By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [82]
Sir Philip Starke. A murderer? Behind her half-closed eyelids, Tuppence studied him with the knowledge clearly in her mind that she was studying him to find out if he fitted in any way with her conception of a murderer–and a child murderer at that.
How old was he, she wondered. Seventy at least, perhaps older. A worn ascetic face. Yes, definitely ascetic. Very definitely a tortured face. Those large dark eyes. El Greco eyes. The emaciated body.
He had come here this evening, why, she wondered? Her eyes went on to Miss Bligh. Sitting a little restlessly in her chair, occasionally moving to push a table nearer someone, to offer a cushion, to move the position of the cigarette box or matches. Restless, ill at ease. She was looking at Philip Starke. Every time she relaxed, her eyes went to him.
‘Doglike devotion,’ thought Tuppence. ‘I think she must have been in love with him once. I think in a way perhaps she still is. You don’t stop being in love with anyone because you get old. People like Derek and Deborah think you do. They can’t imagine anyone who isn’t young being in love. But I think she–I think she is still in love with him, hopelessly, devotedly in love. Didn’t someone say–was it Mrs Copleigh or the vicar who had said, that Miss Bligh had been his secretary as a young woman, that she still looked after his affairs here?
‘Well,’ thought Tuppence, ‘it’s natural enough. Secretaries often fall in love with their bosses. So say Gertrude Bligh had loved Philip Starke. Was that a useful fact at all? Had Miss Bligh known or suspected that behind Philip Starke’s calm ascetic personality there ran a horrifying thread of madness? So fond of children always.’
‘Too fond of children, I thought,’ Mrs Copleigh had said.
Things did take you like that. Perhaps that was a reason for his looking so tortured.
‘Unless one is a pathologist or a psychiatrist or something, one doesn’t know anything about mad murderers,’ thought Tuppence. ‘Why do they want to kill children? What gives them that urge? Are they sorry about it afterwards? Are they disgusted, are they desperately unhappy, are they terrified?’
At that moment she noticed that his gaze had fallen on her. His eyes met hers and seemed to leave some message.
‘You are thinking about me,’ those eyes said. ‘Yes, it’s true what you are thinking. I am a haunted man.’
Yes, that described him exactly–He was a haunted man.
She wrenched her eyes away. Her gaze went to the vicar. She liked the vicar. He was a dear. Did he know anything? He might, Tuppence thought, or he might be living in the middle of some evil tangle that he never even suspected. Things happened all round him, perhaps, but he wouldn’t know about them, because he had that rather disturbing quality of innocence.
Mrs Boscowan? But Mrs Boscowan was difficult to know anything about. A middle-aged woman, a personality, as Tommy had said, but that didn’t express enough. As though Tuppence had summoned her, Mrs Boscowan rose suddenly to her feet.
‘Do you mind if I go upstairs and have a wash?’ she said.
‘Oh! of course.’ Miss Bligh jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll take you up, shall I, Vicar?’
‘I know my way perfectly,’ said Mrs Boscowan. ‘Don’t bother–Mrs Beresford?’
Tuppence jumped slightly.
‘I’ll show you,’ said Mrs Boscowan, ‘where things are. Come with me.’
Tuppence got up as obediently as a child. She did not describe it so to herself. But she knew that she had been summoned and when Mrs Boscowan summoned, you obeyed.
By then Mrs Boscowan