After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [40]
“Oh dear, how annoying for you, Mrs. Banks.”
“Oh well, never mind, I’ll attend to it.”
“I was just going to make a few scones for tea.”
Susan went towards the front door and Miss Gilchrist hovered uncertainly. Susan wondered whether she thought a man with a hatchet was waiting outside.
The visitor, however, proved to be an elderly gentleman who raised his hat when Susan opened the door and said, beaming at her in avuncular style:
“Mrs. Banks, I think?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Guthrie—Alexander Guthrie. I was a friend—a very old friend, of Mrs. Lansquenet’s. You, I think, are her niece, formerly Miss Susan Abernethie?”
“That’s quite right.”
“Then since we know who we are, I may come in?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Guthrie wiped his feet carefully on the mat, stepped inside, divested himself of his overcoat, laid it down with his hat on a small oak chest and followed Susan into the sitting room.
“This is a melancholy occasion,” said Mr. Guthrie, to whom melancholy did not seem to come naturally, his own inclination being to beam. “Yes, a very melancholy occasion. I was in this part of the world and I felt the least I could do was to attend the inquest—and of course the funeral. Poor Cora—poor foolish Cora. I have known her, my dear Mrs. Banks, since the early days of her marriage. A high-spirited girl—and she took art very seriously—took Pierre Lansquenet seriously, too—as an artist, I mean. All things considered he didn’t make her too bad a husband. He strayed, if you know what I mean, yes, he strayed—but fortunately Cora took it as part of the artistic temperament. He was an artist and therefore immoral! In fact, I’m not sure she didn’t go further: he was immoral and therefore he must be an artist! No kind of sense in artistic matters, poor Cora—though in other ways, mind you, Cora had a lot of sense—yes, a surprising lot of sense.”
“That’s what everybody seems to say,” said Susan. “I didn’t really know her.”
“No, no, cut herself off from her family because they didn’t appreciate her precious Pierre. She was never a pretty girl—but she had something. She was good company! You never knew what she’d say next and you never knew if her näiveté was genuine or whether she was doing it deliberately. She made us all laugh a good deal. The eternal child—that’s what we always felt about her. And really the last time I saw her (I have seen her from time to time since Pierre died) she struck me as still behaving very much like a child.”
Susan offered Mr. Guthrie a cigarette, but the old gentleman shook his head.
“No thank you, my dear. I don’t smoke. You must wonder why I’ve come? To tell you the truth I was feeling rather conscience-stricken. I promised Cora to come and see her some weeks ago. I usually called upon her once a year, and just lately she’d taken up the hobby of buying pictures at local sales, and wanted me to look at some of them. My profession is that of art critic, you know. Of course most of Cora’s purchases were horrible daubs, but take it all in all, it isn’t such a bad speculation. Pictures go for next to nothing at these country sales and the frames alone are worth more than you pay for the picture. Naturally any important sale is attended by dealers and one isn’t likely to get hold of masterpieces. But only the other day, a small Cuyp was knocked down for a few pounds at a farmhouse sale. The history of it was quite interesting. It had been given to an old nurse by the family she had served faithfully for many years—they had no idea of its value. Old nurse gave it to a farmer nephew who liked the horse in it but thought it was a dirty old thing! Yes, yes, these things sometimes happen, and Cora was convinced that she had an eye for pictures. She hadn’t of course. Wanted me to come and look at a Rembrandt she had picked up last year. A Rembrandt! Not even a respectable copy of one! But she had got hold of a quite nice Bartolozzi engraving—damp spotted unfortunately. I sold it for her for thirty pounds and of course that spurred her on. She wrote to me with great gusto about an Italian Primitive she had