothing but a miracle would extract the car if they all continued to tug in opposite directions. The curious thing was that they all seemed quite happy about it and enjoying themselves. Inshallah, they would say, if God wills, and would thereupon bend no intelligent endeavour on the satisfaction of their desires. It was not a way of living that commended itself to Joan. One should take thought and make plans for the morrow. Though perhaps if one lived in the middle of nowhere like Tell Abu Hamid it might not be so necessary. If one were here for long, reflected Joan, one would forget even what day of the week it was … And she thought, Let me see, today is Thursday … yes, Thursday, I got here on Monday night. She had arrived now at the tangle of barbed wire and she saw, a little way beyond it, a man in some kind of uniform with a rifle. He was leaning up against a large case and she supposed he was guarding the station or the frontier. He seemed to be asleep and Joan thought she had better not go any farther in case he might wake up and shoot her. It was the sort of thing, she felt, that would not be at all impossible at Tell Abu Hamid. She retraced her steps, making a slight detour so as to encircle the rest house. In that way she would eke out the time and run no risk of that strange feeling of agoraphobia (if it had been agoraphobia). Certainly, she thought with approval, the morning had gone very successfully. She had gone over in her mind the things for which she had to be thankful. Averil’s marriage to dear Edward, such a solid, dependable sort of man – and so well off, too; Averil’s house in London was quite delightful – so handy for Harrods. And Barbara’s marriage. And Tony’s – though that really wasn’t quite so satisfactory – in fact they knew nothing about it – and Tony himself was not as entirely satisfactory as a son should be. Tony should have remained in Crayminster and gone into Alderman, Scudamore and Witney’s. He should have married a nice English girl, fond of outdoor life, and followed in his father’s footsteps. Poor Rodney, with his dark hair streaked with grey, and no son to succeed him at the office. The truth was that Rodney had been much too weak with Tony. He should have put his foot down. Firmness, that was the thing. Why, thought Joan, where would Rodney be, I should like to know, if I hadn’t put my foot down? She felt a warm little glow of self approval. Crippled with debts, probably, and trying to raise a mortgage like Farmer Hoddesdon. She wondered if Rodney really quite appreciated what she had done for him … Joan stared ahead of her at the swimming line of the horizon. A queer watery effect. Of course, she thought, mirage! Yes, that was it, mirage … just like pools of water in the sand. Not at all what one thought of as mirage – she had always imagined trees and cities – something much more concrete. But even this unspectacular watery effect was queer – it made one feel – what was reality? Mirage, she thought, mirage. The word seemed important. What had she been thinking of? Oh, of course, Tony, and how exceedingly selfish and thoughtless he had been. It had always been extremely difficult to get at Tony. He was so vague, so apparently acquiescent, and yet in his quiet, amiable, smiling way, he did exactly as he liked. Tony had never been quite so devoted to her as she felt a son ought to be to his mother. In fact he really seemed to care for his father most. She remembered how Tony, as a small boy of seven, in the middle of the night, had entered the dressing-room where Rodney was sleeping, and had announced quietly and unromantically: ‘I think, Father, I must have eaten a toadstool instead of a mushroom, because I have a very bad pain and I think I am going to die. So I have come here to die with you.’ Actually, it had been nothing to do with toadstools or mushrooms. It had been acute appendicitis and the boy had been operated on within twenty-four hours. But it still seemed to Joan queer that the child should have gone to Rodney and not to her. Far more natural for Tony to have come to his mother. Yes, Tony had been trying in many ways. Lazy at school. Slack over games. And though he was a very good-looking boy and the kind of boy she was proud to take about with her, he never seemed to want to be taken about, and had an irritating habit of melting into the landscape just when she was looking for him. ‘Protective colouring,’ Averil had called it, Joan remembered. ‘Tony is much cleverer at protective colouring than we are,’ she had said. Joan had not quite understood her meaning, but she had felt vaguely a little hurt by it … Joan looked at her watch. No need to get too hot walking. Back to the rest house now. It had been an excellent morning – no incidents of any kind – no unpleasant thoughts, no sensations of agoraphobia – Really, some inner voice in her exclaimed, you are talking just like a hospital nurse. What do you think you are, Joan Scudamore? an invalid? a mental case? And why do you feel so proud of yourself and yet so tired? Is there anything extraordinary in having passed a pleasant, normal morning? She went quickly into the rest house, and was delighted to see that there were tinned pears for lunch as a change. After lunch she went and lay down on her bed. If she could sleep until tea time … But she did not feel even inclined to sleep. Her brain felt bright and wakeful. She lay there with closed eyes, but her body felt alert and tense, as though it were waiting for something … as though it were watchful, ready to defend itself against some lurking danger. All her muscles were taut. I must relax, Joan thought, I must relax. But she couldn’t relax. Her body was stiff and braced. Her heart was beating a little faster than was normal. Her mind was alert and suspicious. The whole thing reminded her of something. She searched and at last the right comparison came to her – a dentist’s waiting-room. The feeling of something definitely unpleasant just ahead of you, the determination to reassure yourself, to put off thinking of it, and the knowledge that each minute was bringing the ordeal nearer … But what ordeal – what was she expecting? What was going to happen?

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

What was going to happen? The lizards, she thought, have all gone back into their holes … that’s because there’s a storm coming … the quiet – before a storm … waiting … waiting … Good Heavens, she was getting quite incoherent again. Miss Gilbey … discipline … a Spiritual Retreat … A Retreat! She must meditate. There was something about repeating Om … Theosophy? Or Buddhism … No, no, stick to her own religion. Meditate on God. On the love of God. God … Our Father, which art in Heaven … Her own father – his squarely trimmed naval brown beard, his deep piercing blue eyes, his liking for everything to be trim and shipshape in the house. A kindly martinet, that was her father, a typical retired Admiral. And her mother, tall, thin, vague, untidy, with a careless sweetness that made people, even when she most exasperated them, find all kinds of excuses for her. Her mother going out to parties with odd gloves and a crooked skirt and a hat pinned askew to a bun of iron grey hair, and happily and serenely unconscious of anything amiss about her appearance. And the anger of the Admiral – always directed on his daughters, never on his wife. ‘Why can’t you girls look after your mother? What do you mean by letting her go out like that! I will not have such slackness!’ he would roar. And the three girls would say submissively: ‘No, Father.’ And afterwards, to each other, ‘It’s all very well, but really Mother is impossible!’ Joan had been very fond of her mother, of course, but her fondness had not blinded her to the fact that her mother was really a very tiresome woman – her complete lack of method and consistency hardly atoned for by her gay irresponsibility and warm-hearted impulsiveness. It had come as quite a shock to Joan, clearing up her mother’s papers after her mother’s death, to come across a letter from her father, written on the twentieth anniversary of their marriage. I grieve deeply that I cannot be with you today, dear heart. I would like to tell you in this letter all that your love has meant to me all these years and how you are more dear to me today than you have ever been before. Your love has been the crowning blessing of my life and I thank God for it and for you … Somehow she had never realized that her father felt quite like that about her mother … Joan thought, Rodney and I will have been married twenty-five years this December. Our silver wedding. How nice, she thought, if he were to write such a letter to me … She concocted a letter in her mind. Dearest Joan – I feel I must write down all I owe to you – and what you have meant to me – You have no idea, I am sure, how your love has been the crowning blessing … Somehow, Joan thought, breaking off this imaginative exercise, it didn’t seem very real. Impossible to imagine Rodney writing such a letter … much as he loved her … much as he loved her … Why repeat that so defiantly? Why feel such a queer, cold little shiver? What had she been thinking about before that? Of course! Joan came to herself with a shock. She was supposed to be engaged in spiritual meditation. Instead of that she had been thinking of mundane matters – of her father and mother, dead these many years. Dead, leaving her alone. Alone in the desert. Alone in this very unpleasant prison-like room. With nothing to think about but herself. She sprang up. No use lying here when one couldn’t go to sleep. She hated these high rooms with their small gauze-covered windows. They hemmed you in. They made you feel small, insect-like. She wanted a big, airy drawing- room, with nice cheerful cretonnes and a crackling fire in the grate and people – lots of people – people you could go and see and people who would come and see you … Oh, the train must come soon – it had got to come soon. Or a car – or something … ‘I can’t stay here,’ said Joan aloud. ‘I can’t stay here!’ (Talking to yourself, she thought, that’s a very bad sign.) She had some tea and then she went out. She didn’t feel she could sit still and think. She would go out and walk, and she wouldn’t think. Thinking, that was what upset you. Look at these people who lived in this place – the Indian, the Arab boy, the cook. She felt quite sure they never thought. Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits … Who had said that? What an admirable way of life! She wouldn’t think, she would just walk. Not too far away from the rest house just in case – well, just in case … Describe a large circle. Round and round. Like an animal. Humiliating. Yes, humiliating but there it was. She had got to be very, very careful of herself. Otherwise – Otherwise what? She didn’t know. She hadn’t any idea. She mustn’t think of Rodney, she mustn’t think of Averil, she mustn’t think of Tony, she mustn’t think of Barbara. She mustn’t think of Blanche Haggard. She mustn’t think of scarlet rhododendron buds. (Particularly she mustn’t think of scarlet rhododendron buds!) She mustn’t think of poetry … She mustn’t think of Joan Scudamore. But that’s myself! No, it isn’t. Yes, it is … If you had nothing but yourself to think about what would you find out about yourself? ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Joan aloud. The sound of her voice astonished her. What was it that she didn’t want to know? A battle, she thought, I’m fighting a losing battle. But against whom? Against what? Never mind, she thought. I don’t want to know – Hang on to that. It was a good phrase. Odd the feeling that there was someone walking with her. Someone she knew quite well. If she turned her head … well, she had turned her head but there was no one. No one at all. Yet the feeling that there was someone persisted. It frightened her. Rodney, Averil, Tony, Barbara, none of them would help her, none of them could help her, none of them wanted to help her. None of them cared. She would go back to the rest house and get away from whoever it was who was spying on her. The Indian was standing outside the wire door. Joan was swaying a little as she walked. The way he stared annoyed her. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Memsahib not look well. Perhaps Memsahib have fever?’ That was it. Of course, that was it. She had fever! How stupid not to have thought of that before. She hurried in. She must take her temperature, look for her quinine. She had got some quinine with her somewhere. She got out her thermometer and put it under her tongue. Fever – of course it was fever! The incoherence – the nameless dreads – the apprehension – the fast beating of her heart. Purely physical, the whole thing. She took out the thermometer and looked at it. 98.2. If anything she was a shade below normal. She got through the evening somehow. She was by now really alarmed about herself. It wasn’t sun – it wasn’t fever – it must be nerves. ‘Just nerves,’ people said. She had said so herself about other people. Well, she hadn’t known. She knew now. Just nerves, indeed! Nerves were hell! What she needed was a doctor, a nice, sympathetic doctor, and a nursing home and a kindly, efficient nurse who would never leave the room. ‘Mrs Scudamore must never be left alone.’ What she had got was a whitewashed prison in the middle of a desert, a semi-intelligent Indian, a completely imbecile Arab boy, and a cook who would presently send in a meal of rice and tinned salmon and baked beans and hard-boiled eggs. All wrong, thought Joan, completely the wrong treatment for my sort of case … After dinner she went to her room and looked at her aspirin bottle. There were six tablets left. Recklessly she took them all. It was leaving her nothing for tomorrow, but she felt she must try something. Never again, she thought, will I go travelling without some proper sleeping stuff with me. She undressed and lay down apprehensively. Strangely enough she fell asleep almost immediately.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

She undressed and lay down apprehensively. Strangely enough she fell asleep almost immediately. That night she dreamed that she was in a big prison building with winding corridors. She was trying to get out but she couldn’t find the way, and yet, all the time, she knew quite well that she did know it … You’ve only got to remember, she kept saying to herself earnestly, you’ve only got to remember. In the morning she woke up feeling quite peaceful, though tired. ‘You’ve only got to remember,’ she said to herself. She got up and dressed and had breakfast. She felt quite all right, just a little apprehensive, that was all. I suppose it will all start again soon, she thought to herself. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it. She sat inertly in a chair. Presently she would go out, but not just yet. She wouldn’t try to think about anything in particular – and she wouldn’t try not to think. Both were much too tiring. She would just let herself drift. The outer office of Alderman, Scudamore and Witney – the deed boxes labelled in white. Estate of Sir Jasper Ffoulkes, deceased. Colonel Etchingham Williams. Just like stage properties. Peter Sherston’s face looking up bright and eager from his desk. How very like his mother he was – no, not quite – he had Charles Sherston’s eyes. That quick, shifty, sideways look. I wouldn’t trust him too far if I were Rodney, she had thought. Funny that she should have thought that! After Leslie Sherston’s death, Sherston had gone completely to pieces. He had drunk himself to death in record time. The children had been salvaged by relations. The third child, a little girl, had died six months after its birth. John, the eldest boy, had gone into woods and forests. He was somewhere out in Burma now. Joan remembered Leslie and her handprinted linen covers. If John was like his mother, and had her desire to see things that grew fast, he must be very happy now. She had heard that he was doing very well. Peter Sherston had come to Rodney and had expressed his desire to be taken into the office. ‘My mother told me she was sure you would help me, sir.’ An attractive, forthright boy, smiling, eager, always anxious to please – the more attractive, Joan had always thought, of the two. Rodney had been glad to take the boy. It had made up to him a little, perhaps, for the fact that his own son had preferred to go overseas and had cut himself off from his family. In time, perhaps, Rodney might have come to look upon Peter almost as a son. He was often at the house and was always charming to Joan. Easy, attractive manners – not quite so unctuous as his father’s had been. And then one day Rodney had come home looking worried and ill. In response to her questions he had replied impatiently that it was nothing, nothing at all. But about a week later he mentioned that Peter was leaving – had decided to go to an aircraft factory. ‘Oh, Rodney, and you’ve been so good to him. And we both liked him so much!’ ‘Yes – an attractive lad.’ ‘What was the trouble? Was he lazy?’ ‘Oh no, he’s a good head for figures and all that sort of thing.’ ‘Like his father?’ ‘Yes, like his father. But all these lads are attracted to the new discoveries – flying – that kind of thing.’ But Joan was not listening. Her own words had suggested to her a certain train of thought. Peter Sherston had left very suddenly. ‘Rodney – there wasn’t anything wrong, was there?’ ‘Wrong? What do you mean?’ ‘I mean – well, like his father. His mouth is like Leslie’s – but he’s got that funny, shifty look in the eyes that his father always had. Oh, Rodney, it’s true, isn’t it? He did do something?’ Rodney said slowly, ‘There was just a little trouble.’ ‘Over the accounts? He took money?’ ‘I’d rather not talk about it, Joan. It was nothing important.’ ‘Crooked like his father! Isn’t heredity queer?’ ‘Very queer. It seems to work the wrong way.’ ‘You mean he might just as well have taken after Leslie? Still, she wasn’t a particularly efficient person, was she?’ Rodney said in a dry voice, ‘I’m of the opinion that she was very efficient. She stuck to her job and did it well.’ ‘Poor thing.’ Rodney said irritably, ‘I wish you wouldn’t always pity her. It annoys me.’ ‘But, Rodney, how unkind of you. She really had an awfully sad life.’ ‘I never think of her that way.’ ‘And then her death –’ ‘I’d rather you didn’t talk about that.’ He turned away. Everybody, thought Joan, was afraid of cancer. They flinched away from the word. They called it, if possible, something else – a malignant growth – a serious operation – an incurable complaint – something internal. Even Rodney didn’t like the mention of it. Because, after all, one never knew – one in every twelve, wasn’t it, died of it? And it often seemed to attack the healthiest people. People who had never had anything else the matter with them. Joan remembered the day that she heard the news from Mrs Lambert in the Market Square. ‘My dear, have you heard? Poor Mrs Sherston!’ ‘What about her?’ ‘Dead!’ With gusto. And then the lowered voice. ‘Internal, I believe … Impossible to operate … She suffered terrible pain, I hear. But very plucky. Kept on working until only a couple of weeks before the end – when they really had to keep her under morphia. My nephew’s wife saw her only six weeks ago. She looked terribly ill and was as thin as a rail, but she was just the same, laughing and joking. I suppose people just can’t believe they can never get well. Oh well, she had a sad life, poor woman. I daresay it’s a merciful release …’ Joan had hurried home to tell Rodney, and Rodney had said quietly, Yes, he knew. He was the executor of her will, he said, and so they had communicated with him at once. Leslie Sherston had not had very much to leave. What there was was to be divided between her children. The clause that did excite Crayminster was the direction that her body should be brought to Crayminster for burial. ‘Because,’ so ran the will, I was very happy there.’ So Leslie Adeline Sherston was laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Crayminster. An odd request, some people thought, considering that it was in Crayminster that her husband had been convicted of fraudulent appropriation of bank funds. But other people said that it was quite natural. She had had a happy time there before all the trouble, and it was only natural that she should look back on it as a kind of lost Garden of Eden. Poor Leslie – a tragic family altogether, for young Peter, after training as a test pilot, had crashed and been killed. Rodney had been terribly cut up about it. In a queer way he seemed to blame himself for Peter’s death. ‘But really, Rodney, I don’t see how you make that out. It was nothing to do with you.’ ‘Leslie sent him to me – she told him that I would give him a job and look after him.’ ‘Well, so you did. You took him into the office.’ ‘I know.’ ‘And he went wrong, and you didn’t prosecute him or anything – you made up the deficit yourself, didn’t you?’ ‘Yes, yes – it isn’t that. Don’t you see, that’s why Leslie sent him to me, because she realized that he was weak, that he had Sherston’s untrustworthiness. John was all right. She trusted me to look after Peter, to guard the weak spot. He was a queer mixture. He had Charles Sherston’s crookedness and Leslie’s courage. Armadales wrote me that he was the best pilot they’d had – absolutely fearless and a wizard – that’s how they phrased it – with planes. The boy volunteered, you know, to try out a new secret device on a plane. It was known to be dangerous. That’s how he was killed.’ ‘Well, I call that very creditable, very creditable indeed.’ Rodney gave a short dry laugh. ‘Oh yes, Joan. But would you say that so complacently if it was your own son who had been killed like that? Would you be satisfied for Tony to have a creditable death?’ Joan stared.

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Would you be satisfied for Tony to have a creditable death?’ Joan stared. ‘But Peter wasn’t our son. It’s entirely different.’ ‘I’m thinking of Leslie … of what she would have felt …’ Sitting in the rest house, Joan shifted a little in her chair. Why had the Sherstons been so constantly in her thoughts ever since she had been here? She had other friends, friends who meant much more to her than any of the Sherstons had ever done. She had never liked Leslie so very much, only felt sorry for her. Poor Leslie under her marble slab. Joan shivered. I’m cold, she thought. I’m cold. Somebody is walking over my grave. But it was Leslie Sherston’s grave she was thinking about. It’s cold in here, she thought, cold and gloomy. I’ll go out in the sunlight. I don’t want to stay here any longer. The churchyard – and Leslie Sherston’s grave. And the scarlet, heavy rhododendron bud that fell from Rodney’s coat. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May … Chapter Nine Joan came out into the sunlight at almost a run. She started walking quickly, hardly glancing at the dump of tins and the hens. That was better. Warm sunlight. Warm – not cold any longer. She had got away from it all … But what did she mean by ‘got away from it all’? The wraith of Miss Gilbey seemed suddenly to be close beside her, saying in impressive tones: ‘Discipline your thoughts, Joan. Be more precise in your terms. Make up your mind exactly what it is from which you are running away.’ But she didn’t know. She hadn’t the least idea. Some fear, some menacing and pursuing dread. Something that had been always there – waiting – and all she could do was to dodge and twist and turn … Really, Joan Scudamore, she said to herself, you are behaving in a very peculiar manner … But saying so didn’t help matters. There must be something badly wrong with her. It couldn’t exactly be agoraphobia – (had she got that name right, or not? It worried her not to be sure) because this time she was anxious to escape from those cold, confining walls – to get out from them into space and sunlight. She felt better now that she was outside. Go out! Go out into the sunshine! Get away from these thoughts. She’d been here long enough. In this high-ceilinged room that was like a mausoleum. Leslie Sherston’s grave, and Rodney … Leslie … Rodney … Get out … The sunshine … So cold – in this room … Cold, and alone … She increased her pace. Get away from that dreadful mausoleum of a rest house. So grim, so hemmed in … The sort of place where you could easily imagine ghosts. What a stupid idea – it was practically a brand new building, only put up two years ago. There couldn’t be ghosts in a new building, everybody knew that. No, if there were ghosts in the rest house, then she, Joan Scudamore, must have brought them with her. Now that was a very unpleasant thought … She quickened her pace. At any rate, she thought determinedly, there’s nobody with me now. I’m quite alone. There’s not even anybody I could meet. Like – who was it – Stanley and Livingstone? Meeting in the wilds of Africa. Dr Livingstone, I presume. Nothing like that here. Only one person she could meet here and that was Joan Scudamore. What a comic idea! ‘Meet Joan Scudamore.’ ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Scudamore.’ Really – quite an interesting idea … Meet yourself … Meet yourself … Oh, God, she was frightened … She was horribly frightened … Her steps quickened into a run. She ran forward, stumbling a little. Her thoughts stumbled just like her feet did. … I’m frightened … … Oh, God, I’m so frightened … … If only there was someone here. Someone to be with me … Blanche, she thought. I wish Blanche were here. Yes, Blanche was just the person she wanted … Nobody near and dear to her. None of her friends. Just Blanche … Blanche, with her easy, warm-hearted kindness. Blanche was kind. You couldn’t surprise Blanche or shock her. And anyway, Blanche thought she was nice. Blanche thought she had made a success of life. Blanche was fond of her. Nobody else was … That was it – that was the thought that had been with her all along – that was what the real Joan Scudamore knew – had always known … Lizards popping out of holes … Truth … Little bits of truth, popping out like lizards, saying, ‘Here am I. You know me. You know me quite well. Don’t pretend you don’t.’ And she did know them – that was the awful part of it. She could recognize each one of them. Grinning at her, laughing at her. All the little bits and pieces of truth. They’d been showing themselves to her ever since she’d arrived here. All she needed to do was to piece them together. The whole story of her life – the real story of Joan Scudamore … It was here waiting for her … She had never needed to think about it before. It had been quite easy to fill her life with unimportant trivialities that left her no time for self- knowledge. What was it Blanche had said? ‘ If you’d nothing to think about but yourself for days on end I wonder what you’d find out about yourself.?’ And how superior, how smug, how stupid had been her answer: ‘Would one find out anything one didn’t know before?’ Sometimes, Mother, I don’t think you know anything about anybody … That had been Tony. How right Tony had been. She hadn’t known anything about her children, anything about Rodney. She had loved them but she hadn’t known. She should have known. If you loved people you should know about them. You didn’t know because it was so much easier to believe the pleasant, easy things that you would like to be true, and not distress yourself with the things that really were true. Like Averil – Averil and the pain that Averil had suffered. She hadn’t wanted to recognize that Averil had suffered … Averil who had always despised her … Averil who had seen through her at a very early age … Averil who had been broken and hurt by life and who, even now perhaps, was still a maimed creature. But a creature with courage … That was what she, Joan, had lacked. Courage. ‘ Courage isn’t everything, ’ she had said. And Rodney had said, ‘ Isn’t it? …’ Rodney had been right … Tony, Averil, Rodney – all of them her accusers. And Barbara? What had been wrong with Barbara? Why had the doctor been so reticent? What was it they had all been hiding from her? What had the child done – that passionate undisciplined child, who had married the first man who asked her so as to get away from home. Yes, it was quite true – that was exactly what Barbara had done. She’d been unhappy at home. And she’d been unhappy because Joan hadn’t taken the least trouble to make home happy for her. She’d had no love for Barbara, no kind of understanding. Cheerfully and selfishly she had determined what was good for Barbara without the least regard for Barbara’s tastes or wishes. She had had no welcome for Barbara’s friends, had gently discouraged them. No wonder the idea of Baghdad had seemed to Barbara like a vista of escape. She had married Bill Wray hastily and impulsively, and without (so Rodney said) loving him. And then what had happened? A love affair? An unhappy love affair? That Major Reid, probably. Yes, that would explain the embarrassment when Joan had mentioned his name. Just the kind of man, she thought, to fascinate a silly child who wasn’t yet properly grown up. And then, in desperation, in one of those violent paroxysms of despair to which she had been prone from early childhood, those cataclysms when she lost all sense of proportion, she had tried – yes, that must be it – to take her own life. And she had been very, very ill – dangerously ill. Had Rodney known, Joan wondered? He had certainly tried to dissuade her from rushing out to Baghdad. No, surely Rodney couldn’t have known. He would have told her. Well, no, perhaps he wouldn’t have told her. He certainly had done his best to stop her going. But she had been absolutely determined. She had felt, she said, that she simply couldn’t endure not to go out to the poor child.

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Surely that had been a creditable impulse. Only – wasn’t even that a part, only, of the truth? Hadn’t she been attracted by the idea of the journey – the novelty – seeing a new part of the world? Hadn’t she enjoyed the idea of playing the part of the devoted mother? Hadn’t she seen herself as a charming, impulsive woman being welcomed by her ill daughter and her distracted son-in-law? How good of you, they would say, to come rushing out like that. Really, of course, they hadn’t been at all pleased to see her! They had been, quite frankly, dismayed. They had warned the doctor, guarded their tongues, done everything imaginable to prevent her from learning the truth. They didn’t want her to know because they didn’t trust her. Barbara hadn’t trusted her. Keep it from Mother – that had probably been her one idea. How relieved they had been when she had announced that she must go back. They had hidden it quite well, making polite protestations, suggesting that she might stay on for a while. But when she had just for a moment actually thought of doing so, how quick William had been to discourage her. In fact, the only possible good that she had done by her hurried rush eastwards was the somewhat curious one of drawing Barbara and William together in their united effort to get rid of her and keep their secret. Odd if, after all, some positive good might come from her visit. Often, Joan remembered, Barbara, still weak, had looked appealingly at William, and William, responding, had hurried into speech, had explained some doubtful point, had fended off one of Joan’s tactless questions. And Barbara had looked at him gratefully – affectionately. They had stood there on the platform, seeing her off. And Joan remembered how William had held Barbara’s hand, and Barbara had leaned a little towards him. ‘Courage, darling,’ that was what he had been meaning. ‘It’s nearly over – she’s going …’ And after the train had gone, they would go back to their bungalow at Alwyah and play with Mopsy – for they both loved Mopsy, that adorable baby who was such a ridiculous caricature of William – and Barbara would stay, ‘Thank goodness she’s gone and we’ve got the house to ourselves.’ Poor William, who loved Barbara so much and who must have been so unhappy, and yet who had never faltered in his love and tenderness. ‘Don’t worry about her!’ Blanche had said. ‘She’ll be all right. There’s the kid and everything.’ Kind Blanche, reassuring an anxiety that simply hadn’t existed. All she, Joan, had had in her mind was a superior disdainful pity for her old friend. I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as this woman. Yes, she had even dared to pray … And now, at this moment, she would have given anything to have had Blanche with her! Blanche, with her kindly, easy charity – her complete lack of condemnation of any living creature. She had prayed that night at the railway rest house wrapped in that spurious mantle of superiority. Could she pray now, when it seemed to her that she had no longer a rag to cover her? Joan stumbled forward and fell on her knees. … God, she prayed, help me … … I’m going mad, God … … Don’t let me go mad … … Don’t let me go on thinking … Silence … Silence and sunlight … And the pounding of her own heart … God , she thought, has forsaken me … … God won’t help me … … I am alone – quite alone … That terrible silence … that awful loneliness … Little Joan Scudamore … silly, futile, pretentious little Joan Scudamore … All alone in the desert. Christ , she thought, was alone in the desert. For forty days and forty nights … … No, no, nobody could do that – nobody could bear it … The silence, the sun, the loneliness … Fear came upon her again – the fear of the vast empty spaces where man is alone except for God … She stumbled to her feet. She must get back to the rest house – back to the rest house. The Indian – the Arab boy – the hens – the empty tins … Humanity. She stared round her wildly. There was no sign of the rest house – no sign of the tiny cairn that was the station – no sign, even, of distant hills. She must have come farther than ever before, so far that all around her there was no discernible landmark. She didn’t, horror upon horror, even know in which direction the rest house lay … The hills – surely those distant hills couldn’t disappear – but all around on the horizon were low clouds … Hills? Clouds? One couldn’t tell. She was lost, completely lost … No, if she went north – that was right – north. The sun … The sun was directly overhead … there was no way of telling her direction from the sun … She was lost – lost – she would never find the way back … Suddenly, frenziedly she began to run. First in one direction, then, in sudden panic back the other way. She ran to and fro, wildly, desperately. And she began to cry out – shouting, calling … Help … Help … (They’ll never hear me, she thought … I’m too far away … ) The desert caught up her voice, reduced it to a small bleating cry. Like a sheep, she thought, like a sheep … He findeth his sheep … The Lord is my Shepherd … Rodney – green pastures and the valley in the High Street … Rodney , she called, help me, help me … But Rodney was going away up the platform, his shoulders squared, his head thrown back … enjoying the thought of a few weeks’ freedom … feeling, for the moment, young again … He couldn’t hear her. Averil – Averil – wouldn’t Averil help her? I’m your mother, Averil, I’ve always done everything for you … No, Averil would go quietly out of the room, saying perhaps: ‘There isn’t really anything I can do …’ Tony – Tony would help her. No, Tony couldn’t help her. He was in South Africa. A long way away … Barbara – Barbara was too ill … Barbara had got food poisoning. Leslie, she thought. Leslie would help me if she could. But Leslie is dead. She suffered and she died … It was no good – there was no one … She began to run again – despairingly, without idea or direction – just running … The sweat was running down her face, down her neck, down her whole body … She thought, This is the end … Christ, she thought … Christ … Christ would come to her in the desert … Christ would show her the way to the green valley. … Would lead her with the sheep … … The lost sheep … … The sinner that repented … … Through the valley of the shadow … … (No shadow – only sun …) … Lead kindly light. (But the sun wasn’t kindly … ) The green valley – the green valley – she must find the green valley … Opening out of the High Street, there in the middle of Crayminster. Opening out of the desert … Forty days and forty nights. Only three days gone – so Christ would still be there. Christ, she prayed, help me … Christ … What was that? Over there – far to the right – that tiny blur upon the horizon! It was the rest house … she wasn’t lost … she was saved … Saved … Her knees gave way – she crumpled down in a heap … Chapter Ten Joan regained consciousness slowly … She felt very sick and ill … And weak, weak as a child. But she was saved. The rest house was there. Presently, when she felt a little better, she could get up and walk to it. In the meantime she would just stay still and think things out. Think them out properly – not pretending any more. God, after all, had not forsaken her … She had no longer that terrible consciousness of being alone … But I must think, she said to herself. I must think. I must get things straight. That is why I’m here – to get things straight … She had got to know, once and for all, just what kind of a woman Joan Scudamore was … That was why she had had to come here, to the desert. This clear, terrible light would show her what she was. Would show her the truth of all the things she hadn’t wanted to look at – the things that, really, she had known all along. There had been one clue yesterday. Perhaps she had better start with that. For it had been then, hadn’t it, that that first sense of blind panic had swept over her? She had been reciting poetry – that was how it had begun. From you have I been absent in the Spring.

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From you have I been absent in the Spring. That was the line – and it had made her think of Rodney and she had said, ‘But it’s November now …’ Just as Rodney had said that evening, ‘But it’s October …’ The evening of the day that he had sat on Asheldown with Leslie Sherston – the two of them sitting there in silence – with four feet of space between them. And she had thought, hadn’t she, that it wasn’t very friendly? But she knew now – and of course she must really have known then – why they sat so far apart. It was because, wasn’t it, they didn’t dare to be nearer … Rodney – and Leslie Sherston … Not Myrna Randolph – never Myrna Randolph. She had deliberately encouraged the Myrna Randolph myth in her own mind because she knew there was nothing in it. She had put up Myrna Randolph as a smoke screen so as to hide what was really there. And partly – be honest now, Joan – partly because it was easier for her to accept Myrna Randolph than Leslie Sherston. It would hurt her pride less to admit that Rodney had been attracted by Myrna Randolph who was beautiful and the kind of siren who could be supposed to attract any man not gifted with superhuman powers of resistance. But Leslie Sherston – Leslie who was not even beautiful – who was not young – who was not even well turned out. Leslie with her tired face and her funny one-sided smile. To admit that Rodney could love Leslie – could love her with such passion that he dared not trust himself nearer than four feet – that was what she hated to acknowledge. That desperate longing, that aching unsatisfied desire – that force of passion that she herself had never known … It had been there between them that day on Asheldown – and she had felt it – it was because she had felt it that she had hurried away so quickly and so shamefacedly, not admitting to herself for a moment the thing that she really knew … Rodney and Leslie – sitting there silent – not even looking at each other – because they dared not. Leslie, loving Rodney so desperately, that she wanted to be laid when dead in the town where he lived … Rodney looking down at the marble slab and saying, ‘It seems damned silly to think of Leslie Sherston under a cold slab of marble like that.’ And the rhododendron bud falling, a scarlet splash. ‘Heart’s blood,’ he had said. ‘Heart’s blood.’ And then, afterwards, how he had said, ‘I’m tired, Joan. I’m tired.’ And later, so strangely, ‘We can’t all be brave …’ He had been thinking of Leslie when he said that. Of Leslie and her courage. ‘ Courage isn’t everything … ’ ‘ Isn’t it?’ And Rodney’s nervous breakdown – Leslie’s death had been the cause of that. Lying there peacefully in Cornwall, listening to the gulls, without interest in life, smiling quietly … Tony’s scornful boyish voice: ‘Don’t you know anything about Father?’ She hadn’t. She hadn’t known a thing! Because, quite determinedly, she hadn’t wanted to know. Leslie looking out of the window, explaining why she was going to have Sherston’s child. Rodney, saying as he too looked out of the window, ‘Leslie doesn’t do things by halves …’ What had they seen, these two, as they stood there? Did Leslie see the apple trees and the anemones in her garden? Did Rodney see the tennis court and the goldfish pond? Or did both of them see the pale smiling countryside and the blur of woods on the farther hill that you saw from the summit of Asheldown … Poor Rodney, poor tired Rodney … Rodney with his kind, teasing smile, Rodney saying Poor Little Joan … always kind, always affectionate, never failing her … Well, she’d been a good wife to him, hadn’t she? She’d always put his interests first … Wait – had she? Rodney, his eyes pleading with her … sad eyes. Always sad eyes. Rodney saying, ‘How was I to know I’d hate the office so?’ looking at her gravely, asking, ‘How do you know that I’ll be happy?’ Rodney pleading for the life he wanted, the life of a farmer. Rodney standing at the window of his office watching the cattle on market day. Rodney talking to Leslie Sherston about dairy herds. Rodney saying to Averil, ‘If a man doesn’t do the work he wants to do, he’s only half a man.’ That was what she, Joan, had done to Rodney … Anxiously, feverishly, she tried to defend herself against the judgment of her new knowledge. She had meant it for the best! One had to be practical! There were the children to think of. She hadn’t done it from selfish motives. But the clamour of protestation died down. Hadn’t she been selfish? Hadn’t it been that she didn’t want to live on a farm herself? She’d wanted her children to have the best things – but what was the best? Hadn’t Rodney as much right to decide what his children should have as she had? Hadn’t he really the prior right? Wasn’t it for a father to choose the life his children should live – the mother to care for their well-being and to follow out, loyally, the father’s idea of life? Life on a farm, Rodney had said, was a good life for children – Tony would certainly have enjoyed it. Rodney had seen to it that Tony should not be balked of the kind of life that he wanted. ‘I’m not very good,’ Rodney had said, ‘at forcing people to do things.’ But she, Joan, hadn’t scrupled to force Rodney … With a sudden, agonizing pang, Joan thought, But I love Rodney. I love Rodney. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him … And that, she saw, with a sudden revealing vision, was just what made it unforgivable. She loved Rodney and yet she had done this thing to him. If she had hated him it could be excused. If she had been indifferent to him, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. But she had loved him, and yet, loving him, she had taken from him his birthright – the right to choose his manner and way of life. And because of that, because she had used, unscrupulously, her woman’s weapons, the child in the cradle, the child that her body was bearing within it – she had taken something from him that he had never recovered. She had taken from him a portion of his manhood. Because, in his gentleness, he had not fought with her and conquered her, he was so much the less, for all his days on the earth, a man … She thought, Rodney … Rodney … She thought, And I can’t give it back to him … I can’t make it up to him … I can’t do anything … But I love him – I do love him … And I love Averil and Tony and Barbara … I always loved them … (But not enough – that was the answer – not enough –) She thought, Rodney – Rodney, is there nothing I can do? Nothing I can say? From you have I been absent in the Spring. Yes, she thought, for a long time … ever since the spring … the spring when we first loved each other … I’ve stayed where I was – Blanche was right – I’m the girl who left St Anne’s. Easy living, lazy thinking, pleased with myself, afraid of anything that might be painful … No courage … What can I do, she thought. What can I do? And she thought, I can go to him. I can say, ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me …’ Yes, I can say that … I can say, ‘Forgive me. I didn’t know. I simply didn’t know …’ Joan got up. Her legs felt weak and rather silly. She walked slowly and painfully – like an old woman. Walking – walking – one foot – then the other – Rodney, she thought, Rodney … How ill she felt – how weak … It was a long way – a very long way. The Indian came running out from the rest house to meet her, his face wreathed in smiles. He waved, gesticulated: ‘Good news, Memsahib, good news!’ She stared at him. ‘You see? Train come! Train at station. You leave by train tonight.’ The train? The train to take her to Rodney. (‘Forgive me, Rodney … forgive me …’) She heard herself laughing – wildly – unnaturally – the Indian stared and she pulled herself together. ‘The train has come,’ she said, ‘just at the right time …’ Chapter Eleven It was like a dream, Joan thought. Yes, it was like a dream.

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Yes, it was like a dream. Walking through the convolutions of barbed wire – the Arab boy carrying her suitcases and chattering shrilly in Turkish to a big, fat, suspicious looking man who was the Turkish station master. And there, waiting for her, the familiar sleeping car with the Wagon Lits man in his chocolate uniform leaning out of a window. Alep-Stamboul on the side of the coach. The link that bound this resting place in the desert to civilization! The polite greeting in French, her compartment thrown open, the bed already made with its sheets and its pillow. Civilization again … Outwardly Joan was once more the quiet, efficient traveller, the same Mrs Scudamore that had left Baghdad less than a week ago. Only Joan herself knew of that astonishing, that almost frightening change that lay behind the facade. The train, as she had said, had come just at the right moment. Just when those last barriers which she herself had so carefully erected had been swept away in a rising tide of fear and loneliness. She had had – as others had had in days gone by – a Vision. A vision of herself. And although she might seem now the commonplace English traveller, intent on the minor details of travel, her heart and mind were held in that abasement of self reproach that had come to her out there in the silence and the sunlight. She had answered almost mechanically the Indian’s comments and questions. ‘Why not Memsahib come back for lunch? Lunch all ready. Very nice lunch. It nearly five o’clock now. Too late lunch. Have tea?’ Yes, she said, she would have tea. ‘But where Memsahib go? I look out, not see Memsahib anywhere. Not know which way Memsahib gone.’ She had walked rather far, she said. Farther than usual. ‘That not safe. Not safe at all. Memsahib get lost. Not know which way to go. Perhaps walk wrong way.’ Yes, she said, she had lost her way for a time, but luckily she had walked in the right direction. She would have tea now, and then rest. What time did the train go? ‘Train go eight-thirty. Sometimes wait for convoy to come in. But no convoy come today. Wadi very bad – lot of water – rush through like that. Whoosh!’ Joan nodded. ‘Memsahib look very tired. Memsahib got fever, perhaps?’ No, Joan said, she hadn’t got fever – now. ‘Memsahib look different.’ Well, she thought, Memsahib was different. Perhaps the difference showed in her face. She went to her room and stared into the fly-stained mirror. Was there any difference? She looked, definitely, older. There were circles under her eyes. Her face was streaked with yellow dust and sweat. She washed her face, ran a comb through her hair, applied powder and lipstick and looked again. Yes, there was definitely a difference. Something had gone from the face that stared so earnestly back at her. Something – could it be smugness? What a horribly smug creature she had been. She felt still the keen disgust that had come to her out there – the self loathing – the new humility of spirit. Rodney, she thought, Rodney … Just his name, repeated softly in her thoughts … She held to it as a symbol of her purpose. To tell him everything, not to spare herself. That, she felt, was all that mattered. They would make together, so far as was possible at this late date, a new life. She would say, ‘I’m a fool and a failure. Teach me, out of your wisdom, out of your gentleness, the way to live.’ That, and forgiveness. For Rodney had a lot to forgive. And the wonderful thing about Rodney, she realized now, was that he had never hated her. No wonder that Rodney was loved so much – that his children adored him (even Averil, she thought, behind her antagonism, has never stopped loving him), that the servants would do anything to please him, that he had friends everywhere. Rodney, she thought, has never been unkind to anyone in his life … She sighed. She was very tired, and her body ached all over. She drank her tea and then lay down on her bed until it was time to have dinner and start for the train. She felt no restlessness now – no fear – no longing for occupation or distraction. There were no more lizards to pop out of holes and frighten her. She had met herself and recognized herself … Now she only wanted to rest, to lie with an empty, peaceful mind and with always, at the back of that mind, the dim picture of Rodney’s kind, dark face … And now she was in the train, had listened to the conductor’s voluble account of the accident on the line, had handed over to him her passport and her tickets and had received his assurance that he would wire to Stamboul for fresh reservations on the Simplon Orient Express. She also entrusted him with a wire to be sent from Alep to Rodney. Journey delayed all well love Joan. Rodney would receive it before her original schedule had expired. So that was all arranged and she had nothing more to do or to think about. She could relax like a tired child. Five days’ peace and quiet whilst the Taurus and Orient Express rushed westwards bringing her each day nearer to Rodney and forgiveness. They arrived at Alep early the following morning. Until then Joan had been the only passenger, since communications with Iraq were interrupted, but now the train was filled to overflowing. There had been delays, cancellations, confusions in the booking of sleepers. There was a lot of hoarse, excited talking, protests, arguments, disputes – all taking place in different languages. Joan was travelling first class and on the Taurus Express the first-class sleepers were the old double ones. The door slid back and a tall woman in black came in. Behind her the conductor was reaching down through the window where porters were handing him up cases. The compartment seemed full of cases – expensive cases stamped with coronets. The tall woman talked to the attendant in French. She directed him where to put things. At last he withdrew. The woman turned and smiled at Joan, an experienced cosmopolitan smile. ‘You are English,’ she said. She spoke with hardly a trace of accent. She had a long, pale, exquisitely mobile face and rather strange light grey eyes. She was, Joan thought, about forty-five. ‘I apologize for this early morning intrusion. It is an iniquitously uncivilized hour for a train to leave, and I disturb your repose. Also these carriages are very old-fashioned – on the new ones the compartments are single. But still –’ she smiled – and it was a very sweet and almost child- like smile – ‘we shall not get too badly on each other’s nerves. It is but two days to Stamboul, and I am not too difficult to live with. And if I smoke too much you will tell me. But now I leave you to sleep, I go to the restaurant car that they put on at this moment,’ she swayed slightly as a bump indicated the truth of her words, ‘and wait there to have breakfast. Again I say how sorry I am you have been disturbed.’ ‘Oh, that’s quite all right,’ Joan said. ‘One expects these things when travelling.’ ‘I see you are sympathetic – good – we shall get on together famously.’ She went out and as she drew the door to behind her, Joan heard her being greeted by her friends on the platform with cries of ‘Sasha – Sasha’ and a voluble burst of conversation in some language that Joan’s ear did not recognize. Joan herself was by now thoroughly awake. She felt rested after her night’s sleep. She always slept well in a train. She got up and proceeded to dress. The train drew out of Alep when she had nearly finished her toilet. When she was ready, she went out into the corridor, but first she took a quick look at the labels on her new companion’s suitcases. Princess Hohenbach Salm. In the restaurant car she found her new acquaintance eating breakfast and conversing with great animation to a small, stout Frenchman. The princess waved a greeting to her and indicated the seat at her side. ‘But you are energetic,’ she exclaimed. ‘If it was me, I should still lie and sleep. Now, Monsieur Baudier, go on with what you are telling me.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Now, Monsieur Baudier, go on with what you are telling me. It is most interesting.’ The princess talked in French to M. Baudier, in English to Joan, in fluent Turkish to the waiter, and occasionally across the aisle in equally fluent Italian to a rather melancholy looking officer. Presently the stout Frenchman finished his breakfast and withdrew, bowing politely. ‘What a good linguist you are,’ said Joan. The long, pale face smiled – a melancholy smile this time. ‘Yes – why not? I am Russian, you see. And I was married to a German, and I have lived much in Italy. I speak eight, nine languages – some well, some not so well. It is a pleasure, do you not think, to converse? All human beings are interesting, and one lives such a short time on this earth! One should exchange ideas – experiences. There is not enough love on the earth, that is what I say. Sasha, my friends say to me, there are people it is impossible to love – Turks, Armenians – Levantines. But I say no. I love them all. Garçon, l’addition.’ Joan blinked slightly for the last sentence had been practically joined to the one before it. The restaurant car attendant came hurrying up respectfully and it was borne in upon Joan that her travelling companion was a person of considerable importance. All that morning and afternoon they wound across the plains and then climbed slowly up into the Taurus. Sasha sat in her corner and read and smoked and occasionally made unexpected and sometimes embarrassing remarks. Joan found herself being fascinated by this strange woman who came from a different world and whose mental processes were so totally different from anything she herself had previously come across. The mingling of the impersonal and the intimate had an odd compelling charm for Joan. Sasha said to her suddenly: ‘You do not read – no? And you do nothing with your hands. You do not knit. That is not like most Englishwomen. And yet you look most English – yes, you look exactly English.’ Joan smiled. ‘I’ve actually nothing to read. I was held up at Tell Abu Hamid owing to the breakdown on the line, so I got through all the literature I had with me.’ ‘But you do not mind? You did not feel it necessary to get something at Alep. No, you are content just to sit and look out through the window at the mountains, and yet you do not see them – you look at something that you yourself see, is it not so? You experience in your mind some great emotion, or you have passed through one. You have a sorrow? Or a great happiness?’ Joan hesitated, with a slight frown. Sasha burst out laughing. ‘Ah but that is so English. You think it impertinent if I ask the questions that we Russians feel are so natural. It is curious that. If I were to ask you where you had been, to what hotels, and what scenery you had seen, and if you have children and what do they do, and have you travelled much, and do you know a good hairdresser in London – all that you would answer with pleasure. But if I ask something that comes into my mind – have you a sorrow, is your husband faithful – do you sleep much with men – what has been your most beautiful experience in life – are you conscious of the love of God? All those things would make you draw back – affronted – and yet they are much more interesting than the others, nicht wahr?’ ‘I suppose,’ said Joan slowly, ‘that we are very reserved as a nation.’ ‘Yes, yes. One cannot even say to an Englishwoman who has recently been married, are you going to have a baby? That is, one cannot say so across the table at luncheon. No, one has to take her aside, to whisper it. And yet if the baby is there, in its cradle, you can say, “How is your baby?”’ ‘Well – it is rather intimate, isn’t it?’ ‘No, I do not see it. I met the other day a friend I have not seen for many years, a Hungarian. Mitzi, I say to her, you are married – yes, several years now, you have not a baby, why not? She answers me she cannot think why not! For five years, she says she and her husband have tried hard – but oh! how hard they have tried! What, she asks, can she do about it? And, since we are at a luncheon party, everyone there makes a suggestion. Yes, and some of them very practical. Who knows, something may come of it.’ Joan looked stolidly unconvinced. Yet she felt, suddenly welling up in her, a strong impulse to open her own heart to this friendly, peculiar foreign creature. She wanted, badly, to share with someone the experience that she had been through. She needed, as it were, to assure herself of its reality … She said slowly, ‘It is true – I have been through rather an upsetting experience.’ ‘Ach, yes? What was it? A man?’ ‘No. No, certainly not.’ ‘I am glad. It is so often a man – and really in the end it becomes a little boring.’ ‘I was all alone – at the rest house at Tell Abu Hamid – a horrible place – all flies and tins and rolls of barbed wire, and very gloomy and dark inside.’ ‘That is necessary because of the heat in summer, but I know what you mean.’ ‘I had no one to talk to – and I soon finished my books – and I got – I got into a very peculiar state.’ ‘Yes, yes, that might well be so. It is interesting what you tell me. Go on.’ ‘I began to find out things – about myself. Things that I had never known before. Or rather things that I had known, but had never been willing to recognize. I can’t quite explain to you –’ ‘Oh, but you can. It is quite easy. I shall understand.’ Sasha’s interest was so natural, so unassumed, that Joan found herself talking with an astonishing lack of self consciousness. Since to Sasha to talk of one’s feelings and one’s intimate relationships was perfectly natural, it began to seem natural to Joan also. She began to talk with less hesitation, describing her uneasiness, her fears, and her final panic. ‘I daresay it will seem absurd to you – but I felt that I was completely lost – alone – that God himself had forsaken me –’ ‘Yes, one has felt that – I have felt it myself. It is very dark, very terrible …’ ‘It was not dark – it was light – blinding light – there was no shelter – no cover – no shadow.’ ‘We mean the same thing, though. For you it was light that was terrible, because you had hidden so long under cover and in deep shade. But for me it was darkness, not seeing my way, being lost in the night. But the agony is the same – it is the knowledge of one’s own nothingness and of being cut off from the love of God.’ Joan said slowly, ‘And then – it happened – like a miracle. I saw everything. Myself – and what I had been. All my silly pretences and shams fell away. It was like – it was like being born again …’ She looked anxiously at the other woman. Sasha bent her head. ‘And I knew what I had to do. I had to go home and start again. Build up a new life … from the beginning …’ There was a silence. Sasha was looking at Joan thoughtfully and something in her expression puzzled Joan. She said, with a slight flush: ‘Oh, I daresay it sounds very melodramatic and farfetched –’ Sasha interrupted her. ‘No, no, you do not understand me. Your experience was real – it has happened to many – to St Paul – to others of the Saints of God – and to ordinary mortals and sinners. It is conversion. It is vision. It is the soul knowing its own bitterness. Yes, it is real all that – it is as real as eating your dinner or brushing your teeth. But I wonder – all the same, I wonder …’ ‘I feel I’ve been so unkind – done harm to – to someone I love –’ ‘Yes, yes, you have remorse.’ ‘And I can hardly wait to get there – to get home, I mean. There is so much I want to say – to tell him.’ ‘To tell whom? Your husband?’ ‘Yes. He has been so kind – so patient always. But he has not been happy.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

He has been so kind – so patient always. But he has not been happy. I have not made him happy.’ ‘And you think you will be better able to make him happy now?’ ‘We can at least have an explanation. He can know how sorry I am. He can help me to – oh, what shall I say?’ The words of the Communion service flashed through her mind. ‘To lead a new life from now on.’ Sasha said gravely, ‘That is what the Saints of God were able to do.’ Joan stared. ‘But I – I am not a saint.’ ‘No. That is what I meant.’ Sasha paused, then said with a slight change of tone, ‘Forgive me that I should have said that. And perhaps it is not true.’ Joan looked slightly bewildered. Sasha lit another cigarette and began to smoke violently, staring out of the window. ‘I don’t know,’ said Joan uncertainly, ‘why I should tell you all this –’ ‘But naturally because you wish to tell someone – you wish to speak of it – it is in your mind and you want to talk of it, that is natural enough.’ ‘I’m usually very reserved.’ Sasha looked amused. ‘And so proud of it like all English people. Oh, you are a very curious race – but very curious. So shamefaced, so embarrassed by your virtues, so ready to admit, to boast of your deficiencies.’ ‘I think you are exaggerating slightly,’ said Joan stiffly. She felt suddenly very British, very far away from the exotic, pale-faced woman in the opposite corner of the carriage, the woman to whom, a minute or two previously, she had confided a most intimate personal experience. Joan said in a conventional voice, ‘Are you going through on the Simplon Orient?’ ‘No, I stay a night in Stamboul and then I go to Vienna.’ She added carelessly, ‘It is possible that I shall die there, but perhaps not.’ ‘Do you mean –’ Joan hesitated, bewildered, ‘that you’ve had a premonition?’ ‘Ah no,’ Sasha burst out laughing. ‘No, it is not like that! It is an operation I am going to have there. A very serious operation. Not very often is it that it succeeds. But they are good surgeons in Vienna. This one to whom I am going – he is very clever – a Jew. I have always said it would be stupid to annihilate all the Jews in Europe. They are clever doctors and surgeons, yes, and they are clever artistically too.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Joan. ‘I am so sorry.’ ‘Because I may be going to die? But what does it matter? One has to die some time. And I may not die. I have the idea, if I live, that I will enter a convent I know of – a very strict order. One never speaks – it is perpetual meditation and prayer.’ Joan’s imagination failed to conceive of a Sasha perpetually silent and meditating. Sasha went on gravely, ‘There will be much prayer needed soon – when the war comes.’ ‘ War?’ Joan stared. Sasha nodded her head. ‘But yes, certainly war is coming. Next year, or the year after.’ ‘Really,’ said Joan. ‘I think you are mistaken.’ ‘No, no. I have friends who are very well informed and they have told me so. It is all decided.’ ‘But war where – against whom?’ ‘War everywhere. Every nation will be drawn in. My friends think that Germany will win quite soon, but I – I do not agree. Unless they can win very very quickly indeed. You see, I know many English and Americans and I know what they are like.’ ‘Surely,’ said Joan, ‘nobody really wants war.’ She spoke incredulously. ‘For what else does the Hitler Youth movement exist?’ Joan said earnestly, ‘But I have friends who have been in Germany a good deal, and they think that there is a lot to be said for the Nazi movement.’ ‘Oh la la,’ cried Sasha. ‘See if they say that in three years’ time.’ Then she leaned forward as the train drew slowly to a standstill. ‘See, we have come to the Cilician Gates. It is beautiful, is it not? Let us get out.’ They got out of the train and stood looking down through the great gap in the mountain chain to the blue, hazy plains beneath … It was close on sunset and the air was exquisitely cool and still. Joan thought: How beautiful … She wished Rodney was here to see it with her. Chapter Twelve Victoria … Joan felt her heart beating with sudden excitement. It was good to be home. She felt, just for a moment, as though she had never been away. England, her own country. Nice English porters … A not so nice, but very English, foggy day! Not romantic, not beautiful, just dear old Victoria station just the same as ever, looking just the same, smelling just the same! Oh, thought Joan, I’m glad to be back. Such a long, weary journey, across Turkey and Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and Italy and France. Customs officers, and passport examinations. All the different uniforms, all the different languages. She was tired – yes, definitely tired – of foreigners. Even that extraordinary Russian woman who had travelled with her from Alep to Stamboul had got rather tiresome in the end. She had been interesting – indeed quite exciting – to begin with, simply because she was so different. But by the time they had been running down beside the Sea of Marmora to Haidar Pacha, Joan had been definitely looking forward to their parting. For one thing it was embarrassing to remember how freely, she, Joan, had talked about her own private affairs to a complete stranger. And for another – well, it was difficult to put it into words – but something about her had made Joan feel definitely provincial. Not a very pleasant feeling. It had been no good to say to herself that she hoped she, Joan, was as good as anybody! She didn’t really think so. She felt uneasily conscious that Sasha, for all her friendliness, was an aristocrat whilst she herself was middle class, the unimportant wife of a country solicitor. Very stupid, of course, to feel like that … But anyway all that was over now. She was home again, back on her native soil. There was no one to meet her for she had sent no further wire to Rodney to tell him when she was arriving. She had had a strong feeling that she wanted to meet Rodney in their own house. She wanted to be able to start straight away on her confession without pause or delay. It would be easier, so she thought. You couldn’t very well ask a surprised husband for forgiveness on the platform at Victoria! Certainly not on the arrival platform, with its hurrying mob of people, and the Customs sheds at the end. No, she would spend the night quietly at the Grosvenor and go down to Crayminster tomorrow. Should she, she wondered, try and see Averil first? She could ring Averil up from the hotel. Yes, she decided. She might do that. She had only hand luggage with her and as it had already been examined at Dover, she was able to go with her porter straight to the hotel. She had a bath and dressed and then rang up Averil. Fortunately Averil was at home. ‘Mother? I’d no idea you were back.’ ‘I arrived this afternoon.’ ‘Is Father up in London?’ ‘No. I didn’t tell him when I was arriving. He might have come up to meet me – and that would be a pity if he’s busy – tiring for him.’ She thought that she heard a faint note of surprise in Averil’s voice as she said: ‘Yes – I think you were right. He’s been very busy lately.’ ‘Have you seen much of him?’ ‘No. He was up in London for the day about three weeks ago and we had lunch together. What about this evening, Mother? Would you like to come out and have dinner somewhere?’ ‘I’d rather you came here, darling, if you don’t mind. I’m a little tired with travelling.’ ‘I expect you must be. All right, I’ll come round.’ ‘Won’t Edward come with you?’ ‘He’s got a business dinner tonight.’ Joan put down the receiver. Her heart was beating a little faster than usual. She thought, Averil – my Averil … How cool and liquid Averil’s voice was … calm, detached, impersonal. Half an hour later they telephoned up that Mrs Harrison-Wilmott was there and Joan went down. Mother and daughter greeted each other with English reserve.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Mother and daughter greeted each other with English reserve. Averil looked well, Joan thought. She was not quite so thin. Joan felt a faint thrill of pride as she went with her daughter into the dining-room. Averil was really very lovely, so delicate and distinguished looking. They sat down at a table and Joan got a momentary shock as she met her daughter’s eyes. They were so cool and uninterested … Averil, like Victoria Station, had not changed. It’s I who have changed, thought Joan, but Averil doesn’t know that. Averil asked about Barbara and about Baghdad. Joan recounted various incidents of her journey home. Somehow or other, their talk was rather difficult. It did not seem to flow. Averil’s inquiries after Barbara were almost perfunctory. It really seemed as though she had an inkling that more pertinent questions might be indiscreet. But Averil couldn’t know anything of the truth. It was just her usual delicate, incurious attitude. The truth, Joan thought suddenly, how do I know it is the truth? Mightn’t it, just possibly, be all imagination on her part? After all, there was no concrete evidence … She rejected the idea, but the mere passing of it through her head had given her a shock. Supposing she was one of those people who imagined things … Averil was saying in her cool voice, ‘Edward has got it into his head that there’s bound to be war with Germany one day.’ Joan roused herself. ‘That’s what a woman on the train said. She seemed quite certain about it. She was rather an important person, and she really seemed to know what she was talking about. I can’t believe it. Hitler would never dare to go to war.’ Averil said thoughtfully, ‘Oh, I don’t know …’ ‘Nobody wants war, darling.’ ‘Well, people sometimes get what they don’t want.’ Joan said decidedly, ‘I think all this talk of it is very dangerous. It puts ideas into people’s heads.’ Averil smiled. They continued to talk in rather a desultory fashion. After dinner, Joan yawned, and Averil said she wouldn’t stay and keep her up – she must be tired. Joan said, Yes, she was rather tired. On the following day Joan did a little shopping in the morning and caught the 2.30 train to Crayminster. That would get her there just after four o’clock. She would be waiting for Rodney when he came home at tea time from the office … She looked out of the carriage window with appreciation. Nothing much in the way of scenery to see this time of year – bare trees, a faint, misty rain falling – but how natural, how homelike. Baghdad with its crowded bazaars, its brilliant blue domed and golden mosques, was far away – unreal – it might never have happened. That long, fantastic journey, the plains of Anatolia, the snows and mountain scenery of the Taurus, the high, bare plains – the long descent through mountain gorges to the Bosphorus, Stamboul with its minarets, the funny ox wagons of the Balkans – Italy with the blue Adriatic Sea glistening as they left Trieste – Switzerland and the Alps in the darkening light – a panorama of different sights and scenes – and all ending in this – this journey home through the quiet winter countryside … I might never have been away, thought Joan. I might never have been away … She felt confused, unable to co-ordinate her thoughts clearly. Seeing Averil last night had upset her – Averil’s cool eyes looking at her, calm, incurious. Averil, she thought, hadn’t seen any difference in her. Well, after all, why should Averil see a difference? It wasn’t her physical appearance that had changed. She said very softly to herself, ‘ Rodney …’ The glow came back – the sorrow – the yearning for love and forgiveness … She thought, It’s all true … I am beginning a new life … She took a taxi up from the station. Agnes opened the door and displayed a flattering surprise and pleasure. The Master, Agnes said, would be pleased. Joan went up to her bedroom, took off her hat, and came down again. The room looked a little bare, but that was because it had no flowers in it. I must cut some laurel tomorrow, she thought, and get some carnations from the shop at the corner. She walked about the room feeling nervous and excited. Should she tell Rodney what she had guessed about Barbara? Supposing that, after all – Of course it wasn’t true! She had imagined the whole thing. Imagined it all because of what that stupid woman Blanche Haggard – no, Blanche Donovan – had said. Really, Blanche had looked too terrible – so old and coarse. Joan put her hand to her head. She felt as though, within her brain, was a kaleidoscope. She had had a kaleidoscope as a child and loved it, had held her breath as all the coloured pieces whirled and revolved, before settling down into a pattern … What had been the matter with her? That horrible rest house place and that very odd experience she had had in the desert … She had imagined all sorts of unpleasant things – that her children didn’t like her – that Rodney had loved Leslie Sherston (of course he hadn’t – what an idea! Poor Leslie). And she had even been regretful because she had persuaded Rodney out of that extraordinary fancy of his to take up farming. Really, she had been very sensible and far-seeing … Oh dear, why was she so confused? All those things she had been thinking and believing – such unpleasant things … Were they actually true? Or weren’t they? She didn’t want them to be true. She’d got to decide – she’d got to decide … What had she got to decide? The sun – thought Joan – the sun was very hot. The sun does give you hallucinations … Running in the desert … falling on her hands and knees … praying … Was that real? Or was this? Madness – absolute madness the things she had been believing. How comfortable, how pleasant to come home to England and feel you had never been away. That everything was just the same as you had always thought it was … And of course everything was just the same. A kaleidoscope whirling … whirling … Settling presently into one pattern or the other. Rodney, forgive me – I didn’t know … Rodney, here I am. I’ve come home! Which pattern? Which? She’d got to choose. She heard the sound of the front door opening – a sound she knew so well – so very well … Rodney was coming. Which pattern? Which pattern? Quick! The door opened. Rodney came in. He stopped, surprised. Joan came quickly forward. She didn’t look at once at his face. Give him a moment, she thought, give him a moment … Then she said gaily, ‘Here I am, Rodney … I’ve come home … ’ Epilogue Rodney Scudamore sat in the small, low-backed chair while his wife poured out tea, and clanked the teaspoons, and chattered brightly about how nice it was to be home again and how delightful it was to find everything exactly the same and that Rodney wouldn’t believe how wonderful it was to be back in England again, and back in Crayminster, and back in her own home! On the windowpane a big bluebottle, deceived by the unusual warmth of the early November day, buzzed importantly up and down the glass. Buzz, buzz, buzz, went the bluebottle. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle went Joan Scudamore’s voice. Rodney sat smiling and nodding his head. Noises, he thought, noises … Meaning everything to some people, and nothing at all to others. He had been mistaken, he decided, in thinking that there was something wrong with Joan when she first arrived. There was nothing wrong with Joan. She was just the same as usual. Everything was just the same as usual. Presently Joan went upstairs to see to her unpacking, and Rodney went across the hall to his study where he had brought some work home from the office. But first he unlocked the small top right-hand drawer of his desk and took out Barbara’s letter. It had come by Air Mail and had been sent off a few days before Joan’s departure from Baghdad. It was a long closely written letter and he knew it now almost by heart. Nevertheless, he read it through again, dwelling a little on the last page. – So now I have told you everything, darling Dads. I daresay you guessed most of it already. You needn’t worry about me.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

You needn’t worry about me. I do realize just what a criminal, wicked little fool I have been. Remember, Mother knows nothing. It wasn’t too easy keeping it all from her, but Dr McQueen played up like a trump and William was wonderful. I really don’t know what I should have done without him – he was always there, ready to fend Mother off, if things got difficult. I felt pretty desperate when she wired she was coming out. I know you must have tried to stop her, darling, and that she just wouldn’t be stopped – and I suppose it was really rather sweet of her in a way – only of course she had to rearrange our whole lives for us and it was simply maddening, and I felt too weak to struggle much! I’m only just beginning to feel that Mopsy is my own again! She is sweet. I wish you could see her. Did you like us when we were babies, or only later? Darling Dads, I’m so glad I had you for a father. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right now. Your loving Babs. Rodney hesitated a moment, holding the letter. He would have liked to have kept it. It meant a great deal to him – that written declaration of his daughter’s faith and trust in him. But in the exercise of his profession he had seen, only too often, the dangers of kept letters. If he were to die suddenly Joan would go through his papers and come across it, and it would cause her needless pain. No need for her to be hurt and dismayed. Let her remain happy and secure in the bright, confident world that she had made for herself. He went across the room and dropped Barbara’s letter into the fire. Yes, he thought, she would be all right now. They would all be all right. It was for Barbara he had feared most – with her unbalanced deeply emotional temperament. Well, the crisis had come and she had escaped, not unscathed, but alive. And already she was realizing that Mopsy and Bill were truly her world. A good fellow, Bill Wray. Rodney hoped that he hadn’t suffered too much. Yes, Barbara would be all right. And Tony was all right in his orange groves in Rhodesia – a long way away, but all right – and that young wife of his sounded the right kind of girl. Nothing had ever hurt Tony much – perhaps it never would. He had that sunny type of mind. And Averil was all right too. As always, when he thought of Averil, it was pride he felt, not pity. Averil with her dry legal mind, and her passion for understatement. Averil, with her cool, sarcastic tongue. So rocklike, so staunch, so strangely unlike the name they had given her. He had fought Averil, fought her and vanquished her with the only weapons her disdainful mind would recognize, weapons that he himself had found it distasteful to use. Cold reasons, logical reasons, pitiless reasons – she had accepted those. But had she forgiven him? He thought not. But it didn’t matter. If he had destroyed her love for him, he had retained and enhanced her respect – and in the end, he thought, to a mind like hers and to her flawless rectitude, it is respect that counts. On the eve of her wedding day, speaking to his best-loved child across the great gulf that now separated them, he had said: ‘I hope you will be happy.’ And she had answered quietly, ‘I shall try to be happy.’ That was Averil – no heroics, no dwelling on the past – no self-pity. A disciplined acceptance of life – and the ability to live it without help from others. He thought, They’re out of my hands now, the three of them. Rodney pushed back the papers on his desk and came over to sit in the chair on the right of the fireplace. He took with him the Massingham lease and sighing slightly started to read it over. ‘The Landlord lets and the tenant takes all that farmhouse buildings lands and hereditaments situate at …’ He read on and turned the page. ‘not to take more than two white straw crops of corn from any part of the arable lands without a summer fallow (a crop of turnips and rape sown on land well cleaned and manured and eaten on such land with sheep to be considered equivalent to a fallow) and …’ His hand relaxed and his eyes wandered to the empty chair opposite. That was where Leslie had sat when he argued with her about the children and the undesirability of their coming in contact with Sherston. She ought, he had said, to consider the children. She had considered them, she said – and after all, he was their father. A father who had been in prison, he said – an ex-jailbird – public opinion – ostracism – cutting them off from their normal social existence – penalizing them unfairly. She ought, he said, to think of all that. Children, he said, should not have their youth clouded. They should start fair. And she had said, ‘That’s just it. He is their father. It isn’t so much that they belong to him as that he belongs to them. I can wish, of course, that they’d had a different kind of father – but it isn’t so.’ And she had said, ‘What kind of a start in life would it be – to begin by running away from what’s there?’ Well, he saw her idea, of course. But it didn’t agree with his ideas. He’d always wanted to give his children the best of things – indeed, that was what he and Joan had done. The best schools, the sunniest rooms in the house – they’d practised small economies themselves to make that possible. But in their case there had never been any moral problem. There had been no disgrace, no dark shadow, no failure, despair and anguish, no question of that kind when it would have been necessary to say, ‘Shall we shield them? Or let them share?’ And it was Leslie’s idea, he saw, that they should share. She, although she loved them, would not shrink from placing a portion of her burden on those small, untrained backs. Not selfishly, not to ease her own load, but because she did not want to deny them even the smallest, most unendurable part of reality. Well, he thought that she was wrong. But he admitted, as he had always admitted, her courage. It went beyond courage for herself. She had courage for those she loved. She remembered Joan saying that autumn day as he went to the office: ‘Courage? Oh yes, but courage isn’t everything?’ And he had said, ‘Isn’t it?’ Leslie sitting there in his chair, with her left eyebrow going slightly up and her right eyebrow down and with the little twist at the right-hand corner of her mouth and her head against the faded blue cushion that made her hair look – somehow – green. He remembered his voice, slightly surprised, saying: ‘Your hair’s not brown. It’s green.’ It was the only personal thing he’d ever said to her. He’d never thought, very much, what she looked like. Tired, he knew, and ill – and yet, withal, strong – yes, physically strong. He had thought once, incongruously, She could sling a sack of potatoes over her shoulder just like a man. Not a very romantic thought and there wasn’t, really, anything very romantic that he could remember about her. The right shoulder higher than the left, the left eyebrow going up and the right down, the little twist at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, the brown hair that looked green against a faded blue cushion. Not much, he thought, for love to feed on. And what was love? In Heaven’s name, what was love? The peace and content that he’d felt to see her sitting there, in his chair, her head green against the blue cushion. The way she had said suddenly, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about Copernicus –’ Copernicus? Why in Heaven’s name, Copernicus? A monk with an idea – with a vision of a differently shaped world – and who was cunning and adroit enough to compromise with the powers of the world and to write his faith in such a form as would pass muster. Why should Leslie, with her husband in prison, and her living to earn and her children to worry about, sit there running a hand through her hair and say, ‘I’ve been thinking about Copernicus’?

