4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [22]
“I rang up from the post office just down the road.”
“But how extraordinary. Why not from here?”
Lucy thought quickly.
“I was afraid the boys might be about—might hear—if I rang up from the hall here.”
“I see… Yes… I see… They are coming—the police, I mean?”
“They’re here now,” said Lucy, as with a squeal of brakes a car drew up at the front door and the front doorbell pealed through the house.
II
“I’m sorry, very sorry—to have asked this of you,” said Inspector Bacon.
His hand under her arm, he led Emma Crackenthorpe out of the barn. Emma’s face was very pale, she looked sick, but she walked firmly erect.
“I’m quite sure that I’ve never seen the woman before in my life.”
“We’re very grateful to you, Miss Crackenthorpe. That’s all I wanted to know. Perhaps you’d like to lie down?”
“I must go to my father. I telephoned Dr. Quimper as soon as I heard about this and the doctor is with him now.”
Dr. Quimper came out of the library as they crossed the hall. He was a tall genial man, with a casual offhand cynical manner that his patients found very stimulating.
He and the inspector nodded to each other.
“Miss Crackenthorpe has performed an unpleasant task very bravely,” said Bacon.
“Well done, Emma,” said the doctor, patting her on the shoulder. “You can take things. I’ve always known that. Your father’s all right. Just go in and have a word with him, and then go into the dining room and get yourself a glass of brandy. That’s a prescription.”
Emma smiled at him gratefully and went into the library.
“That woman’s the salt of the earth,” said the doctor, looking after her. “A thousand pities she’s never married. The penalty of being the only female in a family of men. The other sister got clear, married at seventeen, I believe. This one’s quite a handsome woman really. She’d have been a success as a wife and mother.”
“Too devoted to her father, I suppose,” said Inspector Bacon.
“She’s not really as devoted as all that—but she’s got the instinct some women have to make their menfolk happy. She sees that her father likes being an invalid, so she lets him be an invalid. She’s the same with her brothers. Cedric feels he’s a good painter, what’s his name—Harold—knows how much she relies on his sound judgment—she lets Alfred shock her with his stories of his clever deals. Oh, yes, she’s a clever woman—no fool. Well, do you want me for anything? Want me to have a look at your corpse now Johnstone has done with it” (Johnstone was the police surgeon) “and see if it happens to be one of my medical mistakes?”
“I’d like you to have a look, yes, Doctor. We want to get her identified. I suppose it’s impossible for old Mr. Crackenthorpe? Too much of a strain?”
“Strain? Fiddlesticks. He’d never forgive you or me if you didn’t let him have a peep. He’s all agog. Most exciting thing that’s happened to him for fifteen years or so—and it won’t cost him anything!”
“There’s nothing really much wrong with him then?”
“He’s seventy-two,” said the doctor. “That’s all, really, that’s the matter with him. He has odd rheumatic twinges—who doesn’t? So he calls it arthritis. He has palpitations after meals—as well he may—he puts them down to ‘heart.’ But he can always do anything he wants to do! I’ve plenty of patients like that. The ones who are really ill usually insist desperately that they’re perfectly well. Come on, let’s go and see this body of yours. Unpleasant, I suppose?”
“Johnstone estimates she’s been dead between a fortnight and three weeks.”
“Quite unpleasant, then.”
The doctor stood by the sarcophagus and looked down with frank curiosity, professionally unmoved by what he had named the “unpleasantness.”
“Never seen her before. No patient of mine. I don’t remember ever seeing her about in Brackhampton. She must have been quite good-looking once—hm—somebody had it in for her all right.”
They went out again into the air. Doctor Quimper glanced up at the building.
“Found in the what—what do they call it?—the Long Barn—in a sarcophagus! Fantastic! Who found her?”
“Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow.”
“Oh, the latest