After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [79]
IV
Miss Entwhistle was aroused from a delightful dream in which she was playing Piquet with Queen Mary, by the ringing of the telephone.
She tried to ignore it—but it persisted. Sleepily she raised her head from the pillow and looked at the watch beside her bed. Five minutes to seven—who on earth could be ringing up at that hour? It must be a wrong number.
The irritating ding-dong continued. Miss Entwhistle sighed, snatched up a dressing gown and marched into the sitting room.
“This is Kensington 675498,” she said with asperity as she picked up the receiver.
“This is Mrs. Abernethie speaking. Mrs. Leo Abernethie. Can I speak to Mr. Entwhistle?”
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Abernethie.” The “good morning” was not cordial. “This is Miss Entwhistle. My brother is still asleep, I’m afraid. I was asleep myself.”
“I’m so sorry,” Helen was forced to the apology. “But it’s very important that I should speak to your brother at once.”
“Wouldn’t it do later?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh, very well then.”
Miss Entwhistle was tart.
She tapped at her brother’s door and went in.
“Those Abernethies again!” she said bitterly.
“Eh! The Aberbethies?”
“Mrs. Leo Abernethie. Ringing up before seven in the morning! Really!”
“Mrs. Leo, is it? Dear me. How remarkable. Where is my dressing gown? Ah, thank you.”
Presently he was saying:
“Entwhistle speaking. Is that you, Helen?”
“Yes. I’m terribly sorry to get you out of bed like this. But you did tell me once to ring you up at once if I remembered what it was that struck me as having been wrong somehow on the day of the funeral when Cora electrified us all by suggesting that Richard had been murdered.”
“Ah! You have remembered?”
Helen said in a puzzled voice:
“Yes, but it doesn’t make sense.”
“You must allow me to be the judge of that. Was it something you noticed about one of the people?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“It seems absurd.” Helen’s voice sounded apologetic. “But I’m quite sure of it. It came to me when I was looking at myself in the glass last night. Oh….”
The little startled half cry was succeeded by a sound that came oddly through the wires—a dull heavy sound that Mr. Entwhistle couldn’t place at all.
He said urgently:
“Hallo—hallo—are you there? Helen, are you there?… Helen….”
Twenty-one
I
It was not until nearly an hour later that Mr. Entwhistle, after a great deal of conversation with supervisors and others, found himself at last speaking to Hercule Poirot.
“Thank heaven!” said Mr. Entwhistle with pardonable exasperation. “The Exchange seems to have had the greatest difficulty in getting the number.”
“That is not surprising. The receiver was off the hook.”
There was a grim quality in Poirot’s voice which carried through to the listener.
Mr. Entwhistle said sharply:
“Has something happened?”
“Yes. Mrs. Leo Abernethie was found by the housemaid about twenty minutes ago lying by the telephone in the study. She was unconscious. A serious concussion.”
“Do you mean she was struck on the head?”
“I think so. It is just possible that she fell and struck her head on a marble doorstop, but me I do not think so, and the doctor, he does not think so either.”
“She was telephoning to me at the time. I wondered when we were cut off so suddenly.”
“So it was to you she was telephoning? What did she say?”
“She mentioned to me some time ago that on the occasion when Cora Lansquenet suggested her brother had been murdered, she herself had a feeling of something being wrong—odd—she did not quite know how to put it—unfortunately she could not remember why she had that impression.”
“And suddenly, she did remember?”
“Yes.”
“And rang you up to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Eh bien.”
“There’s no eh bien about it,” said Mr. Entwhistle testily. “She started to tell me, but was interrupted.”
“How much had she said?”
“Nothing pertinent.”
“You will excuse me, mon ami, but I am the judge of that, not you. What exactly did she say?”
“She reminded me that I had asked her to let me know