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Yet because of that, for always, at the mention of Copernicus his own heart would miss a beat, and up there, on the wall, he had hung an old engraving of the monk, to say to him, ‘ Leslie.’ He thought, I should at least have told her that I loved her. I might have said so – once. But had there been any need? That day on Asheldown – sitting there in the October sunlight. He and she together – together and apart. The agony and the desperate longing. Four feet of space between them – four feet because there couldn’t safely be less. She had understood that. She must have understood that. He thought confusedly, That space between us – like an electric field – charged with longing. They had not looked at each other. He had looked down over the ploughland and the farm, with the distant faint sound of the tractor and the pale purple of the upturned earth. And Leslie had looked beyond the farmland to the woods. Like two people gazing at a promised land to which they could not enter in. He thought, I should have told her that I loved her then. But neither of them had said anything – except just that once when Leslie had murmured, ‘ And thy eternal summer shall not fade.’ Just that. One hackneyed line of quotation. And he didn’t even know what she had meant by it. Or perhaps he did. Yes, perhaps he did. The chair cushion had faded. And Leslie’s face. He couldn’t remember her face clearly, only that queer twist of the mouth. And yet for the last six weeks she had sat there every day and talked to him. Just fantasy, of course. He had invented a pseudo Leslie, and put her there in the chair, and put words into her mouth. He had made her say what he wanted her to say, and she had been obedient, but her mouth had curved upwards at the side as though she had laughed at what he was doing to her. It had been, he thought, a very happy six weeks. He’d been able to see Watkins and Mills and there had been that jolly evening with Hargrave Taylor – just a few friends and not too many of them. That pleasant tramp across the hills on Sunday. The servants had given him very good meals and he’d eaten them as slowly as he liked, with a book propped up against the soda water syphon. Some work to finish sometimes after dinner, and then a pipe and finally, just in case he might feel lonely, false Leslie arranged in her chair to keep him company. False Leslie, yes, but hadn’t there been, somewhere, not very far away, real Leslie? And thy eternal summer shall not fade. He looked down again at the lease. ‘… and shall in all respects cultivate the said farm in due and regular course of good husbandry.’ He thought wonderingly, I’m really quite a good lawyer. And then, without wonder (and without much interest), ‘ I’m successful.’ Farming, he thought, was a difficult, heartbreaking business. ‘My God, though,’ he thought, ‘I’m tired.’ He hadn’t felt so tired for a long time. The door opened and Joan came in. ‘Oh, Rodney – you can’t read that without the light on.’ She rustled across behind him and turned the light on. He smiled and thanked her. ‘You’re so stupid, darling, to sit here ruining your eyes when all you’ve got to do is just to turn a switch.’ She added affectionately as she sat down, ‘I don’t know what you’d do without me.’ ‘Get into all sort of bad habits.’ His smile was teasing, kindly. ‘Do you remember,’ Joan went on, ‘when you suddenly got an idea you wanted to turn down Uncle Henry’s offer and take up farming instead?’ ‘Yes, I remember.’ ‘Aren’t you glad now I wouldn’t let you?’ He looked at her, admiring her eager competence, the youthful poise of her neck, her smooth, pretty, unlined face. Cheerful, confident, affectionate. He thought, Joan’s been a very good wife to me. He said quietly, ‘Yes, I’m glad.’ Joan said, ‘We all get impractical ideas sometimes.’ ‘Even you?’ He said it teasingly, but was surprised to see her frown. An expression passed over her face like a ripple across smooth water. ‘One gets nervy sometimes – morbid.’ He was still more surprised. He could not imagine Joan nervy or morbid. Changing the subject he said: ‘You know I quite envy you your journey out East.’ ‘Yes, it was interesting. But I shouldn’t like to have to live in a place like Baghdad.’ Rodney said thoughtfully, ‘I’d like to know what the desert is like. It must be rather wonderful – emptiness and a clear strong light. It’s the idea of the light that fascinates me. To see clearly –’ Joan interrupted him. She said vehemently, ‘It’s hateful – hateful – just arid nothingness!’ She looked round the room with a sharp, nervous glance. Rather, he thought, like an animal that wants to escape. Her brow cleared. She said, ‘That cushion’s dreadfully old and faded. I must get a new one for that chair.’ He made a sharp instinctive gesture, then checked himself. After all, why not? A cushion was faded. Leslie Adeline Sherston was in the churchyard under a marble slab. The firm of Alderman, Scudamore and Witney was forging ahead. Farmer Hoddesdon was trying to raise another mortgage. Joan was walking round the room, testing a ledge for dust, replacing a book in the bookshelf, moving the ornaments on the mantelpiece. It was true that in the last six weeks the room had acquired an untidy, shabby appearance. Rodney murmured to himself softly, ‘The holidays are over.’ ‘What?’ she whirled round on him. ‘What did you say?’ He blinked at her disarmingly. ‘Did I say anything?’ ‘I thought you said “the holidays are over.” You must have dropped off and been dreaming – about the children going back to school.’ ‘Yes,’ said Rodney, ‘I must have been dreaming.’ She stood looking at him doubtfully. Then she straightened a picture on the wall. ‘What’s this? It’s new, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes. I picked it up at Hartley’s sale.’ ‘Oh,’ Joan eyed it doubtfully. ‘Copernicus? Is it valuable?’ ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Rodney. He repeated thoughtfully, ‘I’ve no idea at all …’ What was valuable, what was not? Was there such a thing as remembrance? ‘ You know, I’ve been thinking about Copernicus … ’ Leslie, with her shifty jail bird of a husband – drunkenness, poverty, illness, death. ‘ Poor Mrs Sherston, such a sad life.’ But, he thought, Leslie wasn’t sad. She walked through disillusionment and poverty and illness like a man walks through bogs and over plough and across rivers, cheerfully and impatiently, to get to wherever it is he is going … He looked thoughtfully at his wife out of tired but kindly eyes. So bright and efficient and busy, so pleased and successful. He thought, She doesn’t look a day over twenty-eight. And suddenly a vast upwelling rush of pity swept over him. He said with intense feeling, ‘Poor little Joan.’ She stared at him. She said, ‘Why poor? And I’m not little.’ He said in his old teasing voice, ‘ Here am I, little Joan. If nobody’s with me I’m all alone.’ She came to him with a sudden rush, almost breathing, she said: ‘I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I’ve got you.’ ‘Yes,’ said Rodney. ‘You’ve got me.’ But he knew as he said it that it wasn’t true. He thought: You are alone and you always will be. But, please God, you’ll never know it.

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

But, please God, you’ll never know it. About the Author Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written during the First World War and introduced us to Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective with the ‘Little Grey Cells’, who was destined to reappear in nearly 100 different novels or short stories over the next 50 years. Agatha also created the elderly crime-solver, Miss Marple, as well as more than 2,000 colourful characters across her 80 crime books. Agatha Christie’s books have sold over one billion copies in the English language and another billion in more than 100 countries, making her the best- selling novelist in history. Her stories have transcended the printed page, also finding success as adaptations for stage, films, television, radio, audiobooks, comic strips and interactive games, and her many stage plays have enjoyed critical acclaim – the most famous, The Mousetrap, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. It was her sharp observations of people’s ambitions, relationships and conflicts that added life and sparkle to her ingenious detective stories. When she turned this understanding of human nature away from the crime genre, writing anonymously as Mary Westmacott to prove to herself that her books could sell on merit rather than her fame alone, she created bittersweet novels, love stories with a jagged edge, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work. Also by the Author THE MARY WESTMACOTT COLLECTION Giant’s Bread Unfinished Portrait Absent in the Spring The Rose and the Yew Tree A Daughter’s a Daughter The Burden Copyright Harper Fiction An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First Published by HarperCollins Publishers 1997 This edition 2009 First published in Great Britain by Collins 1944 Copyright © Agatha Christie Mallowan 1944 www.agathachristie.com Source ISBN: 9780006499473 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN 9780006499473 Ebook Edition © NOV 2013 ISBN 9780007534982 Version 2013-10-11 Giant’s Bread A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL Agatha Christie ‘A satisfying novel.’ New York Times Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life. His sheltered childhood in the home he loves has not prepared Vernon for the harsh reality of his adult years, and in order to write the great masterpiece of his life, he has to make a crucial decision with no time left to count the cost … ‘When Miss Westmacott reaches the world of music, her book suddenly comes alive. The chapters in which Jane appears are worth the rest of the book put together.’ New Statesman ISBN 978–0–00–649945–9 The Rose and the Yew Tree A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL Agatha Christie ‘Quiet and intelligent, with class distinctions which motivate its characters.’ Books Everyone expected Isabella Charteris, beautiful, sheltered and aristocratic, to marry her cousin Rupert when he came back from the War. It would have been such a suitable marriage. How strange then that John Gabriel, an ambitious and ruthless war hero, should appear in her life. For Isabella, the price of love would mean abandoning her dreams of home and happiness forever. For Gabriel, it would destroy his chance of a career and all his ambitions … ‘Miss Westmacott writes crisply and is always lucid … much material has been skilfully compressed.’ Times Literary Supplement ISBN 978–0–00–649948–0 A Daughter’s a Daughter A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL Agatha Christie ‘These books are dramatic, and concentrate on the solution to situations which arise out of the high tensions in life.’ Max Mallowan Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode their relationship as each seeks relief in different directions. Are mother and daughter destined to be enemies for life or will their underlying love for each other finally win through? ‘Miss Westmacott shows narrative talent – I should expect her books to be very popular.’ Observer ISBN 978–0–00–649949–7 The Burden A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL Agatha Christie ‘Sometimes you haven’t the right currency. And then someone else has to pay …’ Agatha Christie Laura Franklin bitterly resented the arrival of her younger sister Shirley, an enchanting baby loved by all the family. But Laura’s emotions towards her sister changed dramatically one night, when she vowed to protect her with all her strength and love. While Shirley longs for freedom and romance, Laura has to learn that loving can never be a one-sided affair, and the burden of her love for her sister has a dramatic effect on both their lives. A story of consequences when love turns to obsession … ‘Very much the art of story-telling that would be at home in the woman’s magazine.’ Times Literary Supplement ISBN 978–0–00–649950–3 Come, Tell Me How You Live AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MEMOIR Agatha Christie ‘Perfectly delightful … colourful, lively, occasionally touching and thought- provoking.’ Books & Bookmen Agatha Christie was already well known as a crime writer when she accompanied her husband, Max Mallowan, to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s. She took enormous interest in all his excavations, and when friends asked what her strange life was like, she decided to answer their questions in this delightful book. First published in 1946, Come, Tell Me How You Live gives a charming picture of Agatha Christie herself, while also giving insight into some of her most popular novels, including Murder in Mesopotamia and Appointment with Death. It is, as Jacquetta Hawkes concludes in her introduction, ‘a pure pleasure to read’. ‘Good and enjoyable … she has a delightfully light touch.’ Country Life ISBN 978–0–00–653114–2

absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub

Agatha Christie After the Funeral A Hercule Poirot Mystery For James in memory of happy days at Abney Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Chapter Twenty-two Chapter Twenty-three Chapter Twenty-four Chapter Twenty-five About the Author The Agatha Christie Collection Credits Copyright About the Publisher One I Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room, pulling up the blinds. Now and then he peered with screwed-up rheumy eyes through the windows. Soon they would be coming back from the funeral. He shuffled along a little faster. There were so many windows. Enderby Hall was a vast Victorian house built in the Gothic style. In every room the curtains were of rich faded brocade or velvet. Some of the walls were still hung with faded silk. In the green drawing room, the old butler glanced up at the portrait above the mantelpiece of old Cornelius Abernethie for whom Enderby Hall had been built. Cornelius Abernethie’s brown beard stuck forward aggressively, his hand rested on a terrestrial globe, whether by desire of the sitter, or as a symbolic conceit on the part of the artist, no one could tell. A very forceful-looking gentleman, so old Lanscombe had always thought, and was glad that he himself had never known him personally. Mr. Richard had been his gentleman. A good master, Mr. Richard. And taken very sudden, he’d been, though of course the doctor had been attending him for some little time. Ah, but the master had never recovered from the shock of young Mr. Mortimer’s death. The old man shook his head as he hurried through a connecting door into the White Boudoir. Terrible, that had been, a real catastrophe. Such a fine upstanding young gentleman, so strong and healthy. You’d never have thought such a thing likely to happen to him. Pitiful, it had been, quite pitiful. And Mr. Gordon killed in the war. One thing on top of another. That was the way things went nowadays. Too much for the master, it had been. And yet he’d seemed almost himself a week ago. The third blind in the White Boudoir refused to go up as it should. It went up a little way and stuck. The springs were weak—that’s what it was—very old, these blinds were, like everything else in the house. And you couldn’t get these old things mended nowadays. Too old-fashioned, that’s what they’d say, shaking their heads in that silly superior way—as if the old things weren’t a great deal better than the new ones! He could tell them that! Gimcrack, half the new stuff was—came to pieces in your hands. The material wasn’t good, or the craftsmanship either. Oh yes, he could tell them. Couldn’t do anything about this blind unless he got the steps. He didn’t like climbing up the steps much, these days, made him come over giddy. Anyway, he’d leave the blind for now. It didn’t matter, since the White Boudoir didn’t face the front of the house where it would be seen as the cars came back from the funeral—and it wasn’t as though the room was ever used nowadays. It was a lady’s room, this, and there hadn’t been a lady at Enderby for a long time now. A pity Mr. Mortimer hadn’t married. Always going off to Norway for fishing and to Scotland for shooting and to Switzerland for those winter sports, instead of marrying some nice young lady and settling down at home with children running about the house. It was a long time since there had been any children in the house. And Lanscombe’s mind went ranging back to a time that stood out clearly and distinctly—much more distinctly than the last twenty years or so, which were all blurred and confused and he couldn’t really remember who had come and gone or indeed what they looked like. But he could remember the old days well enough. More like a father to those young brothers and sisters of his, Mr. Richard had been. Twenty-four when his father had died, and he’d pitched in right away to the business, going off every day as punctual as clockwork, and keeping the house running and everything as lavish as it could be. A very happy household with all those young ladies and gentlemen growing up. Fights and quarrels now and again, of course, and those governesses had had a bad time of it! Poor- spirited creatures, governesses, Lanscombe had always despised them. Very spirited the young ladies had been. Miss Geraldine in particular. Miss Cora, too, although she was so much younger. And now Mr. Leo was dead, and Miss Laura gone too. And Mr. Timothy such a sad invalid. And Miss Geraldine dying somewhere abroad. And Mr. Gordon killed in the war. Although he was the eldest, Mr. Richard himself turned out the strongest of the lot. Outlived them all, he had—at least not quite because Mr. Timothy was still alive and little Miss Cora who’d married that unpleasant artist chap. Twenty-five years since he’d seen her and she’d been a pretty young girl when she went off with that chap, and now he’d hardly have known her, grown so stout—and so arty-crafty in her dress! A Frenchman her husband had been, or nearly a Frenchman—and no good ever came of marrying one of them! But Miss Cora had always been a bit—well simple like you’d call it if she’d lived in a village. Always one of them in a family. She’d remembered him all right. “Why, it’s Lanscombe!” she’d said and seemed ever so pleased to see him. Ah, they’d all been fond of him in the old days and when there was a dinner party they’d crept down to the pantry and he’d given them jelly and Charlotte Russe when it came out of the dining room. They’d all known old Lanscombe, and now there was hardly anyone who remembered. Just the younger lot whom he could never keep clear in his mind and who just thought of him as a butler who’d been there a long time. A lot of strangers, he had thought, when they all arrived for the funeral—and a seedy lot of strangers at that! Not Mrs. Leo—she was different. She and Mr. Leo had come here off and on ever since Mr. Leo married. She was a nice lady, Mrs. Leo—a real lady. Wore proper clothes and did her hair well and looked what she was. And the master had always been fond of her. A pity that she and Mr. Leo had never had any children…. Lanscombe roused himself; what was he doing standing here and dreaming about old days with so much to be done? The blinds were all attended to on the ground floor now, and he’d told Janet to go upstairs and do the bedrooms. He and Janet and the cook had gone to the funeral service in the church but instead of going on to the Crematorium they’d driven back to the house to get the blinds up and the lunch ready. Cold lunch, of course, it had to be. Ham and chicken and tongue and salad. With cold lemon soufflé and apple tart to follow. Hot soup first—and he’d better go along and see that Marjorie had got it on ready to serve, for they’d be back in a minute or two now for certain. Lanscombe broke into a shuffling trot across the room. His gaze, abstracted and uncurious, just swept up to the picture over this mantelpiece—the companion portrait to the one in the green drawing room. It was a nice painting of white satin and pearls. The human being round whom they were draped and clasped was not nearly so impressive. Meek features, a rosebud mouth, hair parted in the middle. A woman both modest and unassuming. The only thing really worthy of note about Mrs. Cornelius Abernethie had been her name— Coralie. For over sixty years after their original appearance, Coral Cornplasters and the allied “Coral” foot preparations still held their own.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Whether there had ever been anything outstanding about Coral Cornplasters nobody could say—but they had appealed to the public fancy. On a foundation of Coral Cornplasters there had arisen this neo-Gothic palace, its acres of gardens, and the money that had paid out an income to seven sons and daughters and had allowed Richard Abernethie to die three days ago a very rich man. II Looking into the kitchen with a word of admonition, Lanscombe was snapped at by Marjorie, the cook. Marjorie was young, only twenty-seven, and was a constant irritation to Lanscombe as being so far removed from what his conception of a proper cook should be. She had no dignity and no proper appreciation of his, Lanscombe’s, position. She frequently called the house “a proper old mausoleum” and complained of the immense area of the kitchen, scullery and larder, saying that it was a “day’s walk to get round them all.” She had been at Enderby two years and only stayed because in the first place the money was good, and in the second because Mr. Abernethie had really appreciated her cooking. She cooked very well. Janet, who stood by the kitchen table, refreshing herself with a cup of tea, was an elderly housemaid who, although enjoying frequent acid disputes with Lanscombe, was nevertheless usually in alliance with him against the younger generation as represented by Marjorie. The fourth person in the kitchen was Mrs. Jacks, who “came in” to lend assistance where it was wanted and who had much enjoyed the funeral. “Beautiful it was,” she said with a decorous sniff as she replenished her cup. “Nineteen cars and the church quite full and the Canon read the service beautiful, I thought. A nice fine day for it, too. Ah, poor dear Mr. Abernethie, there’s not many like him left in the world. Respected by all, he was.” There was the note of a horn and the sound of a car coming up the drive, and Mrs. Jacks put down her cup and exclaimed: “Here they are.” Marjorie turned up the gas under her large saucepan of creamy chicken soup. The large kitchen range of the days of Victorian grandeur stood cold and unused, like an altar to the past. The cars drove up one after the other and the people issuing from them in their black clothes moved rather uncertainly across the hall and into the big green drawing room. In the big steel grate a fire was burning, tribute to the first chill of the autumn days and calculated to counteract the further chill of standing about at a funeral. Lanscombe entered the room, offering glasses of sherry on a silver tray. Mr. Entwhistle, senior partner of the old and respected firm of Bollard, Entwhistle, Entwhistle and Bollard, stood with his back to the fireplace warming himself. He accepted a glass of sherry, and surveyed the company with his shrewd lawyer’s gaze. Not all of them were personally known to him, and he was under the necessity of sorting them out, so to speak. Introductions before the departure for the funeral had been hushed and perfunctory. Appraising old Lanscombe first, Mr. Entwhistle thought to himself, “Getting very shaky, poor old chap—going on for ninety I shouldn’t wonder. Well, he’ll have that nice little annuity. Nothing for him to worry about. Faithful soul. No such thing as old-fashioned service nowadays. Household helps and babysitters, God help us all! A sad world. Just as well, perhaps, poor Richard didn’t last his full time. He hadn’t much to live for.” To Mr. Entwhistle, who was seventy-two, Richard Abernethie’s death at sixty- eight was definitely that of a man dead before his time. Mr. Entwhistle had retired from active business two years ago, but as executor of Richard Abernethie’s will and in respect of one of his oldest clients who was also a personal friend, he had made the journey to the North. Reflecting in his own mind on the provisions of the will, he mentally appraised the family. Mrs. Leo, Helen, he knew well, of course. A very charming woman for whom he had both liking and respect. His eyes dwelt approvingly on her now as she stood near one of the windows. Black suited her. She had kept her figure well. He liked the clear cut features, the springing line of grey hair back from her temples and the eyes that had once been likened to cornflowers and which were still quite vividly blue. How old was Helen now? About fifty-one or-two, he supposed. Strange that she had never married again after Leo’s death. An attractive woman. Ah, but they had been very devoted, those two. His eyes went on to Mrs. Timothy. He had never known her very well. Black didn’t suit her—country tweeds were her wear. A big sensible capable-looking woman. She’d always been a good devoted wife to Timothy. Looking after his health, fussing over him—fussing over him a bit too much, probably. Was there really anything the matter with Timothy? Just a hypochondriac, Mr. Entwhistle suspected. Richard Abernethie had suspected so, too. “Weak chest, of course, when he was a boy,” he had said. “But blest if I think there’s much wrong with him now.” Oh well, everybody had to have some hobby. Timothy’s hobby was the all absorbing one of his own health. Was Mrs. Tim taken in? Probably not—but women never admitted that sort of thing. Timothy must be quite comfortably off. He’d never been a spendthrift. However, the extra would not come amiss—not in these days of taxation. He’d probably had to retrench his scale of living a good deal since the war. Mr. Entwhistle transferred his attention to George Crossfield, Laura’s son. Dubious sort of fellow Laura had married. Nobody had ever known much about him. A stockbroker he had called himself. Young George was in a solicitor’s office—not a very reputable firm. Good-looking young fellow—but something a little shifty about him. He couldn’t have too much to live on. Laura had been a complete fool over her investments. She’d left next to nothing when she died five years ago. A handsome romantic girl she’d been, but no money sense. Mr. Entwhistle’s eyes went on from George Crossfield. Which of the two girls was which? Ah yes, that was Rosamund, Geraldine’s daughter, looking at the wax flowers on the malachite table. Pretty girl, beautiful, in fact—rather a silly face. On the stage. Repertory companies or some nonsense like that. Had married an actor, too. Good-looking fellow. “And knows he is,” thought Mr. Entwhistle, who was prejudiced against the stage as a profession. “Wonder what sort of a background he has and where he comes from.” He looked disapprovingly at Michael Shane with his fair hair and his haggard charm. Now Susan, Gordon’s daughter, would do much better on the stage than Rosamund. More personality. A little too much personality for everyday life, perhaps. She was quite near him and Mr. Entwhistle studied her covertly. Dark hair, hazel—almost golden—eyes, a sulky attractive mouth. Beside her was the husband she had just married—a chemist’s assistant, he understood. Really, a chemist’s assistant! In Mr. Entwhistle’s creed girls did not marry young men who served behind a counter. But now of course, they married anybody! The young man, who had a pale nondescript face and sandy hair, seemed very ill at ease. Mr. Entwhistle wondered why, but decided charitably that it was the strain of meeting so many of his wife’s relations. Last in his survey Mr. Entwhistle came to Cora Lansquenet. There was a certain justice in that, for Cora had decidedly been an afterthought in the family. Richard’s youngest sister, she had been born when her mother was just on fifty, and that meek woman had not survived her tenth pregnancy (three children had died in infancy). Poor little Cora! All her life, Cora had been rather an embarrassment, growing up tall and gawky, and given to blurting out remarks that had always better have remained unsaid. All her elder brothers and sisters had been very kind to Cora, atoning for her deficiencies and covering her social mistakes.

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It had never really occurred to anyone that Cora would marry. She had not been a very attractive girl, and her rather obvious advances to visiting young men had usually caused the latter to retreat in some alarm. And then, Mr. Entwhistle mused, there had come the Lansquenet business—Pierre Lansquenet, half French, whom she had come across in an Art school where she had been having very correct lessons in painting flowers in watercolours. But somehow she had got into the Life class and there she had met Pierre Lansquenet and had come home and announced her intention of marrying him. Richard Abernethie had put his foot down—he hadn’t liked what he saw of Pierre Lansquenet and suspected that the young man was really in search of a rich wife. But whilst he was making a few researches into Lansquenet’s antecedents, Cora had bolted with the fellow and married him out of hand. They had spent most of their married life in Brittany and Cornwall and other painters’ conventional haunts. Lansquenet had been a very bad painter and not, by all accounts, a very nice man, but Cora had remained devoted to him and had never forgiven her family for their attitude to him. Richard had generously made his young sister an allowance and on that they had, so Mr. Entwhistle believed, lived. He doubted if Lansquenet had ever earned any money at all. He must have been dead now twelve years or more, thought Mr. Entwhistle. And now here was his widow, rather cushion-like in shape and dressed in wispy artistic black with festoons of jet beads, back in the home of her girlhood, moving about and touching things and exclaiming with pleasure when she recalled some childish memory. She made very little pretence of grief at her brother’s death. But then, Mr. Entwhistle reflected, Cora had never pretended. Reentering the room Lanscombe murmured in muted tones suitable to the occasion: “Luncheon is served.” Two After the delicious chicken soup, and plenty of cold viands accompanied by an excellent Chablis, the funeral atmosphere lightened. Nobody had really felt any deep grief for Richard Abernethie’s death since none of them had had any close ties with him. Their behaviour had been suitably decorous and subdued (with the exception of the uninhibited Cora who was clearly enjoying herself) but it was now felt that the decencies had been observed and that normal conversation could be resumed. Mr. Entwhistle encouraged this attitude. He was experienced in funerals and knew exactly how to set correct funeral timing. After the meal was over, Lanscombe indicated the library for coffee. This was his feeling for niceties. The time had come when business—in other words, The Will—would be discussed. The library had the proper atmosphere for that, with its bookshelves and its heavy red velvet curtains. He served coffee to them there and then withdrew, closing the door. After a few desultory remarks, everyone began to look tentatively at Mr. Entwhistle. He responded promptly after glancing at his watch. “I have to catch the 3:30 train,” he began. Others, it seemed, also had to catch that train. “As you know,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “I am the executor of Richard Abernethie’s will—” He was interrupted. “I didn’t know,” said Cora Lansquenet brightly. “Are you? Did he leave me anything?” Not for the first time, Mr. Entwhistle felt that Cora was too apt to speak out of turn. Bending a repressive glance at her he continued: “Up to a year ago, Richard Abernethie’s will was very simple. Subject to certain legacies he left everything to his son Mortimer.” “Poor Mortimer,” said Cora. “I do think all this infantile paralysis is dreadful.” “Mortimer’s death, coming so suddenly and tragically, was a great blow to Richard. It took him some months to rally from it. I pointed out to him that it might be advisable for him to make new testamentary dispositions.” Maude Abernethie asked in her deep voice: “What would have happened if he hadn’t made a new will? Would it—would it all have gone to Timothy—as the next of kin, I mean?” Mr. Entwhistle opened his mouth to give a disquisition on the subject of next of kin, thought better of it, and said crisply: “On my advice, Richard decided to make a new will. First of all, however, he decided to get better acquainted with the younger generation.” “He had us upon appro,” said Susan with a sudden rich laugh. “First George and then Greg and me, and then Rosamund and Michael.” Gregory Banks said sharply, his thin face flushing: “I don’t think you ought to put it like that, Susan. On appro, indeed!” “But that was what it was, wasn’t it, Mr. Entwhistle?” “Did he leave me anything?” repeated Cora. Mr. Entwhistle coughed and spoke rather coldly: “I propose to send you all copies of the will. I can read it to you in full now if you like but its legal phraseology may seem to you rather obscure. Briefly it amounts to this: After certain small bequests and a substantial legacy to Lanscombe to purchase an annuity, the bulk of the estate—a very considerable one—is to be divided into six equal portions. Four of these, after all duties are paid, are to go to Richard’s brother Timothy, his nephew George Crossfield, his niece Susan Banks, and his niece Rosamund Shane. The other two portions are to be held upon trust and the income from them paid to Mrs. Helen Abernethie, the widow of his brother Leo; and to his sister Mrs. Cora Lansquenet, during their lifetime. The capital after their death to be divided between the other four beneficiaries or their issue.” “That’s very nice!” said Cora Lansquenet with real appreciation. “An income! How much?” “I—er—can’t say exactly at present. Death duties, of course, will be heavy and—” “Can’t you give me any idea?” Mr. Entwhistle realized that Cora must be appeased. “Possibly somewhere in the neighbourhood of three to four thousand a year.” “Goody!” said Cora. “I shall go to Capri.” Helen Abernethie said softly: “How very kind and generous of Richard. I do appreciate his affection towards me.” “He was very fond of you,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “Leo was his favourite brother and your visits to him were always much appreciated after Leo died.” Helen said regretfully: “I wish I had realized how ill he was—I came up to see him not long before he died, but although I knew he had been ill, I did not think it was serious.” “It was always serious,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “But he did not want it talked about and I do not believe that anybody expected the end to come as soon as it did. The doctor was quite surprised, I know.” “‘Suddenly, at his residence’ that’s what it said in the paper,” said Cora, nodding her head. “I wondered then.” “It was a shock to all of us,” said Maude Abernethie. “It upset poor Timothy dreadfully. So sudden, he kept saying. So sudden.” “Still, it’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it?” said Cora. Everybody stared at her and she seemed a little flustered. “I think you’re all quite right,” she said hurriedly. “Quite right. I mean—it can’t do any good—making it public. Very unpleasant for everybody. It should be kept strictly in the family.” The faces turned towards her looked even more blank. Mr. Entwhistle leaned forward: “Really, Cora, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.” Cora Lansquenet looked round at the family in wide-eyed surprise. She tilted her head on one side with a birdlike movement. “But he was murdered, wasn’t he?” she said. Three I Travelling to London in the corner of a first-class carriage Mr. Entwhistle gave himself up to somewhat uneasy thought over that extraordinary remark made by Cora Lansquenet. Of course Cora was a rather unbalanced and excessively stupid woman, and she had been noted, even as a girl, for the embarrassing manner in which she had blurted out unwelcome truths. At least, he didn’t mean truths—that was quite the wrong word to use. Awkward statements—that was a much better term. In his mind he went back over the immediate sequence to that unfortunate remark. The combined stare of many startled and disapproving eyes had roused Cora to a sense of the enormity of what she had said.

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Maude had exclaimed, “Really, Cora!” George had said, “My dear Aunt Cora.” Somebody else had said, “What do you mean?” And at once Cora Lansquenet, abashed, and convicted of enormity, had burst into fluttering phrases. “Oh I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—oh, of course, it was very stupid of me, but I did think from what he said—Oh, of course I know it’s quite all right, but his death was so sudden—please forget that I said anything at all—I didn’t mean to be so stupid—I know I’m always saying the wrong thing.” And then the momentary upset had died down and there had been a practical discussion about the disposition of the late Richard Abernethie’s personal effects. The house and its contents, Mr. Entwhistle supplemented, would be put up for sale. Cora’s unfortunate gaffe had been forgotten. After all, Cora had always been, if not subnormal, at any rate embarrassingly näive. She had never had any idea of what should or should not be said. At nineteen it had not mattered so much. The mannerisms of an enfant terrible can persist to then, but an enfant terrible of nearly fifty is decidedly disconcerting. To blurt out unwelcome truths— Mr. Entwhistle’s train of thought came to an abrupt check. It was the second time that that disturbing word had occurred. Truths. And why was it so disturbing? Because, of course, that had always been at the bottom of the embarrassment that Cora’s outspoken comments had caused. It was because her näive statements had been either true or had contained some grain of truth that they had been so embarrassing! Although in the plump woman of forty-nine, Mr. Entwhistle had been able to see little resemblance to the gawky girl of earlier days, certain of Cora’s mannerisms had persisted—the slight birdlike twist of the head as she brought out a particularly outrageous remark—a kind of air of pleased expectancy. In just such a way had Cora once commented on the figure of the kitchen maid. “Mollie can hardly get near the kitchen table, her stomach sticks out so. It’s only been like that the last month or two. I wonder why she’s getting so fat?” Cora had been quickly hushed. The Abernethie household was Victorian in tone. The kitchen maid had disappeared from the premises the next day, and after due inquiry the second gardener had been ordered to make an honest woman of her and had been presented with a cottage in which to do so. Far-off memories—but they had their point…. Mr. Entwhistle examined his uneasiness more closely. What was there in Cora’s ridiculous remarks that had remained to tease his subconscious in this manner? Presently he isolated two phrases. “I did think from what he said—” and “his death was so sudden….” Mr. Entwhistle examined that last remark first. Yes, Richard’s death could, in a fashion, be considered sudden. Mr. Entwhistle had discussed Richard’s health both with Richard himself and with his doctor. The latter had indicated plainly that a long life could not be expected. If Mr. Abernethie took reasonable care of himself he might live two or even three years. Perhaps longer—but that was unlikely. In any case the doctor had anticipated no collapse in the near future. Well, the doctor had been wrong—but doctors, as they were the first to admit themselves, could never be sure about the individual reaction of a patient to disease. Cases given up, unexpectedly recovered. Patients on the way to recovery relapsed and died. So much depended on the vitality of the patient. On his own inner urge to live And Richard Abernethie, though a strong and vigorous man, had had no great incentive to live. For six months previously his only surviving son, Mortimer, had contracted infantile paralysis and had died within a week. His death had been a shock greatly augmented by the fact that he had been such a particularly strong and vital young man. A keen sportsman, he was also a good athlete and was one of those people of whom it was said that he had never had a day’s illness in his life. He was on the point of becoming engaged to a very charming girl and his father’s hopes for the future were centred in this dearly loved and thoroughly satisfactory son of his. Instead had come tragedy. And besides the sense of personal loss, the future had held little to stir Richard Abernethie’s interest. One son had died in infancy, the second without issue. He had no grandchildren. There was, in fact, no one of the Abernethie name to come after him, and he was the holder of a vast fortune with wide business interests which he himself still controlled to a certain extent. Who was to succeed to that fortune and to the control of those interests? That this had worried Richard deeply, Entwhistle knew. His only surviving brother was very much of an invalid. There remained the younger generation. It had been in Richard’s mind, the lawyer thought, though his friend had not actually said so, to choose one definite successor, though minor legacies would probably have been made. Anyway, as Entwhistle knew, within the last six months Richard Abernethie had invited to stay with him, in succession, his nephew George, his niece Susan and her husband, his niece Rosamund and her husband, and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Leo Abernethie. It was amongst the first three, so the lawyer thought, that Abernethie had looked for his successor. Helen Abernethie, he thought, had been asked out of personal affection and even possibly as someone to consult, for Richard had always held a high opinion of her good sense and practical judgement. Mr. Entwhistle also remembered that sometime during that six months period Richard had paid a short visit to his brother Timothy. The net result had been the will which the lawyer now carried in his briefcase. An equable distribution of property. The only conclusion that could be drawn, therefore, was that he had been disappointed both in his nephew, and in his nieces or perhaps in his nieces’ husbands. As far as Mr. Entwhistle knew, he had not invited his sister, Cora Lansquenet, to visit him—and that brought the lawyer back to that first disturbing phrase that Cora had let slip so incoherently— “but I did think from what he said—” What had Richard Abernethie said? And when had he said it? If Cora had not been to Enderby, then Richard Abernethie must have visited her at the artistic village in Berkshire where she had a cottage. Or was it something that Richard had said in a letter? Mr. Entwhistle frowned. Cora, of course, was a very stupid woman. She could easily have misinterpreted a phrase, and twisted its meaning. But he did wonder what the phrase could have been…. There was enough uneasiness in him to make him consider the possibility of approaching Mrs. Lansquenet on the subject. Not too soon. Better not make it seem of importance. But he would like to know just what it was that Richard Abernethie had said to her which had led her to pipe up so briskly with that outrageous question: “But he was murdered, wasn’t he?” II In a third-class carriage, farther along the train, Gregory Banks said to his wife: “That aunt of yours must be completely bats!” “Aunt Cora?” Susan was vague. “Oh, yes, I believe she was always a bit simple or something.” George Crossfield, sitting opposite, said sharply: “She really ought to be stopped from going about saying things like that. It might put ideas into people’s heads.” Rosamund Shane, intent on outlining the cupid’s bow of her mouth with lipstick, murmured vaguely: “I don’t suppose anyone would pay any attention to what a frump like that says. The most peculiar clothes and lashings and lashings of jet—” “Well, I think it ought to be stopped,” said George. “All right, darling,” laughed Rosamund, putting away her lipstick and contemplating her image with satisfaction in the mirror. “You stop it.” Her husband said unexpectedly: “I think George is right. It’s so easy to set people talking.” “Well, would it matter?” Rosamund contemplated the question. The cupid’s bow lifted at the corners in a smile. “It might really be rather fun.” “Fun?” Four voices spoke. “Having a murder in the family,” said Rosamund.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Having a murder in the family,” said Rosamund. “Thrilling, you know!” It occurred to that nervous and unhappy young man Gregory Banks that Susan’s cousin, setting aside her attractive exterior, might have some faint points of resemblance to her Aunt Cora. Her next words rather confirmed his impression. “If he was murdered,” said Rosamund, “who do you think did it?” Her gaze travelled thoughtfully round the carriage. “His death has been awfully convenient for all of us,” she said thoughtfully. “Michael and I are absolutely on our beam ends. Mick’s had a really good part offered to him in the Sandbourne show if he can afford to wait for it. Now we’ll be in clover. We’ll be able to back our own show if we want to. As a matter of fact there’s a play with a simply wonderful part—” Nobody listened to Rosamund’s ecstatic disquisition. Their attention had shifted to their own immediate future. “Touch and go,” thought George to himself. “Now I can put that money back and nobody will ever know… But it’s been a near shave.” Gregory closed his eyes as he lay back against the seat. Escape from bondage. Susan said in her clear rather hard voice, “I’m very sorry, of course, for poor old Uncle Richard. But then he was very old, and Mortimer had died, and he’d nothing to live for and it would have been awful for him to go on as an invalid year after year. Much better for him to pop off suddenly like this with no fuss.” Her hard confident young eyes softened as they watched her husband’s absorbed face. She adored Greg. She sensed vaguely that Greg cared for her less than she cared for him—but that only strengthened her passion. Greg was hers, she’d do anything for him. Anything at all…. III Maude Abernethie, changing her dress for dinner at Enderby (for she was staying the night), wondered if she ought to have offered to stay longer to help Helen out with the sorting and clearing of the house. There would be all Richard’s personal things… There might be letters… All important papers, she supposed, had already been taken possession of by Mr. Entwhistle. And it really was necessary for her to get back to Timothy as soon as possible. He fretted so when she was not there to look after him. She hoped he would be pleased about the will and not annoyed. He had expected, she knew, that most of Richard’s fortune would come to him. After all, he was the only surviving Abernethie. Richard could surely have trusted him to look after the younger generation. Yes, she was afraid Timothy would be annoyed… And that was so bad for his digestion. And really, when he was annoyed, Timothy could become quite unreasonable. There were times when he seemed to lose his sense of proportion… She wondered if she ought to speak to Dr. Barton about it… Those sleeping pills—Timothy had been taking far too many of them lately—he got so angry when she wanted to keep the bottle for him. But they could be dangerous—Dr. Barton had said so—you could get drowsy and forget you’d taken them—and then take more. And then anything might happen! There certainly weren’t as many left in the bottle as there ought to be… Timothy was really very naughty about medicines. He wouldn’t listen to her… He was very difficult sometimes. She sighed—then brightened. Things were going to be much easier now. The garden, for instance— IV Helen Abernethie sat by the fire in the green drawing room waiting for Maude to come down to dinner. She looked round her, remembering old days here with Leo and the others. It had been a happy house. But a house like this needed people. It needed children and servants and big meals and plenty of roaring fires in winter. It had been a sad house when it had been lived in by one old man who had lost his son…. Who would buy it, she wondered? Would it be turned into an hotel, or an institute, or perhaps one of those hostels for young people? That was what happened to these vast houses nowadays. No one would buy them to live in. It would be pulled down, perhaps, and the whole estate built over. It made her sad to think of that, but she pushed the sadness aside resolutely. It did one no good to dwell on the past. This house, and happy days here, and Richard, and Leo, all that was good, but it was over. She had her own interests… And now, with the income Richard had left her, she would be able to keep on the villa in Cyprus and do all the things she had planned to do. How worried she had been lately over money—taxation—all those investments going wrong… Now, thanks to Richard’s money, all that was over…. Poor Richard. To die in his sleep like that had been really a great mercy… Suddenly on the 22nd—she supposed that that was what had put the idea into Cora’s head. Really Cora was outrageous! She always had been. Helen remembered meeting her once abroad, soon after her marriage to Pierre Lansquenet. She had been particularly foolish and fatuous that day, twisting her head sideways, and making dogmatic statements about painting, and particularly about her husband’s painting, which must have been most uncomfortable for him. No man could like his wife appearing such a fool. And Cora was a fool! Oh, well, poor thing, she couldn’t help it, and that husband of hers hadn’t treated her too well. Helen’s gaze rested absently on a bouquet of wax flowers that stood on a round malachite table. Cora had been sitting beside it when they had all been sitting round waiting to start for the church. She had been full of reminiscences and delighted recognitions of various things and was clearly so pleased at being back in her old home that she had completely lost sight of the reason for which they were assembled. “But perhaps,” thought Helen, “she was just less of a hypocrite than the rest of us….” Cora had never been one for observing the conventions. Look at the way she had plumped out that question: “But he was murdered, wasn’t he?” The faces all round, startled, shocked, staring at her! Such a variety of expressions there must have been on those faces…. And suddenly, seeing the picture clearly in her mind, Helen frowned… There was something wrong with that picture…. Something…? Somebody…? Was it an expression on someone’s face? Was that it? Something that—how could she put it?—ought not to have been there…? She didn’t know…she couldn’t place it…but there had been something—somewhere—wrong. V Meanwhile, in the buffet at Swindon, a lady in wispy mourning and festoons of jet was eating bath buns and drinking tea and looking forward to the future. She had no premonitions of disaster. She was happy. These cross-country journeys were certainly tiring. It would have been easier to get back to Lytchett St. Mary via London—and not so very much more expensive. Ah, but expense didn’t matter now. Still, she would have had to travel with the family—probably having to talk all the way. Too much of an effort. No, better to go home cross-country. These bath buns were really excellent. Extraordinary how hungry a funeral made you feel. The soup at Enderby had been delicious—and so was the cold soufflé. How smug people were—and what hypocrites! All those faces—when she’d said that about murder! The way they’d all looked at her! Well, it had been the right thing to say. She nodded her head in satisfied approval of herself. Yes, it had been the right thing to do. She glanced up at the clock. Five minutes before her train went. She drank up her tea. Not very good tea. She made a grimace. For a moment or two she sat dreaming. Dreaming of the future unfolding before her… She smiled like a happy child. She was really going to enjoy herself at last… She went out to the small branch line train busily making plans. Four I Mr. Entwhistle passed a very restless night. He felt so tired and so unwell in the morning that he did not get up. His sister, who kept house for him, brought up his breakfast on a tray and explained to him severely how wrong he had been to go gadding off to the North of England at his age and in his frail state of health. Mr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Mr. Entwhistle contented himself with saying that Richard Abernethie had been a very old friend. “Funerals!” said his sister with deep disapproval. “Funerals are absolutely fatal for a man of your age! You’ll be taken off as suddenly as your precious Mr. Abernethie was if you don’t take more care of yourself.” The word “suddenly” made Mr. Entwhistle wince. It also silenced him. He did not argue. He was well aware of what had made him flinch at the word suddenly. Cora Lansquenet! What she had suggested was definitely quite impossible, but all the same he would like to find out exactly why she had suggested it. Yes, he would go down to Lytchett St. Mary and see her. He could pretend that it was business connected with probate, that he needed her signature. No need to let her guess that he had paid any attention to her silly remark. But he would go down and see her—and he would do it soon. He finished his breakfast and lay back on his pillows and read The Times. He found The Times very soothing. It was about a quarter to six that evening when his telephone rang. He picked it up. The voice at the other end of the wire was that of Mr. James Parrott, the present second partner of Bollard, Entwhistle, Entwhistle and Bollard. “Look here, Entwhistle,” said Mr. Parrott, “I’ve just been rung up by the police from a place called Lytchett St. Mary.” “Lytchett St. Mary?” “Yes. It seems—” Mr. Parrott paused a moment. He seemed embarrassed. “It’s about a Mrs. Cora Lansquenet. Wasn’t she one of the heirs of the Abernethie estate?” “Yes, of course. I saw her at the funeral yesterday.” “Oh? She was at the funeral, was she?” “Yes. What about her?” “Well,” Mr. Parrott sounded apologetic. “She’s—it’s really most extraordinary—she’s been well—murdered.” Mr. Parrott said the last word with the uttermost deprecation. It was not the sort of word, he suggested, that ought to mean anything to the firm of Bollard, Entwhistle, Entwhistle and Bollard. “Murdered?” “Yes—yes—I’m afraid so. Well, I mean, there’s no doubt about it.” “How did the police get on to us?” “Her companion, or housekeeper, or whatever she is—a Miss Gilchrist. The police asked for the name of her nearest relative or her solicitors. And this Miss Gilchrist seemed rather doubtful about relatives and their addresses, but she knew about us. So they got through at once.” “What makes them think she was murdered?” demanded Mr. Entwhistle. Mr. Parrott sounded apologetic again. “Oh well, it seems there can’t be any doubt about that— I mean it was a hatchet or something of that kind—a very violent sort of crime.” “Robbery?” “That’s the idea. A window was smashed and there are some trinkets missing and drawers pulled out and all that, but the police seem to think there might be something—well—phony about it.” “What time did it happen?” “Some time between two and four thirty this afternoon.” “Where was the housekeeper?” “Changing library books in Reading. She got back about five o’clock and found Mrs. Lansquenet dead. The police want to know if we’ve any idea of who could have been likely to attack her. I said,” Mr. Parrott’s voice sounded outraged, “that I thought it was a most unlikely thing to happen.” “Yes, of course.” “It must be some half-witted local oaf—who thought there might be something to steal and then lost his head and attacked her. That must be it—eh, don’t you think so, Entwhistle?” “Yes, yes…” Mr. Entwhistle spoke absentmindedly. Parrott was right, he told himself. That was what must have happened…. But uncomfortably he heard Cora’s voice saying brightly: “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Such a fool, Cora. Always had been. Rushing in where angels fear to tread… Blurting out unpleasant truths…. Truths! That blasted word again…. II Mr. Entwhistle and Inspector Morton looked at each other appraisingly. In his neat precise manner Mr. Entwhistle had placed at the Inspector’s disposal all the relevant facts about Cora Lansquenet. Her upbringing, her marriage, her widowhood, her financial position, her relatives. “Mr. Timothy Abernethie is her only surviving brother and her next of kin, but he is a recluse and an invalid, and is quite unable to leave home. He has empowered me to act for him and to make all such arrangements as may be necessary.” The Inspector nodded. It was a relief for him to have this shrewd elderly solicitor to deal with. Moreover he hoped that the lawyer might be able to give him some assistance in solving what was beginning to look like a rather puzzling problem. He said: “I understand from Miss Gilchrist that Mrs. Lansquenet had been North, to the funeral of an elder brother, on the day before her death?” “That is so, Inspector. I myself was there.” “There was nothing unusual in her manner—nothing strange—or apprehensive?” Mr. Entwhistle raised his eyebrows in well-simulated surprise. “Is it customary for there to be something strange in the manner of a person who is shortly to be murdered?” he asked. The Inspector smiled rather ruefully. “I’m not thinking of her being ‘fey’ or having a premonition. No, I’m just hunting around for something—well, something out of the ordinary.” “I don’t think I quite understand you, Inspector,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It’s not a very easy case to understand, Mr. Entwhistle. Say someone watched the Gilchrist woman come out of the house at about two o’clock and go along to the village and the bus stop. This someone then deliberately takes the hatchet that was lying by the woodshed, smashes the kitchen window with it, gets into the house, goes upstairs, attacks Mrs. Lansquenet with the hatchet—and attacks her savagely. Six or eight blows were struck.” Mr. Entwhistle flinched—“Oh, yes, quite a brutal crime. Then the intruder pulls out a few drawers, scoops up a few trinkets—worth perhaps a tenner in all, and clears off.” “She was in bed?” “Yes. It seems she returned late from the North the night before, exhausted and very excited. She’d come into some legacy as I understand?” “Yes.” “She slept very badly and woke with a terrible headache. She had several cups of tea and took some dope for her head and then told Miss Gilchrist not to disturb her till lunchtime. She felt no better and decided to take two sleeping pills. She then sent Miss Gilchrist into Reading by the bus to change some library books. She’d have been drowsy, if not already asleep, when this man broke in. He could have taken what he wanted by means of threats, or he could easily have gagged her. A hatchet, deliberately taken up with him from outside, seems excessive.” “He may just have meant to threaten her with it,” Mr. Entwhistle suggested. “If she showed fight then—” “According to the medical evidence there is no sign that she did. Everything seems to show that she was lying on her side sleeping peacefully when she was attacked.” Mr. Entwhistle shifted uneasily in his chair. “One does hear of these brutal and rather senseless murders,” he pointed out. “Oh yes, yes, that’s probably what it will turn out to be. There’s an alert out, of course, for any suspicious character. Nobody local is concerned, we’re pretty sure of that. The locals are all accounted for satisfactorily. Most people are at work at that time of day. Of course her cottage is up a lane outside the village proper. Anyone could get there easily without being seen. There’s a maze of lanes all round the village. It was a fine morning and there has been no rain for some days, so there aren’t any distinctive car tracks to go by—in case anyone came by car.” “You think someone came by car?” Mr. Entwhistle asked sharply. The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is there are curious features about the case.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

All I’m saying is there are curious features about the case. These, for instance—” He shoved across his desk a handful of things—a trefoil-shaped brooch with small pearls, a brooch set with amethysts, a small string of pearls, and a garnet bracelet. “Those are the things that were taken from her jewel box. They were found just outside the house shoved into a bush.” “Yes—yes, that is rather curious. Perhaps if her assailant was frightened at what he had done—” “Quite. But he would probably then have left them upstairs in her room… Of course a panic may have come over him between the bedroom and the front gate.” Mr. Entwhistle said quietly: “Or they may, as you are suggesting, have only been taken as a blind.” “Yes, several possibilities…Of course this Gilchrist woman may have done it. Two women living alone together—you never know what quarrels or resentments or passions may have been aroused. Oh yes, we’re taking that possibility into consideration as well. But it doesn’t seem very likely. From all accounts they were on quite amicable terms.” He paused before going on. “According to you, nobody stands to gain by Mrs. Lansquenet’s death?” The lawyer shifted uneasily. “I didn’t quite say that.” Inspector Morton looked up sharply. “I thought you said that Mrs. Lansquenet’s source of income was an allowance made to her by her brother and that as far as you knew she had no property or means of her own.” “That is so. Her husband died a bankrupt, and from what I knew of her as a girl and since, I should be surprised if she had ever saved or accumulated any money. “The cottage itself is rented, not her own, and the few sticks of furniture aren’t anything to write home about, even in these days. Some spurious ‘cottage oak’ and some arty painted stuff. Whoever she’s left them to won’t gain much—if she’s made a will, that is to say.” Mr. Entwhistle shook his head. “I know nothing about her will. I had not seen her for many years, you must understand.” “Then, what exactly did you mean just now? You had something in mind, I think?” “Yes. Yes, I did. I wished to be strictly accurate.” “Were you referring to the legacy you mentioned? The one that her brother left her? Had she the power to dispose of that by will?” “No, not in the sense you mean. She had no power to dispose of the capital. Now that she is dead, it will be divided amongst the five other beneficiaries of Richard Abernethie’s will. That is what I meant. All five of them will benefit automatically by her death.” The Inspector looked disappointed. “Oh, I thought we were on to something. Well, there certainly seems no motive there for anyone to come and swipe her with a hatchet. Looks as though it’s some chap with a screw loose—one of these adolescent criminals, perhaps—a lot of them about. And then he lost his nerve and bushed the trinkets and ran… Yes, it must be that. Unless it’s the highly respectable Miss Gilchrist, and I must say that seems unlikely.” “When did she find the body?” “Not until just about five o’clock. She came back from Reading by the 4:50 bus. She arrived back at the cottage, let herself in by the front door, and went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. There was no sound from Mrs. Lansquenet’s room, but Miss Gilchrist assumed that she was still sleeping. Then Miss Gilchrist noticed the kitchen window; the glass was all over the floor. Even then, she thought at first it might have been done by a boy with a ball or a catapult. She went upstairs and peeped very gently into Mrs. Lansquenet’s room to see if she were asleep or if she was ready for some tea. Then of course, she let loose, shrieked, and rushed down the lane to the nearest neighbour. Her story seems perfectly consistent and there was no trace of blood in her room or in the bathroom, or on her clothes. No. I don’t think Miss Gilchrist had anything to do with it. The doctor got there at half past five. He puts the time of death not later than four thirty—and probably much nearer two o’clock, so it looks as though whoever it was, was hanging round waiting for Miss Gilchrist to leave the cottage.” The lawyer’s face twitched slightly. Inspector Morton went on: “You’ll be going to see Miss Gilchrist, I suppose?” “I thought of doing so.” “I should be glad if you would. She’s told us, I think, everything that she can, but you never know. Sometimes, in conversation, some point or other may crop up. She’s a trifle old maidish—but quite a sensible, practical woman—and she’s really been most helpful and efficient.” He paused and then said: “The body’s at the mortuary. If you would like to see it—” Mr. Entwhistle assented, though with no enthusiasm. Some few minutes later he stood looking down at the mortal remains of Cora Lansquenet. She had been savagely attacked and the henna dyed fringe was clotted and stiffened with blood. Mr. Entwhistle’s lips tightened and he looked away queasily. Poor little Cora. How eager she had been the day before yesterday to know whether her brother had left her anything. What rosy anticipations she must have had of the future. What a lot of silly things she could have done—and enjoyed doing—with the money. Poor Cora… How short a time those anticipations had lasted. No one had gained by her death—not even the brutal assailant who had thrust away those trinkets as he fled. Five people had a few thousands more of capital—but the capital they had already received was probably more than sufficient for them. No, there could be no motive there. Funny that murder should have been running in Cora’s mind the very day before she herself was murdered. “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Such a ridiculous thing to say. Ridiculous! Quite ridiculous! Much too ridiculous to mention to Inspector Morton. Of course, after he had seen Miss Gilchrist…. Supposing that Miss Gilchrist, although it was unlikely, could throw any light on what Richard had said to Cora. “I thought from what he said—” What had Richard said? “I must see Miss Gilchrist at once,” said Mr. Entwhistle to himself. III Miss Gilchrist was a spare faded-looking woman with short, irongrey hair. She had one of those indeterminate faces that women around fifty so often acquire. She greeted Mr. Entwhistle warmly. “I’m so glad you have come, Mr. Entwhistle. I really know so little about Mrs. Lansquenet’s family, and of course I’ve never, never had anything to do with a murder before. It’s too dreadful!” Mr. Entwhistle felt quite sure that Miss Gilchrist had never before had anything to do with murder. Indeed, her reaction to it was very much that of his partner. “One reads about them, of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, relegating crimes to their proper sphere. “And even that I’m not very fond of doing. So sordid, most of them.” Following her into the sitting room Mr. Entwhistle was looking sharply about him. There was a strong smell of oil paint. The cottage was overcrowded, less by furniture, which was much as Inspector Morton had described it, than by pictures. The walls were covered with pictures, mostly very dark and dirty oil paintings. But there were watercolour sketches as well, and one or two still lifes. Smaller pictures were stacked on the window seat. “Mrs. Lansquenet used to buy them at sales,” Miss Gilchrist explained. “It was a great interest to her, poor dear. She went to all the sales round about. Pictures go so cheap, nowadays, a mere song. She never paid more than a pound for any of them, sometimes only a few shillings, and there was a wonderful chance, she always said, of picking up something worthwhile. She used to say that this was an Italian Primitive that might be worth a lot of money.” Mr. Entwhistle looked at the Italian Primitive pointed out to him dubiously. Cora, he reflected, had never really known anything about pictures. He’d eat his hat if any of these daubs were worth a five pound note!

