Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie [66]
‘Good. They are going out into the garden. No – don’t go in there. We can go straight up.’
Much to my surprise she led the way along the corridor to the extremity of the wing. Here a narrow ladder-like staircase rose to the floor above, and she mounted it, I following. We found ourselves in a dusty boarded passage. Anne opened a door and led me into a large dim attic which was evidently used as a lumber room. There were trunks there, old broken furniture, a few stacked pictures, and the many countless odds and ends which a lumber room collects.
My surprise was so evident that she smiled faintly.
‘First of all, I must explain. I am sleeping very lightly just now. Last night – or rather this morning about three o’clock, I was convinced that I heard someone moving about the house. I listened for some time, and at last got up and came out to see. Out on the landing I realized that the sounds came, not from down below, but from up above. I came along to the foot of these stairs. Again I thought I heard a sound. I called up, “Is anybody there?” But there was no answer, and I heard nothing more, so I assumed that my nerves had been playing tricks on me, and went back to bed.
‘However, early this morning, I came up here – simply out of curiosity. And I found this!’
She stooped down and turned round a picture that was leaning against the wall with the back of the canvas towards us.
I gave a gasp of surprise. The picture was evidently a portrait in oils, but the face had been hacked and cut in such a savage way as to render it unrecognizable. Moreover, the cuts were clearly quite fresh.
‘What an extraordinary thing,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it? Tell me, can you think of any explanation?’
I shook my head.
‘There’s a kind of savagery about it,’ I said, ‘that I don’t like. It looks as though it had been done in a fit of maniacal rage.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’
‘What is the portrait?’
‘I haven’t the least idea. I have never seen it before. All these things were in the attic when I married Lucius and came here to live. I have never been through them or bothered about them.’
‘Extraordinary,’ I commented.
I stooped down and examined the other pictures. They were very much what you would expect to find – some very mediocre landscapes, some oleographs and a few cheaply-framed reproductions.
There was nothing else helpful. A large old-fashioned trunk, of the kind that used to be called an ‘ark,’ had the initials E.P. upon it. I raised the lid. It was empty. Nothing else in the attic was the least suggestive.
‘It really is a most amazing occurrence,’ I said. ‘It’s so – senseless.’
‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘That frightens me a little.’
There was nothing more to see. I accompanied her down to her sitting-room where she closed the door.
‘Do you think I ought to do anything about it? Tell the police?’
I hesitated.
‘It’s hard to say on the face of it whether –’
‘It has anything to do with the murder or not,’ finished Anne. ‘I know. That’s what is so difficult. On the face of it, there seems no connection whatever.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but it is another Peculiar Thing.’
We both sat silent with puzzled brows.
‘What are your plans, if I may ask?’ I said presently.
She lifted her head.
‘I’m going to live here for at least another six months!’ She said it defiantly. ‘I don’t want to. I hate the idea of living here. But I think it’s the only thing to be done. Otherwise people will say that I ran away – that I had a guilty conscience.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Oh! Yes, they will. Especially when –’ She paused and then said: ‘When the six months are up – I am going to marry Lawrence.’ Her eyes met mine. ‘We’re neither of us going to wait any longer.’
‘I supposed,’ I said, ‘that that would happen.’
Suddenly she broke down, burying her head in her hands.
‘You don’t know how grateful I am to you – you don’t know. We’d said goodbye to each other – he was going away. I feel – I feel so awful about Lucius’s death. If we’d been planning to go away