4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [25]
A murmur went round: “That’s them….”
Emma said sharply: “Let’s get away.”
The big hired Daimler drew up to the kerb. Emma got in and motioned to Lucy. Mr. Wimborne, Cedric and Harold followed. Bryan Eastley said: “I’ll take Alfred with me in my little bus.” The chauffeur shut the door and the Daimler prepared to roll away.
“Oh, stop!” cried Emma. “There are the boys!”
The boys, in spite of aggrieved protests, had been left behind at Rutherford Hall, but they now appeared grinning from ear to ear.
“We came on our bicycles,” said Stoddart-West. “The policeman was very kind and let us in at the back of the hall. I hope you don’t mind, Miss Crackenthorpe,” he added politely.
“She doesn’t mind,” said Cedric, answering for his sister. “You’re only young once. Your first inquest, I expect?”
“It was rather disappointing,” said Alexander. “All over so soon.”
“We can’t stay here talking,” said Harold irritably. “There’s quite a crowd. And all those men with cameras.”
At a sign from him, the chauffeur pulled away from the kerb. The boys waved cheerfully.
“All over so soon!” said Cedric. “That’s what they think, the young innocents! It’s just beginning.”
“It’s all very unfortunate. Most unfortunate,” said Harold. “I suppose—”
He looked at Mr. Wimborne who compressed his thin lips and shook his head with distaste.
“I hope,” he said sententiously, “that the whole matter will soon be cleared up satisfactorily. The police were very efficient. However, the whole thing, as Harold says, has been most unfortunate.”
He looked, as he spoke, at Lucy, and there was distinct disapproval in his glance. “If it had not been for this young woman,” his eyes seemed to say, “poking about where she had no business to be—none of this would have happened.”
This statement, or one closely resembling it, was voiced by Harold Crackenthorpe.
“By the way—er—Miss—er—er Eyelesbarrow, just what made you go looking in that sarcophagus?”
Lucy had already wondered just when this thought would occur to one of the family. She had known that the police would ask it first thing; what surprised her was that it seemed to have occurred to no one else until this moment.
Cedric, Emma, Harold and Mr. Wimborne all looked at her.
Her reply, for what it was worth, had naturally been prepared for some time.
“Really,” she said in a hesitating voice. “I hardly know… I did feel that the whole place needed a thorough clearing out and cleaning. And there was”—she hesitated—“a very peculiar and disagreeable smell….”
She had counted accurately on the immediate shrinking of everyone from the unpleasantness of this idea….
Mr. Wimborne murmured: “Yes, yes, of course…about three weeks the police surgeon said… I think, you know, we must all try and not let our minds dwell on this thing.” He smiled encouragingly at Emma who had turned very pale. “Remember,” he said, “this wretched young woman was nothing to do with any of us.”
“Ah, but you can’t be so sure of that, can you?” said Cedric.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow looked at him with some interest. She had already been intrigued by the rather startling differences between the three brothers. Cedric was a big man with a weather-beaten rugged face, unkempt dark hair and a jocund manner. He had arrived from the airport unshaven, and though he had shaved in preparation for the inquest, he was still wearing the clothes in which he had arrived and which seemed to be the only ones he had; old grey flannel trousers, and a patched and rather threadbare baggy jacket. He looked the stage Bohemian to the life and proud of it.
His brother Harold, on the contrary, was the perfect picture of a City gentleman