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

He’d eat his hat if any of these daubs were worth a five pound note! “Of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, noticing his expression, and quick to sense his reaction, “I don’t know much myself, though my father was a painter—not a very successful one, I’m afraid. But I used to do watercolours myself as a girl and I heard a lot of talk about painting and that made it nice for Mrs. Lansquenet to have someone she could talk to about painting and who’d understand. Poor dear soul, she cared so much about artistic things.” “You were fond of her?” A foolish question, he told himself. Could she possibly answer “no”? Cora, he thought, must have been a tiresome woman to live with. “Oh yes,” said Miss Gilchrist. “We got on very well together. In some ways, you know, Mrs. Lansquenet was just like a child. She said anything that came into her head. I don’t know that her judgement was always very good—” One does not say of the dead—“She was a thoroughly silly woman”—Mr. Entwhistle said, “She was not in any sense an intellectual woman.” “No—no—perhaps not. But she was very shrewd, Mr. Entwhistle. Really very shrewd. It quite surprised me sometimes—how she managed to hit the nail on the head.” Mr. Entwhistle looked at Miss Gilchrist with more interest. He thought that she was no fool herself. “You were with Mrs. Lansquenet for some years, I think?” “Three and a half.” “You—er—acted as companion and also did the—er—well—looked after the house?” It was evident that he had touched on a delicate subject. Miss Gilchrist flushed a little. “Oh yes, indeed. I did most of the cooking— I quite enjoy cooking—and did some dusting and light housework. None of the rough, of course.” Miss Gilchrist’s tone expressed a firm principle. Mr. Entwhistle, who had no idea what “the rough” was, made a soothing murmur. “Mrs. Panter from the village came in for that. Twice a week regularly. You see, Mr. Entwhistle, I could not have contemplated being in any way a servant. When my little tea shop failed—such a disaster—it was the war, you know. A delightful place. I called it the Willow Tree and all the china was blue willow pattern—sweetly pretty—and the cakes really good—I’ve always had a hand with cakes and scones. Yes, I was doing really well and then the war came and supplies were cut down and the whole thing went bankrupt—a war casualty, that is what I always say, and I try to think of it like that. I lost the little money my father left me that I had invested in it, and of course I had to look round for something to do. I’d never been trained for anything. So I went to one lady but it didn’t answer at all—she was so rude and overbearing—and then I did some office work—but I didn’t like that at all, and then I came to Mrs. Lansquenet and we suited each other from the start—her husband being an artist and everything.” Miss Gilchrist came to a breathless stop and added mournfully: “But how I loved my dear, dear little tea shop. Such nice people used to come to it!” Looking at Miss Gilchrist, Mr. Entwhistle felt a sudden stab of recognition—a composite picture of hundreds of ladylike figures approaching him in numerous Bay Trees, Ginger Cats, Blue Parrots, Willow Trees and Cosy Corners, all chastely encased in blue or pink or orange overalls and taking orders for pots of china tea and cakes. Miss Gilchrist had a Spiritual Home—a ladylike tea shop of Ye Olde Worlde variety with a suitable genteel clientèle. There must, he thought, be large numbers of Miss Gilchrists all over the country, all looking much alike with mild patient faces and obstinate upper lips and slightly wispy grey hair. Miss Gilchrist went on: “But really I must not talk about myself. The police have been very kind and considerate. Very kind indeed. An Inspector Morton came over from headquarters and he was most understanding. He even arranged for me to go and spend the night at Mrs. Lake’s down the lane but I said ‘No.’ I felt it my duty to stay here with all Mrs. Lansquenet’s nice things in the house. They took the—the—” Miss Gilchrist gulped a little—“the body away, of course, and locked up the room, and the Inspector told me there would be a constable on duty in the kitchen all night—because of the broken window—it has been reglazed this morning, I am glad to say—where was I? Oh yes, so I said I should be quite all right in my own room, though I must confess I did pull the chest of drawers across the door and put a big jug of water on the windowsill. One never knows—and if by any chance it was a maniac—one does hear of such things….” Here Miss Gilchrist ran down. Mr. Entwhistle said quickly: “I am in possession of all the main facts. Inspector Morton gave them to me. But if it would not distress you too much to give me your own account—?” “Of course, Mr. Entwhistle. I know just what you feel. The police are so impersonal, are they not? Rightly so, of course.” “Mrs. Lansquenet got back from the funeral the night before last,” Mr. Entwhistle prompted. “Yes, her train didn’t get in until quite late. I had ordered a taxi to meet it as she told me to. She was very tired, poor dear—as was only natural—but on the whole she was in quite good spirits.” “Yes, yes. Did she talk about the funeral at all?” “Just a little. I gave her a cup of hot milk—she didn’t want anything else—and she told me that the church had been quite full and lots and lots of flowers—oh! and she said that she was sorry not to have seen her other brother—Timothy—was it?” “Yes, Timothy.” “She said it was over twenty years since she had seen him and that she hoped he would have been there, but she quite realized he would have thought it better not to come under the circumstances, but that his wife was there and that she’d never been able to stand Maude—oh dear, I do beg your pardon, Mr. Entwhistle—it just slipped out—I never meant—” “Not at all. Not at all,” said Mr. Entwhistle encouragingly. “I am no relation, you know. And I believe that Cora and her sister-in-law never hit it off very well.” “Well, she almost said as much. ‘I always knew Maude would grow into one of those bossy interfering women,’ is what she said. And then she was very tired and said she’d go to bed at once— I’d got her hot-water bottle in all ready—and she went up.” “She said nothing else that you can remember specially?” “She had no premonition, Mr. Entwhistle, if that is what you mean. I’m sure of that. She was really, you know, in remarkably good spirits—apart from tiredness and the—the sad occasion. She asked me how I’d like to go to Capri. To Capri! Of course I said it would be too wonderful—it’s a thing I’d never dreamed I’d ever do—and she said, ‘We’ll go!’ Just like that. I gathered—of course it wasn’t actually mentioned—that her brother had left her an annuity or something of the kind.” Mr. Entwhistle nodded. “Poor dear. Well, I’m glad she had the pleasure of planning—at all events.” Miss Gilchrist sighed and murmured wistfully, “I don’t suppose I shall ever go to Capri now….” “And the next morning?” Mr. Entwhistle prompted, oblivious of Miss Gilchrist’s disappointments. “The next morning Mrs. Lansquenet wasn’t at all well. Really, she looked dreadful. She’d hardly slept at all, she told me. Nightmares. ‘It’s because you were overtired yesterday,’ I told her, and she said maybe it was. She had her breakfast in bed, and she didn’t get up all the morning, but at lunchtime she told me that she still hadn’t been able to sleep. ‘I feel so restless,’ she said.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

‘I feel so restless,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking of things and wondering.’ And then she said she’d take some sleeping tablets and try and get a good sleep in the afternoon. And she wanted me to go over by bus to Reading and change her two library books, because she’d finished them both on the train journey and she hadn’t got anything to read. Usually two books lasted her nearly a week. So I went off just after two and that—and that—was the last time—” Miss Gilchrist began to sniff. “She must have been asleep, you know. She wouldn’t have heard anything and the Inspector assures me that she didn’t suffer… He thinks the first blow killed her. Oh dear, it makes me quite sick even to think of it!” “Please, please. I’ve no wish to take you any further over what happened. All I wanted was to hear what you could tell me about Mrs. Lansquenet before the tragedy.” “Very natural, I’m sure. Do tell her relations that apart from having such a bad night she was really very happy and looking forward to the future.” Mr. Entwhistle paused before asking his next question. He wanted to be careful not to lead the witness. “She did not mention any of her relations in particular?” “No, no, I don’t think so.” Miss Gilchrist considered. “Except what she said about being sorry not to see her brother Timothy.” “She did not speak at all about her brother’s decease? The—er—cause of it? Anything like that?” “No.” There was no sign of alertness in Miss Gilchrist’s face. Mr. Entwhistle felt certain there would have been if Cora had plumped out her verdict of murder. “He’d been ill for some time, I think,” said Miss Gilchrist vaguely, “though I must say I was surprised to hear it. He looked so very vigorous.” Mr. Entwhistle said quickly: “You saw him—when?” “When he came down here to see Mrs. Lansquenet. Let me see—that was about three weeks ago.” “Did he stay here?” “Oh—no—just came for luncheon. It was quite a surprise. Mrs. Lansquenet hadn’t expected him. I gather there had been some family disagreement. She hadn’t seen him for years, she told me.” “Yes, that is so.” “It quite upset her—seeing him again—and probably realizing how ill he was—” “She knew he was ill?” “Oh yes, I remember quite well. Because I wondered—only in my own mind, you understand—if perhaps Mr. Abernethie might be suffering from softening of the brain. An aunt of mine—” Mr. Entwhistle deftly sidetracked the aunt. “Something Mrs. Lansquenet said caused you to think of softening of the brain?” “Yes. Mrs. Lansquenet said something like ‘Poor Richard. Mortimer’s death must have aged him a lot. He sounds quite senile. All these fancies about persecution and that someone is poisoning him. Old people get like that.’ And of course, as I knew, that is only too true. This aunt that I was telling you about—was convinced the servants were trying to poison her in her food and at last would eat only boiled eggs—because, she said, you couldn’t get inside a boiled egg to poison it. We humoured her, but if it had been nowadays I don’t know what we should have done. With eggs so scarce and mostly foreign at that, so that boiling is always risky.” Mr. Entwhistle listened to the saga of Miss Gilchrist’s aunt with deaf ears. He was very much disturbed. He said at last, when Miss Gilchrist had twittered into silence: “I suppose Mrs. Lansquenet didn’t take all this too seriously?” “Oh no, Mr. Entwhistle, she quite understood.” Mr. Entwhistle found that remark disturbing too, though not quite in the sense in which Miss Gilchrist had used it. Had Cora Lansquenet understood? Not then, perhaps, but later. Had she understood only too well? Mr. Entwhistle knew that there had been no senility about Richard Abernethie. Richard had been in full possession of his faculties. He was not the man to have persecution mania in any form. He was, as he always had been, a hardheaded businessman—and his illness made no difference in that respect. It seemed extraordinary that he should have spoken to his sister in the terms that he had. But perhaps Cora, with her odd childlike shrewdness, had read between the lines, and had crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of what Richard Abernethie had actually said. In most ways, thought Mr. Entwhistle, Cora had been a complete fool. She had no judgement, no balance, and a crude childish point of view, but she had also the child’s uncanny knack of sometimes hitting the nail on the head in a way that seemed quite startling. Mr. Entwhistle left it at that. Miss Gilchrist, he thought, knew no more than she had told him. He asked whether she knew if Cora Lansquenet had left a will. Miss Gilchrist replied promptly that Mrs. Lansquenet’s will was at the Bank. With that and after making certain further arrangements he took his leave. He insisted on Miss Gilchrist’s accepting a small sum in cash to defray present expenses and told her he would communicate with her again, and in the meantime he would be grateful if she would stay on at the cottage while she was looking about for a new post. That would be, Miss Gilchrist said, a great convenience and really she was not at all nervous. He was unable to escape without being shown round the cottage by Miss Gilchrist, and introduced to various pictures by the late Pierre Lansquenet which were crowded into the small dining room and which made Mr. Entwhistle flinch—they were mostly nudes executed with a singular lack of draughtsmanship but with much fidelity to detail. He was also made to admire various small oil sketches of picturesque fishing ports done by Cora herself. “Polperro,” said Miss Gilchrist proudly. “We were there last year and Mrs. Lansquenet was delighted with its picturesqueness.” Mr. Entwhistle, viewing Polperro from the southwest, from the northwest, and presumably from the several other points of the compass, agreed that Mrs. Lansquenet had certainly been enthusiastic. “Mrs. Lansquenet promised to leave me her sketches,” said Miss Gilchrist wistfully. “I admired them so much. One can really see the waves breaking in this one, can’t one? Even if she forgot, I might perhaps have just one as a souvenir, do you think?” “I’m sure that could be arranged,” said Mr. Entwhistle graciously. He made a few further arrangements and then left to interview the Bank Manager and to have a further consultation with Inspector Morton. Five I “Worn out, that’s what you are,” said Miss Entwhistle in the indignant and bullying tones adopted by devoted sisters towards brothers for whom they keep house. “You shouldn’t do it, at your age. What’s it all got to do with you, I’d like to know? You’ve retired, haven’t you?” Mr. Entwhistle said mildly that Richard Abernethie had been one of his oldest friends. “I dare say. But Richard Abernethie’s dead, isn’t he? So I see no reason for you to go mixing yourself up in things that are no concern of yours and catching your death of cold in these nasty draughty railway trains. And murder, too! I can’t see why they sent for you at all.” “They communicated with me because there was a letter in the cottage signed by me, telling Cora the arrangements for the funeral.” “Funerals! One funeral after another, and that reminds me. Another of these precious Abernethies has been ringing you up— Timothy, I think he said. From somewhere in Yorkshire—and that’s about a funeral, too! Said he’d ring again later.” A personal call for Mr. Entwhistle came through that evening. Taking it, he heard Maude Abernethie’s voice at the other end. “Thank goodness I’ve got hold of you at last! Timothy has been in the most terrible state. This news about Cora has upset him dreadfully.” “Quite understandable,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “What did you say?” “I said it was quite understandable.” “I suppose so.” Maude sounded more than doubtful. “Do you mean to say it was really murder?” (“It was murder, wasn’t it?” Cora had said.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

But this time there was no hesitation about the answer.) “Yes, it was murder,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “And with a hatchet, so the papers say?” “Yes.” “It seems quite incredible to me,” said Maude, “that Timothy’s sister—his own sister—can have been murdered with a hatchet!” It seemed no less incredible to Mr. Entwhistle. Timothy’s life was so remote from violence that even his relations, one felt, ought to be equally exempt. “I’m afraid one has to face the fact,” said Mr. Entwhistle mildly. “I am really very worried about Timothy. It’s so bad for him, all this! I’ve got him to bed now but he insists on my persuading you to come up and see him. He wants to know a hundred things—whether there will be an inquest, and who ought to attend, and how soon after that the funeral can take place, and where, and what funds there are, and if Cora expressed any wishes about being cremated or what, and if she left a will—” Mr. Entwhistle interrupted before the catalogue got too long. “There is a will, yes. She left Timothy her executor.” “Oh dear, I’m afraid Timothy can’t undertake anything—” “The firm will attend to all the necessary business. The will’s very simple. She left her own sketches and an amethyst brooch to her companion, Miss Gilchrist, and everything else to Susan.” “To Susan? Now I wonder why Susan? I don’t believe she ever saw Susan—not since she was a baby anyway.” “I imagine that it was because Susan was reported to have made a marriage not wholly pleasing to the family.” Maude snorted. “Even Gregory is a great deal better than Pierre Lansquenet ever was! Of course marrying a man who serves in a shop would have been unheard of in my day—but a chemist’s shop is much better than a haberdasher’s—and at least Gregory seems quite respectable.” She paused and added: “Does this mean that Susan gets the income Richard left to Cora?” “Oh no. The capital of that will be divided according to the instructions of Richard’s will. No, poor Cora had only a few hundred pounds and the furniture of her cottage to leave. When outstanding debts are paid and the furniture sold I doubt if the whole thing will amount to more than at most five hundred pounds.” He went on: “There will have to be an inquest, of course. That is fixed for next Thursday. If Timothy is agreeable, we’ll send down young Lloyd to watch the proceedings on behalf of the family.” He added apologetically: “I’m afraid it may attract some notoriety owing to the—er—circumstances.” “How very unpleasant! Have they caught the wretch who did it?” “Not yet.” “One of these dreadful half-baked young men who go about the country roving and murdering, I suppose. The police are so incompetent.” “No, no,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “The police are by no means incompetent. Don’t imagine that, for a moment.” “Well, it all seems to me quite extraordinary. And so bad for Timothy. I suppose you couldn’t possibly come down here, Mr. Entwhistle? I should be most grateful if you could. I think Timothy’s mind might be set at rest if you were here to reassure him.” Mr. Entwhistle was silent for a moment. The invitation was not unwelcome. “There is something in what you say,” he admitted. “And I shall need Timothy’s signature as executor to certain documents. Yes, I think it might be quite a good thing.” “That is splendid. I am so relieved. Tomorrow? And you’ll stay the night? The best train is the 11:20 from St. Pancras.” “It will have to be an afternoon train, I’m afraid. I have,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “other business in the morning….” II George Crossfield greeted Mr. Entwhistle heartily but with, perhaps, just a shade of surprise. Mr. Entwhistle said, in an explanatory way, although it really explained nothing: “I’ve just come up from Lytchett St. Mary.” “Then it really was Aunt Cora? I read about it in the papers and I just couldn’t believe it. I thought it must be someone of the same name.” “Lansquenet is not a common name.” “No, of course it isn’t. I suppose there is a natural aversion to believing that anyone of one’s own family can be murdered. Sounds to me rather like that case last month on Dartmoor.” “Does it?” “Yes. Same circumstances. Cottage in a lonely position. Two elderly women living together. Amount of cash taken really quite pitifully inadequate one would think.” “The value of money is always relative,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It is the need that counts.” “Yes—yes, I suppose you’re right.” “If you need ten pounds desperately—then fifteen is more than adequate. And inversely so. If your need is for a hundred pounds, forty-five would be worse than useless. And if it’s thousands you need, then hundreds are not enough.” George said with a sudden flicker of the eyes: “I’d say any money came in useful these days. Everyone’s hard up.” “But not desperate,” Mr. Entwhistle pointed out. “It’s the desperation that counts.” “Are you thinking of something in particular?” “Oh no, not at all.” He paused then went on: “It will be a little time before the estate is settled; would it be convenient for you to have an advance?” “As a matter of fact, I was going to raise the subject. However, I saw the Bank this morning and referred them to you and they were quite obliging about an overdraft.” Again there came that flicker in George’s eyes, and Mr. Entwhistle, from the depths of his experience, recognized it. George, he felt certain, had been, if not desperate, then in very sore straits for money. He knew at that moment, what he had felt subconsciously all along, that in money matters he would not trust George. He wondered if old Richard Abernethie, who also had had great experience in judging men, had felt that. Mr. Entwhistle was also sure that after Mortimer’s death, Abernethie had formed the intention of making George his heir. George was not an Abernethie, but he was the only male of the younger generation. He was the natural successor to Mortimer. Richard Abernethie had sent for George, had had him staying in the house for some days. It seemed probable that at the end of the visit the older man had not found George satisfactory. Had he felt instinctively, as Mr. Entwhistle felt, that George was not straight? George’s father, so the family had thought, had been a poor choice on Laura’s part. A stockbroker who had had other rather mysterious activities. George took after his father rather than after the Abernethies. Perhaps misinterpreting the old lawyer’s silence, George said with an uneasy laugh: “Truth is, I’ve not been very lucky with my investments lately. I took a bit of a risk and it didn’t come off. More or less cleaned me out. But I’ll be able to recoup myself now. All one needs is a bit of capital. Ardens Consolidated are pretty good, don’t you think?” Mr. Entwhistle neither agreed nor dissented. He was wondering if by any chance George had been speculating with money that belonged to clients and not with his own? If George had been in danger of criminal prosecution— Mr. Entwhistle said precisely: “I tried to reach you the day after the funeral, but I suppose you weren’t in the office.” “Did you? They never told me. As a matter of fact, I thought I was entitled to a day off after the good news!” “The good news?” George reddened. “Oh look here, I didn’t mean Uncle Richard’s death. But knowing you’ve come into money does give one a bit of a kick. One feels one must celebrate. As a matter of fact I went to Hurst Park. Backed two winners. It never rains but it pours! If your luck’s in, it’s in! Only a matter of fifty quid, but it all helps.” “Oh yes,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It all helps. And there will now be an additional sum coming to you as a result of your Aunt Cora’s death.” George looked concerned. “Poor old girl,” he said. “It does seem rotten luck, doesn’t it?

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Poor old girl,” he said. “It does seem rotten luck, doesn’t it? Probably just when she was all set to enjoy herself.” “Let us hope the police will find the person responsible for her death,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “I expect they’ll get him all right. They’re good, our police. They round up all the undesirables in the neighbourhood and go through ’em with a tooth comb—make them account for their actions at the time it happened.” “Not so easy if a little time has elapsed,” said Mr. Entwhistle. He gave a wintry little smile that indicated he was about to make a joke. “I myself was in Hatchard’s bookshop at 3:30 on the day in question. Should I remember that if I were questioned by the police in ten days’ time? I very much doubt it. And you, George, you were at Hurst Park. Would you remember which day you went to the races in—say—a month’s time?” “Oh I could fix it by the funeral—the day after.” “True—true. And then you backed a couple of winners. Another aid to memory. One seldom forgets the names of a horse on which one has won money. Which were they, by the way?” “Let me see. Gaymarck and Frogg II. Yes, I shan’t forget them in a hurry.” Mr. Entwhistle gave his dry little cackle of laughter and took his leave. III “It’s lovely to see you, of course,” said Rosamund without any marked enthusiasm. “But it’s frightfully early in the morning.” She yawned heavily. “It’s eleven o’clock,” said Mr. Entwhistle. Rosamund yawned again. She said apologetically: “We had the hell of a party last night. Far too much to drink. Michael’s got a terrible hangover still.” Michael appeared at this moment, also yawning. He had a cup of black coffee in his hand and was wearing a very smart dressing gown. He looked haggard and attractive—and his smile had the usual charm. Rosamund was wearing a black skirt, a rather dirty yellow pullover, and nothing else as far as Mr. Entwhistle could judge. The precise and fastidious lawyer did not approve at all of the young Shanes’ way of living. The rather ramshackle flat on the first floor of a Chelsea house—the bottles and glasses and cigarette ends that lay about in profusion—the stale air, and the general air of dust and dishevelment. In the midst of this discouraging setting Rosamund and Michael bloomed with their wonderful good looks. They were certainly a very handsome couple and they seemed, Mr. Entwhistle thought, very fond of each other. Rosamund was certainly adoringly fond of Michael. “Darling,” she said. “Do you think just a teeny sip of champagne? Just to pull us together and toast the future. Oh, Mr. Entwhistle, it really is the most marvellous luck Uncle Richard leaving us all that lovely money just now—” Mr. Entwhistle noted the quick, almost scowling, frown that Michael gave, but Rosamund went on serenely: “Because there’s the most wonderful chance of a play. Michael’s got an option on it. It’s a most wonderful part for him and even a small part for me, too. It’s about one of these young criminals, you know, they are really saints—it’s absolutely full of the latest modern ideas.” “So it would seem,” said Mr. Entwhistle stiffly. “He robs, you know, and he kills, and he’s hounded by the police and by society—and then in the end, he does a miracle.” Mr. Entwhistle sat in outraged silence. Pernicious nonsense these young fools talked! And wrote. Not that Michael Shane was talking much. There was still a faint scowl on his face. “Mr. Entwhistle doesn’t want to hear all our rhapsodies, Rosamund,” he said. “Shut up for a bit and let him tell us why he’s come to see us.” “There are just one or two little matters to straighten out,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “I have just come back from Lytchett St. Mary.” “Then it was Aunt Cora who was murdered? We saw it in the paper. And I said it must be because it’s a very uncommon name. Poor old Aunt Cora. I was looking at her at the funeral that day and thinking what a frump she was and that really one might as well be dead if one looked like that—and now she is dead. They absolutely wouldn’t believe it last night when I told them that that murder with the hatchet in the paper was actually my aunt! They just laughed, didn’t they, Michael?” Michael Shane did not reply and Rosamund with every appearance of enjoyment said: “Two murders one after another. It’s almost too much, isn’t it?” “Don’t be a fool, Rosamund, your Uncle Richard wasn’t murdered.” “Well, Cora thought he was.” Mr. Entwhistle intervened to ask: “You came back to London after the funeral, didn’t you?” “Yes, we came by the same train as you did.” “Of course… Of course. I ask because I tried to get hold of you,” he shot a quick glance at the telephone—“on the following day—several times in fact, and couldn’t get an answer.” “Oh dear—I’m so sorry. What were we doing that day? The day before yesterday. We were here until about twelve, weren’t we? And then you went round to try and get hold of Rosenheim and you went on to lunch with Oscar and I went out to see if I could get some nylons and round the shops. I was to meet Janet but we missed each other. Yes, I had a lovely afternoon shopping—and then we dined at the Castile. We got back here about ten o’clock, I suppose.” “About that,” said Michael. He was looking thoughtfully at Mr. Entwhistle. “What did you want to get hold of us for, sir?” “Oh! Just some points that had arisen about Richard Abernethie’s estate—papers to sign—all that.” Rosamund asked: “Do we get the money now, or not for ages?” “I’m afraid,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “that the law is prone to delays.” “But we can get an advance, can’t we?” Rosamund looked alarmed. “Michael said we could. Actually it’s terribly important. Because of the play.” Michael said pleasantly: “Oh, there’s no real hurry. It’s just a question of deciding whether or not to take up the option.” “It will be quite easy to advance you some money,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “As much as you need.” “Then that’s all right.” Rosamund gave a sigh of relief. She added as an afterthought: “Did Aunt Cora leave any money?” “A little. She left it to your Cousin Susan.” “Why Susan, I should like to know! Is it much?” “A few hundred pounds and some furniture.” “Nice furniture?” “No,” said Mr. Entwhistle. Rosamund lost interest. “It’s all very odd, isn’t it?” she said. “There was Cora, after the funeral, suddenly coming out with ‘He was murdered!’ and then, the very next day, she goes and gets herself murdered? I mean, it is odd, isn’t it?” There was a moment’s rather uncomfortable silence before Mr. Entwhistle said quietly: “Yes, it is indeed very odd….” IV Mr. Entwhistle studied Susan Banks as she leant forward across the table talking in her animated manner. None of the loveliness of Rosamund here. But it was an attractive face and its attraction lay, Mr. Entwhistle decided, in its vitality. The curves of the mouth were rich and full. It was a woman’s mouth and her body was very decidedly a woman’s—emphatically so. Yet in many ways Susan reminded him of her uncle, Richard Abernethie. The shape of her head, the line of her jaw, the deep-set reflective eyes. She had the same kind of dominant personality that Richard had had, the same driving energy, the same foresightedness and forthright judgement. Of the three members of the younger generation she alone seemed to be made of the metal that had raised up the vast Abernethie fortunes. Had Richard recognized in this niece a kindred spirit to his own? Mr. Entwhistle thought he must have done. Richard had always had a keen appreciation of character.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Richard had always had a keen appreciation of character. Here, surely, were exactly the qualities of which he was in search. And yet, in his will, Richard Abernethie had made no distinction in her favour. Distrustful, as Mr. Entwhistle believed, of George, passing over that lovely dimwit, Rosamund—could he not have found in Susan what he was seeking—an heir of his own mettle? If not, the cause must be—yes, it followed logically—the husband…. Mr. Entwhistle’s eyes slid gently over Susan’s shoulder to where Gregory Banks stood absently whittling at a pencil. A thin, pale, nondescript young man with reddish sandy hair. So overshadowed by Susan’s colourful personality that it was difficult to realize what he himself was really like. Nothing to take hold of in the fellow—quite pleasant, ready to be agreeable—a “yes” man, as the modern term went. And yet that did not seem to describe him satisfactorily. There was something vaguely disquieting about the unobtrusiveness of Gregory Banks. He had been an unsuitable match—yet Susan had insisted on marrying him—had overborne all opposition—why? What had she seen in him? And now, six months after the marriage—“She’s crazy about the fellow,” Mr. Entwhistle said to himself. He knew the signs. A large number of wives with matrimonial troubles had passed through the office of Bollard, Entwhistle, Entwhistle and Bollard. Wives madly devoted to unsatisfactory and often what appeared quite unprepossessing husbands, wives contemptuous of, and bored by, apparently attractive and impeccable husbands. What any woman saw in some particular man was beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent male. It just was so. A woman who could be intelligent about everything else in the world could be a complete fool when it came to some particular man. Susan, thought Mr. Entwhistle, was one of those women. For her the world revolved around Greg. And that had its dangers in more ways than one. Susan was talking with emphasis and indignation. “—because it is disgraceful. You remember that woman who was murdered in Yorkshire last year? Nobody was ever arrested. And the old woman in the sweet shop who was killed with a crowbar. They detained some man, and then they let him go!” “There has to be evidence, my dear,” said Mr. Entwhistle. Susan paid no attention. “And that other case—a retired nurse—that was a hatchet or an axe—just like Aunt Cora.” “Dear me, you appear to have made quite a study of these crimes, Susan,” said Mr. Entwhistle mildly. “Naturally one remembers these things—and when someone in one’s own family is killed—and in very much the same way—well, it shows that there must be a lot of these sorts of people going round the countryside, breaking into places and attacking lonely women—and that the police just don’t bother!” Mr. Entwhistle shook his head. “Don’t belittle the police, Susan. They are a very shrewd and patient body of men—persistent, too. Just because it isn’t still mentioned in the newspapers doesn’t mean that a case is closed. Far from it.” “And yet there are hundreds of unsolved crimes every year.” “Hundreds?” Mr. Entwhistle looked dubious. “A certain number, yes. But there are many occasions when the police know who has committed a crime but where the evidence is insufficient for a prosecution.” “I don’t believe it,” said Susan. “I believe if you knew definitely who committed a crime you could always get the evidence.” “I wonder now.” Mr. Entwhistle sounded thoughtful. “I very much wonder….” “Have they any idea at all—in Aunt Cora’s case—of who it might be?” “That I couldn’t say. Not as far as I know. But they would hardly confide in me—and it’s early days yet—the murder took place only the day before yesterday, remember.” “It’s definitely got to be a certain kind of person,” Susan mused. “A brutal, perhaps slightly half-witted type—a discharged soldier or a gaol bird. I mean, using a hatchet like that.” Looking slightly quizzical, Mr. Entwhistle raised his eyebrows and murmured: “Lizzie Borden with an axe Gave her father fifty whacks. When she saw what she had done She gave her mother fifty-one.” “Oh,” Susan flushed angrily, “Cora hadn’t got any relations living with her—unless you mean the companion. And anyway Lizzie Borden was acquitted. Nobody knows for certain she killed her father and stepmother.” “The rhyme is quite definitely libellous,” Mr. Entwhistle agreed. “You mean the companion did do it? Did Cora leave her anything?” “An amethyst brooch of no great value and some sketches of fishing villages of sentimental value only.” “One has to have a motive for murder—unless one is half-witted.” Mr. Entwhistle gave a little chuckle. “As far as one can see, the only person who had a motive is you, my dear Susan.” “What’s that?” Greg moved forward suddenly. He was like a sleeper coming awake. An ugly light showed in his eyes. He was suddenly no longer a negligible feature in the background. “What’s Sue got to do with it? What do you mean—saying things like that?” Susan said sharply: “Shut up, Greg. Mr. Entwhistle doesn’t mean anything—” “Just my little joke,” said Mr. Entwhistle apologetically. “Not in the best taste, I’m afraid. Cora left her estate, such as it was, to you, Susan. But to a young lady who has just inherited several hundred thousand pounds, an estate, amounting at the most to a few hundreds, can hardly be said to represent a motive for murder.” “She left her money to me?” Susan sounded surprised. “How extraordinary. She didn’t even know me! Why did she do it, do you think?” “I think she had heard rumours that there had been a little difficulty—er—over your marriage.” Greg, back again at sharpening his pencil, scowled. “There had been a certain amount of trouble over her own marriage—and I think she experienced a fellow feeling.” Susan asked with a certain amount of interest: “She married an artist, didn’t she, whom none of the family liked? Was he a good artist?” Mr. Entwhistle shook his head very decidedly. “Are there any of his paintings in the cottage?” “Yes.” Then I shall judge for myself,” said Susan. Mr. Entwhistle smiled at the resolute tilt of Susan’s chin. “So be it. Doubtless I am an old fogey and hopelessly old-fashioned in matters of art, but I really don’t think you will dispute my verdict.” “I suppose I ought to go down there, anyway? And look over what there is. Is there anybody there now?” “I have arranged with Miss Gilchrist to remain there until further notice.” Greg said: “She must have a pretty good nerve—to stay in a cottage where a murder’s been committed.” “Miss Gilchrist is quite a sensible woman, I should say. Besides,” added the lawyer drily, “I don’t think she has anywhere else to go until she gets another situation.” “So Aunt Cora’s death left her high and dry? Did she—were she and Aunt Cora—on intimate terms—?” Mr. Entwhistle looked at her rather curiously, wondering just what exactly was in her mind. “Moderately so, I imagine,” he said. “She never treated Miss Gilchrist as a servant.” “Treated her a damned sight worse, I dare say,” said Susan. “These wretched so called ‘ladies’ are the ones who get it taken out of them nowadays. I’ll try and find her a decent post somewhere. It won’t be difficult. Anyone who’s willing to do a bit of housework and cook is worth their weight in gold—she does cook, doesn’t she?” “Oh yes. I gather it is something she called, er ‘the rough’ that she objected to. I’m afraid I don’t quite know what ‘the rough’ is.” Susan appeared to be a good deal amused. Mr. Entwhistle, glancing at his watch, said: “Your aunt left Timothy her executor.” “Timothy,” said Susan with scorn. “Uncle Timothy is practically a myth. Nobody ever sees him.” “Quite.” Mr. Entwhistle glanced at his watch. “I am travelling up to see him this afternoon. I will acquaint him with your decision to go down to the cottage.” “It will only take me a day or two, I imagine.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

I don’t want to be long away from London. I’ve got various schemes in hand. I’m going into business.” Mr. Entwhistle looked round him at the cramped sitting room of the tiny flat. Greg and Susan were evidently hard up. Her father, he knew, had run through most of his money. He had left his daughter badly off. “What are your plans for the future, if I may ask?” “I’ve got my eye on some premises in Cardigan Street. I suppose, if necessary, you can advance me some money? I may have to pay a deposit.” “That can be managed,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “I rang you up the day after the funeral several times—but could get no answer. I thought perhaps you might care for an advance. I wondered whether you might perhaps have gone out of Town.” “Oh no,” said Susan quickly. “We were in all day. Both of us. We didn’t go out at all.” Greg said gently: “You know Susan, I think our telephone must have been out of order that day. You remember how I couldn’t get through to Hard and Co. in the afternoon. I meant to report it, but it was all right the next morning.” “Telephones,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “can be very unreliable sometimes.” Susan said suddenly: “How did Aunt Cora know about our marriage? It was at a Registry Office and we didn’t tell anyone until afterwards!” “I fancy Richard may have told her about it. She remade her will about three weeks ago (it was formerly in favour of the Theosophical Society)—just about the time he had been down to see her.” Susan looked startled. “Did Uncle Richard go down to see her? I’d no idea of that?” “I hadn’t any idea of it myself,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “So that was when—” “When what?” “Nothing,” said Susan. Six I “Very good of you to come along,” said Maude gruffly, as she greeted Mr. Entwhistle on the platform of Bayham Compton station. “I can assure you that both Timothy and I much appreciate it. Of course the truth is that Richard’s death was the worst thing possible for Timothy.” Mr. Entwhistle had not yet considered his friend’s death from this particular angle. But it was, he saw, the only angle from which Mrs. Timothy Abernethie was likely to regard it. As they proceeded towards the exit, Maude developed the theme. “To begin with, it was a shock—Timothy was really very attached to Richard. And then unfortunately it put the idea of death into Timothy’s head. Being such an invalid has made him rather nervous about himself. He realized that he was the only one of the brothers left alive—and he started saying that he’d be the next to go—and that it wouldn’t be long now—all very morbid talk, as I told him.” They emerged from the station and Maude led the way to a dilapidated car of almost fabulous antiquity. “Sorry about our old rattletrap,” she said. “We’ve wanted a new car for years, but really we couldn’t afford it. This has had a new engine twice—and these old cars really stand up to a lot of hard work. “I hope it will start,” she added. “Sometimes one has to wind it.” She pressed the starter several times but only a meaningless whirr resulted. Mr. Entwhistle, who had never wound a car in his life, felt rather apprehensive, but Maude herself descended, inserted the starting handle and with a vigorous couple of turns woke the motor to life. It was fortunate, Mr. Entwhistle reflected, that Maude was such a powerfully built woman. “That’s that,” she said. “The old brute’s been playing me up lately. Did it when I was coming back after the funeral. Had to walk a couple of miles to the nearest garage and they weren’t good for much—just a village affair. I had to put up at the local inn while they tinkered at it. Of course that upset Timothy, too. I had to phone through to him and tell him I couldn’t be back till the next day. Fussed him terribly. One tries to keep things from him as much as possible—but some things one can’t do anything about—Cora’s murder, for instance. I had to send for Dr. Barton to give him a sedative. Things like murder are too much for a man in Timothy’s state of health. I gather Cora was always a fool.” Mr. Entwhistle digested this remark in silence. The inference was not quite clear to him. “I don’t think I’d seen Cora since our marriage,” said Maude. “I didn’t like to say to Timothy at the time: ‘Your youngest sister’s batty,’ not just like that. But it’s what I thought. There she was saying the most extraordinary things! One didn’t know whether to resent them or whether to laugh. I suppose the truth is she lived in a kind of imaginary world of her own—full of melodrama and fantastic ideas about other people. Well, poor soul, she’s paid for it now. She didn’t have any protégés, did she?” “Protégés? What do you mean?” “I just wondered. Some young cadging artist, or musician—or something of that kind. Someone she might have let in that day, and who killed her for her loose cash. Perhaps an adolescent—they’re so queer at that age sometimes—especially if they’re the neurotic arty type. I mean, it seems so odd to break in and murder her in the middle of the afternoon. If you break into a house surely you’d do it at night.” “There would have been two women there then.” “Oh yes, the companion. But really I can’t believe that anyone would deliberately wait until she was out of the way and then break in and attack Cora. What for? He can’t have expected she’d have any cash or stuff to speak of, and there must have been times when both the women were out and the house was empty. That would have been much safer. It seems so stupid to go and commit a murder unless it’s absolutely necessary.” “And Cora’s murder, you feel, was unnecessary?” “It all seems so stupid.” Should murder make sense? Mr. Entwhistle wondered. Academically the answer was yes. But many pointless crimes were on record. It depended, Mr. Entwhistle reflected, on the mentality of the murderer. What did he really know about murderers and their mental processes? Very little. His firm had never had a criminal practice. He was no student of criminology himself. Murderers, as far as he could judge, seemed to be of all sorts and kinds. Some had had overweening vanity, some had had a lust for power, some, like Seddon, had been mean and avaricious, others, like Smith and Rowse, had had an incredible fascination for women; some, like Armstrong, had been pleasant fellows to meet. Edith Thompson had lived in a world of violent unreality, Nurse Waddington had put her elderly patients out of the way with businesslike cheerfulness. Maude’s voice broke into his meditations. “If I could only keep the newspapers from Timothy! But he will insist on reading them—and then, of course, it upsets him. You do understand, don’t you, Mr. Entwhistle, that there can be no question of Timothy’s attending the inquest? If necessary, Dr. Barton can write out a certificate or whatever it is.” “You can set your mind at rest about that.” “Thank goodness!” They turned in through the gates of Stansfield Grange, and up a neglected drive. It had been an attractive small property once—but had now a doleful and neglected appearance. Maude sighed as she said: “We had to let this go to seed during the war. Both gardeners called up. And now we’ve only got one old man—and he’s not much good. Wages have gone up so terribly. I must say it’s a blessing to realize that we’ll be able to spend a little money on the place now. We’re both so fond of it. I was really afraid that we might have to sell it… Not that I suggested anything of the kind to Timothy. It would have upset him—dreadfully.” They drew up before the portico of a very old Georgian house which badly needed a coat of paint. “No servants,” said Maude bitterly, as she led the way in. “Just a couple of women who come in.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Just a couple of women who come in. We had a resident maid until a month ago—slightly hunchbacked and terribly adenoidal and in many ways not too bright, but she was there which was such a comfort—and quite good at plain cooking. And would you believe it, she gave notice and went to a fool of a woman who keeps six Pekinese dogs (it’s a larger house than this and more work) because she was ‘so fond of little doggies,’ she said. Dogs, indeed! Being sick and making messes all the time I’ve no doubt! Really, these girls are mental! So there we are, and if I have to go out any afternoon, Timothy is left quite alone in the house and if anything should happen, how could he get help? Though I do leave the telephone close by his chair so that if he felt faint he could dial Dr. Barton immediately.” Maude led the way into the drawing room where tea was laid ready by the fireplace, and establishing Mr. Entwhistle there, disappeared, presumably to the back regions. She returned in a few minutes’ time with a teapot and silver kettle, and proceeded to minister to Mr. Entwhistle’s needs. It was a good tea with homemade cake and fresh buns. Mr. Entwhistle murmured: “What about Timothy?” and Maude explained briskly that she had taken Timothy his tray before she set out for the station. “And now,” said Maude, “he will have had his little nap and it will be the best time for him to see you. Do try and not let him excite himself too much.” Mr. Entwhistle assured her that he would exercise every precaution. Studying her in the flickering firelight, he was seized by a feeling of compassion. This big, stalwart matter-of-fact woman, so healthy, so vigorous, so full of common sense, and yet so strangely, almost pitifully, vulnerable in one spot. Her love for her husband was maternal love, Mr. Entwhistle decided. Maude Abernethie had borne no child and she was a woman built for motherhood. Her invalid husband had become her child, to be shielded, guarded, watched over. And perhaps, being the stronger character of the two, she had unconsciously imposed on him a state of invalidism greater than might otherwise have been the case. “Poor Mrs. Tim,” thought Mr. Entwhistle to himself. II “Good of you to come, Entwhistle.” Timothy raised himself up in his chair as he held out a hand. He was a big man with a marked resemblance to his brother Richard. But what was strength in Richard, in Timothy was weakness. The mouth was irresolute, the chin very slightly receding, the eyes less deep-set. Lines of peevish irritability showed on his forehead. His invalid status was emphasized by the rug across his knees and a positive pharmacopoeia of little bottles and boxes, on a table at his right hand. “I mustn’t exert myself,” he said warningly. “Doctor’s forbidden it. Keeps telling me not to worry! Worry! If he’d had a murder in his family he’d do a bit of worrying, I bet! It’s too much for a man—first Richard’s death—then hearing all about his funeral and his will—what a will!—and on top of that poor little Cora killed with a hatchet. Hatchet! ugh! This country’s full of gangsters nowadays—thugs—left over from the war! Going about killing defenceless women. Nobody’s got the guts to put these things down—to take a strong hand. What’s the country coming to, I’d like to know? What’s the damned country coming to?” Mr. Entwhistle was familiar with this gambit. It was a question almost invariably asked sooner or later by his clients for the last twenty years and he had his routine for answering it. The noncommittal words he uttered could have been classified under the heading of soothing noises. “It all began with that damned Labour Government,” said Timothy. “Sending the whole country to blazes. And the Government we’ve got now is no better. Mealy- mouthed, milk-and-water socialists! Look at the state we’re in! Can’t get a decent gardener, can’t get servants—poor Maude here has to work herself to a shadow messing about in the kitchen (by the way, I think a custard pudding would go well with the sole tonight, my dear—and perhaps a little clear soup first?). I’ve got to keep my strength up— Doctor Barton said so—let me see, where was I? Oh yes, Cora. It’s a shock, I can tell you, to a man when he hears his sister—his own sister—has been murdered! Why, I had palpitations for twenty minutes! You’ll have to attend to everything for me, Entwhistle. I can’t go to the inquest or be bothered by business of any kind connected with Cora’s estate. I want to forget the whole thing. What happened, by the way, to Cora’s share of Richard’s money? Comes to me, I suppose?” Murmuring something about clearing away tea, Maude left the room. Timothy lay back in his chair and said: “Good thing to get rid of the women. Now we can talk business without any silly interruptions.” “The sum left in trust for Cora,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “goes equally to you and the nieces and nephew.” “But look here,” Timothy’s cheeks assumed a purplish hue of indignation. “Surely I’m her next of kin? Only surviving brother.” Mr. Entwhistle explained with some care the exact provisions of Richard Abernethie’s will, reminding Timothy gently that he had had a copy sent him. “Don’t expect me to understand all that legal jargon, do you?” said Timothy ungratefully. “You lawyers! Matter of fact, I couldn’t believe it when Maude came home and told me the gist of it. Thought she’d got it wrong. Women are never clear headed. Best woman in the world, Maude—but women don’t understand finance. I don’t believe Maude even realizes that if Richard hadn’t died when he did, we might have had to clear out of here. Fact!” “Surely if you had applied to Richard—” Timothy gave a short bark of harsh laughter. “That’s not my style. Our father left us all a perfectly reasonable share of his money—that is, if we didn’t want to go into the family concern. I didn’t. I’ve a soul above cornplasters, Entwhistle! Richard took my attitude a bit hard. Well, what with taxes, depreciation of income, one thing and another—it hasn’t been easy to keep things going. I’ve had to realize a good deal of capital. Best thing to do these days. I did hint once to Richard that this place was getting a bit hard to run. He took the attitude that we’d be much better off in a smaller place altogether. Easier for Maude, he said, more labour saving—labour saving, what a term! Oh no, I wouldn’t have asked Richard for help. But I can tell you, Entwhistle, that the worry affected my health most unfavourably. A man in my state of health oughtn’t to have to worry. Then Richard died and though of course naturally I was cut up about it—my brother and all that— I couldn’t help feeling relieved about future prospects. Yes, it’s all plain sailing now—and a great relief. Get the house painted—get a couple of really good men on the garden—you can get them at a price. Restock the rose garden completely. And—where was I—” “Detailing your future plans.” “Yes, yes—but I mustn’t bother you with all that. What did hurt me—and hurt me cruelly—were the terms of Richard’s will.” “Indeed?” Mr. Entwhistle looked inquiring. “They were not—as you expected?” “I should say they weren’t! Naturally, after Mortimer’s death, I assumed that Richard would leave everything to me.” “Ah—did he—ever—indicate that to you?” “He never said so—not in so many words. Reticent sort of chap, Richard. But he asked himself here—not long after Mortimer’s death. Wanted to talk over family affairs generally. We discussed young George—and the girls and their husbands. Wanted to know my views—not that I could tell him much. I’m an invalid and I don’t get about, and Maudie and I live out of the world.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Rotten silly marriages both of those girls made, if you ask me. Well, I ask you, Entwhistle, naturally I thought he was consulting me as the head of the family after he was gone and naturally I thought the control of the money would be mine. Richard could surely trust me to do the right thing by the younger generation. And to look after poor old Cora. Dash it all, Entwhistle, I’m an Abernethie—the last Abernethie. Full control should have been left in my hands.” In his excitement Timothy had kicked aside his rug and had sat up in his chair. There were no signs of weakness or fragility about him. He looked, Mr. Entwhistle thought, a perfectly healthy man, even if a slightly excitable one. Moreover the old lawyer realized very clearly that Timothy Abernethie had probably always been secretly jealous of his brother Richard. They had been sufficiently alike for Timothy to resent his brother’s strength of character and firm grasp of affairs. When Richard had died, Timothy had exulted in the prospect of succeeding at this late date to the power to control the destinies of others. Richard Abernethie had not given him that power. Had he thought of doing so and then decided against it? A sudden squalling of cats in the garden brought Timothy up out of his chair. Rushing to the window he threw up the sash, bawled out, “Stop it, you!” and picking up a large book hurled it out at the marauders. “Beastly cats,” he grumbled, returning to his visitor. “Ruin the flower beds and I can’t stand that damned yowling.” He sat down again and asked: “Have a drink, Entwhistle?” “Not quite so soon. Maude has just given me an excellent tea.” Timothy grunted. “Capable woman. Maude. But she does too much. Even has to muck about with the inside of that old car of ours—she’s quite a mechanic in her way, you know.” “I hear she had a breakdown coming back from the funeral?” “Yes. Car conked out. She had the sense to telephone through about it, in case I should be anxious, but that ass of a daily woman of ours wrote down the message in a way that didn’t make sense. I was out getting a bit of fresh air—I’m advised by the doctor to take what exercise I can if I feel like it—I got back from my walk to find scrawled on a bit of paper: ‘Madame’s sorry car gone wrong got to stay night.’ Naturally I thought she was still at Enderby. Put a call through and found Maude had left that morning. Might have had the breakdown anywhere! Pretty kettle of fish! Fool of a daily woman only left me a lumpy macaroni cheese for supper. I had to go down to the kitchen and warm it up myself—and make myself a cup of tea—to say nothing of stoking the boiler. I might have had a heart attack—but does that class of woman care? Not she! With any decent feelings she’d have come back that evening and looked after me properly. No loyalty any more in the lower classes—” He brooded sadly. “I don’t know how much Maude told you about the funeral and the relatives,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “Cora produced rather an awkward moment. Said brightly that Richard had been murdered, hadn’t he? Perhaps Maude told you.” Timothy chuckled easily. “Oh yes, I heard about that. Everybody looked down their noses and pretended to be shocked. Just the sort of thing Cora would say! You know how she always managed to put her foot in it when she was a girl, Entwhistle? Said something at our wedding that upset Maude, I remember. Maude never cared for her very much. Yes, Maude rang me up that evening after the funeral to know if I was all right and if Mrs. Jones had come in to give me my evening meal and then she told me it had all gone off very well, and I said ‘What about the will?’ and she tried to hedge a bit, but of course I had the truth out of her. I couldn’t believe it, and I said she must have made a mistake, but she stuck to it. It hurt me, Entwhistle—it really wounded me, if you know what I mean. If you ask me, it was just spite on Richard’s part. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but, upon my word—” Timothy continued on this theme for some time. Then Maude came back into the room and said firmly: “I think, dear, Mr. Entwhistle has been with you quite long enough. You really must rest. If you have settled everything—” “Oh, we’ve settled things. I leave it all to you, Entwhistle. Let me know when they catch the fellow—if they ever do. I’ve no faith in the police nowadays—the Chief Constables aren’t the right type. You’ll see to the—er—interment—won’t you? We shan’t be able to come, I’m afraid. But order an expensive wreath—and there must be a proper stone put up in due course—she’ll be buried locally, I suppose? No point in bringing her North and I’ve no idea where Lansquenet is buried, somewhere in France I believe. I don’t know what one puts on a stone when it’s murder… Can’t very well say ‘entered into rest’ or anything like that. One will have to choose a text—something appropriate. R.I.P.? No, that’s only for Catholics.” “O Lord, thou has seen my wrong. Judge thou my case,” murmured Mr. Entwhistle. The startled glance Timothy bent on him made Mr. Entwhistle smile faintly. “From Lamentations,” he said. “It seems appropriate if somewhat melodramatic. However, it will be some time before the question of the Memorial stone comes up. The—er—ground has to settle, you know. Now don’t worry about anything. We will deal with things and keep you fully informed.” Mr. Entwhistle left for London by the breakfast train on the following morning. When he got home, after a little hesitation, he rang up a friend of his. Seven “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your invitation.” Mr. Entwhistle pressed his host’s hand warmly. Hercule Poirot gestured hospitably to a chair by the fire. Mr. Entwhistle sighed as he sat down. On one side of the room a table was laid for two. “I returned from the country this morning,” he said. “And you have a matter on which you wish to consult me?” “Yes. It’s a long rambling story, I’m afraid.” “Then we will not have it until after we have dined. Georges?” The efficient Georges materialized with some pâté de foie gras accompanied by hot toast in a napkin. “We will have our pâté by the fire,” said Poirot. “Afterwards we will move to the table.” It was an hour and a half later that Mr. Entwhistle stretched himself comfortably out in his chair and sighed a contented sigh. “You certainly know how to do yourself well, Poirot. Trust a Frenchman.” “I am a Belgian. But the rest of your remark applies. At my age the chief pleasure, almost the only pleasure that still remains, is the pleasure of the table. Mercifully I have an excellent stomach.” “Ah,” murmured Mr. Entwhistle. They had dined off sole veronique, followed by escalope de veau milanaise, proceeding to poire flambée with ice cream. They had drunk a Pouilly Fuissé followed by a Corton, and a very good port now reposed at Mr. Entwhistle’s elbow. Poirot, who did not care for port, was sipping Crème de Cacao. “I don’t know,” murmured Mr. Entwhistle reminiscently, “how you manage to get hold of an escalope like that! It melted in the mouth!” “I have a friend who is a Continental butcher. For him I solve a small domestic problem. He is appreciative—and ever since then he is most sympathetic to me in the matters of the stomach.” “A domestic problem,” Mr. Entwhistle sighed. “I wish you had not reminded me… This is such a perfect moment….” “Prolong it, my friend. We will have presently the demitasse and the fine brandy, and then, when digestion is peacefully under way, then you shall tell why you need my advice.” The clock struck the half hour after nine before Mr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Entwhistle stirred in his chair. The psychological moment had come. He no longer felt reluctant to bring forth his perplexities—he was eager to do so. “I don’t know,” he said, “whether I’m making the most colossal fool of myself. In any case I don’t see that there’s anything that can possibly be done. But I’d like to put the facts before you, and I’d like to know what you think.” He paused for a moment or two, then in his dry meticulous way, he told his story. His trained legal brain enabled him to put the facts clearly, to leave nothing out, and to add nothing extraneous. It was a clear succinct account, and as such appreciated by the little elderly man with the egg-shaped head who sat listening to him. When he had finished there was a pause. Mr. Entwhistle was prepared to answer questions, but for some few moments no question came. Hercule Poirot was reviewing the evidence. He said at last: “It seems very clear. You have in your mind the suspicion that your friend, Richard Abernethie, may have been murdered? That suspicion, or assumption, rests on the basis of one thing only—the words spoken by Cora Lansquenet at Richard Abernethie’s funeral. Take those away—and there is nothing left. The fact that she herself was murdered the day afterwards may be the purest coincidence. It is true that Richard Abernethie died suddenly, but he was attended by a reputable doctor who knew him well, and that doctor had no suspicions and gave a death certificate. Was Richard buried or cremated?” “Cremated—according to his own request.” “Yes, that is the law. And it means that a second doctor signed the certificate—but there would be no difficulty about that. So we come back to the essential point, what Cora Lansquenet said. You were there and you heard her. She said: ‘But he was murdered, wasn’t he?’” “Yes.” “And the real point is—that you believe she was speaking the truth.” The lawyer hesitated for a moment, then he said: “Yes, I do.” “Why?” “Why?” Entwhistle repeated the word, slightly puzzled. “But yes, why? Is it because, already, deep down, you had an uneasiness about the manner of Richard’s death?” The lawyer shook his head. “No, no, not in the least.” “Then it is because of her—of Cora herself. You knew her well?” “I had not seen her for—oh—over twenty years.” “Would you have known her if you had met her in the street?” Mr. Entwhistle reflected. “I might have passed her by in the street without recognizing her. She was a thin slip of a girl when I saw her last and she had turned into a stout, shabby, middle-aged woman. But I think that the moment I spoke to her face to face I should have recognized her. She wore her hair in the same way, a bang cut straight across the forehead, and she had a trick of peering up at you through her fringe like a rather shy animal, and she had a very characteristic, abrupt way of talking, and a way of putting her head on one side and then coming out with something quite outrageous. She had character, you see, and character is always highly individual.” “She was, in fact, the same Cora you had known years ago. And she still said outrageous things! The things, the outrageous things, she had said in the past—were they usually—justified?” “That was always the awkward thing about Cora. When truth would have been better left unspoken, she spoke it.” “And that characteristic remained unchanged. Richard Abernethie was murdered—so Cora at once mentioned the fact.” Mr. Entwhistle stirred. “You think he was murdered?” “Oh, no, no, my friend, we cannot go so fast. We agree on this—Cora thought he had been murdered. She was quite sure he had been murdered. It was, to her, more a certainty than a surmise. And so, we come to this, she must have had some reason for the belief. We agree, by your knowledge of her, that it was not just a bit of mischief making. Now tell me—when she said what she did, there was, at once, a kind of chorus of protest—that is right?” “Quite right.” “And she then became confused, abashed, and retreated from the position—saying—as far as you can remember, something like ‘But I thought—from what he told me—’” The lawyer nodded. “I wish I could remember more clearly. But I am fairly sure of that. She used the words ‘he told me’ or ‘he said—’” “And the matter was then smoothed over and everyone spoke of something else. You can remember, looking back, no special expression on anyone’s face? Anything that remains in your memory as—shall we say—unusual?” “No.” “And the very next day, Cora is killed—and you ask yourself: ‘Can it be cause and effect?’” The lawyer stirred. “I suppose that seems to you quite fantastic?” “Not at all,” said Poirot. “Given that the original assumption is correct, it is logical. The perfect murder, the murder of Richard Abernethie, has been committed, all has gone off smoothly—and suddenly it appears that there is one person who has a knowledge of the truth! Clearly that person must be silenced as quickly as possible.” “Then you do think that—it was murder?” Poirot said gravely: “I think, mon cher, exactly as you thought—that there is a case for investigation. Have you taken any steps? You have spoken of these matters to the police?” “No.” Mr. Entwhistle shook his head. “It did not seem to me that any good purpose could be achieved. My position is that I represent the family. If Richard Abernethie was murdered, there seems only one method by which it could be done.” “By poison?” “Exactly. And the body has been cremated. There is now no evidence available. But I decided that I, myself, must be satisfied on the point. That is why, Poirot, I have come to you.” “Who was in the house at the time of his death?” “An old butler who has been with him for years, a cook and a housemaid. It would seem, perhaps, as though it must necessarily be one of them—” “Ah! do not try to pull the wool upon my eyes. This Cora, she knows Richard Abernethie was killed, yet she acquiesces in the hushing up. She says, ‘I think you are all quite right.’ Therefore it must be one of the family who is concerned, someone whom the victim himself might prefer not to have openly accused. Otherwise, since Cora was fond of her brother, she would not agree to let the sleeping murderer lie. You agree to that, yes?” “It was the way I reasoned—yes,” confessed Mr. Entwhistle. “Though how any of the family could possibly—” Poirot cut him short. “Where poison is concerned there are all sorts of possibilities. It must, presumably, have been a narcotic of some sort if he died in his sleep and if there were no suspicious appearances. Possibly he was already having some narcotic administered to him.” “In any case,” said Mr. Entwhistle, “the how hardly matters. We shall never be able to prove anything.” “In the case of Richard Abernethie, no. But the murder of Cora Lansquenet is different. Once we know ‘who’ then evidence ought to be possible to get.” He added with a sharp glance, “You have, perhaps, already done something.” “Very little. My purpose was mainly, I think, elimination. It is distasteful to me to think that one of the Abernethie family is a murderer. I still can’t quite believe it. I hoped that by a few apparently idle questions I could exonerate certain members of the family beyond question. Perhaps, who knows, all of them? In which case, Cora would have been wrong in her assumption and her own death could be ascribed to some casual prowler who broke in. After all, the issue is very simple. What were the members of the Abernethie family doing on the afternoon that Cora Lansquenet was killed?” “Eh bien,” said Poirot, “what were they doing?” “George Crossfield was at Hurst Park races. Rosamund Shane was out shopping in London.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Rosamund Shane was out shopping in London. Her husband—for one must include husbands—” “Assuredly.” “Her husband was fixing up a deal about an option on a play, Susan and Gregory Banks were at home all day, Timothy Abernethie, who is an invalid, was at his home in Yorkshire, and his wife was driving herself home from Enderby.” He stopped. Hercule Poirot looked at him and nodded comprehendingly. “Yes, that is what they say. And is it all true?” “I simply don’t know, Poirot. Some of the statements are capable of proof or disproof—but it would be difficult to do so without showing one’s hand pretty plainly. In fact to do so would be tantamount to an accusation. I will simply tell you certain conclusions of my own. George may have been at Hurst Park races, but I do not think he was. He was rash enough to boast that he had backed a couple of winners. It is my experience that so many offenders against the law ruin their own case by saying too much. I asked him the name of the winners, and he gave the names of two horses without any apparent hesitation. Both of them, I found, had been heavily tipped on the day in question and one had duly won. The other, though an odds on favourite, had unaccountably failed even to get a place.” “Interesting. Had this George any urgent need for money at the time of his uncle’s death?” “It is my impression that his need was very urgent. I have no evidence for saying so, but I strongly suspect that he has been speculating with his clients’ funds and that he was in danger of prosecution. It is only my impression but I have some experience in these matters. Defaulting solicitors, I regret to say, are not entirely uncommon. I can only tell you that I would not have cared to entrust my own funds to George, and I suspect that Richard Abernethie, a very shrewd judge of men, was dissatisfied with his nephew and placed no reliance on him. “His mother,” the lawyer continued, “was a good-looking rather foolish girl and she married a man of what I should call dubious character.” He sighed. “The Abernethie girls were not good choosers.” He paused and then went on: “As for Rosamund, she is a lovely nitwit. I really cannot see her smashing Cora’s head in with a hatchet! Her husband, Michael Shane, is something of a dark horse—he’s a man with ambition and also a man of overweening vanity I should say. But really I know very little about him. I have no reason to suspect him of a brutal crime or of a carefully planned poisoning, but until I know that he really was doing what he says he was doing I cannot rule him out.” “But you have no doubts about the wife?” “No—no—there is a certain rather startling callousness…but no, I really cannot envisage the hatchet. She is a fragile-looking creature.” “And beautiful!” said Poirot with a faint cynical smile. “And the other niece?” “Susan? She is a very different type from Rosamund—a girl of remarkable ability, I should say. She and her husband were at home together that day. I said (falsely) that I had tried to get them on the telephone on the afternoon in question. Greg said very quickly that the telephone had been out of order all day. He had tried to get someone and failed.” “So again it is not conclusive… You cannot eliminate as you hoped to do… What is the husband like?” “I find him hard to make out. He has a somewhat unpleasing personality though one cannot say exactly why he makes this impression. As for Susan—” “Yes?” “Susan reminds me of her uncle. She has the vigour, the drive, the mental capacity of Richard Abernethie. It may be my fancy that she lacks some of the kindliness and the warmth of my old friend.” “Women are never kind,” remarked Poirot. “Though they can sometimes be tender. She loves her husband?” “Devotedly, I should say. But really, Poirot, I can’t believe— I won’t believe for one moment that Susan—” “You prefer George?” said Poirot. “It is natural! As for me, I am not so sentimental about beautiful young ladies. Now tell me about your visit to the older generation?” Mr. Entwhistle described his visit to Timothy and Maude at some length. Poirot summarized the result. “So Mrs. Abernethie is a good mechanic. She knows all about the inside of a car. And Mr. Abernethie is not the invalid he likes to think himself. He goes out for walks and is, according to you, capable of vigorous action. He is also a bit of an egomaniac and he resented his brother’s success and superior character.” “He spoke very affectionately of Cora.” “And ridiculed her silly remark after the funeral. What of the sixth beneficiary?” “Helen? Mrs. Leo? I do not suspect her for a moment. In any case, her innocence will be easy to prove. She was at Enderby. With three servants in the house.” “Eh bien, my friend,” said Poirot. “Let us be practical. What do you want me to do?” “I want to know the truth, Poirot.” “Yes. Yes, I should feel the same in your place.” “And you’re the man to find it out for me. I know you don’t take cases anymore, but I ask you to take this one. This is a matter of business. I will be responsible for your fees. Come now, money is always useful.” Poirot grinned. “Not if it all goes in the taxes! But I will admit, your problem interests me! Because it is not easy… It is all so nebulous… One thing, my friend, had better be done by you. After that, I will occupy myself of everything. But I think it will be best if you yourself seek out the doctor who attended Mr. Richard Abernethie. You know him?” “Slightly.” “What is he like?” “Middle-aged G.P. Quite competent. On very friendly terms with Richard. A thoroughly good fellow.” “Then seek him out. He will speak more freely to you than to me. Ask him about Mr. Abernethie’s illness. Find out what medicines Mr. Abernethie was taking at the time of his death and before. Find out if Richard Abernethie ever said anything to his doctor about fancying himself being poisoned. By the way, this Miss Gilchrist is sure that he used the term poisoned in talking to his sister?” Mr. Entwhistle reflected. “It was the word she used—but she is the type of witness who often changes the actual words used, because she is convinced she is keeping to the sense of them. If Richard had said he was afraid someone wanted to kill him, Miss Gilchrist might have assumed poison because she connected his fears with those of an aunt of hers who thought her food was being tampered with. I can take up the point with her again some time.” “Yes. Or I will do so.” He paused and then said in a different voice: “Has it occurred to you, my friend, that your Miss Gilchrist may be in some danger herself?” Mr. Entwhistle looked surprised. “I can’t say that it had.” “But, yes. Cora voiced her suspicions on the day of the funeral. The question in the murderer’s mind will be, did she voice them to anybody when she first heard of Richard’s death? And the most likely person for her to have spoken to about them will be Miss Gilchrist. I think, mon cher, that she had better not remain alone in that cottage.” “I believe Susan is going down.” “Ah, so Mrs. Banks is going down?” “She wants to look through Cora’s things.” “I see… I see… Well, my friend, do what I have asked of you. You might also prepare Mrs. Abernethie—Mrs. Leo Abernethie, for the possibility that I may arrive in the house. We will see. From now on I occupy myself of everything.” And Poirot twirled his moustaches with enormous energy. Eight I Mr. Entwhistle looked at Dr. Larraby thoughtfully. He had had a lifetime of experience in summing people up. There had been frequent occasions on which it had been necessary to tackle a difficult situation or a delicate subject. Mr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Mr. Entwhistle was an adept by now in the art of how exactly to make the proper approach. How would it be best to tackle Dr. Larraby on what was certainly a very difficult subject and one which the doctor might very well resent as reflecting upon his own professional skill? Frankness, Mr. Entwhistle thought—or at least a modified frankness. To say that suspicions had arisen because of a haphazard suggestion thrown out by a silly woman would be ill-advised. Dr. Larraby had not known Cora. Mr. Entwhistle cleared his throat and plunged bravely. “I want to consult you on a very delicate matter,” he said. “You may be offended, but I sincerely hope not. You are a sensible man and you will realize, I’m sure, that a—er—preposterous suggestion is best dealt with by finding a reasonable answer and not by condemning it out of hand. It concerns my client, the late Mr. Abernethie. I’ll ask you my question flat out. Are you certain, absolutely certain, that he died what is termed a natural death?” Dr. Larraby’s good-humoured, rubicund middle-aged face turned in astonishment on his questioner. “What on earth—Of course he did. I gave a certificate, didn’t I? If I hadn’t been satisfied—” Mr. Entwhistle cut in adroitly: “Naturally, naturally. I assure you that I am not assuming anything to the contrary. But I would be glad to have your positive assurance—in face of the—er—rumours that are flying around.” “Rumours? What rumours?” “One doesn’t know quite how these things start,” said Mr. Entwhistle mendaciously. “But my feeling is that they should be stopped—authoritatively, if possible.” “Abernethie was a sick man. He was suffering from a disease that would have proved fatal within, I should say, at the earliest, two years. It might have come much sooner. His son’s death had weakened his will to live, and his powers of resistance. I admit that I did not expect his death to come so soon, or indeed so suddenly, but there are precedents—plenty of precedents. Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb.” “I understand all that. I am not doubting your diagnosis. Mr. Abernethie was, shall we say (rather melodramatically, I’m afraid) under sentence of death. All I’m asking you is, is it quite possible that a man, knowing or suspecting that he is doomed, might of his own accord shorten that period of life? Or that someone else might do it for him?” Dr. Larraby frowned. “Suicide, you mean? Abernethie wasn’t a suicidal type.” “I see. You can assure me, medically speaking, that such a suggestion is impossible.” The doctor stirred uneasily. “I wouldn’t use the word impossible. After his son’s death life no longer held the interest for Abernethie that it had done. I certainly don’t feel that suicide is likely—but I can’t say that it’s impossible.” “You are speaking from the psychological angle. When I say medically, I really meant: do the circumstances of his death make such a suggestion impossible?” “No, oh no. No, I can’t say that. He died in his sleep, as people often do. There was no reason to suspect suicide, no evidence of his state of mind. If one were to demand an autopsy every time a man who is seriously ill died in his sleep—” The doctor’s face was getting redder and redder. Mr. Entwhistle hastened to interpose. “Of course. Of course. But if there had been evidence—evidence of which you yourself were not aware? If, for instance, he had said something to someone—” “Indicating that he was contemplating suicide? Did he? I must say it surprises me.” “But if it were so—my case is purely hypothetical—could you rule out the possibility?” Dr. Larraby said slowly: “No—not—I could not do that. But I say again. I should be very much surprised.” Mr. Entwhistle hastened to follow up his advantage. “If, then, we assume that his death was not natural—all this is purely hypothetical—what could have caused it? What kind of a drug, I mean?” “Several. Some kind of a narcotic would be indicated. There was no sign of cyanosis, the attitude was quite peaceful.” “He had sleeping draughts or pills? Something of that kind.” “Yes. I had prescribed Slumberyl—a very safe and dependable hypnotic. He did not take it every night. And he only had a small bottle of tablets at a time. Three or even four times the prescribed dose would not have caused death. In fact, I remember seeing the bottle on his washstand after his death still nearly full.” “What else had you prescribed for him?” “Various things—a medicine containing a small quantity of morphia to be taken when he had an attack of pain. Some vitamin capsules. An indigestion mixture.” Mr. Entwhistle interrupted. “Vitamin capsules? I think I was once prescribed a course of those. Small round capsules of gelatine.” “Yes. Containing adexoline.” “Could anything else have been introduced into—say—one of those capsules?” “Something lethal, you mean?” The doctor was looking more and more surprised. “But surely no man would ever—look here, Entwhistle, what are you getting at? My God, man, are you suggesting murder?” “I don’t quite know what I’m suggesting…I just want to know what would be possible.” “But what evidence have you for even suggesting such a thing?” “I haven’t any evidence,” said Mr. Entwhistle in a tired voice. “Mr. Abernethie is dead—and the person to whom he spoke is also dead. The whole thing is rumour—vague, unsatisfactory rumour, and I want to scotch it if I can. If you tell me that no one could possibly have poisoned Abernethie in any way whatsoever, I’ll be delighted! It would be a big weight off my mind, I can assure you.” Dr. Larraby got up and walked up and down. “I can’t tell you what you want me to tell you,” he said at last. “I wish I could. Of course it could have been done. Anybody could have extracted the oil from a capsule and replaced it with—say—pure nicotine or half a dozen other things. Or something could have been put in his food or drink? Isn’t that more likely?” “Possibly. But you see, there were only the servants in the house when he died—and I don’t think it was any of them—in fact I’m quite sure it wasn’t. So I’m looking for some delayed action possibility. There’s no drug, I suppose, that you can administer and then the person dies weeks later?” “A convenient idea—but untenable, I’m afraid,” said the doctor drily. “I know you’re a reasonable person, Entwhistle, but who is making this suggestion? It seems to me wildly farfetched.” “Abernethie never said anything to you? Never hinted that one of his relations might be wanting him out of the way?” The doctor looked at him curiously. “No, he never said anything to me. Are you sure, Entwhistle, that somebody hasn’t been—well, playing up the sensational? Some hysterical subjects can give an appearance of being quite reasonable and normal, you know.” “I hope it was like that. It might well be.” “Let me understand. Someone claims that Abernethie told her—it was a woman, I suppose?” “Oh yes, it was a woman.” “—told her someone was trying to kill him?” Cornered, Mr. Entwhistle reluctantly told the tale of Cora’s remark at the funeral. Dr. Larraby’s face lightened. “My dear fellow. I shouldn’t pay any attention! The explanation is quite simple. The woman’s at a certain time of life—craving for sensation, unbalanced, unreliable—might say anything. They do, you know!” Mr. Entwhistle resented the doctor’s easy assumption. He himself had had to deal with plenty of sensation-hunting and hysterical women. “You may be quite right,” he said, rising.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“You may be quite right,” he said, rising. “Unfortunately we can’t tackle her on the subject, as she’s been murdered herself.” “What’s that—murdered?” Dr. Larraby looked as though he had grave suspicions of Mr. Entwhistle’s own stability of mind. “You’ve probably read about it in the paper. Mrs. Lansquenet at Lytchett St. Mary in Berkshire.” “Of course—I’d no idea she was a relation of Richard Abernethie’s!” Dr. Larraby was looking quite shaken. Feeling that he had revenged himself for the doctor’s professional superiority, and unhappily conscious that his own suspicions had not been assuaged as a result of the visit, Mr. Entwhistle took his leave. II Back at Enderby, Mr. Entwhistle decided to talk to Lanscombe. He started by asking the old butler what his plans were. “Mrs. Leo has asked me to stay on here until the house is sold, sir, and I’m sure I shall be very pleased to oblige her. We are all very fond of Mrs. Leo.” He sighed. “I feel it very much, sir, if you will excuse me mentioning it, that the house has to be sold. I’ve known it for so very many years, and seen all the young ladies and gentlemen grow up in it. I always thought that Mr. Mortimer would come here after his father and perhaps bring up a family here, too. It was arranged, sir, that I should go to the North Lodge when I got past doing my work here. A very nice little place, the North Lodge—and I looked forward to having it very spick and span. But I suppose that’s all over now.” “I’m afraid so, Lanscombe. The estate will have to be sold together. But with your legacy—” “Oh I’m not complaining, sir, and I’m very sensible of Mr. Abernethie’s generosity. I’m well provided for, but it’s not so easy to find a little place to buy nowadays and though my married niece has asked me to make my home with them, well, it won’t be quite the same thing as living on the estate.” “I know,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It’s a hard new world for us old fellows. I wish I’d seen more of my old friend before he went. How did he seem those last few months?” “Well, he wasn’t himself, sir, not since Mr. Mortimer’s death.” “No, it broke him up. And then he was a sick man—sick men have strange fancies sometimes. I imagine Mr. Abernethie suffered from that sort of thing in his last days. He spoke of enemies sometimes, of somebody wishing to do him harm—perhaps? He may even have thought his food was being tampered with?” Old Lanscombe looked surprised—surprised and offended. “I cannot recall anything of that kind, sir.” Entwhistle looked at him keenly. “You’re a very loyal servant, Lanscombe, I know that. But such fancies on Mr. Abernethie’s part would be quite—er—unimportant—a natural symptom in some—er diseases.” “Indeed, sir? I can only say Mr. Abernethie never said anything like that to me, or in my hearing.” Mr. Entwhistle slid gently to another subject. “He had some of his family down to stay with him, didn’t he, before he died. His nephew and his two nieces and their husbands?” “Yes, sir, that is so.” “Was he satisfied with those visits? Or was he disappointed? Lanscombe’s eyes became remote, his old back stiffened. “I really could not say, sir.” “I think you could, you know,” said Mr. Entwhistle gently. “It’s not your place to say anything of that kind—that’s what you really mean. But there are times when one has to do violence to one’s senses of what is fitting. I was one of your master’s oldest friends. I cared for him very much. So did you. That’s why I’m asking you for your opinion as a man, not as a butler.” Lanscombe was silent for a moment, then he said in a colourless voice: “Is there anything—wrong, sir?” Mr. Entwhistle replied truthfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. I would like to make sure. Have you felt yourself that something was—wrong?” “Only since the funeral, sir. And I couldn’t say exactly what it is. But Mrs. Leo and Mrs. Timothy, too, they didn’t seem quite themselves that evening after the others had gone.” “You know the contents of the will?” “Yes, sir. Mrs. Leo thought I would like to know. It seemed to me, if I may permit myself to comment, a very fair will.” “Yes, it was a fair will. Equal benefits. But it is not, I think, the will that Mr. Abernethie originally intended to make after his son died. Will you answer now the question that I asked you just now?” “As a matter of personal opinion—” “Yes, yes, that is understood.” “The master, sir, was very much disappointed after Mr. George had been here… He had hoped, I think, that Mr. George might resemble Mr. Mortimer. Mr. George, if I may say so, did not come up to standard. Miss Laura’s husband was always considered unsatisfactory, and I’m afraid Mr. George took after him.” Lanscombe paused and then went on, “Then the young ladies came with their husbands. Miss Susan he took to at once—a very spirited and handsome young lady, but it’s my opinion he couldn’t abide her husband. Young ladies make funny choices nowadays, sir.” “And the other couple?” “I couldn’t say much about that. A very pleasant and good-looking young pair. I think the master enjoyed having them here—but I don’t think—” The old man hesitated. “Yes, Lanscombe?” “Well, the master had never been much struck with the stage. He said to me one day, ‘I can’t understand why anyone gets stage-struck. It’s a foolish kind of life. Seems to deprive people of what little sense they have. I don’t know what it does to your moral sense. You certainly lose your sense of proportion.’ Of course he wasn’t referring directly—” “No, no, I quite understand. Now after these visits, Mr. Abernethie himself went away—first to his brother, and afterwards to his sister Mrs. Lansquenet.” “That I did not know, sir. I mean he mentioned to me that he was going to Mr. Timothy and afterwards to Something St. Mary.” “That is right. Can you remember anything he said on his return in regard to those visits?” Lanscombe reflected. “I really don’t know—nothing direct. He was glad to be back. Travelling and staying in strange houses tired him very much—that I do remember his saying.” “Nothing else? Nothing about either of them?” Lanscombe frowned. “The master used to—well, to murmur, if you get my meaning—speaking to me and yet more to himself—hardly noticing I was there—because he knew me so well.” “Knew you and trusted you, yes.” “But my recollection is very vague as to what he said—something about he couldn’t think what he’d done with his money—that was Mr. Timothy, I take it. And then he said something about, ‘Women can be fools in ninety-nine different ways but be pretty shrewd in the hundredth.’ Oh yes, and he said, ‘You can only say what you really think to someone of your own generation. They don’t think you’re fancying things as the younger ones do.’ And later he said—but I don’t know in what connection—‘It’s not very nice to have to set traps for people, but I don’t see what else I can do.’ But I think it possible, sir, that he may have been thinking of the second gardener—a question of the peaches being taken.” But Mr. Entwhistle did not think that it was the second gardener who had been in Richard Abernethie’s mind. After a few more questions he let Lanscombe go and reflected on what he had learned. Nothing, really—nothing, that is, that he had not deduced before. Yet there were suggestive points. It was not his sister-in-law, Maude, but his sister Cora of whom he had been thinking when he made the remark about women who were fools and yet shrewd. And it was to her that he had confided his “fancies.” And he had spoken of setting a trap. For whom?

