4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [85]
“Does what help me?” asked Lucy, bewildered.
“What I’ve been telling you,” said Miss Marple. She added gently, “You mustn’t worry, you know. You really mustn’t worry. Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here any day now.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“No, dear, perhaps not. But I think it’s important myself.”
“I can’t help worrying,” said Lucy. “You see, I’ve got interested in the family.”
“I know, dear, it’s very difficult for you because you are quite strongly attracted to both of them, aren’t you, in very different ways.”
“What do you mean?” said Lucy. Her tone was sharp.
“I was talking about the two sons of the house,” said Miss Marple. “Or rather the son and the son-in-law. It’s unfortunate that the two more unpleasant members of the family have died and the two more attractive ones are left. I can see that Cedric Crackenthorpe is very attractive. He is inclined to make himself out worse than he is and has a provocative way with him.”
“He makes me fighting mad sometimes,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “and you enjoy that, don’t you? You’re a girl with a lot of spirit and you enjoy a battle. Yes, I can see where that attraction lies. And then Mr. Eastley is a rather plaintive type, rather like an unhappy little boy. That, of course, is attractive, too.”
“And one of them’s a murderer,” said Lucy bitterly, “and it may be either of them. There’s nothing to choose between them really. There’s Cedric, not caring a bit about his brother Alfred’s death or about Harold’s. He just sits back looking thoroughly pleased making plans for what he’ll do with Rutherford Hall, and he keeps saying that it’ll need a lot of money to develop it in the way he wants to do. Of course I know he’s the sort of person who exaggerates his own callousness and all that. But that could be a cover, too. I mean everyone says that you’re more callous than you really are. But you mightn’t be. You might be even more callous than you seem!”
“Dear, dear Lucy, I’m so sorry about all this.”
“And then Bryan,” went on Lucy. “It’s extraordinary, but Bryan really seems to want to live there. He thinks he and Alexander could find it awfully jolly and he’s full of schemes.”
“He’s always full of schemes of one kind or another, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I think he is. They all sound rather wonderful—but I’ve got an uneasy feeling that they’d never really work. I mean, they’re not practical. The idea sounds all right—but I don’t think he ever considers the actual working difficulties.”
“They are up in the air, so to speak?”
“Yes, in more ways than one. I mean they are usually literally up in the air. They are all air schemes. Perhaps a really good fighter pilot never does quite come down to earth again….”
She added: “And he likes Rutherford Hall so much because it reminds him of the big rambling Victorian house he lived in when he was a child.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully. “Yes, I see….”
Then, with a quick sideways glance at Lucy, she said with a kind of verbal pounce, “But that isn’t all of it, is it, dear? There’s something else.”
“Oh, yes, there’s something else. Just something that I didn’t realize until just a couple of days ago. Bryan could actually have been on that train.”
“On the 4:33 from Paddington?”
“Yes. You see Emma thought she was required to account for her movements on 20th December and she went over it all very carefully—a committee meeting in the morning, and then shopping in the afternoon and tea at the Green Shamrock, and then, she said,