After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [3]
His eyes went on to Mrs. Timothy. He had never known her very well. Black didn’t suit her—country tweeds were her wear. A big sensible capable-looking woman. She’d always been a good devoted wife to Timothy. Looking after his health, fussing over him—fussing over him a bit too much, probably. Was there really anything the matter with Timothy? Just a hypochondriac, Mr. Entwhistle suspected. Richard Abernethie had suspected so, too. “Weak chest, of course, when he was a boy,” he had said. “But blest if I think there’s much wrong with him now.” Oh well, everybody had to have some hobby. Timothy’s hobby was the all absorbing one of his own health. Was Mrs. Tim taken in? Probably not—but women never admitted that sort of thing. Timothy must be quite comfortably off. He’d never been a spendthrift. However, the extra would not come amiss—not in these days of taxation. He’d probably had to retrench his scale of living a good deal since the war.
Mr. Entwhistle transferred his attention to George Crossfield, Laura’s son. Dubious sort of fellow Laura had married. Nobody had ever known much about him. A stockbroker he had called himself. Young George was in a solicitor’s office—not a very reputable firm. Good-looking young fellow—but something a little shifty about him. He couldn’t have too much to live on. Laura had been a complete fool over her investments. She’d left next to nothing when she died five years ago. A handsome romantic girl she’d been, but no money sense.
Mr. Entwhistle’s eyes went on from George Crossfield. Which of the two girls was which? Ah yes, that was Rosamund, Geraldine’s daughter, looking at the wax flowers on the malachite table. Pretty girl, beautiful, in fact—rather a silly face. On the stage. Repertory companies or some nonsense like that. Had married an actor, too. Good-looking fellow. “And knows he is,” thought Mr. Entwhistle, who was prejudiced against the stage as a profession. “Wonder what sort of a background he has and where he comes from.”
He looked disapprovingly at Michael Shane with his fair hair and his haggard charm.
Now Susan, Gordon’s daughter, would do much better on the stage than Rosamund. More personality. A little too much personality for everyday life, perhaps. She was quite near him and Mr. Entwhistle studied her covertly. Dark hair, hazel—almost golden—eyes, a sulky attractive mouth. Beside her was the husband she had just married—a chemist’s assistant, he understood. Really, a chemist’s assistant! In Mr. Entwhistle’s creed girls did not marry young men who served behind a counter. But now of course, they married anybody! The young man, who had a pale nondescript face and sandy hair, seemed very ill at ease. Mr. Entwhistle wondered why, but decided charitably that it was the strain of meeting so many of his wife’s relations.
Last in his survey Mr. Entwhistle came to Cora Lansquenet. There was a certain justice in that, for Cora had decidedly been an afterthought in the family. Richard’s youngest sister, she had been born when her mother was just on fifty, and that meek woman had not survived her tenth pregnancy (three children had died in infancy). Poor little Cora! All her life, Cora had been rather an embarrassment, growing up tall and gawky, and given to blurting out remarks that had always better have remained unsaid. All her elder brothers and sisters had been very kind to Cora, atoning for her deficiencies and covering her social mistakes. It had never really occurred to anyone that Cora would marry. She had not been a very attractive girl, and her rather obvious advances to visiting young men had usually caused the latter to retreat in some alarm. And then, Mr. Entwhistle mused, there had come the Lansquenet business—Pierre Lansquenet, half French, whom she had come across in an Art school where she had been having very correct lessons in painting flowers in watercolours. But somehow she had got into the Life class and there she had met Pierre Lansquenet and had come home and announced her intention of marrying him. Richard Abernethie had put his foot down—he