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

For whom? III Mr. Entwhistle had meditated a good deal over how much he should tell Helen. In the end he decided he should take her wholly into his confidence. First he thanked her for sorting out Richard’s things and for making various household arrangements. The house had been advertised for sale and there were one or two prospective buyers who would shortly be coming to look over it. “Private buyers?” “I’m afraid not. The Y.W.C.A. are considering it, and there is a young people’s club, and the Trustees of the Jefferson Trust are looking for a suitable place to house their Collection.” “It seems sad that the house will not be lived in, but of course it is not a practicable proposition nowadays.” “I am going to ask you if it would be possible for you to remain here until the house is sold. Or would it be a great inconvenience?” “No—actually it would suit me very well. I don’t want to go to Cyprus until May, and I much prefer being here than being in London as I had planned. I love this house, you know; Leo loved it, and we were always happy when we were here together.” “There is another reason why I should be grateful if you would stay on. There is a friend of mine, a man called Hercule Poirot—” Helen said sharply: “Hercule Poirot? Then you think—” “You know of him?” “Yes. Some friends of mine—but I imagined that he was dead long ago.” “He is very much alive. Not young, of course.” “No, he could hardly be young.” She spoke mechanically. Her face was white and strained. She said with an effort: “You think—that Cora was right? That Richard was—murdered?” Mr. Entwhistle unburdened himself. It was a pleasure to unburden himself to Helen with her clear calm mind. When he had finished she said: “One ought to feel it’s fantastic—but one doesn’t. Maude and I, that night after the funeral—it was in both our minds, I’m sure. Saying to ourselves what a silly woman Cora was—and yet being uneasy. And then—Cora was killed—and I told myself it was just coincidence—and of course it may be—but oh! if one can only be sure. It’s all so difficult.” “Yes, it’s difficult. But Poirot is a man of great originality and he has something really approaching genius. He understands perfectly what we need—assurance that the whole thing is a mare’s nest.” “And suppose it isn’t?” “What makes you say that?” asked Mr. Entwhistle sharply. “I don’t know. I’ve been uneasy… Not just about what Cora said that day—something else. Something that I felt at the time to be wrong.” “Wrong? In what way?” “That’s just it. I don’t know.” “You mean it was something about one of the people in the room?” “Yes—yes—something of that kind. But I don’t know who or what… Oh that sounds absurd—” “Not at all. It is interesting—very interesting. You are not a fool, Helen. If you noticed something, that something has significance.” “Yes, but I can’t remember what it was. The more I think—” “Don’t think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind. And when it does—let me know—at once.” “I will.” Nine Miss Gilchrist pulled her black hat down firmly on her head and tucked in a wisp of grey hair. The inquest was set for twelve o’clock and it was not quite twenty past eleven. Her grey coat and skirt looked quite nice, she thought, and she had bought herself a black blouse. She wished she could have been all in black, but that would have been far beyond her means. She looked round the small neat bedroom and at the walls hung with representations of Brixham Harbour, Cockington Forge, Anstey’s Cove, Kyance Cove, Polflexan Harbour, Babbacombe Bay, etc., all signed in a dashing way, Cora Lansquenet. Her eyes rested with particular fondness on Polflexan Harbour. On the chest of drawers a faded photograph carefully framed represented the Willow Tree tea shop. Miss Gilchrist looked at it lovingly and sighed. She was disturbed from her reverie by the sound of the doorbell below. “Dear me,” murmured Miss Gilchrist, “I wonder who—” She went out of her room and down the rather rickety stairs. The bell sounded again and there was a sharp knock. For some reason Miss Gilchrist felt nervous. For a moment or two her steps slowed up, then she went rather unwillingly to the door, adjuring herself not to be so silly. A young woman dressed smartly in black and carrying a small suitcase was standing on the step. She noticed the alarmed look on Miss Gilchrist’s face and said quickly: “Miss Gilchrist? I am Mrs. Lansquenet’s niece—Susan Banks.” “Oh dear, yes, of course. I didn’t know. Do come in, Mrs. Banks. Mind the hallstand—it sticks out a little. In here, yes. I didn’t know you were coming down for the inquest. I’d have had something ready—some coffee or something.” Susan Banks said briskly: “I don’t want anything. I’m so sorry if I startled you.” “Well, you know you did, in a way. It’s very silly of me. I’m not usually nervous. In fact I told the lawyer that I wasn’t nervous, and that I wouldn’t be nervous staying on here alone, and really I’m not nervous. Only—perhaps it’s just the inquest and—and thinking of things, but I have been jumpy all this morning, just about half an hour ago the bell rang and I could hardly bring myself to open the door—which was really very stupid and so unlikely that a murderer would come back—and why should he?—and actually it was only a nun, collecting for an orphanage—and I was so relieved I gave her two shillings although I’m not a Roman Catholic and indeed have no sympathy with the Roman Church and all these monks and nuns although I believe the Little Sisters of the Poor really do good work. But do please sit down, Mrs.— Mrs.—” “Banks.” “Yes, of course, Banks. Did you come down by train?” “No, I drove down. The lane seemed so narrow I ran the car on a little way and found a sort of old quarry I backed it into.” “This lane is very narrow, but there’s hardly ever any traffic along here. It’s rather a lonely road.” Miss Gilchrist gave a little shiver as she said those last words. Susan Banks was looking round the room. “Poor old Aunt Cora,” she said. “She left what she had to me, you know.” “Yes, I know. Mr. Entwhistle told me. I expect you’ll be glad of the furniture. You’re newly married, I understand, and furnishing is such an expense nowadays. Mrs. Lansquenet had some very nice things.” Susan did not agree. Cora had had no taste for the antique. The contents varied between “modernistic” pieces and the “arty” type. “I shan’t want any of the furniture,” she said. “I’ve got my own, you know. I shall put it up for auction. Unless—is there any of it you would like? I’d be very glad….” She stopped, a little embarrassed. But Miss Gilchrist was not at all embarrassed. She beamed. “Now really, that’s very kind of you, Mrs. Banks—yes, very kind indeed. I really do appreciate it. But actually, you know, I have my own things. I put them in store in case—some day—I should need them. There are some pictures my father left too. I had a small tea shop at one time, you know—but then the war came—it was all very unfortunate. But I didn’t sell up everything, because I did hope to have my own little home again one day, so I put the best things in store with my father’s pictures and some relics of our old home. But I would like very much, if you really wouldn’t mind, to have that little painted tea table of dear Mrs. Lansquenet’s. Such a pretty thing and we always had tea on it.” Susan, looking with a slight shudder at a small green table painted with large purple clematis, said quickly that she would be delighted for Miss Gilchrist to have it. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Banks. I feel a little greedy.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Banks. I feel a little greedy. I’ve got all her beautiful pictures, you know, and a lovely amethyst brooch, but I feel that perhaps I ought to give that back to you.” “No, no, indeed.” “You’ll want to go through her things? After the inquest, perhaps?” “I thought I’d stay here a couple of days, go through things, and clear everything up.” “Sleep here, you mean?” “Yes. Is there any difficulty?” “Oh no, Mrs. Banks, of course not. I’ll put fresh sheets on my bed, and I can doss down here on the couch quite well.” “But there’s Aunt Cora’s room, isn’t there? I can sleep in that.” “You—you wouldn’t mind?” “You mean because she was murdered there? Oh no, I wouldn’t mind. I’m very tough, Miss Gilchrist. It’s been—I mean—It’s all right again?” Miss Gilchrist understood the question. “Oh yes, Mrs. Banks. All the blankets sent away to the cleaners and Mrs. Panter and I scrubbed the whole room out thoroughly. And there are plenty of spare blankets. But come up and see for yourself.” She led the way upstairs and Susan followed her. The room where Cora Lansquenet had died was clean and fresh and curiously devoid of any sinister atmosphere. Like the sitting room it contained a mixture of modern utility and elaborately painted furniture. It represented Cora’s cheerful tasteless personality. Over the mantelpiece an oil painting showed a buxom young woman about to enter her bath. Susan gave a slight shudder as she looked at it and Miss Gilchrist said: “That was painted by Mrs. Lansquenet’s husband. There are a lot more of his pictures in the dining room downstairs.” “How terrible.” “Well, I don’t care very much for that style of painting myself—but Mrs. Lansquenet was very proud of her husband as an artist and thought that his work was sadly unappreciated.” “Where are Aunt Cora’s own pictures?” “In my room. Would you like to see them?” Miss Gilchrist displayed her treasures proudly. Susan remarked that Aunt Cora seemed to have been fond of seacoast resorts. “Oh yes. You see, she lived for many years with Mr. Lansquenet at a small fishing village in Brittany. Fishing boats are always so picturesque, are they not?” “Obviously,” Susan murmured. A whole series of picture postcards could, she thought, have been made from Cora Lansquenet’s paintings which were faithful to detail and very highly coloured. They gave rise to the suspicion that they might actually have been painted from picture postcards. But when she hazarded this opinion Miss Gilchrist was indignant. Mrs. Lansquenet always painted from Nature! Indeed, once she had had a touch of the sun from reluctance to leave a subject when the light was just right. “Mrs. Lansquenet was a real artist,” said Miss Gilchrist reproachfully. She glanced at her watch and Susan said quickly: “Yes, we ought to start for the inquest. Is it far? Shall I get the car?” It was only five minutes’ walk, Miss Gilchrist assured her. So they set out together on foot. Mr. Entwhistle, who had come down by train, met them and shepherded them into the Village Hall. There seemed to be a large number of strangers present. The inquest was not sensational. There was evidence of the identification of the deceased. Medical evidence as to the nature of the wounds that had killed her. There were no signs of a struggle. Deceased was probably under a narcotic at the time she was attacked and would have been taken quite unawares. Death was unlikely to have occurred later than four thirty. Between two and four thirty was the nearest approximation. Miss Gilchrist testified to finding the body. A police constable and Inspector Morton gave their evidence. The Coroner summed up briefly. The jury made no bones about the verdict. “Murder by some person or persons unknown.” It was over. They came out again into the sunlight. Half a dozen cameras clicked. Mr. Entwhistle shepherded Susan and Miss Gilchrist into the King’s Arms, where he had taken the precaution to arrange for lunch to be served in a private room behind the bar. “Not a very good lunch,” he said apologetically. But the lunch was not at all bad. Miss Gilchrist sniffed a little and murmured that “it was all so dreadful,” but cheered up and tackled the Irish stew with appetite after Mr. Entwhistle had insisted on her drinking a glass of sherry. He said to Susan: “I’d no idea you were coming down today, Susan. We could have come together.” “I know I said I wouldn’t. But it seemed rather mean for none of the family to be there. I rang up George but he said he was very busy and couldn’t possibly make it, and Rosamund had an audition and Uncle Timothy, of course, is a crock. So it had to be me.” “Your husband didn’t come with you?” “Greg had to settle up with his tiresome shop.” Seeing a startled look in Miss Gilchrist’s eye, Susan said: “My husband works in a chemist’s shop.” A husband in retail trade did not quite square with Miss Gilchrist’s impression of Susan’s smartness, but she said valiantly: “Oh yes, just like Keats.” “Greg’s no poet,” said Susan. She added: “We’ve got great plans for the future—a double-barrelled establishment—Cosmetics and Beauty parlour and a laboratory for special preparations.” “That will be much nicer,” said Miss Gilchrist approvingly. “Something like Elizabeth Arden who is really a Countess, so I have been told—or is that Helena Rubenstein? In any case,” she added kindly, “a pharmacist’s is not in the least like an ordinary shop—a draper, for instance, or a grocer.” “You kept a tea shop, you said, didn’t you?” “Yes, indeed,” Miss Gilchrist’s face lit up. That the Willow Tree had ever been “trade” in the sense that a shop was trade, would never have occurred to her. To keep a tea shop was in her mind the essence of gentility. She started telling Susan about the Willow Tree. Mr. Entwhistle, who had heard about it before, let his mind drift to other matters. When Susan had spoken to him twice without his answering he hurriedly apologized. “Forgive me, my dear, I was thinking, as a matter of fact, about your Uncle Timothy. I am a little worried.” “About Uncle Timothy? I shouldn’t be. I don’t believe really there’s anything the matter with him. He’s just a hypochondriac.” “Yes—yes, you may be right. I confess it was not his health that was worrying me. It’s Mrs. Timothy. Apparently she’s fallen downstairs and twisted her ankle. She’s laid up and your uncle is in a terrible state.” “Because he’ll have to look after her instead of the other way about? Do him a lot of good,” said Susan. “Yes—yes, I dare say. But will your poor aunt get any looking after? That is really the question. With no servants in the house?” “Life is really hell for elderly people,” said Susan. “They live in a kind of Georgian Manor house, don’t they?” Mr. Entwhistle nodded. They came rather warily out of the King’s Arms, but the Press seemed to have dispersed. A couple of reporters were lying in wait for Susan by the cottage door. Shepherded by Mr. Entwhistle she said a few necessary and noncommittal words. Then she and Miss Gilchrist went into the cottage and Mr. Entwhistle returned to the King’s Arms where he had booked a room. The funeral was to be on the following day. “My car’s still in the quarry,” said Susan. “I’d forgotten about it. I’ll drive it along to the village later.” Miss Gilchrist said anxiously: “Not too late. You won’t go out after dark, will you?” Susan looked at her and laughed. “You don’t think there’s a murderer still hanging about, do you?” “No—no, I suppose not.” Miss Gilchrist looked embarrassed. “But it’s exactly what she does think, thought Susan. “How amazing!” Miss Gilchrist had vanished towards the kitchen. “I’m sure you’d like tea early. In about half an hour, do you think, Mrs.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

In about half an hour, do you think, Mrs. Banks?” Susan thought that tea at half past three was overdoing it, but she was charitable enough to realize that “a nice cup of tea” was Miss Gilchrist’s idea of restoration for the nerves and she had her own reasons for wishing to please Miss Gilchrist, so she said: “Whenever you like, Miss Gilchrist.” A happy clatter of kitchen implements began and Susan went into the sitting room. She had only been there a few minutes when the bell sounded and was succeeded by a very precise little rat-tat-tat. Susan came out into the hall and Miss Gilchrist appeared at the kitchen door wearing an apron and wiping floury hands on it. “Oh dear, who do you think that can be?” “More reporters, I expect,” said Susan. “Oh dear, how annoying for you, Mrs. Banks.” “Oh well, never mind, I’ll attend to it.” “I was just going to make a few scones for tea.” Susan went towards the front door and Miss Gilchrist hovered uncertainly. Susan wondered whether she thought a man with a hatchet was waiting outside. The visitor, however, proved to be an elderly gentleman who raised his hat when Susan opened the door and said, beaming at her in avuncular style: “Mrs. Banks, I think?” “Yes.” “My name is Guthrie—Alexander Guthrie. I was a friend—a very old friend, of Mrs. Lansquenet’s. You, I think, are her niece, formerly Miss Susan Abernethie?” “That’s quite right.” “Then since we know who we are, I may come in?” “Of course.” Mr. Guthrie wiped his feet carefully on the mat, stepped inside, divested himself of his overcoat, laid it down with his hat on a small oak chest and followed Susan into the sitting room. “This is a melancholy occasion,” said Mr. Guthrie, to whom melancholy did not seem to come naturally, his own inclination being to beam. “Yes, a very melancholy occasion. I was in this part of the world and I felt the least I could do was to attend the inquest—and of course the funeral. Poor Cora—poor foolish Cora. I have known her, my dear Mrs. Banks, since the early days of her marriage. A high-spirited girl—and she took art very seriously—took Pierre Lansquenet seriously, too—as an artist, I mean. All things considered he didn’t make her too bad a husband. He strayed, if you know what I mean, yes, he strayed—but fortunately Cora took it as part of the artistic temperament. He was an artist and therefore immoral! In fact, I’m not sure she didn’t go further: he was immoral and therefore he must be an artist! No kind of sense in artistic matters, poor Cora—though in other ways, mind you, Cora had a lot of sense—yes, a surprising lot of sense.” “That’s what everybody seems to say,” said Susan. “I didn’t really know her.” “No, no, cut herself off from her family because they didn’t appreciate her precious Pierre. She was never a pretty girl—but she had something. She was good company! You never knew what she’d say next and you never knew if her näiveté was genuine or whether she was doing it deliberately. She made us all laugh a good deal. The eternal child—that’s what we always felt about her. And really the last time I saw her (I have seen her from time to time since Pierre died) she struck me as still behaving very much like a child.” Susan offered Mr. Guthrie a cigarette, but the old gentleman shook his head. “No thank you, my dear. I don’t smoke. You must wonder why I’ve come? To tell you the truth I was feeling rather conscience-stricken. I promised Cora to come and see her some weeks ago. I usually called upon her once a year, and just lately she’d taken up the hobby of buying pictures at local sales, and wanted me to look at some of them. My profession is that of art critic, you know. Of course most of Cora’s purchases were horrible daubs, but take it all in all, it isn’t such a bad speculation. Pictures go for next to nothing at these country sales and the frames alone are worth more than you pay for the picture. Naturally any important sale is attended by dealers and one isn’t likely to get hold of masterpieces. But only the other day, a small Cuyp was knocked down for a few pounds at a farmhouse sale. The history of it was quite interesting. It had been given to an old nurse by the family she had served faithfully for many years—they had no idea of its value. Old nurse gave it to a farmer nephew who liked the horse in it but thought it was a dirty old thing! Yes, yes, these things sometimes happen, and Cora was convinced that she had an eye for pictures. She hadn’t of course. Wanted me to come and look at a Rembrandt she had picked up last year. A Rembrandt! Not even a respectable copy of one! But she had got hold of a quite nice Bartolozzi engraving—damp spotted unfortunately. I sold it for her for thirty pounds and of course that spurred her on. She wrote to me with great gusto about an Italian Primitive she had bought at some sale and I promised I’d come along and see it.” “That’s it over there, I expect,” said Susan, gesturing to the wall behind him. Mr. Guthrie got up, put on a pair of spectacles, and went over to study the picture. “Poor dear Cora,” he said at last. “There are a lot more,” said Susan. Mr. Guthrie proceeded to a leisurely inspection of the art treasures acquired by the hopeful Mrs. Lansquenet. Occasionally he said, “Tchk, Tchk,” occasionally he sighed. Finally he removed his spectacles. “Dirt,” he said, “is a wonderful thing, Mrs. Banks! It gives a patina of romance to the most horrible examples of the painter’s art. I’m afraid that Bartolozzi was beginner’s luck. Poor Cora. Still, it gave her an interest in life. I am really thankful that I did not have to disillusion her.” “There are some pictures in the dining room,” said Susan, “but I think they are all her husband’s work.” Mr. Guthrie shuddered slightly and held up a protesting hand. “Do not force me to look at those again. Life classes have much to answer for! I always tried to spare Cora’s feelings. A devoted wife—a very devoted wife. Well, dear Mrs. Banks, I must not take up more of your time.” “Oh, do stay and have some tea. I think it’s nearly ready.” “That is very kind of you.” Mr. Guthrie sat down again promptly. “I’ll just go and see.” In the kitchen, Miss Gilchrist was just lifting a last batch of scones from the oven. The tea tray stood ready and the kettle was just gently rattling its lid. “There’s a Mr. Guthrie here, and I’ve asked him to stay for tea.” “Mr. Guthrie? Oh, yes, he was a great friend of dear Mrs. Lansquenet’s. He’s the celebrated art critic. How fortunate; I’ve made a nice lot of scones and that’s some homemade strawberry jam, and I just whipped up some little drop cakes. I’ll just make the tea—I’ve warmed the pot. Oh, please, Mrs. Banks, don’t carry that heavy tray. I can manage everything.” However, Susan took in the tray and Miss Gilchrist followed with teapot and kettle, greeted Mr. Guthrie, and they set to. “Hot scones, that is a treat,” said Mr. Guthrie, “and what delicious jam! Really, the stuff one buys nowadays.” Miss Gilchrist was flushed and delighted. The little cakes were excellent and so were the scones, and everyone did justice to them. The ghost of the Willow Tree hung over the party. Here, it was clear, Miss Gilchrist was in her element. “Well, thank you, perhaps I will,” said Mr. Guthrie as he accepted the last cake, pressed upon him by Miss Gilchrist. “I do feel rather guilty, though—enjoying my tea here, where poor Cora was so brutally murdered.” Miss Gilchrist displayed an unexpected Victorian reaction to this. “Oh, but Mrs. Lansquenet would have wished you to take a good tea.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Lansquenet would have wished you to take a good tea. You’ve got to keep your strength up.” “Yes, yes, perhaps you are right. The fact is, you know, that one cannot really bring oneself to believe that someone you knew—actually knew—can have been murdered!” “I agree,” said Susan. “It just seems—fantastic.” “And certainly not by some casual tramp who broke in and attacked her. I can imagine, you know, reasons why Cora might have been murdered—” Susan said quickly, “Can you? What reasons?” “Well, she wasn’t discreet,” said Mr. Guthrie. “Cora was never discreet. And she enjoyed—how shall I put it—showing how sharp she could be? Like a child who’s got hold of somebody’s secret. If Cora got hold of a secret she’d want to talk about it. Even if she promised not to, she’d still do it. She wouldn’t be able to help herself.” Susan did not speak. Miss Gilchrist did not either. She looked worried. Mr. Guthrie went on: “Yes, a little dose of arsenic in a cup of tea—that would not have surprised me, or a box of chocolates by post. But sordid robbery and assault—that seems highly incongruous. I may be wrong but I should have thought she had very little to take that would be worth a burglar’s while. She didn’t keep much money in the house, did she?” Miss Gilchrist said, “Very little.” Mr. Guthrie sighed and rose to his feet. “Ah! well, there’s a lot of lawlessness about since the war. Times have changed.” Thanking them for the tea he took a polite farewell of the two women. Miss Gilchrist saw him out and helped him on with his overcoat. From the window of the sitting room, Susan watched him trot briskly down the front path to the gate. Miss Gilchrist came back into the room with a small parcel in her hand. “The postman must have been while we were at the inquest. He pushed it through the letter box and it had fallen in the corner behind the door. Now I wonder—why, of course, it must be wedding cake.” Happily Miss Gilchrist ripped off the paper. Inside was a small white box tied with silver ribbon. “It is!” She pulled off the ribbon, inside was a modest wedge of rich cake with almond paste and white icing. “How nice! Now who—” She consulted the card attached. “John and Mary. Now who can that be? How silly to put no surname.” Susan, rousing herself from contemplation, said vaguely: “It’s quite difficult sometimes with people just using Christian names. I got a postcard the other day signed Joan. I counted up I knew eight Joans—and with telephoning so much, one often doesn’t know their handwriting.” Miss Gilchrist was happily going over the possible Johns and Marys of her acquaintance. “It might be Dorothy’s daughter—her name was Mary, but I hadn’t heard of an engagement, still less of a marriage. Then there’s little John Banfield—I suppose he’s grown up and old enough to be married—or the Enfield girl—no, her name was Margaret. No address or anything. Oh well, I dare say it will come to me….” She picked up the tray and went out to the kitchen. Susan roused herself and said: “Well— I suppose I’d better go and put the car somewhere.” Ten Susan retrieved the car from the quarry where she had left it and drove it into the village. There was a petrol pump but no garage and she was advised to take it to the King’s Arms. They had room for it there and she left it by a big Daimler which was preparing to go out. It was chauffeur driven and inside it, very much muffled up, was an elderly foreign gentleman with a large moustache. The boy to whom Susan was talking about the car was staring at her with such rapt attention that he did not seem to be taking in half of what she said. Finally he said in an awe-stricken voice: “You’re her niece, aren’t you?” “What?” “You’re the victim’s niece,” the boy repeated with relish. “Oh—yes—yes, I am.” “Ar! Wondered where I’d seen you before.” “Ghoul,” thought Susan as she retraced her steps to the cottage. Miss Gilchrist greeted her with: “Oh, you’re safely back,” in tones of relief which further annoyed her. Miss Gilchrist added anxiously: “You can eat spaghetti, can’t you? I thought for tonight—” “Oh yes, anything. I don’t want much.” “I really flatter myself that I can make a very tasty spaghetti au gratin.” The boast was not an idle one. Miss Gilchrist, Susan reflected, was really an excellent cook. Susan offered to help wash up but Miss Gilchrist, though clearly gratified by the offer, assured Susan that there was very little to do. She came in a little while after with coffee. The coffee was less excellent, being decidedly weak. Miss Gilchrist offered Susan a piece of the wedding cake which Susan refused. “It’s really very good cake,” Miss Gilchrist insisted, tasting it. She had settled to her own satisfaction that it must have been sent by someone whom she alluded to as “dear Ellen’s daughter who I know was engaged to be married but I can’t remember her name.” Susan let Miss Gilchrist chirrup away into silence before starting her own subject of conversation. This moment, after supper, sitting before the fire, was a companionable one. She said at last: “My Uncle Richard came down here before he died, didn’t he?” “Yes, he did.” “When was that exactly?” “Let me see—it must have been one, two—nearly three weeks before his death was announced.” “Did he seem—ill?” “Well, no, I wouldn’t say he seemed exactly ill. He had a very hearty vigorous manner. Mrs. Lansquenet was very surprised to see him. She said, ‘Well, really, Richard, after all these years!’ and he said, ‘I came to see for myself exactly how things are with you.’ And Mrs. Lansquenet said, ‘I’m all right.’ I think, you know, she was a teeny bit offended by his turning up so casually—after the long break. Anyway Mr. Abernethie said, ‘No use keeping up old grievances. You and I and Timothy are the only ones left—and nobody can talk to Timothy except about his own health.’ And he said, ‘Pierre seems to have made you happy, so it seems I was in the wrong. There, will that content you?’ Very nicely he said it. A handsome man, though elderly, of course.” “How long was he here?” “He stayed for lunch. Beef olives, I made. Fortunately it was the day the butcher called.” Miss Gilchrist’s memory seemed to be almost wholly culinary. “They seemed to be getting on well together?” “Oh, yes.” Susan paused and then said: “Was Aunt Cora surprised when—he died?” “Oh yes, it was quite sudden, wasn’t it?” “Yes, it was sudden… I mean—she was surprised. He hadn’t given her any indication how ill he was.” “Oh—I see what you mean.” Miss Gilchrist paused a moment. “No, no, I think perhaps you are right. She did say that he had got very old— I think she said senile….” “But you didn’t think he was senile?” “Well, not to look at. But I didn’t talk to him much, naturally I left them alone together.” Susan looked at Miss Gilchrist speculatively. Was Miss Gilchrist the kind of woman who listened at doors? She was honest, Susan felt sure, she wouldn’t ever pilfer, or cheat over the housekeeping, or open letters. But inquisitiveness can drape itself in a mantle of rectitude. Miss Gilchrist might have found it necessary to garden near an open window, or to dust the hall… That would be within the permitted lengths. And then, of course, she could not have helped hearing something…. “You didn’t hear any of their conversation?” Susan asked. Too abrupt. Miss Gilchrist flushed angrily. “No, indeed, Mrs. Banks. It has never been my custom to listen at doors!” That means she does, thought Susan, otherwise she’d just say “No.” Aloud she said: “I’m so sorry, Miss Gilchrist. I didn’t mean it that way.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

I didn’t mean it that way. But sometimes, in these small flimsily built cottages, one simply can’t help overhearing nearly everything that goes on, and now that they are both dead, it’s really rather important to the family to know just what was said at that meeting between them.” The cottage was anything but flimsily built—it dated from a sturdier era of building, but Miss Gilchrist accepted the bait, and rose to the suggestion held out. “Of course what you say is quite true, Mrs. Banks—this is a very small place and I do appreciate that you would want to know what passed between them, but really I’m afraid I can’t help very much. I think they were talking about Mr. Abernethie’s health—and certain—well, fancies he had. He didn’t look it, but he must have been a sick man and as is so often the case, he put his illhealth down to outside agencies. A common symptom, I believe. My aunt—” Miss Gilchrist described her aunt. Susan, like Mr. Entwhistle, sidetracked the aunt. “Yes,” she said. “That is just what we thought. My uncle’s servants were all very attached to him and naturally they are upset by his thinking—” She paused. “Oh, of course! Servants are very touchy about anything of that kind. I remember that my aunt—” Again Susan interrupted. “It was the servants he suspected, I suppose? Of poisoning him, I mean?” “I don’t know… I—really—” Susan noted her confusion. “It wasn’t the servants. Was it one particular person?” “I don’t know, Mrs. Banks. Really I don’t know—” But her eye avoided Susan’s. Susan thought to herself that Miss Gilchrist knew more than she was willing to admit. It was possible that Miss Gilchrist knew a good deal…. Deciding not to press the point for the moment, Susan said: “What are your own plans for the future, Miss Gilchrist?” “Well, really, I was going to speak to you about that, Mrs. Banks. I told Mr. Entwhistle I would be willing to stay on until everything here was cleared up.” “I know. I’m very grateful.” “And I wanted to ask you how long that was likely to be, because, of course, I must start looking about for another post.” Susan considered. “There’s really not very much to be done here. In a couple of days I can get things sorted out and notify the auctioneer.” “You have decided to sell up everything, then?” “Yes. I don’t suppose there will be any difficulty in letting the cottage?” “Oh, no—people will queue up for it, I’m sure. There are so few cottages to rent. One nearly always has to buy.” “So it’s all very simple, you see.” Susan hesitated a moment before saying, “I wanted to tell you—that I hope you’ll accept three months’ salary.” “That’s very generous of you, I’m sure, Mrs. Banks. I do appreciate it. And you would be prepared to—I mean I could ask you—if necessary—to—to recommend me? To say that I had been with a relation of yours and that I had—proved satisfactory?” “Oh, of course.” “I don’t know whether I ought to ask it.” Miss Gilchrist’s hands began to shake and she tried to steady her voice. “But would it be possible not to—to mention the circumstances—or even the name?” Susan stared. “I don’t understand.” “That’s because you haven’t thought, Mrs. Banks. It’s murder. A murder that’s been in the papers and that everybody has read about. Don’t you see? People might think, ‘Two women living together, and one of them is killed—and perhaps the companion did it.’ Don’t you see, Mrs. Banks? I’m sure that if I was looking for someone, I’d—well, I’d think twice before engaging myself—if you understand what I mean. Because one never knows! It’s been worrying me dreadfully, Mrs. Banks; I’ve been lying awake at night thinking that perhaps I’ll never get another job—not of this kind. And what else is there that I can do?” The question came out with unconscious pathos. Susan felt suddenly stricken. She realized the desperation of this pleasant-spoken commonplace woman who was dependent for existence on the fears and whims of employers. And there was a lot of truth in what Miss Gilchrist had said. You wouldn’t, if you could help it, engage a woman to share domestic intimacy who had figured, however innocently, in a murder case. Susan said: “But if they find the man who did it—” “Oh then, of course, it will be quite all right. But will they find him? I don’t think, myself, the police have the least idea. And if he’s not caught—well, that leaves me as—as not quite the most likely person, but as a person who could have done it.” Susan nodded thoughtfully. It was true that Miss Gilchrist did not benefit from Cora Lansquenet’s death—but who was to know that? And besides, there were so many tales—ugly tales—of animosity arising between women who lived together—strange pathological motives for sudden violence. Someone who had not known them might imagine that Cora Lansquenet and Miss Gilchrist had lived on those terms…. Susan spoke with her usual decision. “Don’t worry, Miss Gilchrist,” she said, speaking briskly and cheerfully. “I’m sure I can find you a post amongst my friends. There won’t be the least difficulty.” “I’m afraid,” said Miss Gilchrist, regaining some of her customary manner, “that I couldn’t undertake any really rough work. Just a little plain cooking and housework—” The telephone rang and Miss Gilchrist jumped. “Dear me, I wonder who that can be.” “I expect it’s my husband,” said Susan, jumping up. “He said he’d ring me tonight.” She went to the telephone. “Yes?—yes, this is Mrs. Banks speaking personally…” There was a pause and then her voice changed. It became soft and warm. “Hallo, darling—yes, it’s me… Oh, quite well… Murder by someone unknown…the usual thing… Only Mr. Entwhistle…What?…it’s difficult to say, but I think so… Yes, just as we thought… Absolutely according to plan… I shall sell the stuff. There’s nothing we’d want… Not for a day or two… Absolutely frightful… Don’t fuss. I know what I’m doing… Greg, you didn’t… You were careful to… No, it’s nothing. Nothing at all. Goodnight, darling.” She rang off. The nearness of Miss Gilchrist had hampered her a little. Miss Gilchrist could probably hear from the kitchen, where she had tactfully retired, exactly what went on. There were things she had wanted to ask Greg, but she hadn’t liked to. She stood by the telephone, frowning abstractedly. Then suddenly an idea came to her. “Of course,” she murmured. “Just the thing.” Lifting the receiver she asked for Trunk Enquiry. Some quarter of an hour later a weary voice from the exchange was saying: “I’m afraid there’s no reply.” “Please go on ringing them.” Susan spoke autocratically. She listened to the far-off buzzing of a telephone bell. Then, suddenly it was interrupted and a man’s voice, peevish and slightly indignant, said: “Yes, yes, what is it?” “Uncle Timothy?” “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” “Uncle Timothy? I’m Susan Banks.” “Susan who?” “Banks. Formerly Abernethie. Your niece Susan.” “Oh, you’re Susan, are you? What’s the matter? What are you ringing up for at this time of night?” “It’s quite early still.” “It isn’t. I was in bed.” “You must go to bed very early. How’s Aunt Maude?” “Is that all you rang up to ask? Your aunt’s in a good deal of pain and she can’t do a thing. Not a thing. She’s helpless. We’re in a nice mess, I can tell you. That fool of a doctor says he can’t even get a nurse. He wanted to cart Maude off to hospital. I stood out against that. He’s trying to get hold of someone for us. I can’t do anything— I daren’t even try. There’s a fool from the village staying in the house tonight—but she’s murmuring about getting back to her husband. Don’t know what we’re going to do.” “That’s what I rang up about. Would you like Miss Gilchrist?” “Who’s she?

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Would you like Miss Gilchrist?” “Who’s she? Never heard of her.” “Aunt Cora’s companion. She’s very nice and capable.” “Can she cook?” “Yes, she cooks very well, and she could look after Aunt Maude.” “That’s all very well, but when could she come? Here I am, all on my own, with only these idiots of village women popping in and out at odd hours, and it’s not good for me. My heart’s playing me up.” “I’ll arrange for her to get off to you as soon as possible. The day after tomorrow, perhaps?” “Well, thanks very much,” said the voice rather grudgingly. “You’re a good girl, Susan—er—thank you.” Susan rang off and went into the kitchen. “Would you be willing to go up to Yorkshire and look after my aunt? She fell and broke her ankle and my uncle is quite useless. He’s a bit of a pest but Aunt Maude is a very good sort. They have help in from the village, but you could cook and look after Aunt Maude.” Miss Gilchrist dropped the coffee pot in her agitation. “Oh, thank you, thank you—that really is kind. I think I can say of myself that I am really good in the sickroom, and I’m sure I can manage your uncle and cook him nice little meals. It’s really very kind of you, Mrs. Banks, and I do appreciate it.” Eleven I Susan lay in bed and waited for sleep to come. It had been a long day and she was tired. She had been quite sure that she would go to sleep at once. She never had any difficulty in going to sleep. And yet here she lay, hour after hour, wide awake, her mind racing. She had said she did not mind sleeping in this room, in this bed. This bed where Cora Abernethie— No, no she must put all that out of her mind. She had always prided herself on having no nerves. Why think of that afternoon less than a week ago? Think ahead—the future. Her future and Greg’s. Those premises in Cardigan Street—just what they wanted. The business on the ground floor and a charming flat upstairs. The room out at the back a laboratory for Greg. For purposes of income tax it would be an excellent setup. Greg would get calm and well again. There would be no more of those alarming brainstorms. The times when he looked at her without seeming to know who she was. Once or twice she’d been quite frightened… And old Mr. Cole—he’d hinted—threatened: “If this happens again…” And it might have happened again—it would have happened again. If Uncle Richard hadn’t died just when he did…. Uncle Richard—but really why look at it like that? He’d nothing to live for. Old and tired and ill. His son dead. It was a mercy really. To die in his sleep quietly like that. Quietly…in his sleep… If only she could sleep. It was so stupid lying awake hour after hour…hearing the furniture creak, and the rustling of trees and bushes outside the window and the occasional queer melancholy hoot—an owl, she supposed. How sinister the country was, somehow. So different from the big noisy indifferent town. One felt so safe there—surrounded by people—never alone. Whereas here…. Houses where a murder had been committed were sometimes haunted. Perhaps this cottage would come to be known as the haunted cottage. Haunted by the spirit of Cora Lansquenet… Aunt Cora. Odd, really, how ever since she had arrived she had felt as though Aunt Cora were quite close to her…within reach. All nerves and fancy. Cora Lansquenet was dead, tomorrow she would be buried. There was no one in the cottage except Susan herself and Miss Gilchrist. Then why did she feel that there was someone in this room, someone close beside her…. She had lain on this bed when the hatchet fell… Lying there trustingly asleep… Knowing nothing till the hatchet fell… And now she wouldn’t let Susan sleep…. The furniture creaked again…was that a stealthy step? Susan switched on the light. Nothing. Nerves, nothing but nerves. Relax…close your eyes…. Surely that was a groan—a groan or a faint moan… Someone in pain—someone dying…. “I mustn’t imagine things, I mustn’t, I mustn’t,” Susan whispered to herself. Death was the end—there was no existence after death. Under no circumstances could anyone come back. Or was she reliving a scene from the past—a dying woman groaning…. There it was again…stronger…someone groaning in acute pain…. But—this was real. Once again Susan switched on the light, sat up in bed and listened. The groans were real groans and she was hearing them through the wall. They came from the room next door. Susan jumped out of bed, flung on a dressing gown and crossed to the door. She went out on to the landing, tapped for a moment on Miss Gilchrist’s door and then went in. Miss Gilchrist’s light was on. She was sitting up in bed. She looked ghastly. Her face was distorted with pain. “Miss Gilchrist, what’s the matter? Are you ill?” “Yes. I don’t know what—I—” she tried to get out of bed, was seized with a fit of vomiting and then collapsed back on the pillows. She murmured: “Please—ring up doctor. Must have eaten something….” “I’ll get you some bicarbonate. We can get the doctor in the morning if you’re no better.” Miss Gilchrist shook her head. “No, get the doctor now. I— I feel dreadful.” “Do you know his number? Or shall I look in the book?” Miss Gilchrist gave her the number. She was interrupted by another fit of retching. Susan’s call was answered by a sleepy male voice. “Who? Gilchrist? In Mead’s Lane. Yes, I know. I’ll be right along.” He was as good as his word. Ten minutes later Susan heard his car draw up outside and she went to open the door to him. She explained the case and she took him upstairs. “I think,” she said, “she must have eaten something that disagreed with her. But she seems pretty bad.” The doctor had had the air of one keeping his temper in leash and who has had some experience of being called out unnecessarily on more than one occasion. But as soon as he examined the moaning woman his manner changed. He gave various curt orders to Susan and presently came down and telephoned. Then he joined Susan in the sitting room. “I’ve sent for an ambulance. Must get her into hospital.” “She’s really bad then?” “Yes. I’ve given her a shot of morphia to ease the pain. But it looks—” He broke off. “What’s she eaten?” “We had macaroni au gratin for supper and a custard pudding. Coffee afterwards.” “You have the same things?” “Yes.” “And you’re all right? No pain or discomfort?” “No.” “She’s taken nothing else? No tinned fish? Or sausages?” “No. We had lunch at the King’s Arms—after the inquest.” “Yes, of course. You’re Mrs. Lansquenet’s niece?” “Yes.” “That was a nasty business. Hope they catch the man who did it.” “Yes, indeed.” The ambulance came. Miss Gilchrist was taken away and the doctor went with her. He told Susan he would ring her up in the morning. When he had left she went upstairs to bed. This time she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. II The funeral was well-attended. Most of the village had turned out. Susan and Mr. Entwhistle were the only mourners, but various wreaths had been sent by the other members of the family. Mr. Entwhistle asked where Miss Gilchrist was, and Susan explained the circumstances in a hurried whisper. Mr. Entwhistle raised his eyebrows. “Rather an odd occurrence?” “Oh, she’s better this morning. They rang up from the hospital. People do get these bilious turns. Some make more fuss than others.” Mr. Entwhistle said no more. He was returning to London immediately after the funeral. Susan went back to the cottage. She found some eggs and made herself an omelette. Then she went up to Cora’s room and started to sort through the dead woman’s things. She was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor. The doctor was looking worried. He replied to Susan’s inquiry by saying that Miss Gilchrist was much better.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

He replied to Susan’s inquiry by saying that Miss Gilchrist was much better. “She’ll be out and around in a couple of days,” he said. “But it was lucky I got called in so promptly. Otherwise—it might have been a near thing.” Susan stared. “Was she really so bad?” “Mrs. Banks, will you tell me again exactly what Miss Gilchrist had to eat and drink yesterday. Everything.” Susan reflected and gave a meticulous account. The doctor shook his head in a dissatisfied manner. “There must have been something she had and you didn’t?” “I don’t think so… Cakes, scones, jam, tea—and then supper. No, I can’t remember anything.” The doctor rubbed his nose. He walked up and down the room. “Was it definitely something she ate? Definitely food poisoning?” The doctor threw her a sharp glance. Then he seemed to come to a decision. “It was arsenic,” he said. “Arsenic?” Susan started. “You mean somebody gave her arsenic?” “That’s what it looks like.” “Could she have taken it herself? Deliberately, I mean?” “Suicide? She says not and she should know. Besides, if she wanted to commit suicide she wouldn’t be likely to choose arsenic. There are sleeping pills in this house. She could have taken an overdose of them.” “Could the arsenic have got into something by accident?” “That’s what I’m wondering. It seems very unlikely, but such things have been known. But if you and she ate the same things—” Susan nodded. She said, “It all seems impossible—” then she gave a sudden gasp. “Why, of course, the wedding cake!” “What’s that? Wedding cake?” Susan explained. The doctor listened with close attention. “Odd. And you say she wasn’t sure who sent it? Any of it left? Or is the box it came in lying around?” “I don’t know. I’ll look.” They searched together and finally found the white cardboard box with a few crumbs of cake still in it lying on the kitchen dresser. The doctor packed it away with some care. “I’ll take charge of this. Any idea where the wrapping paper it came in might be?” Here they were not successful and Susan said that it had probably gone into the Ideal boiler. “You won’t be leaving here just yet, Mrs. Banks?” His tone was genial, but it made Susan feel a little uncomfortable. “No, I have to go through my aunt’s things. I shall be here for a few days.” “Good. You understand the police will probably want to ask some questions. You don’t know of anyone who—well, might have had it in for Miss Gilchrist?” Susan shook her head. “I don’t really know much about her. She was with my aunt for some years—that’s all I know.” “Quite, quite. Always seemed a pleasant unassuming woman—quite ordinary. Not the kind, you’d say, to have enemies or anything melodramatic of that kind. Wedding cake through the post. Sounds like some jealous woman—but who’d be jealous of Miss Gilchrist? Doesn’t seem to fit.” “No.” “Well, I must be on my way. I don’t know what’s happening to us in quiet little Lytchett St. Mary. First a brutal murder and now attempted poisoning through the post. Odd, the one following the other.” He went down the path to his car. The cottage felt stuffy and Susan left the door standing open as she went slowly upstairs to resume her task. Cora Lansquenet had not been a tidy or methodical woman. Her drawers held a miscellaneous assortment of things. There were toilet accessories and letters and old handkerchiefs and paint brushes mixed up together in one drawer. There were a few old letters and bills thrust in amongst a bulging drawer of underclothes. In another drawer under some woollen jumpers was a cardboard box holding two false fringes. There was another drawer full of old photographs and sketching books. Susan lingered over a group taken evidently at some French place many years ago and which showed a younger, thinner Cora clinging to the arm of a tall lanky man with a straggling beard dressed in what seemed to be a velveteen coat and whom Susan took to be the late Pierre Lansquenet. The photographs interested Susan, but she laid them aside, sorted all the papers she had found into a heap and began to go through them methodically. About a quarter way through she came to a letter. She read it through twice and was still staring at it when a voice speaking behind her caused her to give a cry of alarm. “And what may you have got hold of there, Susan? Hallo, what’s the matter?” Susan reddened with annoyance. Her cry of alarm had been quite involuntary and she felt ashamed and anxious to explain. “George? How you startled me!” Her cousin smiled lazily. “So it seems.” “How did you get here?” “Well, the door downstairs was open, so I walked in. There seemed to be nobody about on the ground floor, so I came up here. If you mean how did I get to this part of the world, I started down this morning to come to the funeral.” “I didn’t see you there?” “The old bus played me up. The petrol feed seemed choked. I tinkered with it for some time and finally it seemed to clear itself. I was too late for the funeral by then, but I thought I might as well come on down. I knew you were here.” He paused, and then went on: “I rang you up, as a matter of fact, and Greg told me you’d come down to take possession, as it were. I thought I might give you a hand.” Susan said, “Aren’t you needed in the office? Or can you take days off whenever you like?” “A funeral has always been a recognized excuse for absenteeism. And this funeral is indubitably genuine. Besides, a murder always fascinates people. Anyway, I shan’t be going much to the office in future—not now that I’m a man of means. I shall have better things to do.” He paused and grinned, “Same as Greg,” he said. Susan looked at George thoughtfully. She had never seen much of this cousin of hers and when they did meet she had always found him rather difficult to make out. She asked, “Why did you really come down here, George?” “I’m not sure it wasn’t to do a little detective work. I’ve been thinking a good deal about the last funeral we attended. Aunt Cora certainly threw a spanner into the works that day. I’ve wondered whether it was sheer irresponsibility and auntly joie de vivre that prompted her words, or whether she really had something to go upon. What actually is in that letter that you were reading so attentively when I came in?” Susan said slowly, “It’s a letter that Uncle Richard wrote to Cora after he’d been down here to see her.” How very black George’s eyes were. She’d thought of them as brown but they were black, and there was something curiously impenetrable about black eyes. They concealed the thoughts that lay behind them. George drawled slowly. “Anything interesting in it?” “No, not exactly….” “Can I see?” She hesitated for a moment, then put the letter into his outstretched hand. He read it, skimming over the contents in a low monotone. “Glad to have seen you again after all these years…looking very well…had a good journey home and arrived back not too tired….” His voice changed suddenly, sharpened: “Please don’t say anything to anyone about what I told you. It may be a mistake. Your loving brother, Richard.” He looked up at Susan. “What does that mean?” “It might mean anything… It might be just about his health. Or it might be some gossip about a mutual friend.” “Oh yes, it might be a lot of things. It isn’t conclusive—but it’s suggestive… What did he tell Cora? Does anyone know what he told her?” “Miss Gilchrist might know,” said Susan thoughtfully. “I think she listened.” “Oh, yes, the companion help. Where is she, by the way?” “In hospital, suffering from arsenic poisoning.” George stared. “You don’t mean it?” “I do. Someone sent her some poisoned wedding cake.” George sat down on one of the bedroom chairs and whistled. “It looks,” he said, “as though Uncle Richard was not mistaken.” III On the following morning Inspector Morton called at the cottage. He was a quiet middle-aged man with a soft country burr in his voice. His manner was quiet and unhurried, but his eyes were shrewd. “You realize what this is about, Mrs. Banks?” he said. “Dr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Banks?” he said. “Dr. Proctor has already told you about Miss Gilchrist. The few crumbs of wedding cake that he took from here have been analysed to show traces of arsenic.” “So someone deliberately wanted to poison her?” “That’s what it looks like. Miss Gilchrist herself doesn’t seem able to help us. She keeps repeating that it’s impossible—that nobody would do such a thing. But somebody did. You can’t throw any light on the matter?” Susan shook her head. “I’m simply dumbfounded,” she said. “Can’t you find out anything from the postmark? Or the handwriting?” “You’ve forgotten—the wrapping paper was presumably burnt. And there’s a little doubt whether it came through the post at all. Young Andrews, the driver of the postal van, doesn’t seem able to remember delivering it. He’s got a big round, and he can’t be sure—but there it is—there’s a doubt about it.” “But—what’s the alternative?” “The alternative, Mrs. Banks, is that an old piece of brown paper was used that already had Miss Gilchrist’s name and address on it and a cancelled stamp, and that the package was pushed through the letter box or deposited inside the door by hand to create the impression that it had come by post.” He added dispassionately: “It’s quite a clever idea, you know, to choose wedding cake. Lonely middle- aged women are sentimental about wedding cake, pleased at having been remembered. A box of sweets, or something of that kind might have awakened suspicion.” Susan said slowly: “Miss Gilchrist speculated a good deal about who could have sent it, but she wasn’t at all suspicious—as you say, she was pleased and yes—flattered.” She added: “Was there enough poison in it to—kill?” “That’s difficult to say until we get the quantitative analysis. It rather depends on whether Miss Gilchrist ate the whole of the wedge. She seems to think that she didn’t. Can you remember?” “No—no, I’m not sure. She offered me some and I refused and then she ate some and said it was a very good cake, but I don’t remember if she finished it or not.” “I’d like to go upstairs if you don’t mind, Mrs. Banks.” “Of course.” She followed him up to Miss Gilchrist’s room. She said apologetically: “I’m afraid it’s in a rather disgusting state. But I didn’t have time to do anything about it with my aunt’s funeral and everything, and then after Dr. Proctor came I thought perhaps I ought to leave it as it was.” “That was very intelligent of you, Mrs. Banks. It’s not everyone who would have been so intelligent.” He went to the bed and slipping his hand under the pillow raised it carefully. A slow smile spread over his face. “There you are,” he said. A piece of wedding cake lay on the sheet looking somewhat the worse for wear. “How extraordinary,” said Susan. “Oh no, it’s not. Perhaps your generation doesn’t do it. Young ladies nowadays mayn’t set so much store on getting married. But it’s an old custom. Put a piece of wedding cake under your pillow and you’ll dream of your future husband.” “But surely Miss Gilchrist—” “She didn’t want to tell us about it because she felt foolish doing such a thing at her age. But I had a notion that’s what it might be.” His face sobered. “And if it hadn’t been for an old maid’s foolishness, Miss Gilchrist mightn’t be alive today.” “But who could have possibly wanted to kill her?” His eyes met hers, a curious speculative look in them that made Susan feel uncomfortable. “You don’t know?” he asked. “No—of course I don’t.” “It seems then as though we shall have to find out,” said Inspector Morton. Twelve Two elderly men sat together in a room whose furnishings were of the most modern kind. There were no curves in the room. Everything was square. Almost the only exception was Hercule Poirot himself who was full of curves. His stomach was pleasantly rounded, his head resembled an egg in shape, and his moustaches curved upwards in a flamboyant flourish. He was sipping a glass of sirop and looking thoughtfully at Mr. Goby. Mr. Goby was small and spare and shrunken. He had always been refreshingly nondescript in appearance and he was now so nondescript as practically not to be there at all. He was not looking at Poirot because Mr. Goby never looked at anybody. Such remarks as he was now making seemed to be addressed to the left-hand corner of the chromium-plated fireplace curb. Mr. Goby was famous for the acquiring of information. Very few people knew about him and very few employed his services—but those few were usually extremely rich. They had to be, for Mr. Goby was very expensive. His speciality was the acquiring of information quickly. At the flick of Mr. Goby’s double-jointed thumb, hundreds of patient questioning plodding men and women, old and young, of all apparent stations in life, were despatched to question, and probe, and achieve results. Mr. Goby had now practically retired from business. But he occasionally “obliged” a few old patrons. Hercule Poirot was one of these. “I’ve got what I could for you,” Mr. Goby told the fire curb in a soft confidential whisper. “I sent the boys out. They do what they can—good lads—good lads all of them, but not what they used to be in the old days. They don’t come that way nowadays. Not willing to learn, that’s what it is. Think they know everything after they’ve only been a couple of years on the job. And they work to time. Shocking the way they work to time.” He shook his head sadly and shifted his gaze to an electric plug socket. “It’s the Government,” he told it. “And all this education racket. It gives them ideas. They come back and tell us what they think. They can’t think, most of them, anyway. All they know is things out of books. That’s no good in our business. Bring in the answers—that’s all that’s needed—no thinking.” Mr. Goby flung himself back in his chair and winked at a lampshade. “Mustn’t crab the Government, though! Don’t know really what we’d do without it. I can tell you that nowadays you can walk in most anywhere with a notebook and pencil, dressed right, and speaking B.B.C., and ask people all the most intimate details of their daily lives and all their back history, and what they had for dinner on November 23rd because that was a test day for middleclass incomes—or whatever it happens to be (making it a grade above to butter them up!)—ask ’em any mortal thing you can; and nine times out of ten they’ll come across pat, and even the tenth time though they may cut up rough, they won’t doubt for a minute that you’re what you say you are—and that the Government really wants to know—for some completely unfathomable reason! I can tell you, M. Poirot,” said Mr. Goby, still talking to the lampshade, “that it’s the best line we’ve ever had; much better than reading the electric meter or tracing a fault in the telephone—yes, or than calling as nuns, or the Girl Guides or Boy Scouts asking for subscriptions—though we use all those too. Yes, Government snooping is God’s gift to investigators and long may it continue!” Poirot did not speak. Mr. Goby had grown a little garrulous with advancing years, but he would come to the point in his own good time. “Ar,” said Mr. Goby, and took out a very scrubby little notebook. He licked his finger and flicked over the pages. “Here we are. Mr. George Crossfield. We’ll take him first. Just the plain facts. You won’t want to know how I got them. He’s been in Queer Street for quite a while now. Horses, mostly, and gambling—he’s not a great one for women. Goes over to France now and then, and Monte too. Spends a lot of time at the Casino. Too downy to cash cheques there, but gets hold of a lot more money than his travelling allowance would account for. I didn’t go into that, because it wasn’t what you want to know. But he’s not scrupulous about evading the law—and being a lawyer he knows how to do it. Some reason to believe he’s been using trust funds entrusted to him to invest.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Some reason to believe he’s been using trust funds entrusted to him to invest. Plunging pretty wildly of late—on the Stock Exchange and on the gee-gees! Bad judgement and bad luck. Been off his feed badly for three months. Worried, bad-tempered and irritable in the office. But since his uncle’s death that’s all changed. He’s like the breakfast eggs (if we had ’em). Sunny side up! “Now, as to particular information asked for. Statement that he was at Hurst Park races on the day in question almost certainly untrue. Almost invariably places bets with one or other of two bookies on the course. They didn’t see him that day. Possible that he left Paddington by train for destination unknown. Taxi driver who took fare to Paddington made doubtful identification of his photograph. But I wouldn’t bank on it. He’s a very common type—nothing outstanding about him. No success with porters, etc., at Paddington. Certainly didn’t arrive at Cholsey station—which is nearest for Lytchett St. Mary. Small station, strangers noticeable. Could have got out at Reading and taken bus. Buses there crowded, frequent and several routes go within a mile or so of Lytchett St. Mary as well as the bus service that goes right into the village. He wouldn’t take that—not if he meant business. All in all, he’s a downy card. Wasn’t seen in Lytchett St. Mary but he needn’t have been. Other ways of approach than through the village. Was in the OUDS at Oxford, by the way. If he went to the cottage that day he mayn’t have looked quite like the usual George Crossfield. I’ll keep him in my book, shall I? There’s a black market angle I’d like to play up.” “You may keep him in,” said Hercule Poirot. Mr. Goby licked his finger and turned another page of his notebook. “Mr. Michael Shane. He’s thought quite a lot of in the profession. Has an even better idea of himself than other people have. Wants to star and wants to star quickly. Fond of money and doing himself well. Very attractive to women. They fall for him right and left. He’s partial to them himself—but business comes first, as you might say. He’s been running around with Sorrel Dainton who was playing the lead in the last show he was in. He only had a minor part but made quite a hit in it, and Miss Dainton’s husband doesn’t like him. His wife doesn’t know about him and Miss Dainton. Doesn’t know much about anything, it seems. Not much of an actress I gather, but easy on the eye. Crazy about her husband. Some rumour of a bust-up likely between them not long ago, but that seems out now. Out since Mr. Richard Abernethie’s death.” Mr. Goby emphasised the last point by nodding his head at a cushion on the sofa. “On the day in question, Mr. Shane says he was meeting a Mr. Rosenheim and a Mr. Oscar Lewis to fix up some stage business. He didn’t meet them. Sent them a wire to say he was terribly sorry he couldn’t make it. What he did do was to go to the Emeraldo Car people, who hire out ‘drive yourself ’ cars. He hired a car about twelve o’clock and drove away in it. He returned it about six in the evening. According to the speedometer it had been driven just about the right number of miles for what we’re after. No confirmation from Lytchett St. Mary. No strange car seems to have been observed there that day. Lots of places it could be left unnoticed a mile or so away. And there’s even a disused quarry a few hundred yards down the lane from the cottage. Three market towns within walking distance where you can park in side streets, without the police bothering about you. All right, we keep Mr. Shane in?” “Most certainly.” “Now Mrs. Shane.” Mr. Goby rubbed his nose and told his left cuff about Mrs. Shane. “She says she was shopping. Just shopping…” Mr. Goby raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Women who are shopping—just scatty, that’s what they are. And she’d heard she’d come into money the day before. Naturally there’d be no holding her. She has one or two charge accounts but they’re overdrawn and they’ve been pressing her for payment and she didn’t put any more on the sheet. It’s quite on the cards that she went in here and there and everywhere, trying on clothes, looking at jewellery, pricing this, that, and the other—and as likely as not, not buying anything! She’s easy to approach—I’ll say that. I had one of my young ladies who’s knowledgeable on the theatrical line to do a hook up. Stopped by her table in a restaurant and exclaimed the way they do: ‘Darling, I haven’t seen you since Way Down Under. You were wonderful in that! Have you seen Hubert lately?’ That was the producer and Mrs. Shane was a bit of a flop in the play—but that makes it go all the better. They’re chatting theatrical stuff at once, and my girl throws the right names about, and then she says, ‘I believe I caught a glimpse of you at so and so, on so and so,’ giving the day—and most ladies fall for it and say, ‘Oh no, I was—’ whatever it may be. But not Mrs. Shane. Just looks vacant and says, ‘Oh, I dare say.’ What can you do with a lady like that?” Mr. Goby shook his head severely at the radiator. “Nothing,” said Hercule Poirot with feeling. “Do I not have cause to know it? Never shall I forget the killing of Lord Edgware. I was nearly defeated—yes, I, Hercule Poirot—by the extremely simple cunning of a vacant brain. The very simple-minded have often the genius to commit an uncomplicated crime and then leave it alone. Let us hope that our murderer—if there is a murderer in this affair—is intelligent and superior and thoroughly pleased with himself and unable to resist painting the lily. Enfin—but continue.” Once more Mr. Goby applied himself to his little book. “Mr. and Mrs. Banks—who said they were at home all day. She wasn’t, anyway! Went round to the garage, got out her car, and drove off in it about 1 o’clock. Destination unknown. Back about five. Can’t tell about mileage because she’s had it out every day since and it’s been nobody’s business to check. “As to Mr. Banks, we’ve dug up something curious. To begin with, I’ll mention that on the day in question we don’t know what he did. He didn’t go to work. Seems he’d already asked for a couple of days off on account of the funeral. And since then he’s chucked his job—with no consideration for the firm. Nice, well-established pharmacy it is. They’re not too keen on Master Banks. Seems he used to get into rather queer excitable states. “Well, as I say, we don’t know what he was doing on the day of Mrs. L.’s death. He didn’t go with his wife. It could be that he stopped in their little flat all day. There’s no porter there, and nobody knows whether tenants are in or out. But his back history is interesting. Up till about four months ago—just before he met his wife, he was in a Mental Home. Not certified—just what they call a mental breakdown. Seems he made some slip up in dispensing a medicine. (He was working with a Mayfair firm then.) The woman recovered, and the firm were all over themselves apologizing, and there was no prosecution. After all, these accidental slips do occur, and most decent people are sorry for a poor young chap who’s done it—so long as there’s no permanent harm done, that is. The firm didn’t sack him, but he resigned—said it had shaken his nerve.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

