4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [76]
“I suppose I’m the most likely person really,” said Lucy.
Bryan looked at her anxiously. “But you didn’t, did you?” he asked. He sounded slightly shocked.
“No. I didn’t,” said Lucy.
Nobody could have tampered with the curry. She had made it—alone in the kitchen, and brought it to table, and the only person who could have tampered with it was one of the five people who sat down to the meal.
“I mean—why should you?” said Bryan. “They’re nothing to you, are they? I say,” he added, “I hope you don’t mind my coming back here like this?”
“No, no, of course I don’t. Have you come to stay?”
“Well, I’d like to, if it wouldn’t be an awful bore to you.”
“No. No, we can manage.”
“You see, I’m out of a job at the moment and I—well, I get rather fed up. Are you really sure you don’t mind?”
“Oh, I’m not the person to mind, anyway. It’s Emma.”
“Oh, Emma’s all right,” said Bryan. “Emma’s always been very nice to me. In her own way, you know. She keeps things to herself a lot, in fact, she’s rather a dark horse, old Emma. This living here and looking after the old man would get most people down. Pity she never married. Too late now, I suppose.”
“I don’t think it’s too late, at all,” said Lucy.
“Well…” Bryan considered. “A clergyman perhaps,” he said hopefully. “She’d be useful in the parish and tactful with the Mothers’ Union. I do mean the Mothers’ Union, don’t I? Not that I know what it really is, but you come across it sometimes in books. And she’d wear a hat in church on Sundays,” he added.
“Doesn’t sound much of a prospect to me,” said Lucy, rising and picking up the tray.
“I’ll do that,” said Bryan, taking the tray from her. They went into the kitchen together. “Shall I help you wash up? I do like this kitchen,” he added. “In fact, I know it isn’t the sort of thing that people do like nowadays, but I like this whole house. Shocking taste, I suppose, but there it is. You could land a plane quite easily in the park,” he added with enthusiasm.
He picked up a glass-cloth and began to wipe the spoons and forks.
“Seems a waste, its coming to Cedric,” he remarked. “First thing he’ll do is to sell the whole thing and go breaking off abroad again. Can’t see, myself, why England isn’t good enough for anybody. Harold wouldn’t want this house either, and of course it’s much too big for Emma. Now, if only it came to Alexander, he and I would be as happy together here as a couple of sand boys. Of course it would be nice to have a woman about the house.” He looked thoughtfully at Lucy. “Oh, well, what’s the good of talking? If Alexander were to get this place it would mean the whole lot of them would have to die first, and that’s not really likely, is it? Though from what I’ve seen of the old boy he might easily live to be a hundred, just to annoy them all. I don’t suppose he was much cut up by Alfred’s death, was he?”
Lucy said shortly, “No, he wasn’t.”
“Cantankerous old devil,” said Bryan Eastley cheerfully.
Twenty-two
“Dreadful, the things people go about saying,” said Mrs. Kidder. “I don’t listen, mind you, more than I can help. But you’d hardly believe it.” She waited hopefully.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lucy.
“About that body that was found in the Long Barn,” went on Mrs. Kidder, moving crablike backwards on her hands and knees, as she scrubbed the kitchen floor, “saying as how she’d been Mr. Edmund’s fancy piece during the war, and how she come over here and a jealous husband followed her, and did her in. It is a likely thing as a foreigner would do, but it wouldn’t be likely after all these years, would it?”
“It sounds most unlikely to me.”
“But there’s worse things than that, they say,” said Mrs. Kidder. “Say anything, people will. You’d be surprised. There’s those that say Mr. Harold married somewhere abroad and that she come over and found out that he’s committed bigamy with that lady Alice, and that she was going to bring ’im to court and that he met her down here and did her in, and hid her body in the sarcoffus.