By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [57]
‘You’ve no idea, if your surmise about these deaths is true, who it could be?’
‘No. There seems no pointer of any kind. Taking the view that the killer is probably insane, insanity is a very difficult thing to recognize in some of its manifestations. Is it somebody, shall we say, who dislikes elderly people, who had been injured or has had her life ruined or so she thinks, by somebody elderly? Or is it possibly someone who has her own ideas of mercy killing and thinks that everyone over sixty years of age should be kindly exterminated. It could be anyone, of course. A patient? Or a member of the staff–a nurse or a domestic worker?
‘I have discussed this at great length with Millicent Packard who runs the place. She is a highly competent woman, shrewd, businesslike, with keen supervision both of the guests there and of her own staff. She insists that she has no suspicion and no clue whatever and I am sure that is perfectly true.’
‘But why come to me? What can I do?’
‘Your aunt, Miss Fanshawe, was a resident there for some years–she was a woman of very considerable mental capacity, though she often pretended otherwise. She had unconventional ways of amusing herself by putting on an appearance of senility. But she was actually very much all there–What I want you to try and do, Mr Beresford, is to think hard–you and your wife, too–Is there anything you can remember that Miss Fanshawe ever said or hinted, that might give us a clue–Something she had seen or noticed, something that someone had told her, something that she herself had thought peculiar. Old ladies see and notice a lot, and a really shrewd one like Miss Fanshawe would know a surprising amount of what went on in a place like Sunny Ridge. These old ladies are not busy, you see, they have all the time in the world to look around them and make deductions–and even jump to conclusions–that may seem fantastic, but are sometimes, surprisingly, entirely correct.’
Tommy shook his head.
‘I know what you mean–But I can’t remember anything of that kind.’
‘Your wife’s away from home, I gather. You don’t think she might remember something that hadn’t struck you?’
‘I’ll ask her–but I doubt it.’ He hesitated, then made up his mind. ‘Look here, there was something that worried my wife–about one of the old ladies, a Mrs Lancaster.’
‘Mrs Lancaster? Yes?’
‘My wife’s got it into her head that Mrs Lancaster has been taken away by some so-called relations very suddenly. As a matter of fact, Mrs Lancaster gave a picture to my aunt as a present, and my wife felt that she ought to offer to return the picture to Mrs Lancaster, so she tried to get in touch with her to know if Mrs Lancaster would like the picture returned to her.’
‘Well, that was very thoughtful of Mrs Beresford, I’m sure.’
‘Only she found it very hard to get in touch with her. She got the address of the hotel where they were supposed to be staying–Mrs Lancaster and her relations–but nobody of that name had been staying there or had booked rooms there.’
‘Oh? That was rather odd.’
‘Yes. Tuppence thought it was rather odd, too. They had left no other forwarding address at Sunny Ridge. In fact, we have made several attempts to get in touch with Mrs Lancaster, or with this Mrs–Johnson I think the name was–but have been quite unable to get in touch with them. There was a solicitor who I believe paid all the bills–and made all the arrangements with Miss Packard and we got into communication with him. But he could only give me the address of a bank. Banks,’ said Tommy drily, ‘don’t give you any information.’
‘Not if they’ve been told not to by their clients, I agree.’
‘My wife wrote to Mrs Lancaster care of the bank, and also to Mrs Johnson, but she’s never had any reply.’
‘That seems a little unusual. Still, people don’t