But afterwards, it seems, he got into a very low state and told the doctor he was obsessed by guilt—that it had all been deliberate—the woman had been overbearing and rude to him when she came into the shop, had complained that her last prescription had been badly made up—and that he had resented this and had deliberately added a near lethal dose of some drug or other. He said, ‘She had to be punished for daring to speak to me like that!’ And then wept and said he was too wicked to live and a lot of things like that. The medicos have a long word for that sort of thing—guilt complex or something—and don’t believe it was deliberate at all, just carelessness, but that he wanted to make it important and serious.” “Ça se peut,” said Hercule Poirot. “Pardon? Anyway, he went into this Sanatorium and they treated him and discharged him as cured, and he met Miss Abernethie as she was then. And he got a job in this respectable but rather obscure little chemist’s shop. Told them he’d been out of England for a year and a half, and gave them his former reference from some shop in Eastbourne. Nothing against him in that shop, but a fellow dispenser said he had a very queer temper and was odd in his manner sometimes. There’s a story about a customer saying once as a joke, ‘Wish you’d sell me something to poison my wife, ha ha!’ And Banks says to him, very soft and quiet: ‘I could… It would cost you two hundred pounds.’ The man felt uneasy and laughed it off. May have been all a joke, but it doesn’t seem to me that Banks is the joking kind.” “Mon ami,” said Hercule Poirot. “It really amazes me how you get your information! Medical and highly confidential most of it!” Mr. Goby’s eyes swivelled right round the room and he murmured, looking expectantly at the door, that there were ways…. “Now we come to the country department. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Abernethie. Very nice place they’ve got, but sadly needing money spent on it. Very straitened they seem to be, very straitened. Taxation and unfortunate investments. Mr. Abernethie enjoys ill health and the emphasis is on the enjoyment. Complains a lot and has everyone running and fetching and carrying. Eats hearty meals, and seems quite strong physically if he likes to make the effort. There’s no one in the house after the daily woman goes and no one’s allowed into Mr. Abernethie’s room unless he rings the bell. He was in a very bad temper the morning of the day after the funeral. Swore at Mrs. Jones. Ate only a little of his breakfast and said he wouldn’t have any lunch—he’d had a bad night. He said the supper she had left out for him was unfit to eat and a good deal more. He was alone in the house and unseen by anybody from 9:30 that morning until the following morning.” “And Mrs. Abernethie?” “She started off from Enderby by car at the time you mentioned. Arrived on foot at a small local garage in a place called Cathstone and explained her car had broken down a couple of miles away. “A mechanic drove her out to it, made an investigation and said they’d have to tow it in and it would be a long job—couldn’t promise to finish it that day. The lady was very put out, but went to a small inn, arranged to stay the night, and asked for some sandwiches as she said she’d like to see something of the countryside—it’s on the edge of the moorland country. She didn’t come back to the inn till quite late that evening. My informant said he didn’t wonder. It’s a sordid little place!” “And the times?” “She got the sandwiches at eleven. If she’d walked to the main road, a mile, she could have hitchhiked into Wallcaster and caught a special South Coast express which stops at Reading West. I won’t go into details of buses etcetera. It could just have been done if you could make the—er—attack fairly late in the afternoon.” “I understand the doctor stretched the time limit to possibly 4:30.” “Mind you,” said Mr. Goby, “I shouldn’t say it was likely. She seems to be a nice lady, liked by everybody. She’s devoted to her husband, treats him like a child.” “Yes, yes, the maternal complex.” “She’s strong and hefty, chops the wood and often hauls in great baskets of logs. Pretty good with the inside of a car, too.” “I was coming to that. What exactly was wrong with the car?” “Do you want the exact details, M. Poirot?” “Heaven forbid. I have no mechanical knowledge.” “It was a difficult thing to spot. And also to put right. And it could have been done maliciously by someone without very much trouble. By someone who was familiar with the insides of a car.” “C’est magnifique!” said Poirot with bitter enthusiasm. “All so convenient, all so possible. Bon dieu, can we eliminate nobody? And Mrs. Leo Abernethie?” “She’s a very nice lady, too. Mr. Abernethie deceased was very fond of her. She came there to stay about a fortnight before he died.” “After he had been to Lytchett St. Mary to see his sister?” “No, just before. Her income is a good deal reduced since the war. She gave up her house in England and took a small flat in London. She has a villa in Cyprus and spends part of the year there. She has a young nephew whom she is helping to educate, and there seems to be one or two young artists whom she helps financially from time to time.” “St. Helen of the blameless life,” said Poirot, shutting his eyes. “And it was quite impossible for her to have left Enderby that day without the servants knowing? Say that is so, I implore you!” Mr. Goby brought his glance across to rest apologetically on Poirot’s polished patent leather shoe, the nearest he had come to a direct encounter, and murmured: “I’m afraid I can’t say that, M. Poirot. Mrs. Abernethie went to London to fetch some extra clothes and belongings as she had agreed with Mr. Entwhistle to stay on and see to things.” “Il ne manquait ça!” said Poirot with strong feeling. Thirteen When the card of Inspector Morton of the Berkshire County Police was brought to Hercule Poirot, his eyebrows went up. “Show him in, Georges, show him in. And bring—what is it that the police prefer?” “I would suggest beer, sir.” “How horrible! But how British. Bring beer, then.” Inspector Morton came straight to the point. “I had to come to London,” he said. “And I got hold of your address, M. Poirot. I was interested to see you at the inquest on Thursday.” “So you saw me there?” “Yes. I was surprised—and, as I say, interested. You won’t remember me but I remember you very well. In that Pangbourne Case.” “Ah, you were connected with that?” “Only in a very junior capacity. It’s a long time ago but I’ve never forgotten you.” “And you recognized me at once the other day?” “That wasn’t difficult, sir.” Inspector Morton repressed a slight smile. “Your appearance is—rather unusual.” His gaze took in Poirot’s sartorial perfection and rested finally on the curving moustaches. “You stick out in a country place,” he said. “It is possible, it is possible,” said Poirot with complacency. “It interested me why you should be there. That sort of crime—robbery—assault—doesn’t usually interest you.” “Was it the usual ordinary brutal type of crime?” “That’s what I’ve been wondering.” “You have wondered from the beginning, have you not?” “Yes, M. Poirot. There were some unusual features. Since then we’ve worked along the routine lines. Pulled in one or two people for questioning, but everyone has been able to account quite satisfactorily for his time that afternoon. It wasn’t what you’d call an ‘ordinary’ crime, M. Poirot—we’re quite sure of that. The Chief Constable agrees. It was done by someone who wished to make it appear that way. It could have been the Gilchrist woman, but there doesn’t seem to be any motive—and there wasn’t any emotional background, Mrs.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Lansquenet was perhaps a bit mental—or ‘simple,’ if you like to put it that way, but it was a household of mistress and dogsbody with no feverish feminine friendship about it. There are dozens of Miss Gilchrists about, and they’re not usually the murdering type.” He paused. “So it looks as though we’d have to look farther afield. I came to ask if you could help us at all. Something must have brought you down there, M. Poirot.” “Yes, yes, something did. An excellent Daimler car. But not only that.” “You had—information?” “Hardly in your sense of the word. Nothing that could be used as evidence.” “But something that could be—a pointer?” “Yes.” “You see, M. Poirot, there have been developments.” Meticulously, in detail, he told of the poisoned wedge of wedding cake. Poirot took a deep, hissing breath. “Ingenious—yes, ingenious… I warned Mr. Entwhistle to look after Miss Gilchrist. An attack on her was always a possibility. But I must confess that I did not expect poison. I anticipated a repetition of the hatchet motif. I merely thought that it would be inadvisable for her to walk alone in unfrequented lanes after dark.” “But why did you anticipate an attack on her? I think, M. Poirot, you ought to tell me that.” Poirot nodded his head slowly. “Yes, I will tell you. Mr. Entwhistle will not tell you, because he is a lawyer and lawyers do not like to speak of suppositions, or inferences made from the character of a dead woman, or from a few irresponsible words. But he will not be averse to my telling you—no, he will be relieved. He does not wish to appear foolish or fanciful, but he wants you to know what may—only may—be the facts.” Poirot paused as Georges entered with a tall glass of beer. “Some refreshment, Inspector. No, no, I insist.” “Won’t you join me?” “I do not drink the beer. But I will myself have a glass of sirop de cassis—the English they do not care for it, I have noticed.” Inspector Morton looked gratefully at his beer. Poirot, sipping delicately from his glass of dark purple fluid, said: “It begins, all this, at a funeral. Or rather, to be exact, after the funeral.” Graphically, with many gestures, he set forth the story as Mr. Entwhistle had told it to him, but with such embellishments as his exuberant nature suggested. One almost felt that Hercule Poirot himself had been an eyewitness of the scene. Inspector Morton had an excellent clear-cut brain. He seized at once on what were, for his purposes, the salient points. “This Mr. Abernethie may have been poisoned?” “It is a possibility.” “And the body has been cremated and there is no evidence?” “Exactly.” Inspector Morton ruminated. “Interesting. There’s nothing in it for us. Nothing, that is, to make Richard Abernethie’s death worth investigating. It would be a waste of time.” “Yes.” “But there are the people—the people who were there—the people who heard Cora Lansquenet say what she did, and one of whom may have thought that she might say it again and with more detail.” “As she undoubtedly would have. There are, Inspector, as you say, the people. And now you see why I was at the inquest, why I interested myself in the case—because it is, always, people in whom I interest myself.” “Then the attack on Miss Gilchrist—” “Was always indicated. Richard Abernethie had been down to the cottage. He had talked to Cora. He had, perhaps, actually mentioned a name. The only person who might possibly have known or overheard something was Miss Gilchrist. After Cora is silenced, the murderer might continue to be anxious. Does the other woman know something—anything? Of course, if the murderer is wise he will let well alone, but murderers, Inspector, are seldom wise. Fortunately for us. They brood, they feel uncertain, they desire to make sure—quite sure. They are pleased with their own cleverness. And so, in the end, they protrude their necks, as you say.” Inspector Morton smiled faintly. Poirot went on: “This attempt to silence Miss Gilchrist, already it is a mistake. For now there are two occasions about which you make inquiry. There is the handwriting on the wedding label also. It is a pity the wrapping paper was burnt.” “Yes, I could have been certain, then, whether it came by post or whether it didn’t.” “You have reason for thinking the latter, you say?” “It’s only what the postman thinks—he’s not sure. If the parcel had gone through a village post office, it’s ten to one the postmistress would have noticed it, but nowadays the mail is delivered by van from Market Keynes and of course the young chap does quite a round and delivers a lot of things. He thinks it was letters only and no parcel at the cottage—but he isn’t sure. As a matter of fact he’s having a bit of girl trouble and he can’t think about anything else. I’ve tested his memory and he isn’t reliable in any way. If he did deliver it, it seems to me odd that the parcel shouldn’t have been noticed until after this Mr.—whatshisname—Guthrie—” “Ah, Mr. Guthrie.” Inspector Morton smiled. “Yes, M. Poirot. We’re checking up on him. After all, it would be easy, wouldn’t it, to come along with a plausible tale of having been a friend of Mrs. Lansquenet’s. Mrs. Banks wasn’t to know if he was or he wasn’t. He could have dropped that little parcel, you know. It’s easy to make a thing look as though it’s been through the post. Lamp black a little smudged, makes quite a good postmark cancellation mark over a stamp.” He paused and then added: “And there are other possibilities.” Poirot nodded. “You think—?” “Mr. George Crossfield was down in that part of the world—but not until the next day. Meant to attend the funeral, but had a little engine trouble on the way. Know anything about him, M. Poirot?” “A little. But not as much as I would like to know.” “Like that, is it? Quite a little bunch interested in the late Mr. Abernethie’s will, I understand. I hope it doesn’t mean going after all of them.” “I have accumulated a little information. It is at your disposal. Naturally I have no authority to ask these people questions. In fact, it would not be wise for me to do so.” “I shall go slowly myself. You don’t want to fluster your bird too soon. But when you do fluster it, you want to fluster it well.” “A very sound technique. For you then, my friend, the routine—with all the machinery you have at your disposal. It is slow—but sure. For myself—” “Yes, M. Poirot?” “For myself, I go North. As I have told you, it is people in whom I interest myself. Yes—a little preparatory camouflage—and I go North. “I intend,” added Hercule Poirot, “to purchase a country mansion for foreign refugees. I represent U.N.A.R.C.O.” “And what’s U.N.A.R.C.O.?” “United Nations Aid for Refugee Centre Organization. It sounds well, do you not think?” Inspector Morton grinned. Fourteen Hercule Poirot said to a grim-faced Janet: “Thank you very much. You have been most kind.” Janet, her lips still fixed in a sour line, left the room. These foreigners! The questions they asked. Their impertinence! All very well to say that he was a specialist interested in unsuspected heart conditions such as Mr. Abernethie must have suffered from. That was very likely true—gone very sudden the master had, and the doctor had been surprised. But what business was it of some foreign doctor coming along and nosing around? All very well for Mrs. Leo to say: “Please answer Monsieur Pontarlier’s questions. He has a good reason for asking.” Questions. Always questions. Sheets of them sometimes to fill in as best you could—and what did the Government or anyone else want to know about your private affairs for? Asking your age at that census—downright impertinent and she hadn’t told them, either! Cut off five years she had.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Cut off five years she had. Why not? If she only felt fifty-four, she’d call herself fifty-four! At any rate Monsieur Pontarlier hadn’t wanted to know her age. He’d had some decency. Just questions about the medicines the master had taken, and where they were kept, and if, perhaps, he might have taken too much of them if he was feeling not quite the thing—or if he’d been forgetful. As though she could remember all that rubbish—the master knew what he was doing! And asking if any of the medicines he took were still in the house. Naturally they’d all been thrown away. Heart condition—and some long word he’d used. Always thinking of something new they were, these doctors. Look at them telling old Rogers he had a disc or some such in his spine. Plain lumbago, that was all that was the matter with him. Her father had been a gardener and he’d suffered from lumbago. Doctors! The self-appointed medical man sighed and went downstairs in search of Lanscombe. He had not got very much out of Janet but he had hardly expected to do so. All he had really wanted to do was to check such information as could unwillingly be extracted from her with that given him by Helen Abernethie and which had been obtained from the same source—but with much less difficulty, since Janet was ready to admit that Mrs. Leo had a perfect right to ask such questions and indeed Janet herself had enjoyed dwelling at length on the last few weeks of her master’s life. Illness and death were congenial subjects to her. Yes, Poirot thought, he could have relied on the information that Helen had got for him. He had done so really. But by nature and long habit he trusted nobody until he himself had tried and proved them. In any case the evidence was slight and unsatisfactory. It boiled down to the fact that Richard Abernethie had been prescribed vitamin oil capsules. That these had been in a large bottle which had been nearly finished at the time of his death. Anybody who had wanted to, could have operated on one or more of those capsules with a hypodermic syringe and could have rearranged the bottle so that the fatal dose would only be taken some weeks after that somebody had left the house. Or someone might have slipped into the house on the day before Richard Abernethie died and have doctored a capsule then—or, which was more likely—have substituted something else for a sleeping tablet in the little bottle that stood beside the bed. Or again he might have quite simply tampered with the food or drink. Hercule Poirot had made his own experiments. The front door was kept locked, but there was a side door giving on the garden which was not locked until evening. At about quarter past one, when the gardeners had gone to lunch and when the household was in the dining room, Poirot had entered the grounds, come to the side door, and mounted the stairs to Richard Abernethie’s bedroom without meeting anybody. As a variant he had pushed through a baize door and slipped into the larder. He had heard voices from the kitchen at the end of the passage but no one had seen him. Yes, it could have been done. But had it been done? There was nothing to indicate that that was so. Not that Poirot was really looking for evidence—he wanted only to satisfy himself as to possibilities. The murder of Richard Abernethie could only be a hypothesis. It was Cora Lansquenet’s murder for which evidence was needed. What he wanted was to study the people who had been assembled for the funeral that day, and to form his own conclusions about them. He already had his plan, but first he wanted a few more words with old Lanscombe. Lanscombe was courteous but distant. Less resentful than Janet, he nevertheless regarded this upstart foreigner as the materialization of the Writing on the Wall. This was What We are Coming to! He put down the leather with which he was lovingly polishing the Georgian teapot and straightened his back. “Yes, sir?” he said politely. Poirot sat down gingerly on a pantry stool. “Mrs. Abernethie tells me that you hoped to reside in the lodge by the north gate when you retired from service here?” “That is so, sir. Naturally all that is changed now. When the propety is sold—” Poirot interrupted deftly: “It might still be possible. There are cottages for the gardeners. The lodge is not needed for the guests or their attendants. It might be possible to make an arrangement of some kind.” “Well, thank you, sir, for the suggestion. But I hardly think— The majority of the—guests would be foreigners, I presume?” “Yes, they will be foreigners. Amongst those who fled from Europe to this country are several who are old and infirm. There can be no future for them if they return to their own countries, for these persons, you understand, are those whose relatives there have perished. They cannot earn their living here as an able-bodied man or woman can do. Funds have been raised and are being administered by the organization which I represent to endow various country homes for them. This place is, I think, eminently suitable. The matter is practically settled.” Lanscombe sighed. “You’ll understand, sir, that it’s sad for me to think that this won’t be a private dwelling house any longer. But I know how things are nowadays. None of the family could afford to live here—and I don’t think the young ladies and gentlemen would even want to do so. Domestic help is too difficult to obtain these days, and even if obtained is expensive and unsatisfactory. I quite realize that these fine mansions have served their turn.” Lanscombe sighed again. “If it has to be an—an institution of some kind, I’ll be glad to think that it’s the kind you’re mentioning. We were Spared in This Country, sir, owing to our Navy and Air Force and our brave young men and being fortunate enough to be an island. If Hitler had landed here we’d all have turned out and given him short shrift. My sight isn’t good enough for shooting, but I could have used a pitchfork, sir, and I intended to do so if necessary. We’ve always welcomed the unfortunate in this country, sir, it’s been our pride. We shall continue so to do.” “Thank you, Lanscombe,” said Poirot gently. “Your master’s death must have been a great blow to you.” “It was, sir. I’d been with the master since he was quite a young man. I’ve been very fortunate in my life, sir. No one could have had a better master.” “I have been conversing with my friend and—er—colleague, Dr. Larraby. We were wondering if your master could have had any extra worry—any unpleasant interview—on the day before he died? You do not remember if any visitors came to the house that day?” “I think not, sir. I do not recall any.” “No one called at all just about that time?” “The vicar was here to tea the day before. Otherwise some nuns called for a subscription—and a young man came to the back door and wanted to sell Marjorie some brushes and saucepan cleaners. Very persistent he was. Nobody else.” A worried expression had appeared on Lanscombe’s face. Poirot did not press him further. Lanscombe had already unburdened himself to Mr. Entwhistle. He would be far less forthcoming with Hercule Poirot. With Marjorie, on the other hand, Poirot had had instant success. Marjorie had none of the conventions of “good service.” Marjorie was a first-class cook and the way to her heart lay through her cooking. Poirot had visited her in the kitchen, praised certain dishes with discernment, and Marjorie, realizing that here was someone who knew what he was talking about, hailed him immediately as a fellow spirit. He had no difficulty in finding out exactly what had been served the night before Richard Abernethie had died. Marjorie, indeed, was inclined to view the matter as, “It was the night I made that chocolate soufflé that Mr. Abernethie died. Six eggs I’d saved up for it. The dairyman he’s a friend of mine. Got hold of some cream too. Better not ask how. Enjoyed it, Mr. Abernethie did.” The rest of the meal was likewise detailed.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Abernethie did.” The rest of the meal was likewise detailed. What had come out from the dining room had been finished in the kitchen. Ready as Marjorie was to talk, Poirot had learned nothing of value from her. He went now to fetch his overcoat and a couple of scarves, and thus padded against the North Country air he went out on the terrace and joined Helen Abernethie, who was clipping some late roses. “Have you found out anything fresh?” she asked. “Nothing. But I hardly expected to do so.” “I know. Ever since Mr. Entwhistle told me you were coming, I’ve been ferreting around, but there’s really been nothing.” She paused and said hopefully: “Perhaps it is all a mare’s nest?” “To be attacked with a hatchet?” “I wasn’t thinking of Cora.” “But it is of Cora that I think. Why was it necessary for someone to kill her? Mr. Entwhistle has told me that on that day, at the moment that she came out suddenly with her gaffe, you yourself felt that something was wrong. That is so?” “Well—yes, but I don’t know—” Poirot swept on. “How ‘wrong’? Unexpected? Surprising? Or—what shall we say—uneasy? Sinister?” “Oh no, not sinister. Just something that wasn’t—oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember and it wasn’t important.” “But why cannot you remember—because something else put it out of your head—something more important?” “Yes—yes—I think you’re right there. It was the mention of murder, I suppose. That swept away everything else.” “It was, perhaps, the reaction of some particular person to the word ‘murder’?” “Perhaps… But I don’t remember looking at anyone in particular. We were all staring at Cora.” “It may have been something you heard—something dropped perhaps…or broken….” Helen frowned in an effort of remembrance. “No… I don’t think so….” “Ah well, some day it will come back. And it may be of no consequence. Now tell me, Madame, of those there, who knew Cora best?” Helen considered. “Lanscombe, I suppose. He remembers her from a child. The housemaid, Janet, only came after she had married and gone away.” “And next to Lanscombe?” Helen said thoughtfully: “I suppose—I did. Maude hardly knew her at all.” “Then, taking you as the person who knew her best, why do you think she asked that question as she did?” Helen smiled. “It was very characteristic of Cora!” “What I mean is, was it a bêtise pure and simple? Did she just blurt out what was in her mind without thinking? Or was she being malicious—amusing herself by upsetting everyone?” Helen reflected. “You can’t ever be quite sure about a person, can you? I never have known whether Cora was just ingenuous—or whether she counted, childishly, on making an effect. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” “Yes. I was thinking: Suppose this Mrs. Cora says to herself ‘What fun it would be to ask if Richard was murdered and see how they all look!’ That would be like her, yes?” Helen looked doubtful. “It might be. She certainly had an impish sense of humour as a child. But what difference does it make?” “It would underline the point that it is unwise to make jokes about murder,” said Poirot drily. Helen shivered. “Poor Cora.” Poirot changed the subject. “Mrs. Timothy Abernethie stayed the night after the funeral?” “Yes.” “Did she talk to you at all about what Cora had said?” “Yes, she said it was outrageous and just like Cora!” “She didn’t take it seriously?” “Oh no. No, I’m sure she didn’t.” The second “no,” Poirot thought, had sounded suddenly doubtful. But was not that almost always the case when you went back over something in your mind? “And you, Madame, did you take it seriously?” Helen Abernethie, her eyes looking very blue and strangely young under the sideways sweep of crisp grey hair, said thoughtfully: “Yes, M. Poirot, I think I did.” “Because of your feeling that something was wrong?” “Perhaps.” He waited—but as she said nothing more, he went on: “There had been an estrangement, lasting many years, between Mrs. Lansquenet and her family?” “Yes. None of us liked her husband and she was offended about it, and so the estrangement grew.” “And then, suddenly, your brother-in-law went to see her. Why?” “I don’t know—I suppose he knew, or guessed, that he hadn’t very long to live and wanted to be reconciled—but I really don’t know.” “He didn’t tell you?” “Tell me?” “Yes. You were here, staying with him, just before he went there. He didn’t even mention his intention to you?” He thought a slight reserve came into her manner. “He told me that he was going to see his brother Timothy—which he did. He never mentioned Cora at all. Shall we go in? It must be nearly lunchtime.” She walked beside him carrying the flowers she had picked. As they went in by the side door, Poirot said: “You are sure, quite sure, that during your visit, Mr. Abernethie said nothing to you about any member of the family which might be relevant?” A faint resentment in her manner, Helen said: “You are speaking like a policeman.” “I was a policeman—once. I have no status—no right to question you. But you want the truth—or so I have been led to believe?” They entered the green drawing room. Helen said with a sigh: “Richard was disappointed in the younger generation. Old men usually are. He disparaged them in various ways—but there was nothing—nothing, do you understand—that could possibly suggest a motive for murder.” “Ah,” said Poirot. She reached for a Chinese bowl, and began to arrange the roses in it. When they were disposed to her satisfaction she looked round for a place to put it. “You arrange flowers admirably, Madame,” said Hercule. “I think that anything you undertook you would manage to do with perfection.” “Thank you. I am fond of flowers. I think this would look well on that green malachite table.” There was a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade on the malachite table. As she lifted it off, Poirot said casually: “Did anyone tell Mr. Abernethie that his niece Susan’s husband had come near to poisoning a customer when making up a prescription? Ah, pardon!” He sprang forward. The Victorian ornament had slipped from Helen’s fingers. Poirot’s spring forward was not quick enough. It dropped on the floor and the glass shade broke. Helen gave an expression of annoyance. “How careless of me. However, the flowers are not damaged. I can get a new glass shade made for it. I’ll put it away in the big cupboard under the stairs.” It was not until Poirot had helped her to lift it on to a shelf in the dark cupboard and had followed her back to the drawing room that he said: “It was my fault. I should not have startled you.” “What was it that you asked me? I have forgotten.” “Oh, there is no need to repeat my question. Indeed—I have forgotten what it was.” Helen came up to him. She laid her hand on his arm. “M. Poirot, is there anyone whose life would really bear close investigation? Must people’s lives be dragged into this when they have nothing to do with—with—” “With the death of Cora Lansquenet? Yes. Because one has to examine everything. Oh! it is true enough—it is an old maxim—everyone has something to hide. It is true of all of us—it is perhaps true of you, too, Madame. But I say to you, nothing can be ignored. That is why your friend, Mr. Entwhistle, he has come to me. For I am not the police. I am discreet and what I learn does not concern me. But I have to know. And since in this matter it is not so much evidence as people—then it is people with whom I occupy myself. I need, Madame, to meet everyone who was here on the day of the funeral. And it would be a great convenience—yes, and it would be strategically satisfactory—if I could meet them here.” “I’m afraid,” said Helen slowly, “that that would be too difficult—” “Not so difficult as you think. Already I have devised a means. The house, it is sold. So Mr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

The house, it is sold. So Mr. Entwhistle will declare. (Entendu, sometimes these things fall through!) He will invite the various members of the family to assemble here and to choose what they will from the furnishings before it is all put up to auction. A suitable weekend can be selected for that purpose.” He paused and then said: “You see, it is easy, is it not?” Helen looked at him. The blue eyes were cold—almost frosty. “Are you laying a trap for someone, M. Poirot?” “Alas! I wish I knew enough. No, I have still the open mind. “There may,” Hercule Poirot added thoughtfully, “be certain tests….” “Tests? What kind of tests?” “I have not yet formulated them to myself. And in any case, Madame, it would be better that you should not know them.” “So that I can be tested too?” “You, Madame, have been taken behind the scenes. Now there is one thing that is doubtful. The young people will, I think, come readily. But it may be difficult, may it not, to secure the presence here of Mr. Timothy Abernethie. I hear that he never leaves home.” Helen smiled suddenly. “I believe you may be lucky there, M. Poirot. I heard from Maude yesterday. The workmen are in painting the house and Timothy is suffering terribly from the smell of the paint. He says that it is seriously affecting his health. I think that he and Maude would both be pleased to come here—perhaps for a week or two. Maude is still not able to get about very well—you know she broke her ankle?” “I had not heard. How unfortunate.” “Luckily they have got Cora’s companion, Miss Gilchrist. It seems that she has turned out a perfect treasure.” “What is that?” Poirot turned sharply on Helen. “Did they ask for Miss Gilchrist to go to them? Who suggested it?” “I think Susan fixed it up. Susan Banks.” “Aha,” said Poirot in a curious voice. “So it was the little Susan who suggested it. She is fond of making the arrangements.” “Susan struck me as being a very competent girl.” “Yes. She is competent. Did you hear that Miss Gilchrist had a narrow escape from death with a piece of poisoned wedding cake?” “No!” Helen looked startled. “I do remember now that Maude said over the telephone that Miss Gilchrist had just come out of hospital but I’d no idea why she had been in hospital. Poisoned? But, M. Poirot—why—” “Do you really ask that?” Helen said with sudden vehemence: “Oh! get them all here! Find out the truth! There mustn’t be any more murders.” “So you will cooperate?” “Yes— I will cooperate.” Fifteen I “That linoleum does look nice, Mrs. Jones. What a hand you have with lino. The teapot’s on the kitchen table, so go and help yourself. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve taken up Mr. Abernethie’s elevenses.” Miss Gilchrist trotted up the staircase, carrying a daintily set out tray. She tapped on Timothy’s door, interpreted a growl from within as an invitation to enter, and tripped briskly in. “Morning coffee and biscuits, Mr. Abernethie. I do hope you’re feeling brighter today. Such a lovely day.” Timothy grunted and said suspiciously: “Is there skim on that milk?” “Oh no, Mr. Abernethie. I took it off very carefully, and anyway I’ve brought up the little strainer in case it should form again. Some people like it, you know, they say it’s the cream—and so it is really.” “Idiots!” said Timothy. “What kind of biscuits are those?” “They’re those nice digestive biscuits.” “Digestive tripe. Ginger-nuts are the only biscuits worth eating.” “I’m afraid the grocer hadn’t got any this week. But these are really very nice. You try them and see.” “I know what they’re like, thank you. Leave those curtains alone, can’t you?” “I thought you might like a little sunshine. It’s such a nice sunny day.” “I want the room kept dark. My head’s terrible. It’s this paint. I’ve always been sensitive to paint. It’s poisoning me.” Miss Gilchrist sniffed experimentally and said brightly: “One really can’t smell it much in here. The workmen are over on the other side.” “You’re not sensitive like I am. Must I have all the books I’m reading taken out of my reach?” “I’m so sorry, Mr. Abernethie, I didn’t know you were reading all of them.” “Where’s my wife? I haven’t seen her for over an hour.” “Mrs. Abernethie is resting on the sofa.” “Tell her to come and rest up here.” “I’ll tell her, Mr. Abernethie. But she may have dropped off to sleep. Shall we say in about a quarter of an hour?” “No, tell her I want her now. Don’t monkey about with that rug. It’s arranged the way I like it.” “I’m so sorry. I thought it was slipping off the far side.” “I like it slipping off. Go and get Maude. I want her.” Miss Gilchrist departed downstairs and tiptoed into the drawing room where Maude Abernethie was sitting with her leg up reading a novel. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Abernethie,” she said apologetically. “Mr. Abernethie is asking for you.” Maude thrust aside her novel with a guilty expression. “Oh dear,” she said. “I’ll go at once.” She reached for her stick. Timothy burst out as soon as his wife entered the room: “So there you are at last!” “I’m so sorry dear, I didn’t know you wanted me.” “That woman you’ve got into the house will drive me mad. Twittering and fluttering round like a demented hen. Real typical old maid, that’s what she is.” “I’m sorry she annoys you. She tries to be kind, that’s all.” “I don’t want anybody kind. I don’t want a blasted old maid always chirruping over me. She’s so damned arch, too—” “Just a little, perhaps.” “Treats me as thought I was a confounded kid! It’s maddening.” “I’m sure it must be. But please, please, Timothy, do try not to be rude to her. I’m really very helpless still—and you yourself say she cooks well.” “Her cooking’s all right,” Mr. Abernethie admitted grudgingly. “Yes, she’s a decent enough cook. But keep her in the kitchen, that’s all I ask. Don’t let her come fussing round me.” “No, dear, of course not. How are you feeling?” “Not at all well. I think you’d better send for Barton to come and have a look at me. This paint affects my heart. Feel my pulse—the irregular way it’s beating.” Maude felt it without comment. “Timothy, shall we go to an hotel until the house painting is finished?” “It would be a great waste of money.” “Does that matter so much—now?” “You’re just like all women—hopelessly extravagant! Just because we’ve come into a ridiculously small part of my brother’s estate, you think we can go and live indefinitely at the Ritz.” “I didn’t quite say that, dear.” “I can tell you that the difference Richard’s money will make will be hardly appreciable. This bloodsucking Government will see to that. You mark my words, the whole lot will go in taxation.” Mrs. Abernethie shook her head sadly. “This coffee’s cold,” said the invalid, looking with distaste at the cup which he had not as yet tasted. “Why can’t I ever get a cup of really hot coffee?” “I’ll take it down and warm it up.” In the kitchen Miss Gilchrist was drinking tea and conversing affably, though with slight condescension, with Mrs. Jones. “I’m so anxious to spare Mrs. Abernethie all I can,” she said. “All this running up and down stairs is so painful for her.” “Waits on him hand and foot, she does,” said Mrs. Jones, stirring the sugar in her cup. “It’s very sad his being such an invalid.” “Not such an invalid either,” Mrs. Jones said darkly. “Suits him very well to lie up and ring bells and have trays brought up and down. But he’s well able to get up and go about.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

But he’s well able to get up and go about. Even seen him out in the village, I have, when she’s been away. Walking as hearty as you please. Anything he really needs—like his tobacco or a stamp—he can come and get. And that’s why when she was off to that funeral and got held up on the way back, and he told me I’d got to come in and stay the night again, I refused. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got my husband to think of. Going out to oblige in the mornings is all very well, but I’ve got to be there to see to him when he comes back from work.’ Nor I wouldn’t budge, I wouldn’t. Do him good, I thought, to get about the house and look after himself for once. Might make him see what a lot he gets done for him. So I stood firm, I did. He didn’t half create.” Mrs. Jones drew a deep breath and took a long satisfying drink of sweet inky tea. “Ar,” she said. Though deeply suspicious of Miss Gilchrist, and considering her as a finicky thing and a “regular fussy old maid,” Mrs. Jones approved of the lavish way in which Miss Gilchrist dispensed her employer’s tea and sugar ration. She set down the cup and said affably: “I’ll give the kitchen floor a nice scrub down and then I’ll be getting along. The potatoes is all ready peeled, dear, you’ll find them by the sink.” Though slightly affronted by the “dear,” Miss Gilchrist was appreciative of the goodwill which had divested an enormous quantity of potatoes of their outer coverings. Before she could say anything the telephone rang and she hurried out in the hall to answer it. The telephone, in the style of fiftyodd years ago, was situated inconveniently in a draughty passage behind the staircase. Maude Abernethie appeared at the top of the stairs while Miss Gilchrist was still speaking. The latter looked up and said: “It’s Mrs.—Leo—is it?—Abernethie speaking.” “Tell her I’m just coming.” Maude descended the stairs slowly and painfully. Miss Gilchrist murmured, “I’m so sorry you’ve had to come down again, Mrs. Abernethie. Has Mr. Abernethie finished his elevenses? I’ll just nip up and get the tray.” She trotted up the stairs as Mrs. Abernethie said into the receiver: “Helen? This is Maude here.” The invalid received Miss Gilchrist with a baleful glare. As she picked up the tray he asked fretfully: “Who’s that on the telephone?” “Mrs. Leo Abernethie.” “Oh? Suppose they’ll go on gossiping for about an hour. Women have no sense of time when they get on the phone. Never think of the money they’re wasting.” Miss Gilchrist said brightly that it would be Mrs. Leo who had to pay, and Timothy grunted. “Just pull that curtain aside, will you? No, not that one, the other one. I don’t want the light slap in my eyes. That’s better. No reason because I’m an invalid that I should have to sit in the dark all day.” He went on: “And you might look in that bookcase over there for a green— What’s the matter now? What are you rushing off for?” “It’s the front door, Mr. Abernethie.” “I didn’t hear anything. You’ve got that woman downstairs, haven’t you? Let her go and answer it.” “Yes, Mr. Abernethie. What was the book you wanted me to find?” The invalid closed his eyes. “I can’t remember now. You’ve put it out of my head. You’d better go.” Miss Gilchrist seized the tray and hurriedly departed. Putting the tray on the pantry table she hurried into the front hall, passing Mrs. Abernethie who was still at the telephone. She returned in a moment to ask in a muted voice: “I’m so sorry to interrupt. It’s a nun. Collecting. The Heart of Mary Fund, I think she said. She has a book. Half a crown or five shillings most people seem to have given.” Maude Abernethie said: “Just a moment, Helen,” into the telephone, and to Miss Gilchrist, “I don’t subscribe to Roman Catholics. We have our own Church charities.” Miss Gilchrist hurried away again. Maude terminated her conversation after a few minutes with the phrase, “I’ll talk to Timothy about it.” She replaced the receiver and came into the front hall. Miss Gilchrist was standing quite still by the drawing room door. She was frowning in a puzzled way and jumped when Maude Abernethie spoke to her. “There’s nothing the matter, is there, Miss Gilchrist?” “Oh no, Mrs. Abernethie, I’m afraid I was just woolgathering. So stupid of me when there’s so much to be done.” Miss Gilchrist resumed her imitation of a busy ant and Maude Abernethie climbed the stairs slowly and painfully to her husband’s room. “That was Helen on the telephone. It seems that the place is definitely sold—some Institution for Foreign Refugees—” She paused whilst Timothy expressed himself forcibly on the subject of Foreign Refugees, with side issues as to the house in which he had been born and brought up. “No decent standards left in this country. My old home! I can hardly bear to think of it.” Maude went on: “Helen quite appreciates what you—we—will feel about it. She suggests that we might like to come there for a visit before it goes. She was very distressed about your health and the way the painting is affecting it. She thought you might prefer coming to Enderby to going to an hotel. The servants are there still, so you could be looked after comfortably.” Timothy, whose mouth had been open in outraged protests halfway through this, had closed it again. His eyes had become suddenly shrewd. He now nodded his head approvingly. “Thoughtful of Helen,” he said. “Very thoughtful. I don’t know, I’m sure, I’ll have to think it over… There’s no doubt that this paint is poisoning me—there’s arsenic in paint, I believe. I seem to have heard something of the kind. On the other hand the exertion of moving might be too much for me. It’s difficult to know what would be the best.” “Perhaps you’d prefer an hotel, dear,” said Maude. “A good hotel is very expensive, but where your health is concerned—” Timothy interrupted. “I wish I could make you understand, Maude, that we are not millionaires. Why go to an hotel when Helen has very kindly suggested that we should go to Enderby? Not that it’s really for her to suggest! The house isn’t hers. I don’t understand legal subtleties, but I presume it belongs to us equally until it’s sold and the proceeds divided. Foreign Refugees! It would have made old Cornelius turn in his grave. Yes,” he sighed, “I should like to see the old place again before I die.” Maude played her last card adroitly. “I understand that Mr. Entwhistle has suggested that the members of the family might like to choose certain pieces of furniture or china or something—before the contents are put up for auction.” Timothy heaved himself briskly upright. “We must certainly go. There must be a very exact valuation of what is chosen by each person. Those men the girls have married— I wouldn’t trust either of them from what I’ve heard. There might be some sharp practice. Helen is far too amiable. As the head of the family, it is my duty to be present!” He got up and walked up and down the room with a brisk vigorous tread. “Yes, it is an excellent plan. Write to Helen and accept. What I am really thinking about is you, my dear. It will be a nice rest and change for you. You have been doing far too much lately. The decorators can get on with the painting while we are away and that Gillespie woman can stay here and look after the house.” “Gilchrist,” said Maude. Timothy waved a hand and said that it was all the same. II “I can’t do it,” said Miss Gilchrist. Maude looked at her in surprise. Miss Gilchrist was trembling. Her eyes looked pleadingly into Maude’s. “It’s stupid of me, I know… But I simply can’t. Not stay here all alone in the house.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Not stay here all alone in the house. If there was anyone who could come and—and sleep here too?” She looked hopefully at the other woman, but Maude shook her head. Maude Abernethie knew only too well how difficult it was to get anyone in the neighbourhood to “live in.” Miss Gilchrist went on, a kind of desperation in her voice. “I know you’ll think it nervy and foolish—and I wouldn’t have dreamed once that I’d ever feel like this. I’ve never been a nervous woman—or fanciful. But now it all seems different. I’d be terrified—yes, literally terrified—to be all alone here.” “Of course,” said Maude. “It’s stupid of me. After what happend at Lytchett St. Mary.” “I suppose that’s it… It’s not logical, I know. And I didn’t feel it at first. I didn’t mind being alone in the cottage after—after it had happened. The feeling’s grown up gradually. You’ll have no opinion of me at all, Mrs. Abernethie, but ever since I’ve been here I’ve been feeling it—frightened, you know. Not of anything in particular—but just frightened… It’s so silly and I really am ashamed. It’s just as though all the time I was expecting something awful to happen… Even that nun coming to the door startled me. Oh dear, I am in a bad way….” “I suppose it’s what they call delayed shock,” said Maude vaguely. “Is it? I don’t know. Oh, dear, I’m so sorry to appear so—so ungrateful, and after all your kindness. What you will think—” Maude soothed her. “We must think of some other arrangement,” she said. Sixteen George Crossfield paused irresolutely for a moment as he watched a particular feminine back disappear through a doorway. Then he nodded to himself and went in pursuit. The doorway in question was that of a double-fronted shop—a shop that had gone out of business. The plate-glass windows showed a disconcerting emptiness within. The door was closed, but George rapped on it. A vacuous faced young man with spectacles opened it and stared at George. “Excuse me,” said George. “But I think my cousin just came in here.” The young man drew back and George walked in. “Hallo, Susan,” he said. Susan, who was standing on a packing case and using a footrule, turned her head in some surprise. “Hallo, George. Where did you spring from?” “I saw your back. I was sure it was yours.” “How clever of you. I suppose backs are distinctive.” “Much more so than faces. Add a beard and pads in your cheeks and do a few things to your hair and nobody will know you when you come face to face with them—but beware of the moment when you walk away.” “I’ll remember. Can you remember seven feet five inches until I’ve got time to write it down.” “Certainly. What is this, bookshelves?” “No, cubicle space. Eight feet nine—and three seven….” The young man with the spectacles who had been fidgeting from one foot to the other, coughed apologetically. “Excuse me, Mrs. Banks, but if you want to be here for some time—” “I do, rather,” said Susan. “If you leave the keys, I’ll lock the door and return them to the office when I go past. Will that be all right?” “Yes, thank you. If it weren’t that we’re short staffed this morning—” Susan accepted the apologetic intent of the half-finished sentence and the young man removed himself to the outer world of the street. “I’m glad we’ve got rid of him,” said Susan. “House agents are a bother. They will keep talking just when I want to do sums.” “Ah,” said George. “Murder in an empty shop. How exciting it would be for the passersby to see the dead body of a beautiful young woman displayed behind plate glass. How they would goggle. Like goldfish.” “There wouldn’t be any reason for you to murder me, George.” “Well, I should get a fourth part of your share of our esteemed uncle’s estate. If one were sufficiently fond of money that should be a reason.” Susan stopped taking measurements and turned to look at him. Her eyes opened a little. “You look a different person, George. It’s really—extraordinary.” “Different? How different?” “Like an advertisement. This is the same man that you saw overleaf, but now he has taken Uppington’s Health Salts.” She sat down on another packing case and lit a cigarette. “You must have wanted your share of old Richard’s money pretty badly, George?” “Nobody could honestly say that money isn’t welcome these days.” George’s tone was light. Susan said: “You were in a jam, weren’t you?” “Hardly your business, is it, Susan?” “I was just interested.” “Are you renting this shop as a place of business?” “I’m buying the whole house.” “With possession?” “Yes. The two upper floors were flats. One’s empty and went with the shop. The other, I’m buying the people out.” “Nice to have money, isn’t it, Susan?” There was a malicious tone in George’s voice. But Susan merely took a deep breath and said: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s wonderful. An answer to prayer.” “Does prayer kill off elderly relatives?” Susan paid no attention. “This place is exactly right. To begin with, it’s a very good piece of period architecture. I can make the living part upstairs something quite unique. There are two lovely moulded ceilings and the rooms are a beautiful shape. This part down here which has already been hacked about I shall have completely modern.” “What is this? A dress business?” “No. Beauty culture. Herbal preparations. Face creams!” “The full racket?” “The racket as before. It pays. It always pays. What you need to put it over is personality. I can do it.” George looked at his cousin appreciatively. He admired the slanting planes of her face, the generous mouth, the radiant colouring. Altogether an unusual and vivid face. And he recognized in Susan that odd, indefinable quality, the quality of success. “Yes,” he said, “I think you’ve got what it takes, Susan. You’ll get back your outlay on this scheme and you’ll get places with it.” “It’s the right neighbourhood, just off a main shopping street and you can park a car right in front of the door.” Again George nodded. “Yes, Susan, you’re going to succeed. Have you had this in mind for a long time?” “Over a year.” “Why didn’t you put it up to old Richard? He might have staked you.” “I did put it up to him.” “And he didn’t see his way? I wonder why. I should have thought he’d have recognized the same mettle that he himself was made of.” Susan did not answer, and into George’s mind there leapt a swift bird’s eye view of another figure. A thin, nervous, suspicious-eyed young man. “Where does—what’s his name—Greg—come in on all this?” he asked. “He’ll give up dishing out pills and powders, I take it?” “Of course. There will be a laboratory built out at the back. We shall have our own formulas for face creams and beauty preparations.” George suppressed a grin. He wanted to say: “So baby is to have his playpen,” but he did not say it. As a cousin he did not mind being spiteful, but he had an uneasy sense that Susan’s feeling for her husband was a thing to be treated with care. It had all the qualities of a dangerous explosive. He wondered, as he had wondered on the day of the funeral, about that queer fish, Gregory. Something odd about the fellow. So nondescript in appearance—and yet, in some way, not nondescript…. He looked again at Susan, calmly and radiantly triumphant. “You’ve got the true Abernethie touch,” he said. “The only one of the family who has. Pity as far as old Richard was concerned that you’re a woman. If you’d been a boy, I bet he’d have left you the whole caboodle.” Susan said slowly: “Yes, I think he would.” She paused and then went on: “He didn’t like Greg, you know….” “Ah.” George raised his eyebrows. “His mistake.” “Yes.” “Oh, well. Anyway, things are going well now—all going according to plan.” As he said the words he was struck by the fact that they seemed particularly applicable to Susan. The idea made him, just for a moment, a shade uncomfortable.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

The idea made him, just for a moment, a shade uncomfortable. He didn’t really like a woman who was so cold-bloodedly efficient. Changing the subject he said: “By the way, did you get a letter from Helen? About Enderby?” “Yes, I did. This morning. Did you?” “Yes. What are you going to do about it?” “Greg and I thought of going up the weekend after next—if that suits everyone else. Helen seemed to want us all together.” George laughed shrewdly. “Or somebody might choose a more valuable piece of furniture than somebody else?” Susan laughed. “Oh, I suppose there is a proper valuation. But a valuation for probate will be much lower than the things would be in the open market. And besides, I’d quite like to have a few relics of the founder of the family fortunes. Then I think it would be amusing to have one or two really absurd and charming specimens of the Victorian age in this place. Make a kind of thing of them! That period’s coming in now. There was a green malachite table in the drawing room. You could build quite a colour scheme around it. And perhaps a case of stuffed hummingbirds—or one of those crowns made of waxed flowers. Something like that—just as a keynote—can be very effective.” “I trust your judgement.” “You’ll be there, I suppose?” “Oh, I shall be there—to see fair play if nothing else.” Susan laughed. “What do you bet there will be a grand family row?” she asked. “Rosamund will probably want your green malachite table for a stage set!” Susan did not laugh. Instead she frowned. “Have you seen Rosamund lately?” “I have not seen beautiful Cousin Rosamund since we all came back third-class from the funeral.” “I’ve seen her once or twice… She—she seemed rather odd—” “What was the matter with her? Trying to think?” “No. She seemed—well—upset.” “Upset about coming into a lot of money and being able to put on some perfectly frightful play in which Michael can make an ass of himself?” “Oh, that’s going ahead and it does sound frightful—but all the same, it may be a success. Michael’s good, you know. He can put himself across the footlights—or whatever the term is. He’s not like Rosamund, who’s just beautiful and ham.” “Poor beautiful ham Rosamund.” “All the same Rosamund is not quite so dumb as one might think. She says things that are quite shrewd, sometimes. Things that you wouldn’t have imagined she’d even noticed. It’s—it’s quite disconcerting.” “Quite like our Aunt Cora—” “Yes….” A momentary uneasiness descended on them both—conjured up it seemed, by the mention of Cora Lansquenet. Then George said with a rather elaborate air of unconcern: “Talking of Cora—what about that companion woman of hers? I rather think something ought to be done about her.” “Done about her? What do you mean?” “Well, it’s up to the family, so to speak. I mean I’ve been thinking Cora was our Aunt—and it occurred to me that this woman mayn’t find it easy to get another post.” “That occurred to you, did it?” “Yes. People are so careful of their skins. I don’t say they’d actually think that this Gilchrist female would take a hatchet to them—but at the back of their minds they’d feel that it might be unlucky. People are superstitious.” “How odd that you should have thought of all that, George? How would you know about things like that?” George said drily: “You forget that I’m a lawyer. I see a lot of the queer illogical side of people. What I’m getting at is, that I think we might do something about the woman, give her a small allowance or something, to tide her over, or find some office post for her if she’s capable of that sort of thing. I feel rather as though we ought to keep in touch with her.” “You needn’t worry,” said Susan. Her voice was dry and ironic. “I’ve seen to things. She’s gone to Timothy and Maude.” George looked startled. “I say, Susan—is that wise?” “It was the best thing I could think of—at the moment.” George looked at her curiously. “You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you, Susan? You know what you’re doing and you don’t have—regrets.” Susan said lightly: “It’s a waste of time—having regrets.”

