4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [33]
“It is certainly very perplexing,” Inspector Craddock agreed.
“Is it true that she was a foreigner? Word seems to have got round to that effect.”
“Does that fact suggest anything to you?” The inspector looked at him sharply, but Bryan seemed amiably vacuous.
“No, it doesn’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Maybe she was French,” said Inspector Bacon, with dark suspicion.
Bryan was roused to slight animation. A look of interest came into his blue eyes, and he tugged at his big fair moustache.
“Really? Gay Paree?” He shook his head. “On the whole it seems to make it even more unlikely, doesn’t it? Messing about in the barn, I mean. You haven’t had any other sarcophagus murders, have you? One of these fellows with an urge—or a complex? Thinks he’s Caligula or someone like that?”
Inspector Craddock did not even trouble to reject this speculation. Instead he asked in a casual manner:
“Nobody in the family got any French connections, or—or—relationships that you know of?”
Bryan said that the Crackenthorpes weren’t a very gay lot.
“Harold’s respectably married,” he said. “Fish-faced woman, some impoverished peer’s daughter. Don’t think Alfred cares about women much—spends his life going in for shady deals which usually go wrong in the end. I dare say Cedric’s got a few Spanish señoritas jumping through hoops for him in Ibiza. Women rather fall for Cedric. Doesn’t always shave and looks as though he never washes. Don’t see why that should be attractive to women, but apparently it is—I say, I’m not being very helpful, am I?”
He grinned at them.
“Better get young Alexander on the job. He and James Stoddart- West are out hunting for clues in a big way. Bet you they turn up something.”
Inspector Craddock said he hoped they would. Then he thanked Bryan Eastley and said he would like to speak to Miss Emma Crackenthorpe.
III
Inspector Craddock looked with more attention at Emma Crackenthorpe than he had done previously. He was still wondering about the expression that he had surprised on her face before lunch.
A quiet woman. Not stupid. Not brilliant either. One of those comfortable pleasant women whom men were inclined to take for granted, and who had the art of making a house into a home, giving it an atmosphere of restfulness and quiet harmony. Such, he thought, was Emma Crackenthorpe.
Women such as this were often underrated. Behind their quiet exterior they had force of character, they were to be reckoned with. Perhaps, Craddock thought, the clue to the mystery of the dead woman in the sarcophagus was hidden away in the recesses of Emma’s mind.
Whilst these thoughts were passing through his head, Craddock was asking various unimportant questions.
“I don’t suppose there is much that you haven’t already told Inspector Bacon,” he said. “So I needn’t worry you with many questions.”
“Please ask me anything you like.”
“As Mr. Wimborne told you, we have reached the conclusion that the dead woman was not a native of these parts. That may be a relief to you—Mr. Wimborne seemed to think it would be—but it makes it really more difficult for us. She’s less easily identified.”
“But didn’t she have anything—a handbag? Papers?”
Craddock shook his head.
“No handbag, nothing in her pockets.”
“You’ve no idea of her name—of where she came from—anything at all?”
Craddock thought to himself: She wants to know—she’s very anxious to know—who the woman is. Has she felt like that all along, I wonder? Bacon didn’t give me that impression—and he’s a shrewd man….
“We know nothing about her,” he said. “That’s why we hoped one of you could help us. Are you sure you can’t? Even if you didn’t recognize her—can you think of anyone she might be?”
He thought, but perhaps he imagined it, that there was a very slight pause before she answered.
“I’ve absolutely no idea,” she said.
Imperceptibly, Inspector Craddock’s manner changed. It was hardly noticeable except as a