By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [37]
‘Do you have a lot of artists down here?’
‘Not really. Oh no, not to speak of. One or two ladies comes down in the summer and does sketching sometimes, but I don’t think much of them. We had a young fellow a year ago, called himself an artist. Didn’t shave properly. I can’t say I liked any of his pictures much. Funny colours all swirled round anyhow. Nothing you could recognize a bit. Sold a lot of his pictures, he did at that. And they weren’t cheap, mind you.’
‘Ought to have been five pounds,’ said Mr Copleigh entering the conversation for the first time so suddenly that Tuppence jumped.
‘What my husband thinks is,’ said Mrs Copleigh, resuming her place as interpreter to him. ‘He thinks no picture ought to cost more than five pounds. Paints wouldn’t cost as much as that. That’s what he says, don’t you, George?’
‘Ah,’ said George.
‘Mr Boscowan painted a picture of that house by the bridge and the canal–Waterside or Watermead, isn’t it called? I came that way today.’
‘Oh, you came along that road, did you? It’s not much of a road, is it? Very narrow. Lonely that house is, I always think. I wouldn’t like to live in that house. Too lonely. Don’t you agree, George?’
George made the noise that expressed faint disagreement and possibly contempt at the cowardice of women.
‘That’s where Alice Perry lives, that is,’ said Mrs Copleigh.
Tuppence abandoned her researches on Mr Boscowan to go along with an opinion on the Perrys. It was, she perceived, always better to go along with Mrs Copleigh who was a jumper from subject to subject.
‘Queer couple they are,’ said Mrs Copleigh.
George made his agreeing sound.
‘Keep themselves to themselves, they do. Don’t mingle much, as you’d say. And she goes about looking like nothing on earth, Alice Perry does.’
‘Mad,’ said Mr Copleigh.
‘Well, I don’t know as I’d say that. She looks mad all right. All that scatty hair flying about. And she wears men’s coats and great rubber boots most of the time. And she says odd things and doesn’t sometimes answer you right when you ask her a question. But I wouldn’t say she was mad. Peculiar, that’s all.’
‘Do people like her?’
‘Nobody knows her hardly, although they’ve been there several years. There’s all sorts of tales about her but then, there’s always tales.’
‘What sort of tales?’
Direct questions were never resented by Mrs Copleigh, who welcomed them as one who was only too eager to answer.
‘Calls up spirits, they say, at night. Sitting round a table. And there’s stories of lights moving about the house at night. And she reads a lot of clever books, they say. With things drawn in them–circles and stars. If you ask me, it’s Amos Perry as is the one that’s not quite all right.’
‘He’s just simple,’ said Mr Copleigh indulgently.
‘Well, you may be right about that. But there were tales said of him once. Fond of his garden, but doesn’t know much.’
‘It’s only half a house though, isn’t it?’ said Tuppence. ‘Mrs Perry asked me in very kindly.’
‘Did she now? Did she really? I don’t know as I’d have liked to go into that house,’ said Mrs Copleigh.
‘Their part of it’s all right,’ said Mr Copleigh.
‘Isn’t the other part all right?’ said Tuppence. ‘The front part that gives on the canal.’
‘Well, there used to be a lot of stories about it. Of course, nobody’s lived in it for years. They say there’s something queer about it. Lot of stories told. But when you come down to it, it’s not stories in anybody’s memory here. It’s all long ago. It was built over a hundred years ago, you know. They say as there was a pretty lady kept there first, built for her, it was, by one of the gentlemen at Court.’
‘Queen Victoria’s Court?’ asked Tuppence with interest.
‘I don’t think it would be her. She was particular, the old Queen was. No, I’d say it was before that. Time of one of them Georges. This gentlemen, he used to come down and see her and the story goes that they had a quarrel and he cut her throat one night.’
‘How terrible!’ said Tuppence. ‘Did they hang him for it?’
‘No. Oh no, there was nothing of that sort. The story is, you see, that he had