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Seventeen Michael tossed the letter across the table to Rosamund. “What about it?” “Oh, we’ll go. Don’t you think so?” Michael said slowly: “It might be as well.” “There might be some jewellery… Of course all the things in the house are quite hideous—stuffed birds and wax flowers—ugh!” “Yes. Bit of a mausoleum. As a matter of fact I’d like to make a sketch or two—particularly in that drawing room. The mantelpiece, for instance, and that very odd shaped couch. They’d be just right for The Baronet’s Progress—if we revive it.” He got up and looked at his watch. “That reminds me. I must go round and see Rosenheim. Don’t expect me until rather late this evening. I’m dining with Oscar and we’re going into the question of taking up that option and how it fits in with the American offer.” “Darling Oscar. He’ll be pleased to see you after all this time. Give him my love.” Michael looked at her sharply. He no longer smiled and his face had an alert predatory look. “What do you mean—after all this time? Anyone would think I hadn’t seen him for months.” “Well, you haven’t, have you?” murmured Rosamund. “Yes, I have. We lunched together only a week ago.” “How funny. He must have forgotten about it. He rang up yesterday and said he hadn’t seen you since the first night of Tilly Looks West.” “The old fool must be off his head.” Michael laughed. Rosamund, her eyes wide and blue, looked at him without emotion. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you, Mick?” Michael protested. “Darling, of course I don’t.” “Yes, you do. But I’m not an absolute nitwit. You didn’t go near Oscar that day. I know where you did go.” “Rosamund darling—what do you mean?” “I mean I know where you really were….” Michael, his attractive face uncertain, stared at his wife. She stared back at him, placid, unruffled. How very disconcerting, he suddenly thought, a really empty stare could be. He said rather unsuccessfully: “I don’t know what you’re driving at….” “I just meant it’s rather silly telling me a lot of lies.” “Look here, Rosamund—” He had started to bluster—but he stopped, taken aback as his wife said softly: “We do want to take up this option and put this play on, don’t we?” “Want to? It’s the part I’ve always dreamed must exist somewhere.” “Yes—that’s what I mean.” “Just what do you mean?” “Well—it’s worth a good deal, isn’t it? But one mustn’t take too many risks.” He stared at her and said slowly: “It’s your money— I know that. If you don’t want to risk it—” “It’s our money, darling.” Rosamund stressed it. “I think that’s rather important.” “Listen, darling. The part of Eileen—it would bear writing up.” Rosamund smiled. “I don’t think—really— I want to play it.” “My dear girl.” Michael was aghast. “What’s come over you?” “Nothing.” “Yes, there is, you’ve been different lately—moody—nervous, what is it?” “Nothing. I only want you to be—careful, Mick.” “Careful about what? I’m always careful.” “No, I don’t think you are. You always think you can get away with things and that everyone will believe whatever you want them to. You were stupid about Oscar that day.” Michael flushed angrily. “And what about you? You said you were going shopping with Jane. You didn’t. Jane’s in America, has been for weeks.” “Yes,” said Rosamund. “That was stupid, too. I really just went for a walk—in Regent’s Park.” Michael looked at her curiously. “Regent’s Park? You never went for a walk in Regent’s Park in your life. What’s it all about? Have you got a boyfriend? You may say what you like, Rosamund, you have been different lately. Why?” “I’ve been—thinking about things. About what to do….” Michael came round the table to her in a satisfying spontaneous rush. His voice held fervour as he cried: “Darling—you know I love you madly!” She responded satisfactorily to the embrace, but as they drew apart he was struck again disagreeably by the odd calculation in those beautiful eyes. “Whatever I’d done, you’d always forgive me, wouldn’t you?” he demanded. “I suppose so,” said Rosamund vaguely. “That’s not the point. You see, it’s all different now. We’ve got to think and plan.” “Think and plan—what?” Rosamund, frowning, said: “Things aren’t over when you’ve done them. It’s really a sort of beginning and then one’s got to arrange what to do next, and what’s important and what is not.” “Rosamund….” She sat, her face perplexed, her wide gaze on a middle distance in which Michael, apparently, did not feature. At the third repetition of her name, she started slightly and came out of her reverie. “What did you say?” “I asked you what you were thinking about….” “Oh? Oh yes, I was wondering if I’d go down to—what is it?—Lytchett St. Mary, and see that Miss Somebody—the one who was with Aunt Cora.” “But why?” “Well, she’ll be going away soon, won’t she? To relatives or someone. I don’t think we ought to let her go away until we’ve asked her.” “Asked her what?” “Asked her who killed Aunt Cora.” Michael stared. “You mean—you think she knows?” Rosamund said rather absently: “Oh yes, I expect so… She lived there, you see.” “But she’d have told the police.” “Oh, I don’t mean she knows that way—I just mean that she’s probably quite sure. Because of what Uncle Richard said when he went down there. He did go down there, you know, Susan told me so.” “But she wouldn’t have heard what he said.” “Oh yes, she would, darling.” Rosamund sounded like someone arguing with an unreasonable child. “Nonsense, I can hardly see old Richard Abernethie discussing his suspicions of his family before an outsider.” “Well, of course. She’d have heard it through the door.” “Eavesdropping, you mean?” “I expect so—in fact I’m sure. It must be deadly dull shut up, two women in a cottage and nothing ever happening except washing up and the sink and putting the cat out and things like that. Of course she listened and read letters—anyone would.” Michael looked at her with something faintly approaching dismay. “Would you?” he demanded bluntly. “I wouldn’t go and be a companion in the country.” Rosamund shuddered. “I’d rather die.” “I mean—would you read letters and—and all that?” Rosamund said calmly: “If I wanted to know, yes. Everybody does, don’t you think so?” The limpid gaze met his. “One just wants to know,” said Rosamund. “One doesn’t want to do anything about it. I expect that’s how she feels—Miss Gilchrist, I mean. But I’m certain she knows.” Michael said in a stifled voice: “Rosamund, who do you think killed Cora? And old Richard?” Once again that limpid blue gaze met his. “Darling—don’t be absurd… You know as well as I do. But it’s much, much better never to mention it. So we won’t.” Eighteen From his seat by the fireplace in the library, Hercule Poirot looked at the assembled company. His eyes passed thoughtfully over Susan, sitting upright, looking vivid and animated, over her husband, sitting near her, his expression rather vacant and his fingers twisting a loop of string; they went on to George Crossfield, debonair and distinctly pleased with himself, talking about card sharpers on Atlantic cruises to Rosamund, who said mechanically, “How extraordinary, darling. But why?” in a completely uninterested voice; went on to Michael with his very individual type of haggard good looks and his very apparent charm; to Helen, poised and slightly remote; to Timothy, comfortably settled in the best armchair with an extra cushion at his back; and Maude, sturdy and thickset, in devoted attendance, and finally to the figure sitting with a tinge of apology just beyond the range of the family circle—the figure of Miss Gilchrist wearing a rather peculiar “dressy” blouse. Presently, he judged, she would get up, murmur her excuse and leave the family gathering and go up to her room. Miss Gilchrist, he thought, knew her place. She had learned it the hard way. Hercule Poirot sipped his after-dinner coffee and between half-closed lids made his appraisal. He had wanted them there—all together, and he had got them.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

He had wanted them there—all together, and he had got them. And what, he thought to himself, was he going to do with them now? He felt a sudden weary distaste for going on with the business. Why was that, he wondered? Was it the influence of Helen Abernethie? There was a quality of passive resistance about her that seemed unexpectedly strong. Had she, while apparently graceful and unconcerned, managed to impress her own reluctance upon him? She was averse to this raking up of the details of old Richard’s death, he knew that. She wanted it left alone, left to die out into oblivion. Poirot was not surprised by that. What did surprise him was his own disposition to agree with her. Mr. Entwhistle’s account of the family had, he realized, been admirable. He had described all these people shrewdly and well. With the old lawyer’s knowledge and appraisal to guide him, Poirot had wanted to see for himself. He had fancied that, meeting these people intimately, he would have a very shrewd idea—not of how and when—(those were questions with which he did not propose to concern himself. Murder had been possible—that was all he needed to know!)—but of who. For Hercule Poirot had a lifetime of experience behind him, and as a man who deals with pictures can recognize the artist, so Poirot believed he could recognize a likely type of the amateur criminal who will—if his own particular need arises—be prepared to kill. But it was not to be so easy. Because he could visualize almost all of these people as a possible—though not a probable—murderer. George might kill—as the cornered rat kills. Susan calmly—efficiently—to further a plan. Gregory because he had that queer morbid streak which discounts and invites, almost craves, punishment. Michael because he was ambitious and had a murderer’s cocksure vanity. Rosamund because she was frighteningly simple in outlook. Timothy because he had hated and resented his brother and had craved the power his brother’s money would give. Maude because Timothy was her child and where her child was concerned she would be ruthless. Even Miss Gilchrist, he thought, might have contemplated murder if it could have restored to her the Willow Tree in its ladylike glory! And Helen? He could not see Helen as committing murder. She was too civilized—too removed from violence. And she and her husband had surely loved Richard Abernethie. Poirot sighed to himself. There were to be no shortcuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…. He had been introduced by Helen to the gathering, and had set to work to overcome the almost universal annoyance caused by his presence—a foreign stranger!—in this family gathering. He had used his eyes and his ears. He had watched and listened—openly and behind doors! He had noticed affinities, antagonism, the unguarded words that arose as always when property was to be divided. He had engineered adroitly tête-à-têtes, walks upon the terrace, and had made his deductions and observations. He had talked with Miss Gilchrist about the vanished glories of her tea shop and about the correct composition of brioches and chocolate éclairs and had visited the kitchen garden with her to discuss the proper use of herbs in cooking. He had spent some long half hours listening to Timothy talking about his own health and about the effect upon it of paint. Paint? Poirot frowned. Somebody else had said something about paint— Mr. Entwhistle? There had also been discussion of a different kind of painting. Pierre Lansquenet as a painter. Cora Lansquenet’s paintings, rapturized over by Miss Gilchrist, dismissed scornfully by Susan. “Just like picture postcards,” she had said. “She did them from postcards, too.” Miss Gilchrist had been quite upset by that and had said sharply that dear Mrs. Lansquenet always painted from Nature. “But I bet she cheated,” said Susan to Poirot when Miss Gilchrist had gone out of the room. “In fact I know she did, though I won’t upset the old pussy by saying so.” “And how do you know?” Poirot watched the strong confident line of Susan’s chin. “She will always be sure, this one,” he thought. “And perhaps sometimes, she will be too sure….” Susan was going on. “I’ll tell you, but don’t pass it on to the Gilchrist. One picture is of Polflexan, the cove and lighthouse and the pier—the usual aspect that all amateur artists sit down and sketch. But the pier was blown up in the war, and since Aunt Cora’s sketch was done a couple of years ago, it can’t very well be from Nature, can it? But the postcards they sell there still show the pier as it used to be. There was one in her bedroom drawer. So Aunt Cora started her ‘rough sketch’ down there, I expect, and then finished it surreptitiously later at home from a postcard! It’s funny, isn’t it, the way people get caught out?” “Yes, it is, as you say, funny.” He paused, and then thought that the opening was a good one. “You do not remember me, Madame,” he said, “but I remember you. This is not the first time that I have seen you.” She stared at him. Poirot nodded with great gusto. “Yes, yes, it is so. I was inside an automobile, well wrapped up and from the window I saw you. You were talking to one of the mechanics in the garage. You do not notice me—it is natural— I am inside the car—an elderly muffled-up foreigner! But I noticed you, for you are young and agreeable to look at and you stand there in the sun. So when I arrive here, I say to myself, ‘Tiens! What a coincidence!’” “A garage? Where? When was this?” “Oh, a little time ago—a week—no, more. For the moment,” said Poirot disingenuously and with a full recollection of the King’s Arms garage in his mind, “I cannot remember where. I travel so much all over this country.” “Looking for a suitable house to buy for your refugees?” “Yes. There is so much to take into consideration, you see. Price—neighbourhood—suitability for conversion.” “I suppose you’ll have to pull the house about a lot? Lots of horrible partitions.” “In the bedrooms, yes, certainly. But most of the ground floor rooms we shall not touch.” He paused before going on. “Does it sadden you, Madame, that this old family mansion of yours should go this way—to strangers?” “Of course not.” Susan looked amused. “I think it’s an excellent idea. It’s an impossible place for anybody to think of living in as it is. And I’ve nothing to be sentimental about. It’s not my old home. My mother and father lived in London. We just came here for Christmas sometimes. Actually I’ve always thought it quite hideous—an almost indecent temple to wealth.” “The altars are different now. There is the building in, and the concealed lighting and the expensive simplicity. But wealth still has its temples, Madame. I understand—I am not, I hope, indiscreet—that you yourself are planning such an edifice? Everything de luxe—and no expense spared.” Susan laughed. “Hardly a temple—it’s just a place of business.” “Perhaps the name does not matter… But it will cost much money—that is true, is it not?” “Everything’s wickedly expensive nowadays. But the initial outlay will be worthwhile, I think.” “Tell me something about these plans of yours. It amazes me to find a beautiful young woman so practical, so competent. In my young days—a long time ago, I admit—beautiful women thought only of their pleasures, of cosmetics—of la toilette.” “Women still think a great deal about their faces—that’s where I come in.” “Tell me.” And she had told him. Told him with a wealth of detail and with a great deal of unconscious self-revelation. He appreciated her business acumen, her boldness of planning and her grasp of detail. A good bold planner, sweeping all side issues away. Perhaps a little ruthless as all those who plan boldly must be. Watching her, he had said: “Yes, you will succeed.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Watching her, he had said: “Yes, you will succeed. You will go ahead. How fortunate that you are not restricted, as so many are, by poverty. One cannot go far without the capital outlay. To have had these creative ideas and to have been frustrated by lack of means—that would have been unbearable.” “I couldn’t have borne it! But I’d have raised money somehow or other—got someone to back me.” “Ah! of course. Your uncle, whose house this was, was rich. Even if he had not died, he would, as you express it, have ‘staked’ you.” “Oh no, he wouldn’t. Uncle Richard was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud where women were concerned. If I’d been a man—” A quick flash of anger swept across her face. “He made me very angry.” “I see—yes, I see….” “The old shouldn’t stand in the way of the young. I—oh, I beg your pardon.” Hercule Poirot laughed easily and twirled his moustache. “I am old, yes. But I do not impede youth. There is no one who needs to wait for my death.” “What a horrid idea.” “But you are a realist, Madame. Let us admit without more ado that the world is full of the young—or even the middle-aged—who wait, patiently or impatiently, for the death of someone whose decease will give them if not affluence—then opportunity.” “Opportunity!” Susan said, taking a deep breath. “That’s what one needs.” Poirot who had been looking beyond her, said gaily: “And here is your husband come to join our little discussion…We talk, Mr. Banks, of opportunity. Opportunity the golden—opportunity who must be grasped with both hands. How far in conscience can one go? Let us hear your views?” But he was not destined to hear the views of Gregory Banks on opportunity or on anything else. In fact he had found it next to impossible to talk to Gregory Banks at all. Banks had a curious fluid quality. Whether by his own wish, or by that of his wife, he seemed to have no liking for tête-à-têtes or quiet discussions. No, “conversation” with Gregory had failed. Poirot had talked with Maude Abernethie—also about paint (the smell of ) and how fortunate it had been that Timothy had been able to come to Enderby, and how kind it had been of Helen to extend an invitation to Miss Gilchrist also. “For really she is most useful. Timothy so often feels like a snack—and one cannot ask too much of other people’s servants but there is a gas ring in a little room off the pantry, so that Miss Gilchrist can warm up Ovaltine or Benger’s there without disturbing anybody. And she’s so willing about fetching things, she’s quite willing to run up and down stairs a dozen times a day. Oh yes, I feel that it was really quite Providential that she should have lost her nerve about staying alone in the house as she did, though I admit it vexed me at the time.” “Lost her nerve?” Poirot was interested. He listened whilst Maude gave him an account of Miss Gilchrist’s sudden collapse. “She was frightened, you say? And yet could not exactly say why? That is interesting. Very interesting.” “I put it down myself to delayed shock.” “Perhaps.” “Once during the war, when a bomb dropped about a mile from us, I remember Timothy—” Poirot abstracted his mind from Timothy. “Had anything particular happened that day?” he asked. “On what day?” Maude looked blank. “The day that Miss Gilchrist was upset.” “Oh, that—no, I don’t think so. It seems to have been coming on ever since she left Lytchett St. Mary, or so she said. She didn’t seem to mind when she was there.” And the result, Poirot thought, had been a piece of poisoned wedding cake. Not so very surprising that Miss Gilchrist was frightened after that… And even when she had removed herself to the peaceful country round Stansfield Grange, the fear had lingered. More than lingered. Grown. Why grown? Surely attending on an exacting hypochondriac like Timothy must be so exhausting that nervous fears would be likely to be swallowed up in exasperation? But something in that house had made Miss Gilchrist afraid. What? Did she know herself? Finding himself alone with Miss Gilchrist for a brief space before dinner, Poirot had sailed into the subject with an exaggerated foreign curiosity. “Impossible, you comprehend, for me to mention the matter of murder to members of the family. But I am intrigued. Who would not be? A brutal crime—a sensitive artist attacked in a lonely cottage. Terrible for her family. But terrible, also, I imagine, for you. Since Mrs. Timothy Abernethie gives me to understand that you were there at the time?” “Yes, I was. And if you’ll excuse me, M. Pontarlier, I don’t want to talk about it.” “I understand—oh yes, I completely understand.” Having said this, Poirot waited. And, as he had thought, Miss Gilchrist immediately did begin to talk about it. He heard nothing from her that he had not heard before, but he played his part with perfect sympathy, uttering little cries of comprehension and listening with an absorbed interest which Miss Gilchrist could not help but enjoy. Not until she had exhausted the subject of what she herself had felt, and what the doctor had said, and how kind Mr. Entwhistle had been, did Poirot proceed cautiously to the next point. “You were wise, I think, not to remain alone down in that cottage.” “I couldn’t have done it, M. Pontarlier. I really couldn’t have done it.” “No. I understand even that you were afraid to remain alone in the house of Mr. Timothy Abernethie whilst they came here?” Miss Gilchrist looked guilty. “I’m terribly ashamed about that. So foolish really. It was just a kind of panic I had—really don’t know why.” “But of course one knows why. You had just recovered from a dastardly attempt to poison you—” Miss Gilchrist here sighed and said she simply couldn’t understand it. Why should anyone try to poison her? “But obviously, my dear lady, because this criminal, this assassin, thought that you knew something that might lead to his apprehension by the police.” “But what could I know? Some dreadful tramp, or semi-crazed creature.” “If it was a tramp. It seems to me unlikely—” “Oh, please, M. Pontarlier—” Miss Gilchrist became suddenly very upset. “Don’t suggest such things. I don’t want to believe it.” “You do not want to believe what?” “I don’t want to believe that it wasn’t—I mean—that it was—” She paused, confused. “And yet,” said Poirot shrewdly, “you do believe.” “Oh, I don’t. I don’t!” “But I think you do. That is why you are frightened… You are still frightened, are you not?” “Oh, no, not since I came here. So many people. And such a nice family atmosphere. Oh, no, everything seems quite all right here.” “It seems to me—you must excuse my interest—I am an old man, somewhat infirm and a great part of my time is given to idle speculation on matters which interest me—it seems to me that there must have been some definite occurrence at Stansfield Grange which, so to speak, brought your fears to a head. Doctors recognize nowadays how much takes place in our subconscious.” “Yes, yes— I know they say so.” “And I think your subconscious fears might have been brought to a point by some small concrete happening, something, perhaps, quite extraneous, serving, shall we say, as a focal point.” Miss Gilchrist seemed to lap this up eagerly. “I’m sure you are right,” she said. “Now what, should you think, was this—er—extraneous circumstance?” Miss Gilchrist pondered a moment, and then said, unexpectedly: “I think, you know, M. Pontarlier, it was the nun.” Before Poirot could take this up, Susan and her husband came in, closely followed by Helen. “A nun,” thought Poirot… “Now where, in all this, have I heard something about a nun?” He resolved to lead the conversation on to nuns some time in the course of the evening. Nineteen The family had all been polite to M. Pontarlier, the representative of U.N.A.R.C.O. And how right he had been to have chosen to designate himself by initials.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

And how right he had been to have chosen to designate himself by initials. Everyone had accepted U.N.A.R.C.O. as a matter of course—had even pretended to know all about it! How averse human beings were ever to admit ignorance! An exception had been Rosamund, who had asked him wonderingly: “But what is it? I never heard of it?” Fortunately no one else had been there at the time. Poirot had explained the organization in such a way that anyone but Rosamund would have felt abashed at having displayed ignorance of such a well- known worldwide institution. Rosamund, however, had only said vaguely, “Oh! refugees all over again. I’m so tired of refugees.” Thus voicing the unspoken reaction of many, who were usually too conventional to express themselves so frankly. M. Pontarlier was, therefore, now accepted—as a nuisance but also as a nonentity. He had become, as it were, a piece of foreign décor. The general opinion was that Helen should have avoided having him here this particular weekend, but as he was here they must make the best of it. Fortunately this queer little foreigner did not seem to know much English. Quite often he did not understand what you said to him, and when everyone was speaking more or less at once he seemed completely at sea. He appeared to be interested only in refugees and postwar conditions, and his vocabulary only included those subjects. Ordinary chit-chat appeared to bewilder him. More or less forgotten by all, Hercule Poirot leant back in his chair, sipped his coffee and observed, as a cat may observe the twitterings and comings and goings of a flock of birds. The cat is not ready yet to make its spring. After twenty-four hours of prowling round the house and examining its contents, the heirs of Richard Abernethie were ready to state their preferences, and, if need be, to fight for them. The subject of conversation was, first, a certain Spode dinner dessert service off which they had just been eating dessert. “I don’t suppose I have long to live,” said Timothy in a faint melancholy voice. “And Maude and I have no children. It is hardly worthwhile our burdening ourselves with useless possessions. But for sentiment’s sake I should like to have the old dessert service. I remember it in the dear old days. It’s out of fashion, of course, and I understand dessert services have very little value nowadays—but there it is. I shall be quite content with that—and perhaps the Boule Cabinet in the White Boudoir.” “You’re too late, Uncle,” George spoke with debonair insouciance. “I asked Helen to mark off the Spode service to me this morning.” Timothy became purple in the face. “Mark it off—mark it off? What do you mean? Nothing’s been settled yet. And what do you want with a dessert service? You’re not married.” “As a matter of fact I collect Spode. And this is really a splendid specimen. But it’s quite all right about the Boule Cabinet, Uncle. I wouldn’t have that as a gift.” Timothy waved aside the Boule Cabinet. “Now look here, young George. You can’t go butting in, in this way. I’m an older man than you are—and I’m Richard’s only surviving brother. That dessert service is mine.” “Why not take the Dresden service, Uncle? A very fine example and I’m sure just as full of sentimental memories. Anyway, the Spode’s mine. First come, first served.” “Nonsense—nothing of the kind!” Timothy spluttered. Maude said sharply: “Please don’t upset your uncle, George. It’s very bad for him. Naturally he will take the Spode if he wants to! The first choice is his, and you young people must come afterwards. He was Richard’s brother, as he says, and you are only a nephew.” “And I can tell you this, young man.” Timothy was seething with fury. “If Richard had made a proper will, the disposal of the contents of this place would have been entirely in my hands. That’s the way the property should have been left, and if it wasn’t, I can only suspect undue influence. Yes—and I repeat it—undue influence.” Timothy glared at his nephew. “A preposterous will,” he said. “Preposterous!” He leant back, placed a hand to his heart, and groaned: “This is very bad for me. If I could have—a little brandy.” Miss Gilchrist hurried to get it and returned with the restorative in a small glass. “Here you are, Mr. Abernethie. Please—please don’t excite youself. Are you sure you oughtn’t to go up to bed?” “Don’t be a fool.” Timothy swallowed the brandy. “Go to bed? I intend to protect my interests.” “Really, George, I’m surprised at you,” said Maude. “What your uncle says is perfectly true. His wishes come first. If he wants the Spode dessert service he shall have it!” “It’s quite hideous anyway,” said Susan. “Hold your tongue, Susan,” said Timothy. The thin young man who sat beside Susan raised his head. In a voice that was a little shriller than his ordinary tones, he said: “Don’t speak like that to my wife!” He half rose from his seat. Susan said quickly: “It’s all right, Greg. I don’t mind.” “But I do.” Helen said: “I think it would be graceful on your part, George, to let your uncle have the dessert service.” Timothy spluttered indignantly: “There’s no ‘letting’ about it!” But George, with a slight bow to Helen said, “Your wish is law, Aunt Helen. I abandon my claim.” “You didn’t really want it, anyway, did you?” said Helen. He cast a sharp glance at her, then grinned: “The trouble with you, Aunt Helen, is that you’re too sharp by half! You see more than you’re meant to see. Don’t worry, Uncle Timothy, the Spode is yours. Just my idea of fun.” “Fun, indeed.” Maude Abernethie was indignant. “Your uncle might have had a heart attack!” “Don’t you believe it,” said George cheerfully. “Uncle Timothy will probably outlive us all. He’s what is known as a creaking gate.” Timothy leaned forward balefully. “I don’t wonder,” he said, “that Richard was disappointed in you.” “What’s that?” The good humour went out of George’s face. “You came up here after Mortimer died, expecting to step into his shoes—expecting that Richard would make you his heir, didn’t you? But my poor brother soon took your measure. He knew where the money would go if you had control of it. I’m surprised that he even left you a part of his fortune. He knew where it would go. Horses, gambling, Monte Carlo, foreign casinos. Perhaps worse. He suspected you of not being straight, didn’t he?” George, a white dint appearing each side of his nose, said quietly: “Hadn’t you better be careful of what you are saying?” “I wasn’t well enough to come here for the funeral,” said Timothy slowly, “but Maude told me what Cora said. Cora always was a fool—but there may have been something in it! And if so, I know who I’d suspect—” “Timothy!” Maude stood up, solid, calm, a tower of forcefulness. “You have had a very trying evening. You must consider your health. I can’t have you getting ill again. Come up with me. You must take a sedative and go straight to bed. Timothy and I, Helen, will take the Spode dessert service and the Boule Cabinet as mementoes of Richard. There is no objection to that, I hope?” Her glance swept round the company. Nobody spoke, and she marched out of the room supporting Timothy with a hand under his elbow, waving aside Miss Gilchrist who was hovering half-heartedly by the door. George broke the silence after they had departed. “Femme formidable!” he said. “That describes Aunt Maude exactly. I should hate ever to impede her triumphal progress.” Miss Gilchrist sat down again rather uncomfortably and murmured: “Mrs. Abernethie is always so kind.” The remark fell rather flat. Michael Shane laughed suddenly and said: “You know, I’m enjoying all this! ‘The Voysey Inheritance’ to the life. By the way, Rosamund and I want that malachite table in the drawing room.” “Oh, no,” cried Susan.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“I want that.” “Here we go again,” said George, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Well, we needn’t get angry about it,” said Susan. “The reason I want it is for my new Beauty shop. Just a note of colour—and I shall put a great bouquet of wax flowers on it. It would look wonderful. I can find wax flowers easily enough, but a green malachite table isn’t so common.” “But, darling,” said Rosamund, “that’s just why we want it. For the new set. As you say, a note of colour—and so absolutely period. And either wax flowers or stuffed hummingbirds. It will be absolutely right.” “I see what you mean, Rosamund,” said Susan. “But I don’t think you’ve got as good a case as I have. You could easily have a painted malachite table for the stage—it would look just the same. But for my salon I’ve got to have the genuine thing.” “Now, ladies,” said George. “What about a sporting decision? Why not toss for it? Or cut the cards? All quite in keeping with the period of the table.” Susan smiled pleasantly. “Rosamund and I will talk about it tomorrow,” she said. She seemed, as usual, quite sure of herself. George looked with some interest from her face to that of Rosamund. Rosamund’s face had a vague, rather faraway expression. “Which one will you back, Aunt Helen?” he asked. “An even money chance, I’d say. Susan has determination, but Rosamund is so wonderfully single-minded.” “Or perhaps not hummingbirds,” said Rosamund. “One of those big Chinese vases would make a lovely lamp, with a gold shade.” Miss Gilchrist hurried into placating speech. “This house is full of so many beautiful things,” she said. “That green table would look wonderful in your new establishment, I’m sure, Mrs. Banks. I’ve never seen one like it. It must be worth a lot of money.” “It will be deducted from my share of the estate, of course,” said Susan. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—” Miss Gilchrist was covered with confusion. “It may be deducted from our share of the estate,” Michael pointed out. “With the wax flowers thrown in.” “They look so right on that table,” Miss Gilchrist murmured. “Really artistic. Sweetly pretty.” But nobody was paying any attention to Miss Gilchrist’s well-meant trivialities. Greg said, speaking again in that high nervous voice: “Susan wants that table.” There was a momentary stir of unease, as though, by his words, Greg had set a different musical key. Helen said quickly: “And what do you really want, George? Leaving out the Spode service.” George grinned and the tension relaxed. “Rather a shame to bait old Timothy,” he said. “But he really is quite unbelievable. He’s had his own way in everything so long that he’s become quite pathological about it.” “You have to humour an invalid, Mr. Crossfield,” said Miss Gilchrist. “Ruddy old hypochondriac, that’s what he is,” said George. “Of course he is,” Susan agreed. “I don’t believe there’s anything whatever the matter with him, do you, Rosamund?” “What?” “Anything the matter with Uncle Timothy.” “No—no, I shouldn’t think so.” Rosamund was vague. She apologized. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about what lighting would be right for the table.” “You see?” said George. “A woman of one idea. Your wife’s a dangerous woman, Michael. I hope you realize it.” “I realize it,” said Michael rather grimly. George went on with every appearance of enjoyment. “The Battle of the Table! To be fought tomorrow—politely—but with grim determination. We ought all to take sides. I back Rosamund who looks so sweet and yielding and isn’t. Husbands, presumably back their own wives. Miss Gilchrist? On Susan’s side, obviously.” “Oh, really, Mr. Crossfield, I wouldn’t venture to—” “Aunt Helen?” George paid no attention to Miss Gilchrist’s flutterings. “You have the casting vote. Oh, er—I forgot. M. Pontarlier?” “Pardon?” Hercule Poirot looked blank. George considered explanations, but decided against it. The poor old boy hadn’t understood a word of what was going on. He said: “Just a family joke.” “Yes, yes, I comprehend.” Poirot smiled amiably. “So yours is the casting vote, Aunt Helen. Whose side are you on?” Helen smiled. “Perhaps I want it myself, George.” She changed the subject deliberately, turning to her foreign guest. “I’m afraid this is all very dull for you, M. Pontarlier?” “Not at all, Madame. I consider myself privileged to be admitted to your family life—” he bowed. “I would like to say—I cannot quite express my meaning—my regret that this house had to pass out of your hands into the hands of strangers. It is without doubt—a great sorrow.” “No, indeed, we don’t regret at all,” Susan assured him. “You are very amiable, Madame. It will be, let me tell you, perfection here for my elderly sufferers of persecution. What a haven! What peace! I beg you to remember that, when the harsh feelings come to you as assuredly they must. I hear that there was also the question of a school coming here—not a regular school, a convent—run by religieuses—by ‘nuns,’ I think you say? You would have preferred that, perhaps?” “Not at all,” said George. “The Sacred Heart of Mary,” continued Poirot. “Fortunately, owing to the kindness of an unknown benefactory we were able to make a slightly higher offer.” He addressed Miss Gilchrist directly. “You do not like nuns, I think?” Miss Gilchrist flushed and looked embarrassed. “Oh, really, Mr. Pontarlier, you mustn’t—I mean, it’s nothing personal. But I never do see that it’s right to shut yourself up from the world in that way—not necessary, I mean, and really almost selfish, though not teaching ones, of course, or the ones that go about amongst the poor—because I’m sure they’re thoroughly unselfish women and do a lot of good.” “I simply can’t imagine wanting to be a nun,” said Susan. “It’s very becoming,” said Rosamund. “You remember—when they revived The Miracle last year. Sonia Wells looked absolutely too glamorous for words.” “What beats me,” said George, “is why it should be pleasing to the Almighty to dress oneself up in medieval dress. For after all, that’s all a nun’s dress is. Thoroughly cumbersome, unhygienic and impractical.” “And it makes them look so alike, doesn’t it?” said Miss Gilchrist. “It’s silly, you know, but I got quite a turn when I was at Mrs. Abernethie’s and a nun came to the door, collecting. I got it into my head she was the same as the nun who came to the door on the day of the inquest on poor Mrs. Lansquenet at Lytchett St. Mary. I felt, you know, almost as though she had been following me round!” “I thought nuns always collected in couples,” said George. “Surely a detective story hinged on that point once?” “There was only one this time,” said Miss Gilchrist. “Perhaps they’ve got to economize,” she added vaguely. “And anyway it couldn’t have been the same nun, for the other one was collecting for an organ for St—Barnabas, I think—and this one was for something quite different—something to do with children.” “But they both had the same type of features?” Hercule Poirot asked. He sounded interested. Miss Gilchrist turned to him. “I suppose that must be it. The upper lip—almost as though she had a moustache. I think, you know, that that is really what alarmed me—being in a rather nervous state at the time, and remembering those stories during the war of nuns who were really men and in the Fifth Column and landed by parachute. Of course it was very foolish of me. I knew that afterwards.” “A nun would be a good disguise,” said Susan thoughtfully. “It hides your feet.” “The truth is,” said George, “that one very seldom looks properly at anyone. That’s why one gets such wildly differing accounts of a person from different witnesses in court. You’d be surprised. A man is often described as tall—short; thin—stout; fair—dark; dressed in a dark—light—suit, and so on.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

There’s usually one reliable observer, but one has to make up one’s mind who that is.” “Another queer thing,” said Susan, “is that you sometimes catch sight of yourself in a mirror unexpectedly and don’t know who it is. It just looks vaguely familiar. And you say to yourself, ‘There’s somebody I know quite well… ’ and then suddenly realize it’s yourself!” George said: “It would be more difficult still if you could really see yourself—and not a mirror image.” “Why?” asked Rosamund, looking puzzled. “Because, don’t you see, nobody ever sees themselves—as they appear to other people. They always see themselves in a glass—that is—as a reversed image.” “But why does that look any different?” “Oh yes,” said Susan quickly. “It must. Because people’s faces aren’t the same both sides. Their eyebrows are different, and their mouths go up one side, and their noses aren’t really straight. You can see with a pencil—who’s got a pencil?” Somebody produced a pencil, and they experimented, holding a pencil each side of the nose and laughing to see the ridiculous variation in angle. The atmosphere now had lightened a good deal. Everybody was in a good humour. They were no longer the heirs of Richard Abernethie gathered together for a division of property. They were a cheerful and normal set of people gathered together for a weekend in the country. Only Helen Abernethie remained silent and abstracted. With a sigh, Hercule Poirot rose to his feet and bade his hostess a polite good night. “And perhaps, Madame, I had better say good-bye. My train departs itself at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. That is very early. So I will thank you now for all your kindness and hospitality. The date of possession—that will be arranged with the good Mr. Entwhistle. To suit your convenience, of course.” “It can be anytime you please, M. Pontarlier. I—I have finished all that I came here to do.” “You will return now to your villa at Cyprus?” “Yes.” A little smile curved Helen Abernethie’s lips. Poirot said: “You are glad, yes. You have no regrets?” “At leaving England? Or leaving here, do you mean?” “I meant—leaving here?” “Oh—no. It’s no good, is it, to cling on to the past? One must leave that behind one.” “If one can.” Blinking his eyes innocently Poirot smiled apologetically round on the group of polite faces that surrounded him. “Sometimes, is it not, the Past will not be left, will not suffer itself to pass into oblivion? It stands at one’s elbow—it says, ‘I am not done with yet.’” Susan gave a rather doubtful laugh. Poirot said: “But I am serious—yes.” “You mean,” said Michael, “that your refugees when they come here will not be able to put their past sufferings completely behind them?” “I did not mean my Refugees.” “He meant us, darling,” said Rosamund. “He means Uncle Richard and Aunt Cora and the hatchet and all that.” She turned to Poirot. “Didn’t you?” Poirot looked at her with a blank face. Then he said: “Why do you think that, Madame?” “Because you’re a detective, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. N.A.R.C.O., or whatever you call it, is just nonsense, isn’t it?” Twenty I There was a moment of extraordinary tenseness. Poirot felt it, though he himself did not remove his eyes from Rosamund’s lovely placid face. He said with a little bow, “You have great perspicacity, Madame.” “Not really,” said Rosamund. “You were pointed out to me once in a restaurant. I remembered.” “But you have not mentioned it—until now?” “I thought it would be more fun not to,” said Rosamund. Michael said in an imperfectly controlled voice: “My—dear girl.” Poirot shifted his gaze then to look at him. Michael was angry. Angry and something else—apprehensive? Poirot’s eyes went slowly round all the faces. Susan’s, angry and watchful; Gregory’s dead and shut in; Miss Gilchrist’s, foolish, her mouth wide open; George, wary; Helen, dismayed and nervous…. All those expressions were normal ones under the circumstances. He wished he could have seen their faces a split second earlier, when the words “a detective” fell from Rosamund’s lips. For now, inevitably, it could not be quite the same…. He squared his shoulders and bowed to them. His language and his accent became less foreign. “Yes,” he said. “I am a detective.” George Crossfield said, the white dints showing once more each side of his nose, “Who sent you here?” “I was commissioned to inquire into the circumstances of Richard Abernethie’s death.” “By whom?” “For the moment, that does not concern you. But it would be an advantage, would it not, if you could be assured beyond any possible doubt that Richard Abernethie died a natural death?” “Of course he died a natural death. Who says anything else?” “Cora Lansquenet said so. And Cora Lansquenet is dead herself.” A little wave of uneasiness seemed to sigh through the room like an evil breeze. “She said it here—in this room,” said Susan. “But I didn’t really think—” “Didn’t you, Susan?” George Crossfield turned his sardonic glance upon her. “Why pretend anymore? You won’t take M. Pontarlier in?” “We all thought so really,” said Rosamund. And his name isn’t Pontarlier—it’s Hercules something.” “Hercule Poirot—at your service.” Poirot bowed. There were no gasps of astonishment or of apprehension. His name seemed to mean nothing at all to them. They were less alarmed by it than they had been by the single word “detective.” “May I ask what conclusions you have come to?” asked George. “He won’t tell you, darling,” said Rosamund. “Or if he does tell you, what he says won’t be true.” Alone of all the company she appeared to be amused. Hercule Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. II Hercule Poirot did not sleep well that night. He was perturbed, and he was not quite sure why he was perturbed. Elusive snatches of conversation, various glances, odd movements—all seemed fraught with a tantalizing significance in the loneliness of the night. He was on the threshold of sleep, but sleep would not come. Just as he was about to drop off, something flashed into his mind and woke him up again. Paint—Timothy and paint. Oil paint—the smell of oil paint—connected somehow with Mr. Entwhistle. Paint and Cora. Cora’s paintings—picture postcards… Cora was deceitful about her painting… No, back to Mr. Entwhistle—something Mr. Entwhistle had said—or was it Lanscombe? A nun who came to the house on the day that Richard Abernethie died. A nun with a moustache. A nun at Stansfield Grange—and at Lytchett St. Mary. Altogether too many nuns! Rosamund looking glamorous as a nun on the stage. Rosamund—saying that he was a detective—and everyone staring at her when she said it. That was the way that they must all have stared at Cora that day when she said, “But he was murdered, wasn’t he?” What was it Helen Abernethie had felt to be “wrong” on that occasion? Helen Abernethie—leaving the past behind—going to Cyprus… Helen dropping the wax flowers with a crash when he had said—what was it he had said? He couldn’t quite remember…. He slept then, and as he slept he dreamed…. He dreamed of the green malachite table. On it was the glass-covered stand of wax flowers—only the whole thing had been painted over with thick crimson oil paint. Paint the colour of blood. He could smell the paint, and Timothy was groaning, was saying, “I’m dying—dying…this is the end.” And Maude, standing by, tall and stern, with a large knife in her hand was echoing him, saying, “Yes, it’s the end…” The end—a deathbed, with candles and a nun praying. If he could just see the nun’s face, he would know…. Hercule Poirot woke up—and he did know! Yes, it was the end…. Though there was still a long way to go. He sorted out the various bits of the mosaic. Mr.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

He sorted out the various bits of the mosaic. Mr. Entwhistle, the smell of paint, Timothy’s house and something that must be in it—or might be in it…the wax flowers… Helen… Broken glass…. III Helen Abernethie, in her room, took some time in going to bed. She was thinking. Sitting in front of her dressing table, she stared at herself unseeingly in the glass. She had been forced into having Hercule Poirot in the house. She had not wanted it. But Mr. Entwhistle had made it hard for her to refuse. And now the whole thing had come out into the open. No question any more of letting Richard Abernethie lie quiet in his grave. All started by those few words of Cora’s…. That day after the funeral… How had they all looked, she wondered? How had they looked to Cora? How had she herself looked? What was it George had said? About seeing oneself? There was some quotation, too. To see ourselves as others see us… As others see us. The eyes that were staring into the glass unseeingly suddenly focused. She was seeing herself—but not really herself—not herself as others saw her—not as Cora had seen her that day. Her right—no, her left eyebrow was arched a little higher than the right. The mouth? No, the curve of the mouth was symmetrical. If she met herself she would surely not see much difference from this mirror image. Not like Cora. Cora—the picture came quite clearly… Cora, on the day of the funeral, her head tilted sideways—asking her question—looking at Helen…. Suddenly Helen raised her hands to her face. She said to herself, “It doesn’t make sense…it can’t make sense….” IV Miss Entwhistle was aroused from a delightful dream in which she was playing Piquet with Queen Mary, by the ringing of the telephone. She tried to ignore it—but it persisted. Sleepily she raised her head from the pillow and looked at the watch beside her bed. Five minutes to seven—who on earth could be ringing up at that hour? It must be a wrong number. The irritating ding-dong continued. Miss Entwhistle sighed, snatched up a dressing gown and marched into the sitting room. “This is Kensington 675498,” she said with asperity as she picked up the receiver. “This is Mrs. Abernethie speaking. Mrs. Leo Abernethie. Can I speak to Mr. Entwhistle?” “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Abernethie.” The “good morning” was not cordial. “This is Miss Entwhistle. My brother is still asleep, I’m afraid. I was asleep myself.” “I’m so sorry,” Helen was forced to the apology. “But it’s very important that I should speak to your brother at once.” “Wouldn’t it do later?” “I’m afraid not.” “Oh, very well then.” Miss Entwhistle was tart. She tapped at her brother’s door and went in. “Those Abernethies again!” she said bitterly. “Eh! The Aberbethies?” “Mrs. Leo Abernethie. Ringing up before seven in the morning! Really!” “Mrs. Leo, is it? Dear me. How remarkable. Where is my dressing gown? Ah, thank you.” Presently he was saying: “Entwhistle speaking. Is that you, Helen?” “Yes. I’m terribly sorry to get you out of bed like this. But you did tell me once to ring you up at once if I remembered what it was that struck me as having been wrong somehow on the day of the funeral when Cora electrified us all by suggesting that Richard had been murdered.” “Ah! You have remembered?” Helen said in a puzzled voice: “Yes, but it doesn’t make sense.” “You must allow me to be the judge of that. Was it something you noticed about one of the people?” “Yes.” “Tell me.” “It seems absurd.” Helen’s voice sounded apologetic. “But I’m quite sure of it. It came to me when I was looking at myself in the glass last night. Oh….” The little startled half cry was succeeded by a sound that came oddly through the wires—a dull heavy sound that Mr. Entwhistle couldn’t place at all. He said urgently: “Hallo—hallo—are you there? Helen, are you there?… Helen….” Twenty-one I It was not until nearly an hour later that Mr. Entwhistle, after a great deal of conversation with supervisors and others, found himself at last speaking to Hercule Poirot. “Thank heaven!” said Mr. Entwhistle with pardonable exasperation. “The Exchange seems to have had the greatest difficulty in getting the number.” “That is not surprising. The receiver was off the hook.” There was a grim quality in Poirot’s voice which carried through to the listener. Mr. Entwhistle said sharply: “Has something happened?” “Yes. Mrs. Leo Abernethie was found by the housemaid about twenty minutes ago lying by the telephone in the study. She was unconscious. A serious concussion.” “Do you mean she was struck on the head?” “I think so. It is just possible that she fell and struck her head on a marble doorstop, but me I do not think so, and the doctor, he does not think so either.” “She was telephoning to me at the time. I wondered when we were cut off so suddenly.” “So it was to you she was telephoning? What did she say?” “She mentioned to me some time ago that on the occasion when Cora Lansquenet suggested her brother had been murdered, she herself had a feeling of something being wrong—odd—she did not quite know how to put it—unfortunately she could not remember why she had that impression.” “And suddenly, she did remember?” “Yes.” “And rang you up to tell you?” “Yes.” “Eh bien.” “There’s no eh bien about it,” said Mr. Entwhistle testily. “She started to tell me, but was interrupted.” “How much had she said?” “Nothing pertinent.” “You will excuse me, mon ami, but I am the judge of that, not you. What exactly did she say?” “She reminded me that I had asked her to let me know at once if she remembered what it was that had struck her as peculiar. She said she had remembered—but that it ‘didn’t make sense.’ “I asked her if it was something about one of the people who were there that day, and she said, yes, it was. She said it had come to her when she was looking in the glass—” “Yes?” “That was all.” “She gave no hint as to—which of the people concerned it was?” “I should hardly fail to let you know if she had told me that,” said Mr. Entwhistle acidly. “I apologize, mon ami. Of course you would have told me.” Mr. Entwhistle said: “We shall just have to wait until she recovers consciousness before we know.” Poirot said gravely: “That may not be for a very long time. Perhaps never.” “Is it as bad as that?” Mr. Entwhistle’s voice shook a little. “Yes, it is as bad as that.” “But—that’s terrible, Poirot.” “Yes, it is terrible. And it is why we cannot afford to wait. For it shows that we have to deal with someone who is either completely ruthless or so frightened that it comes to the same thing.” “But look here, Poirot. What about Helen? I feel worried. Are you sure she will be safe at Enderby?” “No, she would not be safe. So she is not at Enderby. Already the ambulance has come and is taking her to a nursing home where she will have special nurses and where no one, family or otherwise, will be allowed in to see her.” Mr. Entwhistle sighed. “You relieve my mind! She might have been in danger.” “She assuredly would have been in danger!” Mr. Entwhistle’s voice sounded deeply moved. “I have a great regard for Helen Abernethie. I always have had. A woman of very exceptional character. She may have had certain—what shall I say?—reticences in her life.” “Ah, there were reticences?” “I have always had an idea that such was the case.” “Hence the villa in Cyprus. Yes, that explains a good deal….” “I don’t want you to begin thinking—” “You cannot stop me thinking. But now, there is a little commission that I have for you. One moment.” There was a pause, then Poirot’s voice spoke again. “I had to make sure that nobody was listening. All is well. Now here is what I want you to do for me.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

All is well. Now here is what I want you to do for me. You must prepare to make a journey.” “A journey?” Mr. Entwhistle sounded faintly dismayed. “Oh, I see—you want me to come down to Enderby?” “Not at all. I am in charge here. No, you will not have to travel so far. Your journey will not take you very far from London. You will travel to Bury St. Edmunds—(Ma foi! what names your English towns have!) and there you will hire a car and drive to Forsdyke House. It is a Mental Home. Ask for Dr. Penrith and inquire of him particulars about a patient who was recently discharged.” “What patient? Anyway, surely—” Poirot broke in: “The name of the patient is Gregory Banks. Find out for what form of insanity he was being treated.” “Do you mean that Gregory Banks is insane?” “Sh! Be careful what you say. And now—I have not yet breakfasted and you, too, I suspect, have not breakfasted?” “Not yet. I was too anxious—” “Quite so. Then, I pray you, eat your breakfast, repose yourself. There is a good train to Bury St. Edmunds at twelve o’clock. If I have any more news I will telephone you before you start.” “Be careful of yourself, Poirot,” said Mr. Entwhistle with some concern. “Ah that, yes! Me, I do not want to be hit on the head with a marble doorstop. You may be assured that I will take every precaution. And now—for the moment—good-bye.” Poirot heard the sound of the receiver being replaced at the other end, then he heard a very faint second click—and smiled to himself. Somebody had replaced the receiver on the telephone in the hall. He went out there. There was no one about. He tiptoed to the cupboard at the back of the stairs and looked inside. At that moment Lanscombe came through the service door carrying a tray with toast and a silver coffeepot. He looked slightly surprised to see Poirot emerge from the cupboard. “Breakfast is ready in the dining room, sir,” he said. Poirot surveyed him thoughtfully. The old butler looked white and shaken. “Courage,” said Poirot, clapping him on the shoulder. “All will yet be well. Would it be too much trouble to serve me a cup of coffee in my bedroom?” “Certainly, sir. I will send Janet up with it, sir.” Lanscombe looked disapprovingly at Hercule Poirot’s back as the latter climbed the stairs. Poirot was attired in an exotic silk dressing gown with a pattern of triangles and squares. “Foreigners!” thought Lanscombe bitterly. “Foreigners in the house! And Mrs. Leo with concussion! I don’t know what we’re coming to. Nothing’s the same since Mr. Richard died.” Hercule Poirot was dressed by the time he received his coffee from Janet. His murmurs of sympathy were well-received, since he stressed the shock her discovery must have given her. “Yes, indeed, sir, what I felt when I opened the door of the study and came in with the Hoover and saw Mrs. Leo lying there I shall never forget. There she lay—and I made sure she was dead. She must have been taken faint as she stood at the phone—and fancy her being up at that time in the morning! I’ve never known her to do such a thing before.” “Fancy, indeed!” He added casually: “No one else was up, I suppose?” “As it happens, sir, Mrs. Timothy was up and about. She’s a very early riser always—often goes for a walk before breakfast.” “She is of the generation that rises early,” said Poirot, nodding his head. “The younger ones, now—they do not get up so early?” “No, indeed, sir, all fast asleep when I brought them their tea—and very late I was, too, what with the shock and getting the doctor to come and having to have a cup first to steady myself.” She went off and Poirot reflected on what she had said. Maude Abernethie had been up and about, and the younger generation had been in bed—but that, Poirot reflected, meant nothing at all. Anyone could have heard Helen’s door open and close, and have followed her down to listen—and would afterwards have made a point of being fast asleep in bed. “But if I am right,” thought Poirot, “and after all, it is natural to me to be right—it is a habit I have!—then there is no need to go into who was here and who was these. First, I must seek a proof where I have deduced the proof may be. And then—I make my little speech. And I sit back and see what happens….” As soon as Janet had left the room, Poirot drained his coffee cup, put on his overcoat and his hat, left his room, ran nimbly down the back stairs and left the house by the side door. He walked briskly the quarter mile to the post office where he demanded a trunk call. Presently he was once more speaking to Mr. Entwhistle. “Yes, it is I yet again! Pay no attention to the commission with which I entrusted you. C’était une blague! Someone was listening. Now, mon vieux, to the real commission. You must, as I said, take a train. But not to Bury St. Edmunds. I want you to proceed to the house of Mr. Timothy Abernethie.” “But Timothy and Maude are at Enderby.” “Exactly. There is no one in the house but a woman by the name of Jones who has been persuaded by the offer of considerable largesse to guard the house whilst they are absent. What I want you to do is to take something out of that house!” “My dear Poirot! I really can’t stoop to burglary!” “It will not seem like burglary. You will say to the excellent Mrs. Jones who knows you, that you have been asked by Mr. or Mrs. Abernethie to fetch this particular object and take it to London. She will not suspect anything amiss.” “No, no, probably not. But I don’t like it.” Mr. Entwhistle sounded most reluctant. “Why can’t you go and get whatever it is yourself?” “Because, my friend, I should be a stranger of foreign appearance and as such a suspicious character, and Mrs. Jones would at once raise the difficulties! With you, she will not.” “No, no—I see that. But what on earth are Timothy and Maude going to think when they hear about it? I have known them for forty odd years.” “And you knew Richard Abernethie for that time also! And you knew Cora Lansquenet when she was a little girl!” In a martyred voice Mr. Entwhistle asked: “You’re sure this is really necessary, Poirot?” “The old question they asked in wartime on the posters. Is your journey really necessary? I say to you, it is necessary. It is vital!” “And what is this object I’ve got to get hold of?” Poirot told him. “But really, Poirot, I don’t see—” “It is not necessary for you to see. I am doing the seeing.” “And what do you want me to do with the damned thing?” “You will take it to London, to an address in Elm Park Gardens. If you have a pencil, note it down.” Having done so, Mr. Entwhistle said, still in his martyred voice: “I hope you know what you are doing, Poirot?” He sounded very doubtful—but Poirot’s reply was not doubtful at all. “Of course I know what I am doing. We are nearing the end.” Mr. Entwhistle sighed: “If we could only guess what Helen was going to tell me.” “No need to guess, I know.” “You know? But my dear Poirot—” “Explanations must wait. But let me assure you of this. I know what Helen Abernethie saw when she looked in her mirror.” II Breakfast had been an uneasy meal. Neither Rosamund nor Timothy had appeared, but the others were there and had talked in rather subdued tones, and eaten a little less than they normally would have done. George was the first one to recover his spirits. His temperament was mercurial and optimistic. “I expect Aunt Helen will be all right,” he said. “Doctors always like to pull a long face. After all, what’s concussion?

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Doctors always like to pull a long face. After all, what’s concussion? Often clears up completely in a couple of days.” “A woman I knew had concussion during the war,” said Miss Gilchrist conversationally. “A brick or something hit her as she was walking down Tottenham Court Road—it was during fly bomb time—and she never felt anything at all. Just went on with what she was doing—and collapsed in a train to Liverpool twelve hours later. And would you believe it, she had no recollection at all of going to the station and catching the train or anything. She just couldn’t understand it when she woke up in hospital. She was there for nearly three weeks.” “What I can’t make out,” said Susan, “is what Helen was doing telephoning at that unearthly hour, and who she was telephoning to?” “Felt ill,” said Maude with decision. “Probably woke up feeling queer and came down to ring up the doctor. Then had a giddy fit and fell. That’s the only thing that makes sense.” “Bad luck hitting her head on that doorstop,” said Michael. “If she’d just pitched over onto that thick pile carpet she’d have been all right.” The door opened and Rosamund came in, frowning. “I can’t find those wax flowers,” she said. “I mean the ones that were standing on the malachite table the day of Uncle Richard’s funeral.” She looked accusingly at Susan. “You haven’t taken them?” “Of course I haven’t! Really, Rosamund, you’re not still thinking about malachite tables with poor old Helen carted off to hospital with concussion?” “I don’t see why I shouldn’t think about them. If you’ve got concussion you don’t know what’s happening and it doesn’t matter to you. We can’t do anything for Aunt Helen, and Michael and I have got to get back to London by tomorrow lunchtime because we’re seeing Jackie Lygo about opening dates for The Baronet’s Progress. So I’d like to fix up definitely about the table. But I’d like to have a look at those wax flowers again. There’s a kind of Chinese vase on the table now—nice—but not nearly so period. I do wonder where they are—perhaps Lanscombe knows.” Lanscombe had just looked in to see if they had finished breakfast. “We’re all through, Lanscombe,” said George getting up. “What’s happened to our foreign friend?” “He is having his coffee and toast served upstairs, sir.” “Petit déjeuner for N.A.R.C.O.” “Lanscombe, do you know where those wax flowers are that used to be on that green table in the drawing room?” asked Rosamund. “I understand Mrs. Leo had an accident with them, ma’am. She was going to have a new glass shade made, but I don’t think she has seen about it yet.” “Then where is the thing?” “It would probably be in the cupboard behind the staircase, ma’am. That is where things are usually placed when awaiting repair. Shall I ascertain for you?” “I’ll go and look myself. Come with me, Michael sweetie. It’s dark there, and I’m not going in any dark corners by myself after what happened to Aunt Helen.” Everybody showed a sharp reaction. Maude demanded in her deep voice: “What do you mean, Rosamund?” “Well, she was coshed by someone, wasn’t she?” Gregory Banks said sharply: “She was taken suddenly faint and fell.” Rosamund laughed. “Did she tell you so? Don’t be silly, Greg, of course she was coshed.” George said sharply: “You shouldn’t say things like that, Rosamund.” “Nonsense,” said Rosamund. “She must have been. I mean, it all adds up. A detective in the house looking for clues, and Uncle Richard poisoned, and Aunt Cora killed with a hatchet, and Miss Gilchrist given poisoned wedding cake, and now Aunt Helen struck down with a blunt instrument. You’ll see, it will go on like that. One after another of us will be killed and the one that’s left will be It—the murderer, I mean. But it’s not going to be me—who’s killed, I mean.” “And why should anyone want to kill you, beautiful Rosamund?” asked George lightly. Rosamund opened her eyes very wide. “Oh,” she said. “Because I know too much, of course.” “What do you know?” Maude Abernethie and Gregory Banks spoke almost in unison. Rosamund gave her vacant and angelic smile. “Wouldn’t you all like to know?” she said agreeably. “Come on, Michael.” Twenty-two I At eleven o’clock, Hercule Poirot called an informal meeting in the library. Everyone was there and Poirot looked thoughtfully round the semicircle of faces. “Last night,” he said, “Mrs. Shane announced to you that I was a private detective. For myself, I hoped to retain my—camouflage, shall we say?—a little longer. But no matter! Today—or at most the day after—I would have told you the truth. Please listen carefully now to what I have to say. “I am in my own line a celebrated person—I may say a most celebrated person. My gifts, in fact, are unequalled!” George Crossfield grinned and said: “That’s the stuff, M. Pont—no, it’s M. Poirot, isn’t it? Funny, isn’t it, that I’ve never even heard of you?” “It is not funny,” said Poirot severely. “It is lamentable! Alas, there is no proper education nowadays. Apparently one learns nothing but economics—and how to sit Intelligence Tests! But to continue. I have been a friend for many years of Mr. Entwhistle’s—” “So he’s the fly in the ointment!” “If you like to put it that way, Mr. Crossfield! Mr. Entwhistle was greatly upset by the death of his old friend, Mr. Richard Abernethie. He was particularly perturbed by some words spoken on the day of the funeral by Mr. Abernethie’s sister, Mrs. Lansquenet. Words spoken in this very room.” “Very silly—and just like Cora,” said Maude. “Mr. Entwhistle should have had more sense than to pay attention to them!” Poirot went on: “Mr. Entwhistle was even more perturbed after the—the coincidence, shall I say?—of Mrs. Lansquenet’s death. He wanted one thing only—to be assured that that death was a coincidence. In other words he wanted to feel assured that Richard Abernethie had died a natural death. To that end he commissioned me to make the necessary investigations.” There was a pause. “I have made them….” Again there was a pause. No one spoke. Poirot threw back his head. “Eh bien, you will all be delighted to hear that as a result of my investigations—there is absolutely no reason to believe that Mr. Abernethie died anything but a natural death. There is no reason at all to believe that he was murdered!” He smiled. He threw out his hands in a triumphant gesture. “That is good news, is it not?” It hardly seemed to be, by the way they took it. They stared at him and in all but the eyes of one person there still seemed to be doubt and suspicion. The exception was Timothy Abernethie, who was nodding his head in violent agreement. “Of course Richard wasn’t murdered,” he said angrily. “Never could understand why anybody ever even thought of such a thing for a moment! Just Cora up to her tricks, that was all. Wanting to give you all a scare. Her idea of being funny. Truth is that although she was my own sister, she was always a bit mental, poor girl. Well, Mr. whatever your name is, I’m glad you’ve had the sense to come to the right conclusion, though if you ask me, I call it damned cheek of Entwhistle to go commissioning you to come prying and poking about. And if he thinks he’s going to charge the estate with your fee, I can tell you he won’t get away with it! Damned cheek, and most uncalled for! Who’s Entwhistle to set himself up? If the family’s satisfied—” “But the family wasn’t, Uncle Timothy,” said Rosamund. “Hey—what’s that?” Timothy peered at her under beetling brows of displeasure. “We weren’t satisfied. And what about Aunt Helen this morning?” Maude said sharply: “Helen’s just the age when you’re liable to get a stroke.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

That’s all there is to that.” “I see,” said Rosamund. “Another coincidence, you think?” She looked at Poirot. “Aren’t there rather too many coincidences?” “Coincidences,” said Hercule Poirot, “do happen.” “Nonsense,” said Maude. “Helen felt ill, came down and rang up the doctor, and then—” “But she didn’t ring up the doctor,” said Rosamund. “I asked him—” Susan said sharply: “Who did she ring up?” “I don’t know,” said Rosamund, a shade of vexation passing over her face. “But I dare say I can find out,” she added hopefully. II Hercule Poirot was sitting in the Victorian summerhouse. He drew his large watch from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. He had announced that he was leaving by the twelve o’clock train. There was still half an hour to go. Half an hour for someone to make up their mind and come to him. Perhaps more than one person…. The summerhouse was clearly visible from most of the windows of the house. Surely, soon, someone would come? If not, his knowledge of human nature was deficient, and his main premises incorrect. He waited—and above his head a spider in its web waited for a fly. It was Miss Gilchrist who came first. She was flustered and upset and rather incoherent. “Oh, Mr. Pontarlier—I can’t remember your other name,” she said. “I had to come and speak to you although I don’t like doing it—but really I feel I ought to. I mean, after what happened to poor Mrs. Leo this morning—and I think myself Mrs. Shane was quite right—and not coincidence, and certainly not a stroke—as Mrs. Timothy suggested, because my own father had a stroke and it was quite a different appearance, and anyway the doctor said concussion quite clearly!” She paused, took breath and looked at Poirot with appealing eyes. “Yes,” said Poirot gently and encouragingly. “You want to tell me something?” “As I say, I don’t like doing it—because she’s been so kind. She found me the position with Mrs. Timothy and everything. She’s been really very kind. That’s why I feel so ungrateful. And even gave me Mrs. Lansquenet’s musquash jacket which is really most handsome and fits beautifully because it never matters if fur is a little on the large side. And when I wanted to return her amethyst brooch she wouldn’t hear of it—” “You are referring,” said Poirot gently, “to Mrs. Banks?” “Yes, you see—” Miss Gilchrist looked down, twisting her fingers unhappily. She looked up and said with a sudden gulp: “You see, I listened!” “You mean you happened to overhear a conversation—” “No.” Miss Gilchrist shook her head with an air of heroic determination. “I’d rather speak the truth. And it’s not so bad telling you because you’re not English.” Hercule Poirot understood her without taking offence. “You mean that to a foreigner it is natural that people should listen at doors and open letters, or read letters that are left about?” “Oh, I’d never open anybody else’s letters,” said Miss Gilchrist in a shocked tone. “Not that. But I did listen that day—the day that Mr. Richard Abernethie came down to see his sister. I was curious, you know, about his turning up suddenly after all those years. And I did wonder why—and—and—you see when you haven’t much life of your own or very many friends, you do tend to get interested—when you’re living with anybody, I mean.” “Most natural,” said Poirot. “Yes, I do think it was natural… Though not, of course, at all right. But I did it! And I heard what he said!” “You heard what Mr. Abernethie said to Mrs. Lansquenet?” “Yes. He said something like—‘It’s no good talking to Timothy. He pooh-poohs everything. Simply won’t listen. But I thought I’d like to get it off my chest to you, Cora. We three are the only ones left. And though you’ve always liked to play the simpleton you’ve got a lot of common sense. So what would you do about it, if you were me?’ “I couldn’t quite hear what Mrs. Lansquenet said, but I caught the word police—and then Mr. Abernethie burst out quite loud, and said, ‘I can’t do that. Not when it’s a question of my own niece.’ And then I had to run in the kitchen for something boiling over and when I got back Mr. Abernethie was saying, ‘Even if I die an unnatural death I don’t want the police called in, if it can possibly be avoided. You understand that, don’t you, my dear girl? But don’t worry. Now that I know, I shall take all possible precautions.’ And he went on, saying he’d made a new will, and that she, Cora, would be quite all right. And then he said about her having been happy with her husband and how perhaps he’d made a mistake over that in the past.” Miss Gilchrist stopped. “Poirot said: “I see—I see….” “But I never wanted to say—to tell. I didn’t think Mrs. Lansquenet would have wanted me to… But now—after Mrs. Leo being attacked this morning—and then you saying so calmly it was coincidence. But, oh, M. Pontarlier, it wasn’t coincidence!” Poirot smiled. He said: “No, it wasn’t coincidence… Thank you, Miss Gilchrist, for coming to me. It was very necessary that you should.” III He had a little difficulty in getting rid of Miss Gilchrist, and it was urgent that he should, for he hoped for further confidences. His instinct was right. Miss Gilchrist had hardly gone before Gregory Banks, striding across the lawn, came impetuously into the summerhouse. His face was pale and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. His eyes were curiously excited. “At last!” he said. “I thought that stupid woman would never go. You’re all wrong in what you said this morning. You’re wrong about everything. Richard Abernethie was killed. I killed him.” Hercule Poirot let his eyes move up and down over the excited young man. He showed no surprise. “So you killed him, did you? How?” Gregory Banks smiled. “It wasn’t difficult for me. You can surely realize that. There were fifteen or twenty different drugs I could lay my hands on that would do it. The method of administration took rather more thinking out, but I hit on a very ingenious idea in the end. The beauty of it was that I didn’t need to be anywhere near at the time.” “Clever,” said Poirot. “Yes.” Gregory Banks cast his eyes down modestly. He seemed pleased. “Yes— I do think it was ingenious.” Poirot asked with interest: “Why did you kill him? For the money that would come to your wife?” “No. No, of course not.” Greg was suddenly excitedly indignant. “I’m not a money grubber. I didn’t marry Susan for her money!” “Didn’t you, Mr. Banks?” “That’s what he thought,” Greg said with sudden venom. “Richard Abernethie! He liked Susan, he admired her, he was proud of her as an example of Abernethie blood! But he thought she’d married beneath her—he thought I was no good—he despised me! I dare say I hadn’t the right accent—I didn’t wear my clothes the right way. He was a snob—a filthy snob!” “I don’t think so,” said Poirot mildly. “From all I have heard, Richard Abernethie was no snob.” “He was. He was.” The young man spoke with something approaching hysteria. “He thought nothing of me. He sneered at me—always very polite but underneath I could see that he didn’t like me!” “Possibly.” “People can’t treat me like that and get away with it! They’ve tried it before! A woman who used to come and have her medicines made up. She was rude to me. Do you know what I did?” “Yes,” said Poirot. Gregory looked startled. “So you know that?” “Yes.” “She nearly died.” He spoked in a satisfied manner. “That shows you I’m not the sort of person to be trifled with!

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“That shows you I’m not the sort of person to be trifled with! Richard Abernethie despised me—and what happened to him? He died.” “A most successful murder,” said Poirot with grave congratulation. He added: “But why come and give yourself away—to me?” “Because you said you were through with it all! You said he hadn’t been murdered. I had to show you that you’re not as clever as you think you are—and besides—besides—” “Yes,” said Poirot. “And besides?” Greg collapsed suddenly on the bench. His face changed. It took on a sudden ecstatic quality. “It was wrong—wicked… I must be punished… I must go back there—to the place of punishment…to atone… Yes, to atone! Repentance! Retribution!” His face was alight now with a kind of glowing ecstasy. Poirot studied him for a moment or two curiously. Then he asked: “How badly do you want to get away from your wife?” Gregory’s face changed. “Susan? Susan is wonderful—wonderful!” “Yes. Susan is wonderful. That is a grave burden. Susan loves you devotedly. That is a burden, too?” Gregory sat looking in front of him. Then he said, rather in the manner of a sulky child: “Why couldn’t she let me alone?” He sprang up. “She’s coming now—across the lawn. I’ll go now. But you’ll tell her what I told you? Tell her I’ve gone to the police station. To confess.” IV Susan came in breathlessly. “Where’s Greg? He was here! I saw him.” “Yes.” Poirot paused a moment—before saying: “He came to tell me that it was he who poisoned Richard Abernethie….” “What absolute nonsense! You didn’t believe him, I hope?” “Why should I not believe him?” “He wasn’t even near this place when Uncle Richard died!” “Perhaps not. Where was he when Cora Lansquenet died?” “In London. We both were.” Hercule Poirot shook his head. “No, no, that will not do. You, for instance, took out your car that day and were away all the afternoon. I think I know where you went. You went to Lytchett St. Mary.” “I did no such thing!” Poirot smiled. “When I met you here, Madame, it was not, as I told you, the first time I had seen you. After the inquest on Mrs. Lansquenet you were in the garage of the King’s Arms. You talk there to a mechanic and close by you is a car containing an elderly foreign gentleman. You did not notice him, but he noticed you.” “I don’t see what you mean. That was the day of the inquest.” “Ah, but remember what that mechanic said to you! He asked you if you were a relative of the victim, and you said you were her niece.” “He was just being a ghoul. They’re all ghouls.” “And his next words were, ‘Ah, wondered where I’d seen you before.’ Where did he see you before, Madame? It must have been in Lytchett St. Mary, since in his mind his seeing you before was accounted for by your being Mrs. Lansquenet’s niece. Had he seen you near her cottage? And when? It was a matter, was it not, that demands inquiry. And the result of the inquiry is, that you were there—in Lytchett St. Mary—on the afternoon Cora Lansquenet died. You parked your car in the same quarry where you left it the morning of the inquest. The car was seen and the number was noted. By this time Inspector Morton knows whose car it was.” Susan stared at him. Her breath came rather fast, but she showed no signs of discomposure. “You’re talking nonsense, M. Poirot. And you’re making me forget what I came here to say—I wanted to try and find you alone—” “To confess to me it was you and not your husband who committed the murder?” “No, of course not. What kind of a fool do you think I am? And I’ve already told you that Gregory never left London that day.” “A fact which you cannot possibly know since you were away yourself. Why did you go down to Lytchett St. Mary, Mrs. Banks?” Susan drew a deep breath. “All right, if you must have it! What Cora said at the funeral worried me. I kept on thinking about it. Finally I decided to run down in the car and see her, and ask her what had put the idea into her head. Greg thought it a silly idea, so I didn’t even tell him where I was going. I got there about three o’clock, knocked and rang, but there was no answer, so I thought she must be out or gone away. That’s all there is to it. I didn’t go round to the back of the cottage. If I had, I might have seen the broken window. I just went back to London without the faintest idea there was anything wrong.” Poirot’s face was noncommittal. He said: “Why does your husband accuse himself of the crime?” “Because he’s—” a word trembled on Susan’s tongue and was rejected. Poirot seized on it. “You were going to say ‘because he is batty’ speaking in jest—but the jest was too near the truth, was it not?” “Greg’s all right. He is. He is.” “I know something of his history,” said Poirot. “He was for some months in Forsdyke House Mental Home before you met him.” “He was never certified. He was a voluntary patient.” “That is true. He is not, I agree, to be classed as insane. But he is, very definitely, unbalanced. He has a punishment complex—has had it, I suspect, since infancy.” Susan spoke quickly and eagerly: “You don’t understand, M. Poirot. Greg has never had a chance. That’s why I wanted Uncle Richard’s money so badly. Uncle Richard was so matter-of-fact. He couldn’t understand. I knew Greg had got to set up for himself. He had got to feel he was someone—not just a chemist’s assistant, being pushed around. Everything will be different now. He will have his own laboratory. He can work out his own formulas.” “Yes, yes—you will give him the earth—because you love him. Love him too much for safety or for happiness. But you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving. At the end of it all, he will still be something that he does not want to be….” “What’s that?” “Susan’s husband.” “How cruel you are! And what nonsense you talk!” “Where Gregory Banks is concerned you are unscrupulous. You wanted your uncle’s money—not for yourself—but for your husband. How badly did you want it?” Angrily, Susan turned and dashed away. V “I thought,” said Michael Shane lightly, “that I’d just come along and say good-bye.” He smiled, and his smile had a singularly intoxicating quality. Poirot was aware of the man’s vital charm. He studied Michael Shane for some moments in silence. He felt as though he knew this man least well of all the house party, for Michael Shane only showed the side of himself that he wanted to show. “Your wife,” said Poirot conversationally, “is a very unusual woman.” Michael raised his eyebrows. “Do you think so? She’s a lovely, I agree. But not, or so I’ve found, conspicuous for brains.” “She will never try to be too clever,” Poirot agreed. “But she knows what she wants.” He sighed. “So few people do.” “Ah!” Michael’s smile broke out again. “Thinking of the malachite table?” “Perhaps.” Poirot paused and added: “And of what was on it.” “The wax flowers, you mean?” “The wax flowers.” Michael frowned. “I don’t always quite understand you, M. Poirot. However,” the smile was switched on again, “I’m more thankful than I can say that we’re all out of the wood. It’s unpleasant, to say the least of it, to go around with the suspicion that somehow or other one of us murdered poor old Uncle Richard.” “That is how he seemed to you when you met him?” Poirot inquired.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Poor old Uncle Richard?” “Of course he was very well-preserved and all that—” “And in full possession of his faculties—” “Oh yes.” “And, in fact, quite shrewd?” “I dare say.” “A shrewd judge of character.” The smile remained unaltered. “You can’t expect me to agree with that, M. Poirot. He didn’t approve of me.” “He thought you, perhaps, the unfaithful type?” Poirot suggested. Michael laughed. “What an old-fashioned idea!” “But it is true, isn’t it?” “Now I wonder what you mean by that?” Poirot placed the tips of his fingers together. “There have been inquiries made, you know,” he murmured. “By you?” “Not only by me.” Michael Shane gave him a quick searching glance. His reactions, Poirot noted, were quick. Michael Shane was no fool. “You mean—the police are interested?” “They have never been quite satisfied, you know, to regard the murder of Cora Lansquenet as a casual crime.” “And they’ve been making inquiries about me?” Poirot said primly: “They are interested in the movements of Mrs. Lansquenet’s relations on the day that she was killed.” “That’s extremely awkward.” Michael spoke with a charming confidential rueful air. “Is it, Mr. Shane?” “More so than you can imagine! I told Rosamund, you see, that I was lunching with a certain Oscar Lewis on that day.” “When, in actual fact, you were not?” “No. Actually I motored down to see a woman called Sorrel Dainton—quite a well-known actress. I was with her in her last show. Rather awkward, you see—for though it’s quite satisfactory as far as the police are concerned, it won’t go down very well with Rosamund.” “Ah!” Poirot looked discreet. “There has been a little trouble over this friendship of yours?” “Yes… In fact—Rosamund made me promise I wouldn’t see her anymore.” “Yes, I can see that may be awkward… Entre nous, you had an affair with the lady?” “Oh, just one of those things! It’s not as though I cared for the woman at all.” “But she cares for you?” “Well, she’s been rather tiresome… Women do cling so. However, as you say, the police at any rate will be satisfied.” “You think so?” “Well, I could hardly be taking a hatchet to Cora if I was dallying with Sorrel miles and miles away. She’s got a cottage in Kent.” “I see—I see—and this Miss Dainton, she will testify for you?” “She won’t like it—but as it’s murder, I suppose she’ll have to do it.” “She will do it, perhaps, even if you were not dallying with her.” “What do you mean?” Michael looked suddenly black as thunder. “The lady is fond of you. When they are fond, women will swear to what is true—and also to what is untrue.” “Do you mean to say that you don’t believe me?” “It does not matter if I believe you or not. It is not I you have to satisfy.” “Who then?” Poirot smiled. “Inspector Morton—who has just come out on the terrace through the side door.” Michael Shane wheeled round sharply. Twenty-three I “I heard you were here, M. Poirot,” said Inspector Morton. The two men were pacing the terrace together. “I came over with Superintendent Parwell from Matchfield. Dr. Larraby rang him up about Mrs. Leo Abernethie and he’s come over here to make a few inquiries. The doctor wasn’t satisfied.” “And you, my friend,” inquired Poirot, “where do you come in? You are a long way from your native Berkshire.” “I wanted to ask a few questions—and the people I wanted to ask them of seemed very conveniently assembled here.” He paused before adding, “Your doing?” “Yes, my doing.” “And as a result Mrs. Leo Abernethie gets knocked out.” “You must not blame me for that. If she had come to me… But she did not. Instead she rang up her lawyer in London.” “And was in the process of spilling the beans to him when—Wonk!” “When—as you say—Wonk!” “And what had she managed to tell him?” “Very little. She had only got as far as telling him that she was looking at herself in the glass.” “Ah! well,” said Inspector Morton philosophically. “Women will do it.” He looked sharply at Poirot. “That suggests something to you?” “Yes, I think I know what it was she was going to tell him.” “Wonderful guesser, aren’t you? You always were. Well, what was it?” “Excuse me, are you inquiring into the death of Richard Abernethie?” “Officially, no. Actually, of course, if it has a bearing on the murder of Mrs. Lansquenet—” “It has a bearing on that, yes. But I will ask you, my friend, to give me a few more hours. I shall know by then if what I have imagined—imagined only, you comprehend—is correct. If it is—” “Well, if it is?” “Then I may be able to place in your hands a piece of concrete evidence.” “We could certainly do with it,” said Inspector Morton with feeling. He looked askance at Poirot. “What have you been holding back?” “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Since the piece of evidence I have imagined may not in fact exist. I have only deduced its existence from various scraps of conversation. I may,” said Poirot in a completely unconvinced tone, “be wrong.” Morton smiled. “But that doesn’t often happen to you?” “No. Though I will admit—yes, I am forced to admit—that it has happened to me.” “I must say I’m glad to hear it! To be always right must be sometimes monotonous.” “I do not find it so,” Poirot assured him. Inspector Morton laughed. “And you’re asking me to hold off with my questioning?” “No, no, not at all. Proceed as you had planned to do. I suppose you were not actually contemplating an arrest?” Morton shook his head. “Much too flimsy for that. We’d have to get a decision from the Public Prosecutor first—and we’re a long way from that. No, just statements from certain parties of their movements on the day in question—in one case with a caution, perhaps.” “I see. Mrs. Banks?” “Smart, aren’t you? Yes. She was there that day. Her car was parked in that quarry.” “She was not seen actually driving the car?” “No.” The Inspector added, “It’s bad you know, that she’s never said a word about being down there that day. She’s got to explain that satisfactorily.” “She is quite skilful at explanations,” said Poirot drily. “Yes. Clever young lady. Perhaps a thought too clever.” “It is never wise to be too clever. That is how murderers get caught. Has anything more come up about George Crossfield?” “Nothing definite. He’s a very ordinary type. There are a lot of young men like him going about the country in trains and buses or on bicycles. People find it hard to remember when a week or so has gone by if it was Wednesday or Thursday when they were at a certain place or noticed a certain person.” He paused and went on: “We’ve had one piece of rather curious information—from the Mother Superior of some convent or other. Two of her nuns had been out collecting from door to door. It seems that they went to Mrs. Lansquenet’s cottage on the day before she was murdered, but couldn’t make anyone hear when they knocked and rang. That’s natural enough—she was up North at the Abernethie funeral and Gilchrist had been given the day off and had gone on an excursion to Bournemouth. The point is that they say there was someone in the cottage. They say they heard sighs and groans. I’ve queried whether it wasn’t a day later but the Mother Superior is quite definite that that couldn’t be so. It’s all entered up in some book. Was there someone searching for something in the cottage that day, who seized the opportunity of both the women being away? And did that somebody not find what he or she was looking for and come back the next day? I don’t set much store on the sighs and still less on the groans. Even nuns are suggestible and a cottage where murder has occurred positively asks for groans. The point is, was there someone in the cottage who shouldn’t have been there? And if so, who was it?

