Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [38]
“I’m not quite sure that I do, Miss Rich.”
“I mean if you had something like a bank robbery, she might quite easily be the cashier that gets shot, but it would be as a cashier, not as Grace Springer. Nobody would love her or hate her enough to want to do away with her. I think she probably felt that without thinking about it, and that’s what made her so officious. About finding fault, you know, and enforcing rules and finding out what people were doing that they shouldn’t be doing, and showing them up.”
“Snooping?” asked Kelsey.
“No, not exactly snooping.” Eileen Rich considered. “She wouldn’t tiptoe round on sneakers or anything of that kind. But if she found something going on that she didn’t understand she’d be quite determined to get to the bottom of it. And she would get to the bottom of it.”
“I see.” He paused a moment. “You didn’t like her yourself much, did you, Miss Rich?”
“I don’t think I ever thought about her. She was just the Games Mistress. Oh! What a horrible thing that is to say about anybody! Just this—just that! But that’s how she felt about her job. It was a job that she took pride in doing well. She didn’t find it fun. She wasn’t keen when she found a girl who might be really good at tennis, or really fine at some form of athletics. She didn’t rejoice in it or triumph.”
Kelsey looked at her curiously. An odd young woman, this, he thought.
“You seem to have your ideas on most things, Miss Rich,” he said.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.”
“How long have you been at Meadowbank?”
“Just over a year and a half.”
“There’s never been any trouble before?”
“At Meadowbank?” She sounded startled.
“Yes.”
“Oh no. Everything’s been quite all right until this term.”
Kelsey pounced.
“What’s been wrong this term? You don’t mean the murder, do you? You mean something else—”
“I don’t—” she stopped—“Yes, perhaps I do—but it’s all very nebulous.”
“Go on.”
“Miss Bulstrode’s not been happy lately,” said Eileen slowly. “That’s one thing. You wouldn’t know it. I don’t think anybody else has even noticed it. But I have. And she’s not the only one who’s unhappy. But that isn’t what you mean, is it? That’s just people’s feelings. The kind of things you get when you’re cooped up together and think about one thing too much. You meant, was there anything that didn’t seem right just this term. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Kelsey, looking at her curiously, “yes, that’s it. Well, what about it?”
“I think there is something wrong here,” said Eileen Rich slowly. “It’s as though there were someone among us who didn’t belong.” She looked at him, smiled, almost laughed and said, “Cat among the pigeons, that’s the sort of feeling. We’re the pigeons, all of us, and the cat’s amongst us. But we can’t see the cat.”
“That’s very vague, Miss Rich.”
“Yes, isn’t it? It sounds quite idiotic. I can hear that myself. What I really mean, I suppose, is that there has been something, some little thing that I’ve noticed but I don’t know what I’ve noticed.”
“About anyone in particular?”
“No, I told you, that’s just it. I don’t know who it is. The only way I can sum it up is to say that there’s someone here, who’s—somehow—wrong! There’s someone here—I don’t know who—who makes me uncomfortable. Not when I’m looking at her but when she’s looking at me because it’s when she’s looking at me that it shows, whatever it is. Oh, I’m getting more incoherent than ever. And anyway, it’s only a feeling. It’s not what you want. It isn’t evidence.”
“No,” said Kelsey, “it isn’t evidence. Not yet. But it’s interesting, and if your feeling gets anymore definite, Miss Rich, I’d be glad to hear about it.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “because it’s serious, isn’t it? I mean, someone’s been killed—we don’t know why—and the killer may be miles away, or, on the other hand, the killer may be here