After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [13]
“He was murdered, wasn’t he?”
Such a ridiculous thing to say. Ridiculous! Quite ridiculous! Much too ridiculous to mention to Inspector Morton.
Of course, after he had seen Miss Gilchrist….
Supposing that Miss Gilchrist, although it was unlikely, could throw any light on what Richard had said to Cora.
“I thought from what he said—” What had Richard said?
“I must see Miss Gilchrist at once,” said Mr. Entwhistle to himself.
III
Miss Gilchrist was a spare faded-looking woman with short, irongrey hair. She had one of those indeterminate faces that women around fifty so often acquire.
She greeted Mr. Entwhistle warmly.
“I’m so glad you have come, Mr. Entwhistle. I really know so little about Mrs. Lansquenet’s family, and of course I’ve never, never had anything to do with a murder before. It’s too dreadful!”
Mr. Entwhistle felt quite sure that Miss Gilchrist had never before had anything to do with murder. Indeed, her reaction to it was very much that of his partner.
“One reads about them, of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, relegating crimes to their proper sphere. “And even that I’m not very fond of doing. So sordid, most of them.”
Following her into the sitting room Mr. Entwhistle was looking sharply about him. There was a strong smell of oil paint. The cottage was overcrowded, less by furniture, which was much as Inspector Morton had described it, than by pictures. The walls were covered with pictures, mostly very dark and dirty oil paintings. But there were watercolour sketches as well, and one or two still lifes. Smaller pictures were stacked on the window seat.
“Mrs. Lansquenet used to buy them at sales,” Miss Gilchrist explained. “It was a great interest to her, poor dear. She went to all the sales round about. Pictures go so cheap, nowadays, a mere song. She never paid more than a pound for any of them, sometimes only a few shillings, and there was a wonderful chance, she always said, of picking up something worthwhile. She used to say that this was an Italian Primitive that might be worth a lot of money.”
Mr. Entwhistle looked at the Italian Primitive pointed out to him dubiously. Cora, he reflected, had never really known anything about pictures. He’d eat his hat if any of these daubs were worth a five pound note!
“Of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, noticing his expression, and quick to sense his reaction, “I don’t know much myself, though my father was a painter—not a very successful one, I’m afraid. But I used to do watercolours myself as a girl and I heard a lot of talk about painting and that made it nice for Mrs. Lansquenet to have someone she could talk to about painting and who’d understand. Poor dear soul, she cared so much about artistic things.”
“You were fond of her?”
A foolish question, he told himself. Could she possibly answer “no”? Cora, he thought, must have been a tiresome woman to live with.
“Oh yes,” said Miss Gilchrist. “We got on very well together. In some ways, you know, Mrs. Lansquenet was just like a child. She said anything that came into her head. I don’t know that her judgement was always very good—”
One does not say of the dead—“She was a thoroughly silly woman”—Mr. Entwhistle said, “She was not in any sense an intellectual woman.”
“No—no—perhaps not. But she was very shrewd, Mr. Entwhistle. Really very shrewd. It quite surprised me sometimes—how she managed to hit the nail on the head.”
Mr. Entwhistle looked at Miss Gilchrist with more interest. He thought that she was no fool herself.
“You were with Mrs. Lansquenet for some years, I think?”
“Three and a half.”
“You—er—acted as companion and also did the—er—well—looked after the house?”
It was evident that he had touched on a delicate subject. Miss Gilchrist flushed a little.
“Oh yes, indeed. I did most of the cooking— I quite enjoy cooking—and did some dusting and light housework. None of the rough, of course.” Miss Gilchrist’s tone expressed a firm principle. Mr. Entwhistle, who had no idea what “the rough” was, made