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

And if so, who was it? All the Abernethie crowd were at the funeral.” Poirot asked a seemingly irrelevant question: “These nuns who were collecting in that district, did they return at all at a later date to try again?” “As a matter of fact they did come again—about a week later. Actually on the day of the inquest, I believe.” “That fits,” said Hercule Poirot. “That fits very well.” Inspector Morton looked at him. “Why this interest in nuns?” “They have been forced on my attention whether I will or no. It will not have escaped your attention, Inspector, that the visit of the nuns was the same day that poisoned wedding cake found its way into that cottage.” “You don’t think— Surely that’s a ridiculous idea?” “My ideas are never ridiculous,” said Hercule Poirot severely. “And now, mon cher, I must leave you to your questions and to the inquiries into the attack on Mrs. Abernethie. I myself must go in search of the late Richard Abernethie’s niece.” “Now be careful what you go saying to Mrs. Banks.” “I do not mean Mrs. Banks. I mean Richard Abernethie’s other niece.” II Poirot found Rosamund sitting on a bench overlooking a little stream that cascaded down in a waterfall and then flowed through rhododendron thickets. She was staring into the water. “I do not, I trust, disturb an Ophelia,” said Poirot as he took his seat beside her. “You are, perhaps, studying the role?” “I’ve never played in Shakespeare,” said Rosamund. “Except once in Rep. I was Jessica in The Merchant. A lousy part.” “Yet not without pathos. ‘I am never merry when I hear sweet music.’ What a load she carried, poor Jessica, the daughter of the hated and despised Jew. What doubts of herself she must have had when she brought with her her father’s ducats when she ran away to her lover. Jessica with gold was one thing—Jessica without gold might have been another.” Rosamund turned her head to look at him. “I thought you’d gone,” she said with a touch of reproach. She glanced down at her wristwatch. “It’s past twelve o’clock.” “I have missed my train,” said Poirot. “Why?” “You think I missed it for a reason?” “I suppose so. You’re rather precise, aren’t you? If you wanted to catch a train, I should think you’d catch it.” “Your judgement is admirable. Do you know, Madame, I have been sitting in the little summerhouse hoping that you would, perhaps, pay me a visit there?” Rosamund stared at him. “Why should I? You more or less said good-bye to us all in the library.” “Quite so. And there was nothing—you wanted to say to me?” “No.” Rosamund shook her head. “I had a lot I wanted to think about. Important things.” “I see.” “I don’t often do much thinking,” said Rosamund. “It seems a waste of time. But this is important. I think one ought to plan one’s life just as one wants it to be.” “And that is what you are doing?” “Well, yes… I was trying to make a decision about something.” “About your husband?” “In a way.” Poirot waited a moment, then he said: “Inspector Morton has just arrived here.” He anticipated Rosamund’s question by going on: “He is the police officer in charge of the inquiries about Mrs. Lansquenet’s death. He has come here to get statements from you all about what you were doing on the day she was murdered.” “I see. Alibis,” said Rosamund cheerfully. Her beautiful face relaxed into an impish glee. “That will be hell for Michael,” she said. “He thinks I don’t really know he went off to be with that woman that day.” “How did you know?” “It was obvious from the way he said he was going to lunch with Oscar. So frightfully casually, you know, and his nose twitching just a tiny bit like it always does when he tells lies.” “How devoutly thankful I am I am not married to you, Madame!” “And then, of course, I made sure by ringing up Oscar,” continued Rosamund. “Men always tell such silly lies.” “He is not, I fear, a very faithful husband?” Poirot hazarded. Rosamund, however, did not reject the statement. “No.” “But you do not mind?” “Well, it’s rather fun in a way,” said Rosamund. “I mean having a husband that all the other women want to snatch away from you. I should hate to be married to a man that nobody wanted—like poor Susan. Really Greg is so completely wet!” Poirot was studying her. “And suppose someone did succeed—in snatching your husband away from you?” “They won’t,” said Rosamund. “Not now,” she added. “You mean—” “Not now that there’s Uncle Richard’s money. Michael falls for these creatures in a way—that Sorrel Dainton woman nearly got her hooks into him—wanted him for keeps—but with Michael the show will always come first. He can launch out now in a big way—put his own shows on. Do some production as well as acting. He’s ambitious, you know, and he really is good. Not like me. I adore acting—but I’m ham, though I look nice. No, I’m not worried about Michael anymore. Because it’s my money, you see.” Her eyes met Poirot’s calmly. He thought how strange it was that both Richard Abernethie’s nieces should have fallen deeply in love with men who were incapable of returning that love. And yet Rosamund was unusually beautiful and Susan was attractive and full of sex appeal. Susan needed and clung to the illusion that Gregory loved her. Rosamund, clear-sighted, had no illusions at all, but knew what she wanted. “The point is,” said Rosamund, “that I’ve got to make a big decision—about the future. Michael doesn’t know yet.” Her face curved into a smile. “He found out that I wasn’t shopping that day and he’s madly suspicious about Regent’s Park.” “What is this about Regent’s Park?” Poirot looked puzzled. “I went there, you see, after Harley Street. Just to walk about and think. Naturally Michael thinks that if I went there at all, I went to meet some man!” Rosamund smiled beatifically and added: “He didn’t like that at all!” “But why should you not go to Regent’s Park?” asked Poirot. “Just to walk there, you mean?” “Yes. Have you never done it before?” “Never. Why should I? What is there to go to Regent’s Park for?” Poirot looked at her and said: “For you—nothing.” He added: “I think, Madame, that you must cede the green malachite table to your cousin Susan.” Rosamund’s eyes opened very wide. “Why should I? I want it.” “I know. I know. But you—you will keep your husband. And the poor Susan, she will lose hers.” “Lose him? Do you mean Greg’s going off with someone? I wouldn’t have believed it of him. He looks so wet.” “Infidelity is not the only way of losing a husband, Madame.” “You don’t mean—?” Rosamund stared at him. “You’re not thinking that Greg poisoned Uncle Richard and killed Aunt Cora and conked Aunt Helen on the head? That’s ridiculous. Even I know better than that.” “Who did, then?” “George, of course. George is a wrong un, you know, he’s mixed up in some sort of currency swindle—I heard about it from some friends of mine who were in Monte. I expect Uncle Richard got to know about it and was just going to cut him out of his will.” Rosamund added complacently: “I’ve always known it was George.” Twenty-four I The telegram came about six o’clock that evening. As specially requested it was delivered by hand, not telephoned, and Hercule Poirot, who had been hovering for some time in the neighbourhood of the front door, was at hand to receive it from Lanscombe as the latter took it from the telegraph boy. He tore it open with somewhat less than his usual precision. It consisted of three words and a signature. Poirot gave vent to an enormous sigh of relief. Then he took a pound note from his pocket and handed it to the dumbfounded boy. “There are moments,” he said to Lanscombe, “when economy should be abandoned.” “Very possibly, sir,” said Lanscombe politely. “Where is Inspector Morton?” asked Poirot.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“Where is Inspector Morton?” asked Poirot. “One of the police gentlemen,” Lanscombe spoke with distaste—and indicated subtly that such things as names for police officers were impossible to remember—“has left. The other is, I believe, in the study.” “Splendid,” said Poirot. “I join him immediately.” He once more clapped Lanscombe on the shoulder and said: “Courage, we are on the point of arriving!” Lanscombe looked slightly bewildered since departures, and not arrivals, had been in his mind. He said: “You do not, then, propose to leave by the nine thirty train after all, sir?” “Do not lose hope,” Poirot told him. Poirot moved away, then wheeling round, he asked: “I wonder, can you remember what were the first words Mrs. Lansquenet said to you when she arrived here on the day of your master’s funeral?” “I remember very well, sir,” said Lanscombe, his face lighting up. “Miss Cora—I beg pardon, Mrs. Lansquenet—I always think of her as Miss Cora, somehow—” “Very naturally.” “She said to me: ‘Hallo, Lanscombe. It’s a long time since you used to bring us out meringues to the huts.’ All the children used to have a hut of their own—down by the fence in the Park. In summer, when there was going to be a dinner party, I used to take the young ladies and gentlemen—the younger ones, you understand, sir—some meringues. Miss Cora, sir, was always very fond of her food.” Poirot nodded. “Yes,” he said, “that was as I thought. Yes, it was very typical, that.” He went into the study to find Inspector Morton and without a word handed him the telegram. Morton read it blankly. “I don’t understand a word of this.” “The time has come to tell you all.” Inspector Morton grinned. “You sound like a young lady in a Victorian melodrama. But it’s about time you came across with something. I can’t hold out on this setup much longer. That Banks fellow is still insisting that he poisoned Richard Abernethie and boasting that we can’t find out how. What beats me is why there’s always somebody who comes forward when there’s a murder and yells out that they did it! What do they think there is in it for them? I’ve never been able to fathom that.” “In this case, probably shelter from the difficulties of being responsible for oneself—in other words— Forsdyke Sanatorium.” “More likely to be Broadmoor.” “That might be equally satisfactory.” “Did he do it, Poirot? The Gilchrist woman came out with the story she’d already told you and it would fit with what Richard Abernethie said about his niece. If her husband did it, it would involve her. Somehow, you know, I can’t visualize that girl committing a lot of crimes. But there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to try and cover him.” “I will tell you all—” “Yes, yes, tell me all! And for the Lord’s sake hurry up and do it!” II This time it was in the big drawing room that Hercule Poirot assembled his audience. There was amusement rather than tension in the faces that were turned towards him. Menace had materialized in the shape of Inspector Morton and Superintendent Parwell. With the police in charge, questioning, asking for statements, Hercule Poirot, private detective, had receded into something closely resembling a joke. Timothy was not far from voicing the general feeling when he remarked in an audible sotto voce to his wife: “Damned little mountebank! Entwhistle must be gaga!—that’s all I can say.” It looked as though Hercule Poirot would have to work hard to make his proper effect. He began in a slightly pompous manner. “For the second time, I announce my departure! This morning I announced it for the twelve o’clock train. This evening I announce it for the nine thirty—immediately, that is, after dinner. I go because there is nothing more here for me to do.” “Could have told him that all along.” Timothy’s commentary was still in evidence. “Never was anything for him to do. The cheek of these fellows!” “I came here originally to solve a riddle. The riddle is solved. Let me, first, go over the various points which were brought to my attention by the excellent Mr. Entwhistle. “First, Mr. Richard Abernethie dies suddenly. Secondly, after his funeral, his sister Cora Lansquenet says, ‘He was murdered, wasn’t he?’ Thirdly Mrs. Lansquenet is killed. The question is, are those three things part of a sequence? Let us observe what happens next? Miss Gilchrist, the dead woman’s companion, is taken ill after eating a piece of wedding cake which contains arsenic. That, then, is the next step in the sequence. “Now, as I told you this morning, in the course of my inquiries I have come across nothing—nothing at all, to substantiate the belief that Mr. Abernethie was poisoned. Equally, I may say, I have found nothing to prove conclusively that he was not poisoned. But as we proceed, things become easier. Cora Lansquenet undoubtedly asked that sensational question at the funeral. Everyone agrees upon that. And undoubtedly, on the following day, Mrs. Lansquenet was murdered—a hatchet being the instrument employed. Now let us examine the fourth happening. The local post van driver is strongly of the belief—though he will not definitely swear to it—that he did not deliver that parcel of wedding cake in the usual way. And if that is so, then the parcel was left by hand and though we cannot exclude a ‘person unknown’—we must take particular notice of those people who were actually on the spot and in a position to put the parcel where it was subsequently found. Those were: Miss Gilchrist herself, of course; Susan Banks who came down that day for the inquest; Mr. Entwhistle (but yes, we must consider Mr. Entwhistle; he was present, remember, when Cora made her disquieting remark!) And there were two other people. An old gentleman who represented himself to be a Mr. Guthrie, an art critic, and a nun or nuns who called early that morning to collect a subscription. “Now I decided that I would start on the assumption that the postal van driver’s recollection was correct. Therefore the little group of people under suspicion must be very carefully studied. Miss Gilchrist did not benefit in any way by Richard Abernethie’s death and in only a very minute degree by Mrs. Lansquenet’s—in actual fact the death of the latter put her out of employment and left her with the possibility of finding it difficult to get new employment. Also Miss Gilchrist was taken to hospital definitely suffering from arsenic poisoning. “Susan Banks did benefit from Richard Abernethie’s death, and in a small degree from Mrs. Lansquenet’s—though here her motive must almost certainly have been security. She might have very good reason to believe that Miss Gilchrist had overheard a conversation between Cora Lansquenet and her brother which referred to her, and she might therefore decide that Miss Gilchrist must be eliminated. She herself, remember, refused to partake of the wedding cake and also suggested not calling in a doctor until the morning, when Miss Gilchrist was taken ill in the night. “Mr. Entwhistle did not benefit by either of the deaths—but he had had considerable control over Mr. Abernethie’s affairs, and the trust funds, and there might well be some reason why Richard Abernethie should not live too long. But—you will say—if it is Mr. Entwhistle who was concerned, why should he come to me? “And to that I will answer—it is not the first time that a murderer has been too sure of himself. “We now come to what I may call the two outsiders. Mr. Guthrie and a nun. If Mr. Guthrie is really Mr. Guthrie, the art critic, then that clears him. The same applies to the nun, if she is really a nun. The question is, are these people themselves, or are they somebody else? “And I may say that there seems to be a curious—motif—one might call it—of a nun running through this business. A nun comes to the door of Mr. Timothy Abernethie’s house and Miss Gilchrist believes it is the same nun she has seen at Lytchett St.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

Mary. Also a nun, or nuns, called here the day before Mr. Abernethie died….” George Crossfield murmured, “Three to one, the nun.” Poirot went on: “So here we have certain pieces of our pattern—the death of Mr. Abernethie, the murder of Cora Lansquenet, the poisoned wedding cake, the ‘motif’ of the ‘nun.’ “I will add some other features of the case that engaged my attention: “The visit of an art critic, a smell of oil paint, a picture postcard of Polflexan harbour, and finally a bouquet of wax flowers standing on that malachite table where a Chinese vase stands now. “It was reflecting on these things that led me to the truth—and I am now about to tell you the truth. “The first part of it I told you this morning. Richard Abernethie died suddenly—but there would have been no reason at all to suspect foul play had it not been for the words uttered by his sister Cora at his funeral. The whole case for the murder of Richard Abernethie rests upon those words. As a result of them, you all believed that murder had taken place, and you believed it, not really because of the words themselves but because of the character of Cora Lansquenet herself. For Cora Lansquenet had always been famous for speaking the truth at awkward moments. So the case for Richard’s murder rested not only upon what Cora had said but upon Cora herself. “And now I come to the question that I suddenly asked myself: “How well did you all know Cora Lansquenet?” He was silent for a moment, and Susan asked sharply, “What do you mean?” Poirot went on: “Not well at all—that is the answer! The younger generation had never seen her at all, or if so, only when they were very young children. There were actually only three people present that day who actually knew Cora. Lanscombe, the butler, who is old and very blind; Mrs. Timothy Abernethie who had only seen her a few times round about the date of her own wedding, and Mrs. Leo Abernethie who had known her quite well, but who had not seen her for over twenty years. “So I said to myself: ‘Supposing it was not Cora Lansquenet who came to the funeral that day?’” “Do you mean that Aunt Cora—wasn’t Aunt Cora?” Susan demanded incredulously. “Do you mean that it wasn’t Aunt Cora who was murdered, but someone else?” “No, no, it was Cora Lansquenet who was murdered. But it was not Cora Lansquenet who came the day before to her brother’s funeral. The woman who came that day came for one purpose only—to exploit, one may say, the fact that Richard died suddenly. And to create in the minds of his relations that he had been murdered. Which she managed to do most successfully!” “Nonsense! Why? What was the point of it?” Maude spoke bluffly. “Why? To draw attention away from the other murder. From the murder of Cora Lansquenet herself. For if Cora says that Richard has been murdered and the next day she herself is killed, the two deaths are bound to be at least considered as possible cause and effect. But if Cora is murdered and her cottage is broken into, and if the apparent robbery does not convince the police, then they will look—where? Close at home, will they not? Suspicion will tend to fall on the woman who shares the house with her.” Miss Gilchrist protested in a tone that was almost bright: “Oh come—really—Mr. Pontarlier—you don’t suggest I’d commit a murder for an amethyst brooch and a few worthless sketches?” “No,” said Poirot. “For a little more than that. There was one of those sketches, Miss Gilchrist, that represented Polflexan harbour and which, as Mrs. Banks was clever enough to realize, had been copied from a picture postcard which showed the old pier still in position. But Mrs. Lansquenet painted always from life. I remembered then that Mr. Entwhistle had mentioned there being a smell of oil paint in the cottage when he first got there. You can paint, can’t you, Miss Gilchrist? Your father was an artist and you know a good deal about pictures. Supposing that one of the pictures that Cora picked up cheaply at a sale was a valuable picture. Supposing that she herself did not recognize it for what it was, but that you did. You knew she was expecting, very shortly, a visit from an old friend of hers who was a well- known art critic. Then her brother died suddenly—and a plan leaps into your head. Easy to administer a sedative to her in her early cup of tea that will keep her unconscious for the whole of the day of the funeral whilst you yourself are playing her part at Enderby. You know Enderby well from listening to her talk about it. She has talked, as people do when they get on in life, a great deal about her childhood days. Easy for you to start off by a remark to old Lanscombe about meringues and huts which will make him quite sure of your identity in case he was inclined to doubt. Yes, you used your knowledge of Enderby well that day, with allusions to this and that, and recalling memories, None of them suspected you were not Cora. You were wearing her clothes, slightly padded, and since she wore a false front of hair, it was easy for you to assume that. Nobody had seen Cora for twenty years—and in twenty years people change so much that one often hears the remark: ‘I would never have known her!’ But mannerisms are remembered, and Cora had certain very definite mannerisms, all of which you had practised carefully before the glass. “And it was there, strangely enough, that you made your first mistake. You forgot that a mirror image is reversed. When you saw in the glass the perfect reproduction of Cora’s birdlike sidewise tilt of the head, you didn’t realize that it was actually the wrong way round. You saw, let us say, Cora inclining her head to the right—but you forgot that actually your own head was inclined to the left to produce that effect in the glass. “That was what puzzled and worried Helen Abernethie at the moment when you made your famous insinuation. Something seemed to her ‘wrong.’ I realized myself the other night when Rosamund Shane made an unexpected remark what happens on such an occasion. Everybody inevitably looks at the speaker. Therefore, when Mrs. Leo felt something was ‘wrong,’ it must be that something was wrong with Cora Lansquenet. The other evening, after talk about mirror images and ‘seeing oneself ’ I think Mrs. Leo experimented before a looking glass. Her own face is not particularly asymmetrical. She probably thought of Cora, remembered how Cora used to incline her head to the right, did so, and looked in the glass—when, of course, the image seemed to her ‘wrong’ and she realized, in a flash, just what had been wrong on the day of the funeral. She puzzled it out—either Cora had taken to inclining her head in the opposite direction—most unlikely—or else Cora had not been Cora. Neither way seemed to her to make sense. But she was determined to tell Mr. Entwhistle of her discovery at once. Someone who was used to getting up early was already about, and followed her down, and fearful of what revelations she might be about to make struck her down with a heavy doorstop.” Poirot paused and added: “I may as well tell you now, Miss Gilchrist, that Mrs. Abernethie’s concussion is not serious. She will soon be able to tell us her own story.” “I never did anything of the sort,” said Miss Gilchrist. “The whole thing is a wicked lie.” “It was you that day,” said Michael Shane suddenly. He had been studying Miss Gilchrist’s face. “I ought to have seen it sooner— I felt in a vague kind of way I had seen you before somewhere—but of course one never looks much at—” he stopped. “No, one doesn’t bother to look at a mere companion-help,” said Miss Gilchrist. Her voice shook a little. “A drudge, a domestic drudge! Almost a servant! But go on, M. Poirot. Go on with this fantastic piece of nonsense!” “The suggestion of murder thrown out at the funeral was only the first step, of course,” said Poirot. “You had more in reserve.

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

“You had more in reserve. At any moment you were prepared to admit to having listened to a conversation between Richard and his sister. What he actually told her, no doubt, was the fact that he had not long to live, and that explains a cryptic phrase in the letter he wrote to her after getting home. The ‘nun’ was another of your suggestions. The nun—or rather nuns—who called at the cottage on the day of the inquest suggested to you a mention of a nun who was ‘following you round,’ and you used that when you were anxious to hear what Mrs. Timothy was saying to her sister-in-law at Enderby. And also because you wished to accompany her there and find out for yourself just how suspicions were going. Actually to poison yourself, badly but not fatally, with arsenic, is a very old device—and I may say that it served to awaken Inspector Morton’s suspicions of you.” “But the picture?” said Rosamund. “What kind of a picture was it?” Poirot slowly unfolded a telegram. “This morning I rang up Mr. Entwhistle, a responsible person, to go to Stansfield Grange and, acting on authority from Mr. Abernethie himself” (here Poirot gave a hard stare at Timothy) “to look amongst the pictures in Miss Gilchrist’s room and select the one of Polflexan Harbour on pretext of having it reframed as a surprise for Miss Gilchrist. He was to take it back to London and call upon Mr. Guthrie whom I had warned by telegram. The hastily painted sketch of Polflexan Harbour was removed and the original picture exposed.” He held up the telegram and read: “Definitely a Vermeer. Guthrie.” Suddenly, with electrifying effect, Miss Gilchrist burst into speech. “I knew it was a Vermeer. I knew it! She didn’t know! Talking about Rembrandts and Italian Primitives and unable to recognize a Vermeer when it was under her nose! Always prating about Art—and really knowing nothing about it! She was a thoroughly stupid woman. Always maundering on about this place—about Enderby, and what they did there as children, and about Richard and Timothy and Laura and all the rest of them. Rolling in money always! Always the best of everything those children had. You don’t know how boring it is listening to somebody going on about the same things, hour after hour and day after day. And saying, ‘Oh, yes, Mrs. Lansquenet’ and ‘Really, Mrs. Lansquenet?’ Pretending to be interested. And really bored—bored—bored… And nothing to look forward to… And then—a Vermeer! I saw in the papers that a Vermeer sold the other day for over five thousand pounds!” “You killed her—in that brutal way—for five thousand pounds?” Susan’s voice was incredulous. “Five thousand pounds,” said Poirot, “would have rented and equipped a tea shop….” Miss Gilchrist turned to him. “At least,” she said. “You do understand. It was the only chance I’d ever get. I had to have a capital sum.” Her voice vibrated with the force and obsession of her dream. “I was going to call it the Palm Tree. And have little camels as menu holders. One can occasionally get quite nice china—export rejects—not that awful white utility stuff. I meant to start it in some nice neighbourhood where nice people would come in. I had thought of Rye… Or perhaps Chichester… I’m sure I could have made a success of it.” She paused a minute, then added musingly, “Oak tables—and little basket chairs with striped red and white cushions….” For a few moments, the tea shop that would never be, seemed more real than the Victorian solidity of the drawing room at Enderby…. It was Inspector Morton who broke the spell. Miss Gilchrist turned to him quite politely. “Oh, certainly,” she said. “At once. I don’t want to give any trouble, I’m sure. After all, if I can’t have the Palm Tree, nothing really seems to matter very much….” She went out of the room with him and Susan said, her voice still shaken: “I’ve never imagined a ladylike murderer. It’s horrible….”

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

It’s horrible….” Twenty-five “But I don’t understand about the wax flowers,” said Rosamund. She fixed Poirot with large reproachful blue eyes. They were at Helen’s flat in London. Helen herself was resting on the sofa and Rosamund and Poirot were having tea with her. “I don’t see that wax flowers had anything to do with it,” said Rosamund. “Or the malachite table.” “The malachite table, no. But the wax flowers were Miss Gilchrist’s second mistake. She said how nice they looked on the malachite table. And you see, Madame, she could not have seen them there. Because they had been broken and put away before she arrived with the Timothy Abernethies. So she could only have seen them when she was there as Cora Lansquenet.” “That was stupid of her, wasn’t it?” said Rosamund. Poirot shook a forefinger at her. “It shows you, Madame, the dangers of conversations. It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever! sooner or later they will give themselves away. Miss Gilchrist did.” “I shall have to be careful,” said Rosamund thoughtfully. Then she brightened up. “Did you know? I’m going to have a baby.” “Aha! So that is the meaning of Harley Street and Regent’s Park?” “Yes. I was so upset, you know, and so surprised—that I just had to go somewhere and think.” “You said, I remember, that that does not very often happen.” “Well, it’s much easier not to. But this time I had to decide about the future. And I’ve decided to leave the stage and just be a mother.” “A role that will suit you admirably. Already I foresee delightful pictures in the Sketch and the Tatler.” Rosamund smiled happily. “Yes, it’s wonderful. Do you know, Michael is delighted. I didn’t really think he would be.” She paused and added: “Susan’s got the malachite table. I thought, as I was having a baby—” She left the sentence unfinished. “Susan’s cosmetic business promises well,” said Helen. “I think she is all set for a big success.” “Yes, she was born to succeed,” said Poirot. “She is like her uncle.” “You mean Richard, I suppose,” said Rosamund. “Not Timothy?” “Assuredly not like Timothy,” said Poirot. They laughed. “Greg’s away somewhere,” said Rosamund. “Having a rest cure Susan says?” She looked inquiringly at Poirot who said nothing. “I can’t think why he kept on saying he’d killed Uncle Richard,” said Rosamund. “Do you think it was a form of Exhibitionism?” Poirot reverted to the previous topic. “I received a very amiable letter from Mr. Timothy Abernethie,” he said. “He expressed himself as highly satisfied with the services I had rendered the family.” “I do think Uncle Timothy is quite awful,” said Rosamund. “I am going to stay with them next week,” said Helen. “They seem to be getting the gardens into order, but domestic help is still difficult.” “They miss the awful Gilchrist, I suppose,” said Rosamund. “But I dare say in the end, she’d have killed Uncle Timothy too. What fun if she had!” “Murder has always seemed fun to you, Madame.” “Oh! not really,” said Rosamund vaguely. “But I did think it was George.” She brightened up. “Perhaps he will do one some day.” “And that will be fun,” said Poirot sarcastically. “Yes, won’t it?” Rosamund agreed. She ate another éclair from the plate in front of her. Poirot turned to Helen. “And you, Madame, are off to Cyprus?” “Yes, in a fortnight’s time.” “Then let me wish you a happy journey.” He bowed over her hand. She came with him to the door, leaving Rosamund dreamily stuffing herself with cream pastries. Helen said abruptly: “I should like you to know, M. Poirot, that the legacy Richard left me meant more to me than theirs did to any of the others.” “As much as that, Madame?” “Yes. You see—there is a child in Cyprus… My husband and I were very devoted—it was a great sorrow to us to have no children. After he died my loneliness was unbelievable. When I was nursing in London at the end of the war, I met someone… He was younger than I was and married, though not very happily. We came together for a little while. That was all. He went back to Canada—to his wife and his children. He never knew about—our child. He would not have wanted it. I did. It seemed like a miracle to me—a middle-aged woman with everything behind her. With Richard’s money I can educate my so-called nephew, and give him a start in life.” She paused, then added, “I never told Richard. He was fond of me and I of him—but he would not have understood. You know so much about us all that I thought I would like you to know this about me.” Once again Poirot bowed over her hand. He got home to find the armchair on the left of the fireplace occupied. “Hallo, Poirot,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “I’ve just come back from the Assizes. They brought in a verdict of Guilty, of course. But I shouldn’t be surprised if she ends up in Broadmoor. She’s gone definitely over the edge since she’s been in prison. Quite happy, you know, and most gracious. She spends most her time making the most elaborate plans to run a chain of tea shops. Her newest establishment is to be the Lilac Bush. She’s opening it in Cromer.” “One wonders if she was always a little mad? But me, I think not.” “Good Lord, no! Sane as you and I when she planned that murder. Carried it out in cold blood. She’s got a good head on her, you know, underneath the fluffy manner.” Poirot gave a little shiver. “I am thinking,” he said, “of some words that Susan Banks said—that she had never imagined a ladylike murderer.” “Why not?” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It takes all sorts.” They were silent—and Poirot thought of murderers he had known…. The Agatha Christie Collection THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective. The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Murder on the Links Poirot Investigates The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Murder in the Mews Dumb Witness Death on the Nile Appointment with Death Hercule Poirot’s Christmas Sad Cypress One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Evil Under the Sun Five Little Pigs The Hollow The Labors of Hercules Taken at the Flood The Underdog and Other Stories Mrs. McGinty’s Dead After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Dead Man’s Folly Cat Among the Pigeons The Clocks Third Girl Hallowe’en Party Elephants Can Remember Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com The Agatha Christie Collection THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES Join the legendary spinster sleuth from St. Mary Mead in solving murders far and wide. The Murder at the Vicarage The Body in the Library The Moving Finger A Murder Is Announced They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye 4:50 From Paddington The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram’s Hotel Nemesis Sleeping Murder Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving couple from Young Adventurers Ltd. The Secret Adversary Partners in Crime N or M? By the Pricking of My Thumbs Postern of Fate Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

after the funeral - agatha christie.epub

The Agatha Christie Collection Don’t miss a single one of Agatha Christie’s stand-alone novels and short- story collections. The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Sittaford Mystery Parker Pyne Investigates Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Murder Is Easy The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories And Then There Were None Towards Zero Death Comes as the End Sparkling Cyanide The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories Crooked House Three Blind Mice and Other Stories They Came to Baghdad Destination Unknown Ordeal by Innocence Double Sin and Other Stories The Pale Horse Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories Endless Night Passenger to Frankfurt The Golden Ball and Other Stories The Mousetrap and Other Plays The Harlequin Tea Set Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com About the Author Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott. She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime- fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp. Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010. www.AgathaChristie.com Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors. THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Sittaford Mystery Parker Pyne Investigates Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Murder Is Easy The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories And Then There Were None Towards Zero Death Comes as the End Sparkling Cyanide The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories Crooked House Three Blind Mice and Other Stories They Came to Baghdad Destination Unknown Ordeal by Innocence Double Sin and Other Stories The Pale Horse Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories Endless Night Passenger to Frankfurt The Golden Ball and Other Stories The Mousetrap and Other Plays The Harlequin Tea Set The Hercule Poirot Mysteries The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Murder on the Links Poirot Investigates The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Murder in the Mews Dumb Witness Death on the Nile Appointment with Death Hercule Poirot’s Christmas Sad Cypress One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Evil Under the Sun Five Little Pigs The Hollow The Labors of Hercules Taken at the Flood The Underdog and Other Stories Mrs. McGinty’s Dead After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Dead Man’s Folly Cat Among the Pigeons The Clocks Third Girl Hallowe’en Party Elephants Can Remember Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case The Miss Marple Mysteries The Murder at the Vicarage The Body in the Library The Moving Finger A Murder Is Announced They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye 4:50 from Paddington The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram’s Hotel Nemesis Sleeping Murder Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries The Secret Adversary Partners in Crime N or M? By the Pricking of My Thumbs Postern of Fate Memoirs An Autobiography Come, Tell Me How You Live Credits Cover design and illustration by Faith Laurel Copyright This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This title was previously published as Funerals Are Fatal. AGATHA CHRISTIE®POIROT®AFTER THE FUNERAL™. Copyright © 1953 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. AFTER THE FUNERAL © 1953. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-0-06-207382-2 EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-00-6-173991-0 11 12 13 14 15 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollins.ca New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollins.com

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Agatha Christie An Autobiography Contents Cover Preface Foreword Part I Ashfield Part II ‘Girls and Boys Come out to Play’ Part III Growing up Part IV Flirting, Courting, Banns Up, Marriage Part V War Part VI Round the World Part VII The Land of Lost Content Part VIII Second Spring Part IX Life with Max Part X The Second War Part XI Autumn Epilogue Searchable Terms About the Author Copyright About the Publisher PREFACE Agatha Christie began to write this book in April 1950; she finished it some fifteen years later when she was 75 years old. Any book written over so long a period must contain certain repetitions and inconsistencies and these have been tidied up. Nothing of importance has been omitted, however: substantially, this is the autobiography as she would have wished it to appear. She ended it when she was 75 because, as she put it, ‘it seems the right moment to stop. Because, as far as life is concerned, that is all there is to say.’ The last ten years of her life saw some notable triumphs–the film of Murder on the Orient Express; the continued phenomenal run of The Mousetrap; sales of her books throughout the world growing massively year by year and in the United States taking the position at the top of the best-seller charts which had for long been hers as of right in Britain and the Commonwealth; her appointment in 1971 as a Dame of the British Empire. Yet these are no more than extra laurels for achievements that in her own mind were already behind her. In 1965 she could truthfully write…‘I am satisfied. I have done what I want to do.’ Though this is an autobiography, beginning, as autobiographies should, at the beginning and going on to the time she finished writing, Agatha Christie has not allowed herself to be too rigidly circumscribed by the strait-jacket of chronology. Part of the delight of this book lies in the way in which she moves as her fancy takes her; breaking off here to muse on the incomprehensible habits of housemaids or the compensations of old age; jumping forward there because some trait in her childlike character reminds her vividly of her grandson. Nor does she feel any obligation to put everything in. A few episodes which to some might seem important–the celebrated disappearance, for example–are not mentioned, though in that particular case the references elsewhere to an earlier attack of amnesia give the clue to the true course of events. As to the rest, ‘I have remembered, I suppose, what I wanted to remember’, and though she describes her parting from her first husband with moving dignity, what she usually wants to remember are the joyful or the amusing parts of her existence. Few people can have extraced more intense or more varied fun from life, and this book, above all, is a hymn to the joy of living. If she had seen this book into print she would undoubtedly have wished to acknowledge many of those who had helped bring that joy into her life; above all, of course, her husband Max and her family. Perhaps it would not be out of place for us, her publishers, to acknowledge her. For fifty years she bullied, berated and delighted us; her insistence on the highest standards in every field of publishing was a constant challenge; her good-humour and zest for life brought warmth into our lives. That she drew great pleasure from her writing is obvious from these pages; what does not appear is the way in which she could communicate that pleasure to all those involved with her work, so that to publish her made business ceaselessly enjoyable. It is certain that both as an author and as a person Agatha Christie will remain unique.

an autobiography - agatha christie.epub

FOREWORD NIMRUD, IRAQ. 2 April 1950. Nimrud is the modern name of the ancient city of Calah, the military capital of the Assyrians. Our Expedition House is built of mud-brick. It sprawls out on the east side of the mound, and has a kitchen, a living–and dining-room, a small office, a workroom, a drawing office, a large store and pottery room, and a minute darkroom (we all sleep in tents). But this year one more room has been added to the Expedition House, a room that measures about three metres square. It has a plastered floor with rush mats and a couple of gay coarse rugs. There is a picture on the wall by a young Iraqi artist, of two donkeys going through the Souk, all done in a maze of brightly coloured cubes. There is a window looking out east towards the snow-topped mountains of Kurdistan. On the outside of the door is affixed a square card on which is printed in cuneiform BEIT AGATHA (Agatha’s House). So this is my ‘house’ and the idea is that in it I have complete privacy and can apply myself seriously to the business of writing. As the dig proceeds there will probably be no time for this. Objects will need to be cleaned and repaired. There will be photography, labelling, cataloguing and packing. But for the first week or ten days there should be comparative leisure. It is true that there are certain hindrances to concentration. On the roof overhead, Arab workmen are jumping about, yelling happily to each other and altering the position of insecure ladders. Dogs are barking, turkeys are gobbling. The policeman’s horse is clanking his chain, and the window and door refuse to stay shut, and burst open alternately. I sit at a fairly firm wooden table, and beside me is a gaily painted tin box with which Arabs travel. In it I propose to keep my typescript as it progresses. I ought to be writing a detective story, but with the writer’s natural urge to write anything but what he should be writing, I long, quite unexpectedly, to write my autobiography. The urge to write one’s autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later. It has suddenly overtaken me. On second thoughts, autobiography is much too grand a word. It suggests a purposeful study of one’s whole life. It implies names, dates and places in tidy chronological order. What I want is to plunge my hand into a lucky dip and come up with a handful of assorted memories. Life seems to me to consist of three parts: the absorbing and usually enjoyable present which rushes on from minute to minute with fatal speed; the future, dim and uncertain, for which one can make any number of interesting plans, the wilder and more improbable the better, since–as nothing will turn out as you expect it to do–you might as well have the fun of planning anyway; and thirdly, the past, the memories and realities that are the bedrock of one’s present life, brought back suddenly by a scent, the shape of a hill, an old song–some triviality that makes one suddenly say ‘I remember…’ with a peculiar and quite unexplainable pleasure. This is one of the compensations that age brings, and certainly a very enjoyable one–to remember. Unfortunately you often wish not only to remember, but also to talk about what you remember. And this, you have to tell yourself repeatedly, is boring for other people. Why should they be interested in what, after all, is your life, not theirs? They do, occasionally, when young, accord to you a certain historical curiosity. ‘I suppose,’ a well-educated girl says with interest, ‘that you remember all about the Crimea?’ Rather hurt, I reply that I’m not quite as old as that. I also repudiate participation in the Indian Mutiny. But I admit to recollections of the Boer War–I should do, my brother fought in it. The first memory that springs up in my mind is a clear picture of myself walking along the streets of Dinard on market day with my mother. A boy with a great basket of stuff cannons roughly into me, grazing my arm and nearly knocking me flat. It hurts. I begin to cry. I am, I think, about seven years old. My mother, who likes stoic behaviour in public places, remonstrates with me. ‘Think,’ she says, ‘of our brave soldiers in South Africa.’ My answer is to bawl out: ‘I don’t want to be a brave soldier. I want to be a cowyard!’ What governs one’s choice of memories? Life is like sitting in a cinema. Flick! Here am I, a child eating éclairs on my birthday. Flick! Two years have passed and I am sitting on my grandmother’s lap, being solemnly trussed up as a chicken just arrived from Mr Whiteley’s, and almost hysterical with the wit of the joke. Just moments–and in between long empty spaces of months or even years. Where was one then? It brings home to one Peer Gynt’s question: ‘Where was I, myself, the whole man, the true man?’ We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man. I think, myself, that one’s memories represent those moments which, insignificant as they may seem, nevertheless represent the inner self and oneself as most really oneself. I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. The house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God. So there we are, all of us, little Agatha Miller, and big Agatha Miller, and Agatha Christie and Agatha Mallowan proceeding on our way-where? That one doesn’t know–which, of course, makes life exciting. I have always thought life exciting and I still do. Because one knows so little of it–only one’s own tiny part–one is like an actor who has a few lines to say in Act I. He has a type-written script with his cues, and that is all he can know. He hasn’t read the play. Why should he? His but to say ‘The telephone is out of order, Madam’ and then retire into obscurity. But when the curtain goes up on the day of performance, he will hear the play through, and he will be there to line up with the rest, and take his call. To be part of something one doesn’t in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life. I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. So what I plan to do is to enjoy the pleasures of memory–not hurrying myself- writing a few pages from time to time. It is a task that will probably go on for years. But why do I call it a task? It is an indulgence. I once saw an old Chinese scroll that I loved. It featured an old man sitting under a tree playing cat’s cradle. It was called ‘Old Man enjoying the pleasures of Idleness.’ I’ve never forgotten it. So having settled that I’m going to enjoy myself, I had better, perhaps, begin. And though I don’t expect to be able to keep up chronological continuity, I can at least try to begin at the beginning. PART I ASHFIELD O! ma chère maison; mon nid, mon gîte Le passé Vhabite…O ma chère maison I One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood. I had a home and a garden that I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother two people who loved each other dearly and made a success of their marriage and of parenthood. Looking back I feel that our house was truly a happy house. That was largely due to my father, for my father was a very agreeable man. The quality of agreeableness Is not much stressed nowadays. People tend to ask if a man is clever, industrious, if he contributes to the well-being of the community, if he ‘counts’ in the scheme of things. But Charles Dickens puts the matter delightfully in David Copperfield: ‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I enquired cautiously. ‘Oh what an agreeable man he is!’ exclaimed Peggotty. Ask yourself that question about most of your friends and acquaintances, and you will perhaps be surprised at how seldom your answer will be the same as Peggotty’s. By modern standards my father would probably not be approved of. He was a lazy man.

an autobiography - agatha christie.epub

By modern standards my father would probably not be approved of. He was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway. He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner. During the season, he spent his days at the Cricket Club, of which he was President. He also occasionally got up amateur theatricals. He had an enormous number of friends and loved entertaining them. There was one big dinner party at our home every week, and he and my mother went out to dinner usually another two or three times a week. It was only later that I realized what a much loved man he was. After his death, letters came from all over the world. And locally tradesmen, cabmen, old employees–again and again some old man would come up to me and say: ‘Ah! I remember Mr Miller well. I’ll never forget him. Not many like him nowadays.’ Yet he had no outstanding characteristics. He was not particularly intelligent. I think that he had a simple and loving heart, and he really cared for his fellow men. He had a great sense of humour and he easily made people laugh. There was no meanness in him, no jealousy, and he was almost fantastically generous. And he had a natural happiness and serenity. My mother was entirely different. She was an enigmatic and arresting personality–more forceful than my father–startlingly original in her ideas, shy and miserably diffident about herself, and at bottom, I think, with a natural melancholy. Servants and children were devoted to her, and her lightest word was always promptly obeyed. She would have made a first class educator. Anything she told you immediately became exciting and significant. Sameness bored her and she would jump from one subject to another in a way that sometimes made her conversation bewildering. As my father used to tell her, she had no sense of humour. To that accusation she would protest in an injured voice: ‘Just because I don’t think certain stories of yours are funny, Fred…’ and my father would roar with laughter. She was about ten years younger than my father and she had loved him devotedly ever since she was a child often. All the time that he was a gay young man, flitting about between New York and the South of France, my mother, a shy quiet girl, sat at home, thinking about him, writing an occasional poem in her ‘album,’ embroidering a pocket-book for him. That pocket-book, incidentally, my father kept all his life. A typically Victorian romance, but with a wealth of deep feeling behind it. I am interested in my parents, not only because they were my parents, but because they achieved that very rare production, a happy marriage. Up to date I have only seen four completely successful marriages. Is there a formula for success? I can hardly think so. Of my four examples, one was of a girl of seventeen to a man over fifteen years her senior. He had protested she could not know her mind. She replied that she knew it perfectly and had determined to marry him some three years back! Their married life was further complicated by having first one and then the other mother-in-law living with them-enough to wreck most alliances. The wife is calm with a quality of deep intensity. She reminds me a little of my mother without having her brilliance and intellectual interests. They have three children, all now long out in the world. Their partnership has lasted well over thirty years and they are still devoted. Another was that of a young man to a woman fifteen years older than himself–a widow. She refused him for many years, at last accepted him, and they lived happily until her death 35 years later. My mother Clara Boehmer went through unhappiness as a child. Her father, an officer in the Argyll Highlanders, was thrown from his horse and fatally injured, and my grandmother was left, a young and lovely widow with four children, at the age of 27 with nothing but her widow’s pension. It was then that her elder sister, who had recently married a rich American as his second wife, wrote to her offering to adopt one of the children and bring it up as her own. To the anxious young widow, working desperately with her needle to support and educate four children, the offer was not to be refused. Of the three boys and one girl, she selected the girl; either because it seemed to her that boys could make their way in the world while a girl needed the advantages of easy living, or because, as my mother always believed, she cared for the boys more. My mother left Jersey and came to the North of England to a strange home. I think the resentment she felt, the deep hurt at being unwanted, coloured her attitude to life. It made her distrustful of herself and suspicious of people’s affection. Her aunt was a kindly woman, good-humoured and generous, but she was imperceptive of a child’s feelings. My mother had all the so- called advantages of a comfortable home and a good education–what she lost and what nothing could replace was the carefree life with her brothers in her own home. Quite often I have seen in correspondence columns enquiries from anxious parents asking if they ought to let a child go to others because of ‘the advantages she will have which I cannot provide–such as a first-class education’. I always long to cry out: Don’t let the child go. Her own home, her own people, love, and the security of belonging–what does the best education in the world mean against that? My mother was deeply miserable in her new life. She cried herself to sleep every night, grew thin and pale, and at last became so ill that her aunt called in a doctor. He was an elderly, experienced man, and after talking to the little girl he went to her aunt and said: ‘The child’s homesick.’ Her aunt was astonished and unbelieving. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That couldn’t possibly be so. Clara’s a good quiet child, she never gives any trouble, and she’s quite happy.’ But the old doctor went back to the child and talked to her again. She had brothers, hadn’t she? How many? What were their names? And presently the child broke down in a storm of weeping, and the whole story came out. Bringing out the trouble eased the strain, but the feeling always remained of ‘not being wanted’. I think she held it against my grandmother until her dying day. She became very attached to her American ‘uncle’. He was a sick man by then, but he was fond of quiet little Clara and she used to come and read to him from her favourite book, The King of the Golden River. But the real solace in her life were the periodical visits of her aunt’s stepson–Fred Miller–her so-called ‘Cousin Fred’. He was then about twenty and he was always extra kind to his little ‘cousin’. One day, when she was about eleven, he said to his stepmother: ‘What lovely eyes Clara has got!’ Clara, who had always thought of herself as terribly plain, went upstairs and peered at herself in her aunt’s large dressing-table mirror. Perhaps her eyes were rather nice…She felt immeasurably cheered. From then on, her heart was given irrevocably to Fred. Over in America an old family friend said to the gay young man, ‘Freddie, one day you will marry that little English cousin of yours.’ Astonished, he replied, ‘Clara? She’s only a child.’ But he always had a special feeling for the adoring child. He kept her childish letters and the poems she wrote him, and after a long series of flirtations with social beauties and witty girls in New York (among them Jenny Jerome, afterwards Lady Randolph Churchill) he went home to England to ask the quiet little cousin to be his wife. It is typical of my mother that she refused him firmly. ‘Why?’ I once asked her. ‘Because I was dumpy,’ she replied. An extraordinary but, to her, quite valid reason. My father was not to be gainsaid. He came a second time, and on this occasion my mother overcame her misgivings and rather dubiously agreed to marry him, though full of misgivings that he would be ‘disappointed in her’. So they were married, and the portrait that I have of her in her wedding dress shows a lovely serious face with dark hair and big hazel eyes.

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Before my sister was born they went to Torquay, then a fashionable winter resort enjoying the prestige later accorded to the Riviera, and took furnished rooms there. My father was enchanted with Torquay. He loved the sea. He had several friends living there, and others, Americans, who came for the winter. My sister Madge was born in Torquay, and shortly after that my father and mother left for America, which at that time they expected to be their permanent home. My father’s grandparents were still living, and after his own mother’s death in Florida he had been brought up by them in the quiet of the New England countryside. He was very attached to them and they were keen to see his wife and baby daughter. My brother was born whilst they were in America. Some time after that my father decided to return to England. No sooner had he arrived than business troubles recalled him to New York. He suggested to my mother that she should take a furnished house in Torquay and settle there until he could return. My mother accordingly went to look at furnished houses in Torquay. She returned with the triumphant announcement: ‘Fred; I’ve bought a house!’ My father almost fell over backwards. He still expected to live in America. ‘But why did you do that?’ he asked. ‘Because I liked it,’ explained my mother. She has seen, it appeared, about 35 houses, but only one did she fancy, and that house was for sale only–its owners did not want to let. Sc my mother, who had been left £2000 by my aunt’s husband, had appealed to my aunt, who was her trustee, and they had forthwith bought the house. ‘But we’ll only be there for a year,’ groaned my father, ‘at most.’ My mother, whom we always claimed was clairvoyant, replied that they could always sell it again. Perhaps she saw dimly her family living in that house for many years ahead. ‘I loved the house as soon as I got into it,’ she insisted. ‘It’s got a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere.’ The house was owned by some people called Brown who were Quakers, and when my mother, hesitatingly, condoled with Mrs Brown on having to leave the house they had lived in so many years, the old lady said gently: ‘I am happy to think of thee and thy children living here, my dear.’ It was, my mother said, like a blessing. Truly I believe there was a blessing upon the house. It was an ordinary enough villa, not in the fashionable part of Torquay–the Warberrys or the Lincombes–but at the other end of the town the older part of Tor Mohun. At that time the road in which it was situated led almost at once into rich Devon country, with lanes and fields. The name of the house was Ashfield and it has been my home, off and on, nearly all my life. For my father did not, after all, make his home in America. He liked Torquay so much that he decided not to leave it. He settled down to his club and his whist and his friends. My mother hated living near the sea, disliked all social gatherings and was unable to play any game of cards. But she lived happily in Ashfield, and gave large dinner parties, attended social functions, and on quiet evenings at home would ask my father with hungry impatience for local drama and what had happened at the club today. ‘Nothing,’ my father would reply happily. ‘But surely, Fred, someone must have said something interesting?’ My father obligingly racks his brains, but nothing comes. He says that M—is still too mean to buy a morning paper and comes down to the club, reads the news there, and then insists on retailing it to the other members. ‘I say, you fellows, have you seen that on the North West Frontier…’ etc. Everyone is deeply annoyed, since M—is one of the richest members. My mother, who has heard all this before, is not satisfied. My father relapses into quiet contentment. He leans back in his chair, stretches out his legs to the fire and gently scratches his head (a forbidden pastime). ‘What are you thinking about, Fred?’ demands my mother. ‘Nothing,’ my father replies with perfect truth. ‘You can’t be thinking about nothing? Again and again that statement baffles my mother. To her it is unthinkable. Through her own brain thoughts dart with the swiftness of swallows in flight. Far from thinking of nothing, she is usually thinking of three things at once. As I was to realise many years later, my mother’s ideas were always slightly at variance with reality. She saw the universe as more brightly coloured than it was, people as better or worse than they were. Perhaps because in the years of her childhood she had been quiet, restrained, with her emotions kept well below the surface, she tended to see the world in terms of drama that came near, sometimes, to melodrama. Her creative imagination was so strong that it could never see things as drab or ordinary. She had, too, curious flashes of intuition–of knowing suddenly what other people were thinking. When my brother was a young man in the Army and had got into monetary difficulties which he did not mean to divulge to his parents, she startled him one evening by looking across at him as he sat frowning and worrying. ‘Why, Monty,’ she said, ‘you’ve been to moneylenders. Have you been raising money on your grandfather’s will? You shouldn’t do that. It’s better to go to your father and tell him about it.’ Her faculty for doing that sort of thing was always surprising her family. My sister said once: ‘Anything I don’t want mother to know, I don’t even think of, if she’s in the room.’ II Difficult to know what one’s first memory is. I remember distinctly my third birthday. The sense of my own importance surges up in me. We are having tea in the garden–in the part of the garden where, later, a hammock swings between two trees. There is a tea-table and it is covered with cakes, with my birthday cake, all sugar icing and with candles in the middle of it. Three candles. And then the exciting occurrence–a tiny red spider, so small that I can hardly see it, runs across the white cloth. And my mother says: ‘It’s a lucky spider, Agatha, a lucky spider for your birthday…’ And then the memory fades, except for a fragmentary reminiscence of an interminable argument sustained by my brother as to how many eclairs he shall be allowed to eat. The lovely, safe, yet exciting world of childhood. Perhaps the most absorbing thing in mine is the garden. The garden was to mean more and more to me, year after year. I was to know every tree in it, and attach a special meaning to each tree. From a very early time, it was divided in my mind into three distinct parts. There was the kitchen garden, bounded by a high wall which abutted on the road. This was uninteresting to me except as a provider of raspberries and green apples, both of which I ate in large quantities. It was the kitchen garden but nothing else. It offered no possibilities of enchantment. Then came the garden proper–a stretch of lawn running downhill, and studded with certain interesting entities. The ilex, the cedar, the Wellingtonia (excitingly tall). Two fir-trees, associated for some reason not now clear with my brother and sister. Monty’s tree you could climb (that is to say hoist yourself gingerly up three branches). Madge’s tree, when you had burrowed cautiously into it, had a seat, an invitingly curved bough, where you could sit and look out unseen on the outside world. Then there was what I called the turpentine tree which exuded a sticky strong-smelling gum which I collected carefully in leaves and which was ‘very precious balm’. Finally, the crowning glory, the beech tree–the biggest tree in the garden, with a pleasant shedding of beechnuts which I ate with relish. There was a copper beech, too, but this, for some reason, never counted in my tree world. Thirdly, there was the wood. In my imagination it looked and indeed still looms as large as the New Forest. Mainly composed of ash trees, it had a path winding through it. The wood had everything that is connected with woods. Mystery, terror, secret delight, inaccessibility and distance… The path through the wood led out on to the tennis or croquet lawn at the top of a high bank in front of the dining-room window. When you emerged there, enchantment ended.

an autobiography - agatha christie.epub

When you emerged there, enchantment ended. You were in the everyday world once more, and ladies, their skirts looped up and held in one hand, were playing croquet, or, with straw boater-hats on their heads, were playing tennis. When I had exhausted the delights of ‘playing in the garden’ I returned to the Nursery wherein was Nursie, a fixed point, never changing. Perhaps because she was an old woman and rheumatic, my games were played around and beside, but not wholly with, Nursie. They were all make-believe. From as early as I can remember, I had various companions of my own choosing. The first lot, whom I cannot remember except as a name, were ‘The Kittens’. I don’t know now who ‘The Kittens’ were, and whether I was myself a Kitten, but I do remember their names: Clover, Blackie and three others. Their mother’s name was Mrs Benson. Nursie was too wise ever to talk to me about them, or to try to join in the murmurings of conversation going on round her feet. Probably she was thankful that I could amuse myself so easily. Yet it was a horrible shock to me one day when I came up the stairs from the garden for tea to hear Susan the housemaid saying: ‘Don’t seem to care for toys much, does she? What does she play with?’ And Nursie’s voice replying: ‘Oh she plays that she’s a kitten with some other kittens.’ Why is there such an innate demand for secrecy in a child’s mind? The knowledge that anyone–even Nursie–knew about The Kittens upset me to the core. From that day on I set myself never to murmur aloud in my games. The Kittens were My Kittens and only mine. No one must know. I must, of course, have had toys. Indeed, since I was an indulged and much loved child, I must have had a good variety of them, but I do not remember any, except, vaguely, a box of variegated beads, and stringing them into necklaces. I also remember a tiresome cousin, an adult, insisting teasingly that my blue beads were green and my green ones were blue. My feelings were as those of Euclid: ‘which is absurd’, but politely I did not contradict her. The joke fell flat. I remember some dolls: Phoebe, whom I did not much care for, and a doll called Rosalind or Rosy. She had long golden hair and I admired her enormously, but I did not play much with her. I preferred The Kittens. Mrs Benson was terribly poor, and it was all very sad. Captain Benson, their father, had been a Sea Captain and had gone down at sea, which was why they had been left in such penury. That more or less ended the Saga of the Kittens except that there existed vaguely in my mind a glorious finale to come of Captain Benson not being dead and returning one day with vast wealth just when things had become quite desperate in the Kittens’ home. From the Kittens I passed on to Mrs Green. Mrs Green had a hundred children, of whom the important ones were Poodle, Squirrel and Tree. Those three accompanied me on all my exploits in the garden. They were not quite children and not quite dogs, but indeterminate creatures between the two. Once a day, like all well brought-up children, I ‘went for a walk’. This I much disliked, especially buttoning up my boots-a necessary preliminary. I lagged behind and shuffled my feet, and the only thing that got me through was Nursie’s stories. She had a repertoire of six, all centred on the various children of the families with which she had lived. I remember none of them now, but I do know that one concerned a tiger in India, one was about monkeys, and one about a snake. They were very exciting, and I was allowed to choose which I would hear. Nursie repeated them endlessly without the least sign of weariness. Sometimes, as a great treat, I was allowed to remove Nursie’s snowy ruffled cap. Without it, she somehow retreated into private life and lost her official status. Then, with elaborate care, I would tie a large blue satin ribbon round her head–with enormous difficulty and holding my breath, because tying a bow is no easy matter for a four-year-old. After which I would step back and exclaim in ecstasy: ‘Oh Nursie, you are beautiful!’ At which she would smile and say in her gentle voice: ‘Am I, love?’ After tea, I would be put into starched muslin and go down to the drawing-room to my mother to be played with. If the charm of Nursie’s stories were that they were always the same, so that Nursie represented the rock of stability in my life, the charm of my mother was that her stories were always different and that we practically never played the same game twice. One story, I remember, was about a mouse called Bright Eyes. Bright Eyes had several different adventures, but suddenly, one day, to my dismay, my mother declared that there were no more stories about Bright Eyes to tell. I was on the point of weeping when my mother said: ‘But I’ll tell you a story about a Curious Candle.’ We had two instalments of the Curious Candle, which was, I think, a kind of detective story, when unluckily some visitors came to stay and our private games and stories were in abeyance. When the visitors left and I demanded the end of the Curious Candle, which had paused at a most thrilling moment when the villain was slowly rubbing poison into the candle, my mother looked blank and apparently could remember nothing about the matter. That unfinished serial still haunts my mind. Another delightful game was ‘Houses’, in which we collected bath towels from all over the house and draped them over chairs and tables so as to make ourselves residences, out of which we emerged on all fours. I remember little of my brother and sister, and I presume this is because they were away at school. My brother was at Harrow and my sister at Brighton at the Miss Lawrences’ School which was afterwards to become Roedean. My mother was considered go-ahead to send her daughter to a boarding school, and my father broad-minded to allow it. But my mother delighted in new experiments. Her own experiments were mostly in religion. She was, I think, of a naturally mystic turn of mind. She had the gift of prayer and contemplation, but her ardent faith and devotion found it difficult to select a suitable form of worship. My long-suffering father allowed himself to be taken to first one, now another place of worship. Most of these religious flirtations took place before I was born. My mother had nearly been received into the Roman Catholic church, had then bounced off into being a Unitarian (which accounted for my brother never having been christened), and had from there become a budding Theosophist, but took a dislike to Mrs Besant when hearing her lecture. After a brief but vivid interest in Zoroastrianism, she returned, much to my father’s relief, to the safe haven of the Church of England, but with a preference for ‘high’ churches. There was a picture of St. Francis by her bed, and she read The Imitation of Christ night and morning. That same book lies always by my bed. My father was a simple-hearted, orthodox Christian. He said his prayers every night and went to Church every Sunday. His religion was matter-of-fact and without heart-searchings–but if my mother liked hers with trimmings, it was quite all right with him. He was, as I have said, an agreeable man. I think he was relieved when my mother returned to the Church of England in time for me to be christened in the Parish Church. I was called Mary after my grandmother, Clarissa after my mother, and Agatha as an afterthought, suggested on the way to the church by a friend of my mother’s who said it was a nice name. My own religious views were derived mainly from Nursie, who was a Bible Christian. She did not go to Church but read her Bible at home. Keeping the Sabbath was very important, and being worldly was a sore offence in the eyes of the Almighty. I was myself insufferably smug in my conviction of being one of the ‘saved’. I refused to play games on Sunday or sing or strum the piano, and I had terrible fears for the ultimate salvation of my father, who played croquet blithely on Sunday afternoons and made gay jokes about curates and even, once, about a bishop. My mother, who had been passionately enthusiastic for education for girls, had now, characteristically, swung round to the opposite view.

