4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [80]
Darwin, his manservant, opened the door.
“Her ladyship has just arrived, sir,” he said.
For a moment Harold stared at him. Alice! Good heavens, was it today that Alice was coming home? He’d forgotten all about it. Good thing Darwin had warned him. It wouldn’t have looked so good if he’d gone upstairs and looked too astonished at seeing her. Not that it really mattered, he supposed. Neither Alice nor he had any illusions about the feeling they had for each other. Perhaps Alice was fond of him—he didn’t know.
All in all, Alice was a great disappointment to him. He hadn’t been in love with her, of course, but though a plain woman she was quite a pleasant one. And her family and connections had undoubtedly been useful. Not perhaps as useful as they might have been, because in marrying Alice he had been considering the position of hypothetical children. Nice relations for his boys to have. But there hadn’t been any boys, or girls either, and all that had remained had been he and Alice growing older together without much to say to each other and with no particular pleasure in each other’s company.
She stayed away a good deal with relations and usually went to the Riviera in the winter. It suited her and it didn’t worry him.
He went upstairs now into the drawing room and greeted her punctiliously.
“So you’re back, my dear. Sorry I couldn’t meet you, but I was held up in the City. I got back as early as I could. How was San Raphael?”
Alice told him how San Raphael was. She was a thin woman with sandy-coloured hair, a well-arched nose and vague, hazel eyes. She talked in a well-bred, monotonous and rather depressing voice. It had been a good journey back, the Channel a little rough. The Customs, as usual, very trying at Dover.
“You should come by air,” said Harold, as he always did. “So much simpler.”
“I dare say, but I don’t really like air travel. I never have. Makes me nervous.”
“Saves a lot of time,” said Harold.
Lady Alice Crackenthorpe did not answer. It was possible that her problem in life was not to save time but to occupy it. She inquired politely after her husband’s health.
“Emma’s telegram quite alarmed me,” she said. “You were all taken ill, I understand.”
“Yes, yes,” said Harold.
“I read in the paper the other day,” said Alice, “of forty people in a hotel going down with food poisoning at the same time. All this refrigeration is dangerous, I think. People keep things too long in them.”
“Possibly,” said Harold. Should he, or should he not mention arsenic? Somehow, looking at Alice, he felt himself quite unable to do so. In Alice’s world, he felt, there was no place for poisoning by arsenic. It was a thing you read about in the papers. It didn’t happen to you or your own family. But it had happened in the Crackenthorpe family….
He went up to his room and lay down for an hour or two before dressing for dinner. At dinner, tête-à-tête with his wife, the conversation ran on much the same lines. Desultory, polite. The mention of acquaintances and friends at San Raphael.
“There’s a parcel for you on the hall table, a small one,” Alice said.
“Is there? I didn’t notice it.”
“It’s an extraordinary thing but somebody was telling me about a murdered woman having been found in a barn, or something like that. She said it was at Rutherford Hall. I suppose it must be some other Rutherford Hall.”
“No,” said Harold, “no, it isn’t. It was in our barn, as a matter of fact.”
“Really, Harold! A murdered woman in the barn at Rutherford Hall—and you never told me anything about it.”
“Well, there hasn’t been much time, really,” said Harold, “and it was all rather unpleasant. Nothing to do with us, of course. The Press milled around a good deal. Of course we had to deal with the police and all that sort of thing.”
“Very unpleasant,” said Alice. “Did they find out who did it?” she added, with rather perfunctory interest.
“Not yet,” said Harold.
“What sort of woman was she?”
“Nobody knows. French, apparently.”
“Oh, French,” said Alice, and allowing for the difference in class, her tone was not unlike