By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [29]
‘We can get in through the door.’
‘What door?’
‘Outside here in the yard. The key’s hanging up among those.’
He went outside and along to the end, opening a small door there. It was a kind of potting shed really, but a door from it led into the other house and near the door of the potting shed were six or seven rusty keys hanging on a nail.
‘This one fits,’ said Mr Perry.
He took down the key and put it in the door, and after exerting a good deal of cajolery and force, the key turned rustily in the lock.
‘I went in once before,’ he said, ‘when I heard water running. Somebody’d forgotten to turn the water off properly.’
He went in and the two women followed him. The door led into a small room which still contained various flower vases on a shelf and a sink with a tap.
‘A flower room, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he said. ‘Where people used to do the flowers. See? A lot of the vases left here.’
There was a door out of the flower room. This was not even locked. He opened it and they went through. It was like, Tuppence thought, going through into another world. The passageway outside was covered with a pile carpet. A little way along there was a door half-open and from there the sounds of a bird in distress were coming. Perry pushed the door open and his wife and Tuppence went in.
The windows were shuttered but one side of a shutter was hanging loose and light came in. Although it was dim, there was a faded but beautiful carpet on the floor, a deep sage-green in colour. There was a bookshelf against the wall but no chairs or tables. The furniture had been removed no doubt, the curtains and carpets had been left as fittings to be passed on to the next tenant.
Mrs Perry went towards the fireplace. A bird lay in the grate scuffling and uttering loud squawking sounds of distress. She stooped, picked it up, and said,
‘Open the window if you can, Amos.’
Amos went over, pulled the shutter aside, unfastened the other side of it and then pushed at the latch of the window. He raised the lower sash which came gratingly. As soon as it was open Mrs Perry leaned out and released the jackdaw. It flopped on to the lawn, hopped a few paces.
‘Better kill it,’ said Perry. ‘It’s damaged.’
‘Leave it a bit,’ said his wife. ‘You never know. They recover very quickly, birds. It’s fright that makes them so paralysed looking.’
Sure enough, a few moments later the jackdaw, with a final struggle, a squawk, a flapping of wings flew off.
‘I only hope,’ said Alice Perry, ‘that it doesn’t come down that chimney again. Contrary things, birds. Don’t know what’s good for them. Get into a room, they can never get out of it by themselves. Oh,’ she added, ‘what a mess.’
She, Tuppence and Mr Perry all stared at the grate. From the chimney had come down a mass of soot, of odd rubble and of broken bricks. Evidently it had been in a bad state of repair for some time.
‘Somebody ought to come and live here,’ said Mrs Perry, looking round her.
‘Somebody ought to look after it,’ Tuppence agreed with her. ‘Some builder ought to look at it or do something about it or the whole house will come down soon.’
‘Probably water has been coming through the roof in the top rooms. Yes, look at the ceiling up there, it’s come through there.’
‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Tuppence, ‘to ruin a beautiful house–it really is a beautiful room, isn’t it.’
She and Mrs Perry looked together round it appreciatively. Built in 1790 it had all the graciousness of a house of that period. It had had originally a pattern of willow leaves on the discoloured paper.
‘It’s a ruin now,’ said Mr Perry.
Tuppence poked the debris in the grate.
‘One ought to sweep it up,’ said Mrs Perry.
‘Now what do you want to bother yourself with a house that doesn’t belong to you?’ said her husband. ‘Leave it alone, woman. It’ll be in just as bad a state tomorrow morning.’
Tuppence stirred the bricks aside with a toe.
‘Ooh,’ she said with an exclamation of disgust.
There were two dead birds lying in the fireplace. By the look of them they had been dead for some time.
‘That’s the nest that came down