4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [38]
“What can’t you make out?”
“What you’re doing here?”
“I’m earning my living.”
“As a skivvy?” he spoke disparagingly.
“You’re out of date,” said Lucy. “Skivvy, indeed! I’m a Household Help, a Professional Domestician, or an Answer to Prayer, mainly the latter.”
“You can’t like all the things you have to do—cooking and making beds and whirring about with a hoopla or whatever you call it, and sinking your arms up to the elbows in greasy water.”
Lucy laughed.
“Not the details, perhaps, but cooking satisfies my creative instincts, and there’s something in me that really revels in clearing up mess.”
“I live in a permanent mess,” said Cedric. “I like it,” he added defiantly.
“You look as though you did.”
“My cottage in Ibiza is run on simple straightforward lines. Three plates, two cups and saucers, a bed, a table and a couple of chairs. There’s dust everywhere and smears of paint and chips of stone—I sculpt as well as paint—and nobody’s allowed to touch a thing. I won’t have a woman near the place.”
“Not in any capacity?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I was assuming that a man of such artistic tastes presumably had some kind of love life.”
“My love life, as you call it, is my own business,” said Cedric with dignity. “What I won’t have is woman in her tidying-up interfering bossing capacity.”
“How I’d love to have a go at your cottage,” said Lucy. “It would be a challenge!”
“You won’t get the opportunity.”
“I suppose not.”
Some bricks fell out of the pigsty. Cedric turned his head and looked into its nettle-ridden depths.
“Dear old Madge,” he said. “I remember her well. A sow of most endearing disposition and prolific mother. Seventeen in the last litter, I remember. We used to come here on fine afternoons and scratch Madge’s back with a stick. She loved it.”
“Why has this whole place been allowed to get into the state it’s in? It can’t only be the war?”
“You’d like to tidy this up, too, I suppose? What an interfering female you are. I quite see now why you would be the person to discover a body! You couldn’t even leave a Greco-Roman sarcophagus alone.” He paused and then went on. “No, it’s not only the war. It’s my father. What do you think of him, by the way?”
“I haven’t had much time for thinking.”
“Don’t evade the issue. He’s as mean as hell, and in my opinion a bit crazy as well. Of course he hates all of us—except perhaps Emma. That’s because of my grandfather’s will.”
Lucy looked inquiring.
“My grandfather was the man who madea-da-monitch. With the Crunchies and the Cracker Jacks and the Cosy Crisps. All the afternoon tea delicacies and then, being far-sighted, he switched on very early to Cheesies and Canapés so that now we cash in on cocktail parties in a big way. Well, the time came when father intimated that he had a soul above Crunchies. He travelled in Italy and the Balkans and Greece and dabbled in art. My grandfather was peeved. He decided my father was no man of business and a rather poor judge of art (quite right in both cases), so left all his money in trust for his grandchildren. Father had the income for life, but he couldn’t touch the capital. Do you know what he did? He stopped spending money. He came here and began to save. I’d say that by now he’s accumulated nearly as big a fortune as my grandfather left. And in the meantime all of us, Harold, myself, Alfred and Emma haven’t got a penny of grandfather’s money. I’m a stony-broke painter. Harold went into business and is now a prominent man in the City—he’s the one with the money-making touch, though I’ve heard rumours that he’s in Queer Street lately. Alfred—well, Alfred is usually known in the privacy of the family as Flash Alf—”
“Why?”
“What a lot of things you want to know! The answer is that Alf is the black sheep of the family. He’s not actually been to prison yet, but he’s been very near it. He was in the Ministry of Supply during the war, but left it rather abruptly under questionable circumstances. And after that there were some dubious deals in tinned