Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [37]
Tim looked at him, opened his mouth, but said nothing.
II
Evelyn Hillingdon, calm and composed as usual, sat down in the chair indicated. She considered the few questions asked her, taking her time over it. Her dark, intelligent eyes looked at Weston thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she said, “I was talking to Mr. Kendal on the terrace when his wife came up the steps and told us about the murder.”
“Your husband wasn’t there?”
“No, he had gone to bed.”
“Had you any special reason for your conversation with Mr. Kendal?”
Evelyn raised her finely pencilled eyebrows—It was a definite rebuke.
She said coldly:
“What a very odd question. No—there was nothing special about our conversation.”
“Did you discuss the matter of his wife’s health?”
Again Evelyn took her time.
“I really can’t remember,” she said at last.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Sure that I can’t remember? What a curious way of putting it—one talks about so many things at different times.”
“Mrs. Kendal has not been in good health lately, I understand.”
“She looked quite all right—a little tired perhaps. Of course running a place like this means a lot of worries, and she is quite inexperienced. Naturally, she gets flustered now and then.”
“Flustered.” Weston repeated the word. “That was the way you would describe it?”
“It’s an old-fashioned word, perhaps, but just as good as the modern jargon we use for everything—A ‘virus infection’ for a bilious attack—an ‘anxiety neurosis’ for the minor bothers of daily life—”
Her smile made Weston feel slightly ridiculous. He thought to himself that Evelyn Hillingdon was a clever woman. He looked at Daventry, whose face remained unmoved, and wondered what he thought.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hillingdon,” said Weston.
III
“We don’t want to worry you, Mrs. Kendal, but we have to have your account of just how you came to find this girl. Dr. Graham says you are sufficiently recovered to talk about it now.”
“Oh yes,” said Molly, “I’m really quite all right again.” She gave them a small nervous smile. “It was just the shock—It was rather awful, you know.”
“Yes, indeed it must have been—I understand you went for a walk after dinner.”
“Yes—I often do.”
Her eyes shifted, Daventry noticed, and the fingers of her hands twined and untwined about each other.
“What time would that have been, Mrs. Kendal?” asked Weston.
“Well, I don’t really know—we don’t go much by the time.”
“The steel band was still playing?”
“Yes—at least—I think so—I can’t really remember.”
“And you walked—which way?”
“Oh, along the beach path.”
“To the left or the right?”
“Oh! First one way—and then the other—I—I—really didn’t notice.”
“Why didn’t you notice, Mrs. Kendal?”
She frowned.
“I suppose I was—well—thinking of things.”
“Thinking of anything particular?”
“No—No—Nothing particular—Just things that had to be done—seen to—in the hotel.” Again that nervous twining and untwining of fingers. “And then—I noticed something white—in a clump of hibiscus bushes—and I wondered what it was. I stopped and—and pulled—” She swallowed convulsively—“And it was her—Victoria—all huddled up—and I tried to raise her head up and I got—blood—on my hands.”
She looked at them and repeated wonderingly as though recalling something impossible:
“Blood—on my hands.”
“Yes—Yes—A very dreadful experience. There is no need for you to tell us more about that part of it—How long had you been walking, do you think, when you found her—”
“I don’t know—I have no idea.”
“An hour? Half an hour? Or more than an hour—”
“I don’t know,” Molly repeated.
Daventry asked in a quiet everyday voice:
“Did you take a knife with you on your—walk?”
“A knife?” Molly sounded surprised. “Why should I take a knife?”
“I only ask because one of the kitchen staff mentioned that you had a knife in your hand when you went out of the kitchen into the garden.”
Molly frowned.
“But I didn’t go out of the kitchen—oh you mean earlier—before dinner