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No child ought to be allowed to read until it was eight years old: better for the eyes and also for the brain. Here, however, things did not go according to plan. When a story had been read to me and I liked it, I would ask for the book and study the pages which, at first meaningless, gradually began to make sense. When out with Nursie, I would ask her what the words written up over shops or on hoardings were. As a result, one day I found I was reading a book called The Angel of Love quite successfully to myself. I proceeded to do so out loud to Nursie. ‘I’m afraid, Ma’am,’ said Nursie apologetically to mother the next day, ‘Miss Agatha can read.’ My mother was much distressed–but there it was. Not yet five, but the world of story books was open to me. From then on, for Christmas and birthdays I demanded books. My father said that, as I could read, I had better learn to write. This was not nearly so pleasant. Shaky copybooks full of pothooks and hangers still turn up in old drawers, or lines of shaky B’s and R’s, which I seem to have had great difficulty in distinguishing since I had learned to read by the look of words and not by their letters. Then my father said I might as well start arithmetic, and every morning after breakfast I would set to at the dining-room window seat, enjoying myself far more with figures than with the recalcitrant letters of the alphabet. Father was proud and pleased with my progress. I was promoted to a little brown book of ‘Problems’. I loved ‘Problems’. Though merely sums in disguise, they had an intriguing flavour. ‘John has five apples, George has six; if John takes away two of George’s apples, how many will George have at the end of the day?’ and so on. Nowadays, thinking of that problem, I feel an urge to reply: ‘Depends how fond of apples George is.’ But then I wrote down 4, with the feeling of one who has solved a knotty point, and added of my own accord, ‘and John will have 7.’ That I liked arithmetic seemed strange to my mother, who had never, as she admitted freely, had any use for figures, and had so much trouble with household accounts that my father took them over. The next excitement in my life was the gift of a canary. He was named Goldie and became very tame, hopping about the nursery, sometimes sitting on Nursie’s cap, and perching on my finger when I called him. He was not only my bird, he was the start of a new secret Saga. The chief personages were Dickie and Dicksmistress. They rode on chargers all over the country (the garden) and had great adventures and narrow escapes from bands of robbers. One day the supreme catastrophe occurred. Goldie disappeared. The window was open, the gate of his cage unlatched. It seemed likely he had flown away. I can still remember the horrible, dragging length of that day. It went on and on and on. I cried and cried and cried. The cage was put outside the window with a piece of sugar in the bars. My mother and I went round the garden calling, ‘Dickie, Dickie, Dickie’. The housemaid was threatened with instant dismissal by my mother for cheerfully remarking, ‘Some cat’s got him, likely as not,’ which started my tears flowing again. It was when I had been put to bed and lay there, still sniffing spasmodically and holding my mother’s hand, that a cheerful little cheep was heard. Down from the top of the curtain pole came Master Dickie. He flew round the nursery once and then entered his cage. Oh that incredulous wonder of delight! All that day-that unending miserable day–Dickie had been up the curtain pole. My mother improved the occasion after the fashion of the time. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘how silly you have been? What a waste all that crying was? Never cry about things until you are sure.’ I assured her that I never would. Something else came to me then, besides the joy of Dickie’s return, the strength of my mother’s love and understanding when there was trouble. In the black abyss of misery, holding tight to her hand had been the one comfort. There was something magnetic and healing in her touch. In illness there was no one like her. She could give you her own strength and vitality. III The outstanding figure in my early life was Nursie. And round myself and Nursie was our own special world, The Nursery. I can see the wallpaper now–mauve irises climbing up the walls in an endless pattern. I used to lie in bed at night looking at it in the firelight or the subdued light of Nursie’s oil lamp on the table. I thought it was beautiful. Indeed, I have had a passion for mauve all my life. Nursie sat by the table sewing or mending. There was a screen round my bed and I was supposed to be asleep, but I was usually awake, admiring the irises, trying to see just how they intertwined, and thinking up new adventures for the Kittens. At nine-thirty, Nursie’s supper tray was brought up by Susan the housemaid. Susan was a great big girl, jerky and awkward in her movements and apt to knock things over. She and Nursie would hold a whispered conversation, then, when she had gone, Nursie would come over and look behind the screen. ‘I thought you wouldn’t be asleep. I suppose you want a taste?’ ‘Oh, yes please, Nursie.’ A delicious morsel of juicy steak was placed in my mouth. I cannot really believe that Nursie had steak every night for supper, but in my memories steak it always is. One other person of importance in the house was Jane our cook, who ruled the kitchen with the calm superiority of a queen. She came to my mother when she was a slim girl of nineteen, promoted from being a kitchenmaid. She remained with us for forty years and left weighing at least fifteen stone. Never once during that time had she displayed any emotion, but when she finally yielded to her brother’s urgings and went to keep house for him in Cornwall, the tears rolled silently down her cheeks as she left. She took with her one trunk–probably the trunk with which she had arrived. In all those years she had accumulated no possessions. She was, by today’s standards, a wonderful cook, but my mother occasionally complained that she had no imagination. ‘Oh dear, what pudding shall we have tonight? You suggest something, Jane.’ ‘What about a nice stone pudding, Ma’am?’ A stone pudding was the only suggestion Jane ever vouchsafed, but for some reason my mother was allergic to the idea and said no, we wouldn’t have that, we’d have something else. To this day I have never known what a stone pudding was–my mother did not know either–she just said that it sounded dull. When I first knew Jane she was enormous–one of the fattest women I have ever seen. She had a calm face, hair parted in the middle–beautiful, naturally wavy dark hair scraped back into a bun in the nape of her neck. Her jaws moved rhythmically all the time because she was invariably eating something–a fragment of pastry, a freshly-made scone, or a rock cake–it was like a large gentle cow everlastingly chewing the cud. Splendid eating went on in the kitchen. After a large breakfast, eleven o’clock brought the delights of cocoa, and a plate of freshly-made rock cakes and buns, or perhaps hot jam pastry. The midday meal took place when ours was finished, and by etiquette the kitchen was taboo until 3 o’clock had struck. I was instructed by my mother that I was never to intrude during the kitchen lunchtime: ‘That is their own time, and it must not be interrupted by us.’ If by some unforeseen chance–a cancellation of dinner guests for instance-a message had to be conveyed, my mother would apologise for disturbing them, and, by unwritten law, none of the servants would rise at her entrance if they were seated at table. Servants did an incredible amount of work. Jane cooked five-course dinners for seven or eight people as a matter of daily routine. For grand dinner parties of twelve or more, each course contained alternatives–two soups, two fish courses, etc. The housemaid cleaned about forty silver photograph frames and toilet silver ad lib, took in and emptied a ‘hip bath’ (we had a bathroom but my mother considered it a revolting idea to use a bath others had used), brought hot water to bedrooms four times a day, lit bedroom fires in winter, and mended linen etc. every afternoon.

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every afternoon. The parlourmaid cleaned incredible amounts of silver and washed glasses with loving care in a papier mache bowl, besides providing perfect waiting at table. In spite of these arduous duties, servants were, I think, actively happy, mainly because they knew they were appreciated–as experts, doing expert work. As such, they had that mysterious thing, prestige; they looked down with scorn on shop assistants and their like. One of the things I think I should miss most, if I were a child nowadays, would be the absence of servants. To a child they were the most colourful part of daily life. Nurses supplied platitudes; servants supplied drama, entertainment, and all kinds of unspecified but interesting knowledge. Far from being slaves they were frequently tyrants. They ‘knew their place’, as was said, but knowing their place meant not subservience but pride, the pride of the professional. Servants in the early 1900s were highly skilled. Parlourmaids had to be tall, to look smart, to have been perfectly trained, to have the right voice in which to murmur: ‘Hock or sherry?’ They performed intricate miracles of valeting for the gentlemen. I doubt if there is any such thing as a real servant nowadays. Possibly a few are hobbling about between the ages of seventy and eighty, but otherwise there are merely the dailies, the waitresses, those who ‘oblige’, domestic helpers, working housekeepers, and charming young women who want to combine earning a little extra money with hours that will suit them and their children’s needs. They are amiable amateurs; they often become friends but they seldom command the awe with which we regarded our domestic staff. Servants, of course, were not a particular luxury–it was not a case of only the rich having them; the only difference was that the rich had more. They had butlers and footmen and housemaids and parlourmaids and between-maids and kitchen-maids and so on. As you descended the stages of affluence you would arrive eventually at what is so well described in those delightful books of Barry Pain, Eliza and Eliza’s Husband, as The girl’. Our various servants are far more real to me than my mother’s friends and my distant relations. I have only to close my eyes to see Jane moving majestically in her kitchen, with vast bust, colossal hips, and a starched band that confined her waist. Her fat never seemed to trouble her, she never suffered from her feet, her knees or her ankles, and if she had blood pressure she was quite unaware of it. As far as I remember she was never ill. She was Olympian. If she had emotions, she never showed them; she was prodigal neither of endearments nor of anger; only on the days when she was engaged in the preparation of a large dinner-party a slight flush would show. The intense calm of her personality would be what I should describe as ‘faintly ruffled’-her face slightly redder, her lips pressed tight together, a faint frown on her forehead. Those were the days when I used to be banished from the kitchen with decision. ‘Now, Miss Agatha, I have no time today–I’ve got a lot on hand. I’ll give you a handful of raisins and then you must go out in the garden and not come and worry me any more.’ I left immediately, impressed, as always, by Jane’s utterances. Jane’s principal characteristics were reticence and aloofness. We knew she had a brother, otherwise we knew little of her family. She never talked about them. She came from Cornwall. She was called ‘Mrs Rowe’, but that was a courtesy title. Like all good servants, she knew her place. It was a place of command, and she made it clear to those working in the house that she was in charge. Jane must have taken pride in the splendid dishes she cooked, but never showed it or spoke of it. She accepted compliments on her dinner on the following morning with no sign of gratification, though I think she was definitely pleased when my father came out into the kitchen and congratulated her. Then there was Barker, one of our housemaids, who opened up to me yet another vista of life. Barkers’ father was a particularly strict Plymouth Brother, and Barker was very conscious of sin and the way she had broken away in certain matters. ‘Damned to all Eternity I shall be, no doubt of it,’ she would say, with a kind of cheerful relish. ‘What my father would say, I don’t know, if he knew I went to Church of England services. What’s more, I enjoyed them. I enjoyed the Vicar’s sermon last Sunday, and I enjoyed the singing too.’ A child who came to stay was heard by my mother saying scornfully one day to the parlourmaid: ‘Oh! you’re only a servant!’ and was promptly taken to task. ‘Never let me hear you speak like that to a servant. Servants must be treated with the utmost courtesy. They are doing skilled work which you could not possibly do yourself without long training. And remember they cannot answer back. You must always be polite to people whose position forbids them to be rude to you. If you are impolite, they will despise you, and rightly, because you have not acted like a lady.’ ‘To be a little lady’ was well rammed home in those times. It included some curious items. Starting with courtesy to dependents, it went on to such things as: ‘Always leave something on your plate for Lady Manners.’ ‘Never drink with your mouth full.’ ‘Remember never to put two halfpenny stamps on a letter unless it is a bill to a tradesman.’ And, of course ‘Put on clean underclothes when you are going on a railway journey in case there should be an accident.’ Tea-time in the kitchen was often a social reunion. Jane had innumerable friends, and one or two of them dropped in nearly every day. Trays of hot rock cakes came out of the oven. Never since have I tasted rock cakes like Jane’s. They were crisp and flat and full of currants, and eaten hot they were Heaven. Jane in her mild bovine way was quite a martinet; if one of the others rose from the table, a voice would say: ‘I haven’t finished yet, Florence,’ and Florence, abashed, would sit down again murmuring, ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Rowe.’ Cooks of any seniority were always ‘Mrs’. Housemaids and parlourmaids were supposed to have ‘suitable’ names–e.g. Jane, Mary, Edith, etc. Such names as Violet, Muriel, Rosamund and so on were not considered suitable, and the girl was told firmly, ‘Whilst you are in my service you will be called “Mary’.’ Parlourmaids, if of sufficient seniority, were often called by their surnames. Friction between ‘the nursery’ and ‘the kitchen’ was not uncommon, but Nursie, though no doubt standing on her rights, was a peaceable person and respected and consulted by the young maids. Dear Nursie–I have a portrait of her hanging in my house in Devon. It was painted by the same artist who painted the rest of my family, a painter well known at that time–N. H. J. Baird. My mother was somewhat critical of Mr Baird’s pictures: ‘He makes everybody look so dirty,’ she complained. ‘All of you look as if you hadn’t washed for weeks!’ There is something in what she said. The heavy blue and green shadows in the flesh tints of my brother’s face do suggest a reluctance to use soap and water, and the portrait of myself at sixteen has a suggestion of an incipient moustache, a blemish from which I have never suffered. My father’s portrait, however, is so pink and white and shining that it might be an advertisement for soap. I suspect that it gave the artist no particular pleasure to paint, but that my mother had vanquished poor Mr Baird by sheer force of personality. My brother’s and sister’s portraits were not particularly like, my father’s was the living image of him, but was far less distinctive as a portrait. Nursie’s portrait was, I am sure, a labour of love on Mr Baird’s part. The transparent cambric of her frilled cap and apron is lovely, and a perfect frame for the wise wrinkled face with its deep set eyes-the whole reminiscent of some Flemish Old Master.

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I don’t know how old Nursie was when she came to us, or why my mother should have chosen such an old woman, but she always said: ‘From the moment Nursie came, I never had to worry about you–I knew you were in good hands.’ A great many babies had passed through those hands–I was the last of them. When the census came round, my father had to register the names and ages of everyone in the house. ‘Very awkward job,’ he said ruefully. ‘The servants don’t like you asking them their ages. And what about Nursie?’ So Nursie was summoned and stood before him, her hands folded in front of her snowy apron and her mild old eyes fixed on him inquiringly. ‘So you see,’ explained my father, after a brief resume of what a census was, ‘I have to put down everyone’s age. Er–what shall I put down for you?’ ‘Whatever you like, Sir,’ replied Nursie politely. ‘Yes, but–er–I have to know.’ ‘Whatever you think best, Sir.’ Nursie was not to be stampeded. His own estimate being that she was at least seventy-five, he hazarded nervously: “Er–er–fifty-nine? Something like that?’ An expression of pain passed across the wrinkled face. ‘Do I really look as old as that, Sir?’ asked Nursie wistfully. ‘No, no–Well, what shall I say?’ Nursie returned to her gambit. ‘Whatever you think right, Sir,’ she said with dignity. My father thereupon wrote down sixty-four. Nursie’s attitude has its echoes in present times. When my husband, Max, was dealing with Polish and Yugoslav pilots during the last war, he encountered the same reaction. ‘Age?’ The pilot waves his hands amiably: ‘Anything you please–twenty, thirty, forty–it does not matter.’ ‘And where were you born?’ ‘Anywhere you like. Cracow, Warsaw, Belgrade, Zagreb-as you please.’ The ridiculous unimportance of these factual details could not be more clearly stressed. Arabs are much the same. ‘Your father is well?’ ‘Oh yes, but he is very old.’ ‘How old?’ ‘Oh a very old man–ninety, ninety—five.’ The father turns out to be just short of fifty. But that is how life is viewed. When you are young, you are young; when you are in vigour you are a ‘very strong man’ when your vigour begins to fail, you are old. If old, you might as well be as old as possible. On my fifth birthday, I was given a dog. It was the most shattering thing that ever happened to me; such unbelievable joy, that I was unable to say a word. When I read that well-known cliche ‘so and so was struck dumb’ I realize that it can be a simple statement of fact. I was struck dumb–I couldn’t even say thank-you. I could hardly look at my beautiful dog. Instead I turned away from him. I needed, urgently, to be alone and come to terms with this incredible happiness. (I have done the same thing frequently during my later life. Why is one so idiotic?) I think it was the lavatory to which I retired–a perfect place for quiet meditation, where no one could possibly pursue you. Lavatories were comfortable, almost residential apartments in those days. I closed the heavy mahogany shelf-like seat, sat on it, gazed unseeingly at the map of Torquay that hung on the wall, and gave myself up to realization. ‘I have a dog…a dog…. It’s a dog of my own…my very own dog…. It’s a Yorkshire terrier…my dog…my very own dog….’ My mother told me later that my father had been much disappointed by the reception of his gift. ‘I thought the child would love it.’ he said. ‘She doesn’t seem to care about it at all.’ But my mother, always understanding, said that I needed a little time. ‘She can’t quite take it in yet.’ The four-month-old Yorkshire terrier puppy, meantime, had wandered out disconsolately into the garden, where he attached himself to our gardener, a grumpy man called Davey. The dog had been bred by a jobbing gardener, and at the sight of a spade being pressed into the earth he felt that here was a place where he could feel at home. He sat down on the garden path and watched the digging with an attentive air. Here in due course I found him and we made acquaintance. We were both shy, and made only tentative advances to each other. But by the end of the week Tony and I were inseparable. His official name, given him by my father, was George Washington–Tony, for short, was my contribution. Tony was an admirable dog for a child–he was good-natured, affectionate, and lent himself to all my fancies. Nursie was spared certain ordeals. Bows of ribbon and general adornments were now applied to Tony, who welcomed them as a mark of appreciation and occasionally ate bits of them in addition to his quota of slippers. He had the privilege of being introduced into my new secret saga. Dickie (Goldie the canary) and Dicksmistress (me) were now joined by Lord Tony. I remember less of my sister in those early years than of my brother. My sister was nice to me, while my brother called me Kid and was lofty–so naturally I attached myself to him whenever he permitted it. The chief fact I remember about him was that he kept white mice. I was introduced to Mr and Mrs Whiskers and their family. Nursie disapproved. She said they smelt. They did, of course. We already had one dog in the house, an old Dandy Dinmont called Scotty, which belonged to my brother. My brother, named Louis Montant after my father’s greatest friend in America, was always known as Monty, and he and Scotty were inseparable. Almost automatically, my mother would murmur: ‘Don’t put your face down on the dog and let him lick you, Monty.’ Monty, flat on the floor by Scotty’s basket, with his arm wreathed lovingly round the dog’s neck, would pay no attention. My father would say: ‘That dog smells terrible!’ Scotty was then fifteen, and only a fervent dog-lover could deny the accusation. ‘Roses!’ Monty would murmur lovingly. ‘Roses! That’s what he smells of–roses.’ Alas, tragedy came to Scotty. Slow and blind, he was out walking with Nursie and myself when, crossing the road, a tradesman’s cart dashed round a corner, and he was run over. We brought him home in a cab and the vet was summoned, but Scotty died a few hours later. Monty was out sailing with some friends. My mother was disturbed at the thought of breaking the news to him. She had the body put in the wash-house and waited anxiously for my brother’s return. Unfortunately, instead of coming straight into the house as usual, he went round to the yard and into the wash-house, looking for some tools he needed. There he found Scotty’s body. He went straight off again and must have walked round for many hours. He got home at last just before midnight. My parents were understanding enough not to mention Scotty’s death to him. He dug Scotty’s grave himself in the Dogs’ Cemetery in a corner of the garden where each family dog had his name in due course on a small headstone. My brother, given, as I have said, to remorseless teasing, used to call me the ‘scrawny chicken’. I obliged him by bursting into tears every time. Why the epithet infuriated me so I do not know. Being somewhat of a cry baby I used to trail off to Mother, sobbing out, ‘I aren’t a scrawny chicken, arm I, Marmee?’ My mother, unperturbed, would merely say: ‘If you don’t want to be teased, why do you go trailing after Monty all the time?’ The question was unanswerable, but such was my brother’s fascination for me that I could not keep away. He was at an age when he was highly scornful of kid sisters, and found me a thorough nuisance. Sometimes he would be gracious and admit me to his ‘workshop’, where he had a lathe, and would allow me to hold pieces of wood and tools and hand them to him. But sooner or later the scrawny chicken was told to take herself off. Once he so highly favoured me as to volunteer to take me out with him in his boat.

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He had a small dinghy which he sailed on Torbay. Rather to everyone’s surprise I was allowed to go. Nursie, who was still with us then, was dead against the expedition, being of the opinion that I would get wet, dirty, tear my frock, pinch my fingers and almost certainly be drowned. ‘Young gentlemen don’t know how to look after a little girl.’ My mother said that she thought I had sense enough not to fall over-board, and that it would be an experience. I think also she wished to express appreciation of Monty’s unusual act of unselfishness. So we walked down the town and on to the pier. Monty brought the boat to the steps and Nursie passed me down to him. At the last moment, mother had qualms. ‘You are to be careful, Monty. Very careful. And don’t be out long. You will look after her, won’t you?’ My brother, who was, I imagine, already repenting of his kindly offer, said briefly, ‘She’ll be all right’. To me he said, ‘Sit where you are and keep still, and for goodness sake don’t touch anything.’ He then did various things with ropes. The boat assumed an angle that made it practically impossible for me to sit where I was and keep still as ordered, and also frightened me a good deal, but as we scudded through the water my spirits revived and I was transported with happiness. Mother and Nursie stood on the end of the pier, gazing after us like figures in a Greek play, Nursie almost weeping as she prophesied doom, my mother seeking to allay her fears, adding finally, probably remembering what a bad sailor she herself was, ‘I don’t expect she’ll ever want to go again. The sea is quite choppy.’ Her pronouncement was true enough. I was returned shortly afterwards, green in the face, having ‘fed the fishes’ as my brother put it, three times. He landed me in high disgust, remarking that women were all the same. IV It was just before I was five years old that I first met fear. Nursie and I were primrosing one spring day. We had crossed the railway line and gone up Shiphay lane, picking primroses from the hedges, where they grew thickly. We turned in through an open gate and went on picking. Our basket was growing full when a voice shouted at us, angry and rough: ‘Wot d’you think you’re doing ‘ere?’ He seemed to me a giant of a man, angry and red-faced. Nursie said we were doing no harm, only primrosing. ‘Trespassing, that’s what you’re at. Get out of it. If you’re not out of that gate in one minute, I’ll boil you alive, see?’ I tugged desperately at Nursie’s hand as we went. Nursie could not go fast, and indeed did not try to do so. My fear mounted. When we were at last safely in the lane I almost collapsed with relief. I was white and sick, as Nursie suddenly noticed. ‘Dearie,’ she said gently, ‘you didn’t think he meant it, did you? Not to boil you or whatever it was?’ I nodded dumbly. I had visualised it. A great steaming cauldron on a fire, myself being thrust into it. My agonised screams. It was all deadly real to me. Nursie talked soothingly. It was a way people had of speaking. A kind of joke, as it were. Not a nice man, a very rude, unpleasant man, but he hadn’t meant what he said. It was a joke. It had been no joke to me, and even now when I go into a field a slight tremor goes down my spine. From that day to this I have never known so real a terror. Yet in nightmares I never relived this particular experience. All children have nightmares, and I doubt if they are a result of nursemaids or others ‘frightening’ them, or of any happening in real life. My own particular nightmare centred round someone I called ‘The Gunman’. I never read a story about anyone of the kind. I called him The Gunman because he carried a gun, not because I was frightened of his shooting me, or for any reason connected with the gun. The gun was part of his appearance, which seems to me now to have been that of a Frenchman in grey-blue uniform, powdered hair in a queue and a kind of three-cornered hat, and the gun was some old-fashioned kind of musket. It was his mere presence that was frightening. The dream would be quite ordinary–a tea-party, or a walk with various people, usually a mild festivity of some kind. Then suddenly a feeling of uneasiness would come. There was someone–someone who ought not to be there–a horrid feeling of fear: and then I would see him–sitting at the tea-table, walking along the beach, joining in the game. His pale blue eyes would meet mine, and I would wake up shrieking: ‘The Gunman, the Gunman!’ ‘Miss Agatha had one of her gunman dreams last night,’ Nursie would report in her placid voice. ‘Why is he so frightening, darling?’ my mother would ask. ‘What do you think he will do to you?’ I didn’t know why he was frightening. Later the dream varied. The Gunman was not always in costume. Sometimes, as we sat round a tea-table, I would look across at a friend, or a member of the family, and I would suddenly realise that it was not Dorothy or Phyllis or Monty, or my mother or whoever it might be. The pale blue eyes in the familiar face met mine–under the familiar appearance. It was really the Gunman. At the age of four I fell in love. It was a shattering and wonderful experience. The object of my passion was one of the Dartmouth cadets, a friend of my brother’s. Golden-haired and blue-eyed, he appealed to all my romantic instincts. He himself could have had no idea of the emotions he aroused. Gloriously uninterested in the ‘kid sister’ of his friend Monty, he would probably have said, if asked, that I disliked him. An excess of emotion caused me to go in the opposite direction if I saw him coming, and when seated at the dining-table, to keep my head resolutely turned away. My mother took me gently to task. ‘I know you’re shy, dear, but you must be polite. It’s so rude to turn your head away from Philip all the time, and if he speaks to you, you only mutter. Even if you dislike him, you must be polite.’ Dislike him! How little anyone knew. When I think of it now, how supremely satisfying early love can be. It demands nothing–not a look nor a word. It is pure adoration. Sustained by it, one walks on air, creating in one’s own mind heroic occasions on which one will be of service to the beloved one. Going into a plague camp to nurse him. Saving him from fire. Shielding him from a fatal bullet. Anything, indeed, that has caught the imagination in a story. In these imaginings there is never a happy ending. You yourself are burnt to death, shot, or succumb to the plague. The hero does not even know of the supreme sacrifice you have made. I sat on the nursery floor, and played with Tony, looking solemn and priggish, whilst inside my head a glorious exultation swirled in extravagant fancies. The months passed. Philip became a midshipman and left the Britannia. For a short while his image persisted and then dwindled. Love vanished, to return three years later, when I adored hopelessly a tall dark young Army captain who was courting my sister. Ashfield was home and accepted as such; Ealing, however, was an excitement. It had all the romance of a foreign country. One of its principal joys was its lavatory. It had a splendidly large mahogany lavatory seat. Sitting on it one felt exactly like a Queen on her throne, and I rapidly translated Dicksmistress into Queen Marguerite, and Dickie became her son, Prince Goldie, the heir to the throne. He sat at her right hand on the small circle which enclosed the handsome Wedgwood plug handle. Here in the morning I woud retreat, sit bowing, giving audience, and extending my hand to be kissed until summoned angrily to come out by others wishing to enter.

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On the wall there hung a coloured map of New York City, also an object of interest to me. There were several American prints in the house. In the spare bedroom was a set of coloured prints for which I had a deep affection. One, entitled ‘Winter Sports’, depicted a very cold-looking man on a sheet of ice, dragging up a fish through a small hole. It seemed rather a melancholy sport to me. On the other hand, Grey Eddy, the trotter, was fascinatingly dashing. Since my father had married the niece of his stepmother (his American father’s English second wife), and since he called her Mother whilst his wife continued to call her Auntie, she was usually known officially as Auntie-Grannie. My grandfather had spent the last years of his life going to and fro between his business in New York and its English branch in Manchester. His had been one of the ‘success stories’ of America. A poor boy from a family in Massachusetts, he had come to New York, been engaged more or less as an office boy, and had risen to be a partner in the firm. ‘Shirtsleeves to Swivel-chair in Three Generations’ had certainly come true in our family. My grandfather made a big fortune. My father, mainly owing to trust in his fellow men, let it dwindle away, and my brother ran through what was left of it like a flash of lightning. Not long before he died my grandfather had bought a large house in Cheshire. He was a sick man by then, and his second wife was left a widow comparatively young. She lived on in Cheshire for a while, but finally bought a house in Ealing, which was then still practically in the country. As she often said, there were fields all around. However, by the time I came to visit her this seemed hard to believe. Rows of neat houses spread in every direction. Grannie’s house and garden had a tremendous fascination for me. I divided the nursery into several ‘territories’. The front part had been built out with a bay window and had a gay striped drugget on the floor. This part I christened the Muriel Room (possibly because I had been fascinated by the term Oriel window). The back part of the nursery, covered with a Brussels carpet, was the Dining Hall. Various mats and pieces of linoleum were allocated by me to different rooms. I moved, busy and important, from one room of my house to another, murmuring under my breath. Nursie, peaceful as ever, sat stitching. Another fascination was Auntie-Grannie’s bed, an immense mahogany four-poster closely hemmed in with red damask curtains. It was a feather bed, and early in the morning I would arrive before being dressed and climb in. Grannie was awake from six o’clock onwards, and always welcomed me. Downstairs there was the drawing-room, crowded to repletion with marquetry furniture and Dresden china, and perpetually shrouded in gloom because of the conservatory erected outside. The drawing-room was only used for parties. Next to the drawing-room was the morning-room, where almost invariably a ‘sewing-woman’ was ensconced. Now that I come to think of it, sewing-women were an inevitable accompaniment of a household. They all had a certain resemblance to each other in that they were usually very refined, in unfortunate circumstances, treated with careful courtesy by the mistress of the house, and the family, and with no courtesy at all by the servants, were sent in meals on trays, and–as far as I can remember–were unable to produce any article of clothing that fitted. Everything was either too tight everywhere or else hung on one in loose folds. The answer to any complaint was usually: ‘Ah yes, but Miss James has had such an unfortunate life.’ So, in the morning-room, Miss James sat and sewed with patterns all around her, and a sewing-machine in front of her. In the dining-room, Grannie passed her life in Victorian contentment. The furniture was of heavy mahogany with a central table and chairs all round it. The windows were thickly draped with Nottingham lace. Grannie sat either at the table, in a huge leather-backed carver’s chair, writing letters, or else in a big velvet armchair by the fireplace. The tables, sofa, and some of the chairs were taken up with books, books that were meant to be there and books escaping out of loosely tied-up parcels. Grannie was always buying books, for herself and for presents, and in the end the books became too much for her and she forgot to whom she had meant to send them–or else discovered that ‘Mr Bennett’s dear little boy had, unnoticed by her, now reached the age of eighteen and was no longer eligible for The Boys of St. Guldred’s or The Adventures of Timothy Tiger. An indulgent playmate, Grannie would lay aside the long scratchy-looking letter she was writing (heavily crossed ‘to save notepaper’) and enter into the delightful pastime of ‘a chicken from Mr Whiteley’s’. Needless to say, I was the chicken. Selected by Grannie with appeals to the shopman as to whether I was really young and tender, brought home, trussed up, skewered (yells of delight from my skewered self), put in the oven, done to a turn, brought on the table dished up, great show of sharpening the carving-knife, when suddenly the chicken comes alive and ‘It’s Me!’–grand climax–to be repeated ad lib. One of the morning events was Grannie’s visit to the store-cupboard which was situated by the side door into the garden. I would immediately appear and Grannie would exclaim, ‘Now what can a little girl want here?’ The little girl would wait hopefully, peering into the interesting recesses. Rows of jars of jam and preserves. Boxes of dates, preserved fruits, figs, French plums, cherries, angelica, packets of raisins and currants, pounds of butter and sacks of sugar, tea and flour. All the household eatables lived there, and were solemnly handed out every day in anticipation of the day’s needs. Also a searching inquiry was held as to exactly what had been done with the previous day’s allocation. Grannie kept a liberal table for all, but was highly suspicious of waste. Household needs satisfied, and yesterday’s provender satisfactorily accounted for, Grannie would unscrew a jar of French plums and I would go gladly out into the garden with my hands full. How odd it is, when remembering early days, that the weather seems constant in certain places. In my nursery at Torquay it is always an autumn or winter afternoon. There is a fire in the grate, and clothes drying on the high fireguard, and outside there are leaves swirling down, or sometimes, excitingly, snow. In the Ealing garden it is always summer–and particularly hot summer. I can relive easily the gasp of dry hot air and the smell of roses as I go out through the side door. That small square of green grass, surrounded with standard rose-trees, does not seem small to me. Again it was a world. First the roses, very important; any dead heads snipped off every day, the other roses cut and brought in and arranged in a number of small vases. Grannie was inordinately proud of her roses, attributing all their size and beauty to ‘the bedroom slops, my dear. Liquid manure–nothing like it! No one has roses like mine.’ On Sundays my other grandmother and usually two of my uncles used to come to midday dinner. It was a splendid Victorian day. Granny Boehmer, known as Granny B., who was my mother’s mother, would arrive about eleven o’clock, panting a little because she was very stout, even stouter than Auntie-Grannie. After taking a succession of trains and omnibuses from London, her first action would be to rid herself of her buttoned boots. Her servant Harriet used to come with her on these occasions. Harriet would kneel before her to remove the boots and substitute a comfortable pair of woolly slippers. Then with a deep sigh Granny B. would settle herself down at the dining-room table, and the two sisters would start their Sunday morning business. This consisted of lengthy and complicated accounts. Granny B. did a great deal of Auntie- Grannie’s shopping for her at the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street. The Army and Navy Stores was the hub of the universe to the two sisters. Lists, figures, accounts were gone into and thoroughly enjoyed by both.

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Lists, figures, accounts were gone into and thoroughly enjoyed by both. Discussions on quality of the goods purchased took place: ‘You wouldn’t have cared for it, Margaret. Not good quality material, very rawny–not at all like that last plum colour velvet.’ Then Auntie-Grannie would bring out her large fat purse, which I always looked upon with awe and considered as an outward and visible sign of immense wealth. It had a lot of gold sovereigns in the middle compartment, and the rest of it was bulging with half-crowns and sixpences and an occasional five shilling piece. The accounts for repairs and small purchases were settled. The Army and Navy Stores, of course, was on a deposit account–and I think that Auntie-Grannie always added a cash present for Granny B’s time and trouble. The sisters were fond of each other, but there was also a good deal of petty jealousy and bickering between them. Each enjoyed teasing the other, and getting the better of her in some way. Granny B. had, by her own account, been the beauty of the family. Auntie-Grannie used to deny this. ‘Mary (or Polly, as she called her) had a pretty face, yes,’ she would say. ‘But of course she hadn’t got the figure I had. Gentlemen like a figure.’ In spite of Polly’s lack of figure (for which, I may say, she amply made up later–I have never seen such a bust) at the age of sixteen a captain in the Black Watch had fallen in love with her. Though the family had said that she was too young to marry, he pointed out that he was going abroad with his regiment and might not be back in England for some time, and that he would like the marriage to take place straight away. So married Polly was at sixteen. That, I think, was possibly the first point of jealousy. It was a love match. Polly was young and beautiful and her Captain was said to be the handsomest man in the regiment. Polly soon had five children, one of whom died. Her husband left her a young widow of twenty-seven–after a fall from his horse. Auntie-Grannie was not married until much later in life. She had had a romance with a young naval officer, but they were too poor to marry and he turned to a rich widow. She in turn married a rich American with one son. She was in some ways frustrated, though her good sense and love of life never deserted her. She had no children. However, she was left a very rich widow. With Polly, on the other hand, it was all she could do to feed and clothe her family after her husband’s death. His tiny pension was all she had. I remember her sitting all day in the window of her house, sewing, making fancy pin- cushions, embroidered pictures and screens. She was wonderful with her needle, and she worked without ceasing, far more, I think, than an eight-hour day. So each of them envied the other for something they did not have. I think they quite enjoyed their spirited squabbles. Erupting sounds would fill the ear. ‘Nonsense, Margaret, I never heard such nonsense in my life!’ Indeed, Mary, let me tell you–’ and so on. Polly had been courted by some of her dead husband’s fellow officers and had had several offers of marriage, but she had steadfastly refused to marry again. She would put no one in her husband’s place, she said, and she would be buried with him in his grave in Jersey when her time came. The Sunday accounts finished, and commissions written down for the coming week, the uncles would arrive. Uncle Ernest was in the Home Office and Uncle Harry secretary of the Army and Navy Stores. The eldest uncle, Uncle Fred, was in India with his regiment. The table was laid and Sunday midday dinner was served. An enormous joint, usually cherry tart and cream, a vast piece of cheese, and finally dessert on the best Sunday dessert plates–very beautiful they were and are: I have them still; I think eighteen out of the original twenty-four, which is not bad for about sixty odd years. I don’t know if they were Coalport or French china–the edges were bright green, scalloped with gold, and in the centre of each plate was a different fruit–my favourite was then and always has been the Fig, a juicy-looking purple fig. My daughter Rosalind’s has always been the Gooseberry, an unusually large and luscious gooseberry. There was also a beautiful Peach, White Currants, Red Currants, Raspberries, Strawberries, and many others. The climax of the meal was when these were placed on the table, with their little lace mats on them, and finger bowls, and then everyone in turn guessed what fruit their plate was. Why this afforded so much satisfaction I cannot say, but it was always a thrilling moment, and when you had guessed right you felt you had done something worthy of esteem. After a gargantuan meal there was sleep. Aunti-Grannie retired to her secondary chair by the fireplace–large and rather low-seated. Granny B. would settle on the sofa, a claret-coloured leather couch, buttoned all over its surface, and over her mountainous form was spread an Afghan rug. I don’t know what happened to the uncles. They may have gone for a walk, or retired to the drawing-room, but the drawing-room was seldom used. It was impossible to use the morning-room because that room was sacred to Miss Grant, the present holder of the post of sewing-woman. ‘My dear, such a sad case,’ Grannie would murmur to her friends. ‘Such a poor little creature, deformed, only one passage, like a fowl.’ That phrase always fascinated me, because I didn’t know what it meant. Where did what I took to be a corridor come in? After everyone except me had slept soundly for at least an hour–I used to rock myself cautiously in the rocking-chair–we would have a game of Schoolmaster. Both Uncle Harry and Uncle Ernest were splendid exponents of Schoolmaster. We sat in a row, and whoever was schoolmaster, armed with a newspaper truncheon, would pace up and down the line shouting out questions in a hectoring voice: ‘What is the date of the invention of needles?’ Who was Henry VIII’s third wife?’ How did William Rufus meet his death?’ What are the diseases of wheat?’ Anyone who could give a correct answer moved up; those correspondingly disgraced moved down. I suppose it was the Victorian forerunner of the quizzes we enjoy so much nowadays. The uncles, I think, disappeared after that, having done their duty by their mother and their aunt. Granny B. remained, and partook of tea with Madeira cake; then came the terrible moment when the buttoned boots were brought forth, and Harriet started on the task of encasing her in them once more. It was agonising to watch, and must have been anguish to endure. Poor Granny B.’s ankles had swollen up like puddings by the end of the day. To force the buttons into their holes with the aid of a button-hook involved an enormous amount of painful pinching, which forced sharp cries from her. Oh! those buttoned boots. Why did anyone wear them? Were they recommended by doctors? Were they the price of a slavish devotion to fashion? I know boots were said to be good for children’s ankles, to strengthen them, but that could hardly apply in the case of an old lady of seventy. Anyway, finally encased and pale still from the pain, Granny B. started her return by train and bus to her own residence in Bayswater. Ealing at that time had the same characteristics as Cheltenham or Leamington Spa. The retired military and navy came there in large quantities for the ‘healthy air’ and the advantage of being so near London. Grannie led a thoroughly social life–she was a sociable woman at all times. Her house was always full of old Colonels and Generals for whom she would embroider waistcoats and knit bedsocks: ‘I hope your wife won’t object,’ she would say as she presented them. ‘I shouldn’t like to cause trouble!’ The old gentlemen would make gallant rejoinders, and go away feeling thoroughly doggish and pleased with their manly attractions. Their gallantry always made me rather shy. The jokes they cracked for my amusement did not seem funny, and their arch, rallying manner made me nervous. ‘And what’s the little lady going to have for her dessert?

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‘And what’s the little lady going to have for her dessert? Sweets to the sweet, little lady. A peach now? Or one of these golden plums to match those golden curls?’ Pink with embarrassment, I murmured that I would like a peach please. ‘And which peach? Now then, choose.’ ‘Please,’ I murmured, ‘I would like the biggest and the bestest.’ Roars of laughter. All unaware, I seemed to have made a joke. ‘You shouldn’t ask for the biggest, ever,’ said Nursie later. ‘It’s greedy.’ I could admit that it was greedy, but why was it funny? As a guide to social life, Nursie was in her element. ‘You must eat up your dinner quicker than that. Suppose now, that you were to be dining at a ducal house when you grow up?’ Nothing seemed more unlikely, but I accepted the possibility. ‘There will be a grand butler and several footmen, and when the moment comes, they’ll clear away your plate, whether you’ve finsihed or not.’ I paled at the prospect and applied myself to boiled mutton with a will. Incidents of the aristocracy were frequently on Nursie’s lips. They fired me with ambition. I wanted, above everything in the world, to be the Lady Agatha one day. But Nursie’s social knowledge was inexorable. ‘That you can never be,’ she said. ‘Never?’ I was aghast. ‘Never,’ said Nursie, a firm realist. ‘To be the Lady Agatha, you have to be born it. You have to be the daughter of a Duke, a Marquis, or an Earl. If you marry a Duke, you’ll be a Duchess, but that’s because of your husband’s title. It’s not something you’re born with.’ It was my first brush with the inevitable. There are things that cannot be achieved. It is important to realise this early in life, and very good for you. There are some things that you just cannot have–a natural curl in your hair, black eyes (if yours happen to be blue) or the title of Lady Agatha. On the whole I think the snobbery of my childhood, the snobbery of birth that is, is more palatable than the other snobberies: the snobbery of wealth and intellectual snobbery. Intellectual snobbery seems today to breed a particular form of envy and venom. Parents are determined that their offspring shall shine. ‘We’ve made great sacrifices for you to have a good education,’ they say. The child is burdened with guilt if he does not fulfil their hopes. Everyone is so sure that it is all a matter of opportunity–not of natural aptitude. I think late Victorian parents were more realistic and had more consideration for their children and for what would make a happy and successful life for them. There was much less keeping up with the Joneses. Nowadays I often feel that it is for one’s own prestige that one wants one’s children to succeed. The Victorians looked dispassionately at their offspring and made up their minds about their capacities. A. was obviously going to be ‘the pretty one’. B. was ‘the clever one’. C. was going to be plain and was definitely not intellectual. Good works would be C.’s best chance. And so on. Sometimes, of course, they were wrong, but on the whole it worked. There is an enormous relief in not being expected to produce something that you haven’t got. In contrast to most of our friends, we were not really well off My father, as an American, was considered automatically to be ‘rich’. All Americans were supposed to be rich. Actually he was merely comfortably off We did not have a butler or a footman. We did not have a carriage and horses and a coachman. We had three servants, which was a minimum then. On a wet day, if you were going out to tea with a friend, you walked a mile and a half in the rain in your machintosh and your goloshes. A ‘cab’ was never ordered for a child unless it was going to a real party in a perishable dress. On the other hand, the food that was served to guests in our house was quite incredibly luxurious compared to present-day standards–indeed you would have to employ a chef and his assistant to provide it! I came across the menu of one of our early dinner parties (for ten) the other day. It began with a choice of thick or clear soup, then boiled turbot, or fillets of sole. After that came a sorbet. Saddle of mutton followed. Then, rather unexpectedly, Lobster Mayonnaise. Pouding Diplomatique and Charlotte Russe were the sweets and then dessert. All this was produced by Jane, single-handed. Nowadays, of course, on an equivalent income, a family would have a car, perhaps a couple of dailies, and any heavy entertaining would probably be in a restaurant or done at home by the wife. In our family it was my sister who was early recognised as ‘the clever one’. Her headmistress at Brighton urged that she should go to Girton. My father was upset and said ‘We can’t have Madge turned into a blue-stocking. We’d better send her to Paris to be “finished’.’ So my sister went to Paris, to her own complete satisfaction since she had no wish whatever to go to Girton. She certainly had the brains of the family. She was witty, very entertaining, quick of repartee and successful in everything she attempted. My brother, a year younger than her, had enormous personal charm, a liking for literature, but was otherwise intellectually backward. I think both my father and my mother realised that he was going to be the ‘difficult’ one. He had a great love of practical engineering. My father had hoped that he would go into banking but realised that he did not have the capacity to succeed. So he took up engineering–but there again he could not succeed, as mathematics let him down. I myself was always recognised, though quite kindly, as ‘the slow one’ of the family. The reactions of my mother and my sister were unusually quick–I could never keep up. I was, too, very inarticulate. It was always difficult for me to assemble into words what I wanted to say. ‘Agatha’s so terribly slow’ was always the cry. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. It did not worry or distress me. I was resigned to being always ‘the slow one’. It was not until I was over twenty that I realised that my home standard had been unusually high and that actually I was quite as quick or quicker than the average. Inarticulate I shall always be. It is probably one of the causes that have made me a writer. The first real sorrow of my life was parting with Nursie. For some time one of her former nurselings who had an estate in Somerset had been urging her to retire. He offered her a comfortable little cottage on his property where she and her sister could live out their days. Finally she made her decision. The time had come for her to quit work. I missed her terribly. Every day I wrote to her–a short badly-written ill- spelt note: writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. They were practically always the same: ‘Darling Nursie. I miss you very much. I hope you are quite well. Tony has a flea. Lots and lots of love and kisses. From Agatha.’ My mother provided a stamp for these letters, but after a while she was moved to gentle protest. ‘I don’t think you need write every day. Twice a week, perhaps?’ I was appalled. ‘But I think of her every day. I must write.’ She signed, but did not object. Nevertheless she continued gentle suggestion. It was some months before I cut down correspondence to the two letters a week suggested. Nursie herself was a poor hand with a pen, and in any case was too wise, I imagine, to encourage me in my obstinate fidelity. She wrote to me twice a month, gentle nondescript epistles. I think my mother was disturbed that I found her so hard to forget. She told me afterwards that she had discussed the matter with my father, who had replied with an unexpected twinkle: ‘Well, you remembered me very faithfully as a child when I went to America.’ My mother said that that was quite different. ‘Did you think that I would come back and marry you one day when you were grown up?’ he asked.

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My mother said, ‘No, indeed,’ then hesitated and admitted that she had had her day-dream. It was a typically sentimental Victorian one. My father was to make a brilliant but unhappy marriage. Disillusioned, after his wife’s death he returned to seek out his quiet cousin Clara. Alas, Clara, a helpless invalid, lay permanently on a sofa, and finally blessed him with her dying breath. She laughed as she told him–‘You see,’ she said, ‘I thought I shouldn’t look so dumpy lying on a sofa–with a pretty soft wool cover thrown over me.’ Early death and invalidism were as much the tradition of romance then as toughness seems to be nowadays. No young woman then, as far as I can judge, would ever own up to having rude health. Grannie always told me with great complacence how delicate she had been as a child, ‘never expected to live to maturity’ a slight knock on the hand when playing and she fainted away. Granny B., on the other hand, said of her sister: ‘Margaret was always perfectly strong. I was the delicate one.’ Auntie-Grannie lived to ninety-two and Granny B. to eight-six, and personally I doubt if they were ever delicate at all. But extreme sensibility, constant fainting fits, and early consumption (a decline) were fashionable. Indeed, so imbued with this point of view was Grannie that she frequently went out of her way to impart mysteriously to my various young men how terribly delicate and frail I was and how unlikely to reach old age. Often, when I was eighteen, one of my swains would say anxiously to me, ‘Are you sure you won’t catch a chill? Your grandmother told me how delicate you are!’ Indignantly I would protest the rude health I had always enjoyed, and the anxious face would clear. ‘But why does your grandmother say you’re delicate?’ I had to explain that Grannie was doing her loyal best to make me sound interesting. When she herself was young, Grannie told me, young ladies were never able to manage more than a morsel of food at the dinner-table if gentlemen were present. Substantial trays were taken up to bedrooms later. Illness and early death pervaded even children’s books. A book called Our White Violet was a great favourite of mine. Little Violet, a saintly invalid on page one, died an edifying death surrounded by her weeping family on the last page. Tragedy was relieved by her two naughty brothers, Punny and Firkin, who never ceased getting themselves into mischief. Little Women, a cheerful tale on the whole, had to sacrifice rosy-faced Beth. The death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop leaves me cold and slightly nauseated, but in Dickens’s time, of course, whole families wept over its pathos. That article of household furniture, the sofa or couch, is associated nowadays mainly with the psychiatrist–but in Victorian times it was the symbol of early death, decline, and romance with a capital R. I am inclined to the belief that the Victorian wife and mother cashed in on it pretty well. It excused her from much household drudgery. She often took to it in the early forties and spent a pleasant life, waited on hand and foot, given affectionate consideration by her devoted husband and ungrudging service by her daughters. Friends flocked to visit her, and her patience and sweetness under affliction were admired by all. Was there really anything the matter with her? Probably not. No doubt her back ached and she suffered from her feet as most of us do as life goes on. The sofa was the answer. Another of my favourite books was about a little German girl (naturally an invalid, crippled) who lay all day looking out of the window. Her attendant, a selfish and pleasure-loving young woman, rushed out one day to view a procession. The invalid leaned out too far, fell and was killed. Haunting remorse of the pleasure-loving attendant, white-faced and grief-stricken for life. All these gloomy books I read with great satisfaction. And there were, of course, the Old Testament stories, in which I had revelled from an early age. Going to church was one of the highlights of the week. The parish church of Tor Mohun was the oldest church in Torquay. Torquay itself was a modern watering place, but Tor Mohun was the original hamlet. The old church was a small one, and it was decided that a second, bigger church was needed for the parish. This was built just about the time that I was born, and my father advanced a sum of money in my infant name so that I should be a founder. He explained this to me in due course and I felt very important. ‘When can I go to church?’ had been my constant demand–and at last the great day came. I sat next to my father in a pew near the front and followed the service in his big prayer-book. He had told me beforehand that I could go out before the sermon if I liked, and when the time came he whispered to me, ‘Would you like to go?’ I shook my head vigorously and so remained. He took my hand in his and I sat contentedly, trying hard not to fidget. I enjoyed church services on Sunday very much. At home previously there had been special story-books only allowed to be read on Sundays (which made a treat of them) and books of Bible stories with which I was familiar. There is no doubt that the stories of the Old Testament are, from a child’s point of view, rattling good yarns. They have that dramatic cause and effect which a child’s mind demands: Joseph and his brethren, his coat of many colours, his rise to power in Egypt, and the dramatic finale of his forgiveness of the wicked brothers. Moses and the burning bush was another favourite. David and Goliath, too, has a sure-fire appeal. Only a year or two ago, standing on the mound at Nimrud, I watched the local bird-scarer, an old Arab with his handful of stones and his sling, defending the crops from the hordes of predatory birds. Seeing his accuracy of aim and the deadliness of his weapon, I suddenly realised for the first time that it was Goliath against whom the dice were loaded. David was in a superior position from the start–the man with a long-distance weapon against the man who had none. Not so much the little fellow against the big one, as brains versus brawn. A good many interesting people came to our house during my young days, and it seems a pity that I do not remember any of them. All I recall about Henry James is my mother complaining that he always wanted a lump of sugar broken in two for his tea–and that it really was affectation, as a small knob would do quite as well Rudyard Kipling came, and again my only memory is a discussion between my mother and a friend as to why he had ever married Mrs Kipling. My mother’s friend ended by saying, ‘I know the reason. They are the perfect complement to each other.’ Taking the word to be ‘compliment’ I though it a very obscure remark, but as Nursie explained one day that to ask you to marry him was the highest compliment a gentleman could pay a lady, I began to see the point. Though I came down to tea-parties, I remember, in white muslin and a yellow satin sash, hardly anyone at the parties remains in my mind. The people I imagined were always more real to me than the flesh and blood ones I met. I do remember a close friend of my mother’s, a Miss Tower, mainly because I took endless pains to avoid her. She had black eyebrows and enormous white teeth, and I thought privately that she looked exactly like a wolf. She had a habit of pouncing on me, kissing me vehemently and exclaiming, ‘I could eat you!’ I was always afraid she would. All through my life I have carefully abstained from rushing at children and kissing them unasked. Poor little things, what defence have they? Dear Miss Tower, so good and kind and so fond of children–but with so little idea of their feelings. Lady MacGregor was a social leader in Torquay, and she and I were on happy, joking terms. When I was still in the perambulator she had accosted me one day and asked if I knew who she was? I said truthfully that I didn’t. ‘Tell your Mama,’ she said, ‘that you met Mrs Snooks out today.’ As soon as she had gone, Nursie took me to task.

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‘That’s Lady MacGregor, and you know her quite well.’ But thereafter I always greeted her as Mrs Snooks and it was our own private joke. A cheerful soul was my godfather, Lord Lifford, then Captain Hewitt. He came to the house one day, and hearing Mr and Mrs Miller were out said cheerfully, ‘Oh, that’s all right. I’ll come in and wait for them,’ and attempted to push past the parlourmaid. The conscientious parlourmaid slammed the door in his face and rushed upstairs to call to him from the conveniently situated lavatory window. He finally convinced her that he was a friend of the family–principally because he said, ‘And I know the window you’re speaking from, it’s the W.C.’ This proof of topography convinced her, and she let him in, but retired convulsed with shame at his knowledge that it was the lavatory from which she had been speaking. We were very delicate about lavatories in those days. It was unthinkable to be seen entering or leaving one except by an intimate member of the family; difficult in our house, since the lavatory was halfway up the stairs and in full view from the hall. The worst, of course, was to be inside and then hear voices below. Impossible to come out. One had to stay immured there until the coast was clear. Of my own childish friends I do not remember much. There were Dorothy and Dulcie, younger than I was; stolid children with adenoids, whom I found dull. We had tea in the garden and ran races round a big ilex tree, eating Devonshire cream on ‘tough cakes’ (the local bun). I cannot imagine why this pleased us. Their father, Mr B., was my father’s great crony. Soon after we came to live in Torquay, Mr B. told my father that he was going to be married. A wonderful woman, so he described her, ‘And it frightens me, Joe’–my father was always called Joe by his friends–‘it positively frightens me how that woman loves me!’ Shortly afterwards a friend of my mother’s arrived to stay, seriously perturbed. Acting as companion to someone at a hotel in North Devon, she had come across a large, rather handsome young woman, who in a loud voice was conversing with a friend in the hotel lounge. ‘I’ve landed my bird, Dora,’ she boomed triumphantly. ‘Got him to the point at last, and he’s eating out of my hand.’ Dora congratulated her, and marriage settlements were freely discussed. Then the name of Mr B. was mentioned as the duly landed bridegroom. A great consultation was held between my mother and father. What, if anything, was to be done about this? Could they let poor B. be married for his money in this shameful way? Was it too late? Would he believe them if they told him what had been overheard. My father, at last, made his decision. B. was not to be told anything. Tale- telling was a mean business. And B. was not an ignorant boy. He had chosen with his eyes open. Whether Mrs B. had married her husband for money or not, she made him an excellent wife, and they appeared to be as happy together as turtle-doves. They had three children, were practically inseparable, and a better home life could not be found. Poor B. eventually died of cancer of the tongue, and all through his long painful ordeal his wife nursed him devotedly. It was a lesson, my mother once said, in not thinking you know what’s best for other people. When one went to lunch or tea with the B.’s the talk was entirely of food. ‘Percival, my love,’ Mrs B. would boom, ‘some more of this excellent mutton. Deliciously tender.’ ‘As you say, Edith, my dear. Just one more slice. Let me pass you the caper sauce. Excellently made. Dorothy, my love, some more mutton?’ ‘No, thank you, papa.’ ‘Dulcie? Just a small slice from the knuckle–so tender.’ ‘No, thank you, mamma.’ I had one other friend called Margaret. She was what might be termed a semi- official friend. We did not visit each other’s homes (Margaret’s mother had bright orange hair and very pink cheeks; I suspect now that she was considered ‘fast’ and that my father would not allow my mother to call), but we took walks together. Our nurses, I gathered, were friends. Margaret was a great talker and she used to cause me horrible embarrassment. She had just lost her front teeth and it made her conversation so indistinct that I could not take in what she said. I felt it would be unkind to say so, so I answered at random, growing more and more desperate. Finally Margaret offered to ‘tell me a story’. It was all about ‘thome poithoned thweets’, but what happened to them I shall never know. It went on incomprehensibly for a long time and Margaret ended up triumphantly with, ‘Don’t you think thatth a loverly thtory?’ I agreed fervently. ‘Do you think thee really ought to–’ I felt questioning on the story would be too much for me to bear. I broke in with decision. ‘I’ll tell you a story now, Margaret.’ Margaret looked undecided. Evidently there was some knotty point in the poisoned sweets story that she wanted to discuss, but I was desperate. ‘It’s about a–a–peach-stone,’ I improvised wildly. ‘About a fairy who lived in a peach-stone.’ ‘Go on,’ said Margaret. I went on. I spun things out till Margaret’s gate was in sight. ‘That’s a very nice story,’ said Margaret appreciatively. ‘What fairy book does it come out of?’ It did not come out of any fairy book. It came out of my head. It was not, I think, a particularly good story. But it had saved me from the awful unkindness of reproaching Margaret for her missing teeth. I said that I could not quite remember which fairy book it was in. When I was five years old, my sister came back ‘finished’ from Paris. I remember the excitement of seeing her alight at Ealing from a four-wheeler cab. She wore a gay little straw hat and a white veil with black spots on it, and appeared to me an entirely new person. She was very nice to her little sister and used to tell me stories. She also endeavoured to cope with my education by teaching me French from a manual called Le Petit Precepteur. She was not, I think, a good teacher and I took a fervant dislike to the book. Twice I adroitly concealed it behind other books in the bookshelf; it was a very short time, however, before it came to light again. I saw that I had to do better. In a corner of the room was an enormous glass case containing a stuffed bald-headed eagle which was my father’s pride and glory. I insinuated Le Petit Précepteur behind the eagle into the unseen corner of the room. This was highly successful. Several days passed and a thorough hunt failed to find the missing book. My mother, however, defeated my efforts with ease. She proclaimed a prize of a particularly delectable chocolate for whoever should find the book. My greed was my undoing. I fell into the trap, conducted an elaborate search round the room, finally climbed up on a chair, peered behind the eagle, and exclaimed in a surprised voice: ‘Why, there it is!’ Retribution followed. I was reproved and sent to bed for the rest of the day. I accepted this as fair, since I had been found out, but I considered it unjust that I was not given the chocolate. That had been promised to whoever found the book, and I had found it. My sister had a game which both fascinated and terrified me. This was ‘The Elder Sister’. The thesis was that in our family was an elder sister, senior to my sister and myself. She was mad and lived in a cave at Corbin’s Head, but sometimes she came to the house. She was indistinguishable in appearance from my sister, except for her voice, which was quite different. It was a frightening voice, a soft oily voice. ‘You know who I am, don’t you, dear? I’m your sister Madge. You don’t think I’m anyone else, do you? You wouldn’t think that?’ I used to feel indescribable terror. Of course I knew really it was only Madge pretending–but was it?

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Of course I knew really it was only Madge pretending–but was it? Wasn’t it perhaps true? That voice–those crafty sideways glancing eyes. It was the elder sister! My mother used to get angry. ‘I won’t have you frightening the child with this silly game, Madge.’ Madge would reply reasonably enough: ‘But she asks me to do it.’ I did. I would say to her: ‘Will the elder sister be coming soon?’ ‘I don’t know. Do you want her to come?’ ‘Yes–yes, I do. Did I really? I suppose so. My demand was never satisfied at once. Perhaps two days later there would be a knock at the nursery door, and the voice: ‘Can I come in, dear? It’s your elder sister. Many years later, Madge had still only to use the Elder Sister voice and I would feel chills down my spine. Why did I like being frightened? What instinctive need is satisfied by terror? Why, indeed, do children like stories about bears, wolves and witches? Is it because something rebels in one against the life that is too safe? Is a certain amount of danger in life a need of human beings? Is much of the juvenile delinquency nowadays attributable to the fact of too much security? Do you instinctively need something to combat, to overcome–to, as it were, prove yourself to yourself? Take away the wolf from Red Riding Hood and would any child enjoy it? However, like most things in life, you want to be frightened a little–but not too much. My sister must have had a great gift for story-telling. At an early age her brother would urge her on. ‘Tell it me again.’ ‘I don’t want to.’ ‘Do, do!’ ‘No, I don’t want to.’ ‘Please. I’ll do anything.’ ‘Will you let me bite your finger?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I shall bite it hard. Perhaps I shall bite it right off!’ ‘I don’t mind.’ Madge obligingly launches into the story once more. Then she picks up his finger and bites it. Now Monty yells. Mother arrives. Madge is punished. ‘But it was a bargain,’ she says, unrepentant. I remember well my first written story. It was in the nature of a melodrama, very short, since both writing and spelling were a pain to me. It concerned the noble Lady Madge (good) and the bloody Lady Agatha (bad) and a plot that involved the inheritance of a castle. I showed it to my sister and suggested we could act it. My sister said immediately that she would rather be the bloody Lady Madge and I could be the noble Lady Agatha. ‘But don’t you want to be the good one?’ I demanded, shocked. My sister said no, she thought it would be much more fun to be wicked. I was pleased, as it had been solely politeness which had led me to ascribe nobility to Lady Madge. My father, I remember, laughed a good deal at my effort, but in a kindly way, and my mother said that perhaps I had better not use the word bloody as it was not a very nice word. ‘But she was bloody,’ I explained. ‘She killed a lot of people. She was like bloody Mary, who burnt people at the stake.’ Fairy books played a great part in life. Grannie gave them to me for birthdays and Christmas. The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, and so on. I loved them all and read them again and again. Then there was a collection of animal stories, also by Andrew Lang, including one about Androcles and the Lion. I loved that too. It must have been about then that I first embarked on a course of Mrs Molesworth, the leading writer of stories for children. They lasted me for many years, and I think, on re-reading them now, that they are very good. Of course children would find them old-fashioned nowadays, but they tell a good story and there is a lot of characterization in them. There was Carrots, just a little Boy, and Herr Baby for very young children, and various fairy story tales. I can still re-read The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room. My favourite of all, Four Winds Farm, I find uninteresting now and wonder why I loved it so much. Reading story-books was considered slightly too pleasurable to be really virtuous. No story-books until after lunch. In the mornings you were supposed to find something ‘useful’ to do. Even to this day, if I sit down and read a novel after breakfast I have a feeling of guilt. The same applies to cards on a Sunday. I outgrew Nursie’s condemnation of cards as ‘the Devil’s picture books’, but ‘no cards on Sundays’ was a rule of the house, and in after years when playing bridge on a Sunday I never quite threw off a feeling of wickedness. At some period before Nursie left, my mother and father went to America and were away some time. Nursie and I went to Ealing. I must have been several months there, fitting in very happily. The pillar of Grannie’s establishment was an old, wrinkled cook, Hannah. She was as thin as Jane was fat, a bag of bones with deeply lined face and stooped shoulders. She cooked magnificently. She also made homebaked bread three times a week, and I was allowed in the kitchen to assist and make my own little cottage loaves and twists. I only fell foul of her once, when I asked her what giblets were. Apparently giblets were things nicely brought up young ladies did not ask about. I tried to tease her by running to and fro in the kitchen saying, ‘Hannah, what are giblets? Hannah, for the third time, what are giblets?’ etc. I was removed by Nursie in the end and reproved, and Hannah would not speak to me for two days. After that I was much more careful how I transgressed her rules. Some time during my stay at Ealing I must have been taken to the Diamond Jubilee for I came across a letter not long ago written from America by my father. It is couched in the style of the day, which was singularly unlike my father’s spoken words–letter-writing fell into a definite and sanctimonious pattern, whereas my father’s speech was usually jolly and slightly ribald. You must be very very good to dear Auntie-Grannie, Agatha, because remember how very very good she has been to you, and the treats she gives you. I hear you are going to see this wonderful show which you will never forget, it is a thing to be seen only once in a lifetime. You must tell her how very grateful you are; how wonderful it is for you, I wish I could be there, and so does your mother. I know you will never forget it. My father lacked the gift of prophecy, because I have forgotten it. How maddening children are! When I look back to the past, what do I remember? Silly little things about local sewing-women, the bread twists I made in the kitchen, the smell of Colonel F.’s breath–and what do I forget? A spectacle that somebody paid a great deal of money for me to see and remember. I feel very angry with myself. What a horrible, ungrateful child! That reminds me of what I think was a coincidence so amazing that one is so inclined to say it could never have happened. The occasion must have been Queen Victoria’s funeral. Both Auntie-Grannie and Granny B. were going to see it. They had procured a window in a house somewhere near Paddington, and they were to meet each other there on the great day. At five in the morning, so as not to be late, Grannie rose in her house at Ealing, and in due course got to Paddington Station. That would give her, she calculated, a good three hours to get to her vantage point, and she had with her some fancy-work, some food and other necessities to pass the hours of waiting once she arrived there. Alas, the time she had allowed herself was not enough. The streets were crammed. Some time after leaving Paddington Station she was quite unable to make further headway. Two ambulance men rescued her from the crowd, and assured her that she couldn’t go on. ‘I must, but I must!’ cried Grannie, tears streaming down her face. ‘I’ve got my room, I’ve got my seat; the two first seats in the second window on the second floor, so that I can look down and see everything.

an autobiography - agatha christie.epub