After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [83]
“I’ll go and look myself. Come with me, Michael sweetie. It’s dark there, and I’m not going in any dark corners by myself after what happened to Aunt Helen.”
Everybody showed a sharp reaction. Maude demanded in her deep voice:
“What do you mean, Rosamund?”
“Well, she was coshed by someone, wasn’t she?”
Gregory Banks said sharply:
“She was taken suddenly faint and fell.”
Rosamund laughed.
“Did she tell you so? Don’t be silly, Greg, of course she was coshed.”
George said sharply:
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Rosamund.”
“Nonsense,” said Rosamund. “She must have been. I mean, it all adds up. A detective in the house looking for clues, and Uncle Richard poisoned, and Aunt Cora killed with a hatchet, and Miss Gilchrist given poisoned wedding cake, and now Aunt Helen struck down with a blunt instrument. You’ll see, it will go on like that. One after another of us will be killed and the one that’s left will be It—the murderer, I mean. But it’s not going to be me—who’s killed, I mean.”
“And why should anyone want to kill you, beautiful Rosamund?” asked George lightly.
Rosamund opened her eyes very wide.
“Oh,” she said. “Because I know too much, of course.”
“What do you know?” Maude Abernethie and Gregory Banks spoke almost in unison.
Rosamund gave her vacant and angelic smile.
“Wouldn’t you all like to know?” she said agreeably. “Come on, Michael.”
Twenty-two
I
At eleven o’clock, Hercule Poirot called an informal meeting in the library. Everyone was there and Poirot looked thoughtfully round the semicircle of faces.
“Last night,” he said, “Mrs. Shane announced to you that I was a private detective. For myself, I hoped to retain my—camouflage, shall we say?—a little longer. But no matter! Today—or at most the day after—I would have told you the truth. Please listen carefully now to what I have to say.
“I am in my own line a celebrated person—I may say a most celebrated person. My gifts, in fact, are unequalled!”
George Crossfield grinned and said:
“That’s the stuff, M. Pont—no, it’s M. Poirot, isn’t it? Funny, isn’t it, that I’ve never even heard of you?”
“It is not funny,” said Poirot severely. “It is lamentable! Alas, there is no proper education nowadays. Apparently one learns nothing but economics—and how to sit Intelligence Tests! But to continue. I have been a friend for many years of Mr. Entwhistle’s—”
“So he’s the fly in the ointment!”
“If you like to put it that way, Mr. Crossfield! Mr. Entwhistle was greatly upset by the death of his old friend, Mr. Richard Abernethie. He was particularly perturbed by some words spoken on the day of the funeral by Mr. Abernethie’s sister, Mrs. Lansquenet. Words spoken in this very room.”
“Very silly—and just like Cora,” said Maude. “Mr. Entwhistle should have had more sense than to pay attention to them!”
Poirot went on:
“Mr. Entwhistle was even more perturbed after the—the coincidence, shall I say?—of Mrs. Lansquenet’s death. He wanted one thing only—to be assured that that death was a coincidence. In other words he wanted to feel assured that Richard Abernethie had died a natural death. To that end he commissioned me to make the necessary investigations.”
There was a pause.
“I have made them….”
Again there was a pause. No one spoke.
Poirot threw back his head.
“Eh bien, you will all be delighted to hear that as a result of my investigations—there is absolutely no reason to believe that Mr. Abernethie died anything but a natural death. There is no reason at all to believe that he was murdered!” He smiled. He threw out his hands in a triumphant gesture.
“That is good news, is it not?”
It hardly seemed to be, by the way they took it. They stared at him and in all but the eyes of one person there still seemed to be doubt and suspicion.
The exception was Timothy Abernethie, who was nodding his head in violent agreement.
“Of course Richard wasn’t murdered,” he said angrily. “Never could understand why anybody ever even thought of such a thing for a moment! Just Cora up to her tricks, that