Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie [79]
‘She’s such a prize idiot,’ I added.
‘Oh! I wouldn’t say that. She’s rather shrewd, is Miss Gladys Cram. A remarkably healthy specimen. Not likely to trouble members of my profession.’
I told him that I was worried about Hawes, and that I was anxious that he should get away for a real rest and change.
Something evasive came into his manner when I said this. His answer did not ring quite true.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I suppose that would be the best thing. Poor chap. Poor chap.’
‘I thought you didn’t like him.’
‘I don’t – not much. But I’m sorry for a lot of people I don’t like.’ He added after a minute or two: ‘I’m even sorry for Protheroe. Poor fellow – nobody ever liked him much. Too full of his own rectitude and too self-assertive. It’s an unlovable mixture. He was always the same – even as a young man.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him then.’
‘Oh, yes! When we lived in Westmorland, I had a practice not far away. That’s a long time ago now. Nearly twenty years.’
I sighed. Twenty years ago Griselda was five years old. Time is an odd thing…
‘Is that all you came to say to me, Clement?’
I looked up with a start. Haydock was watching me with keen eyes.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ he said.
I nodded.
I had been uncertain whether to speak or not when I came in, but now I decided to do so. I like Haydock as well as any man I know. He is a splendid fellow in every way. I felt that what I had to tell might be useful to him.
I recited my interviews with Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby.
He was silent for a long time after I’d spoken.
‘It’s quite true, Clement,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve been trying to shield Mrs Lestrange from any inconvenience that I could. As a matter of fact, she’s an old friend. But that’s not my only reason. That medical certificate of mine isn’t the put-up job you all think it was.’
He paused, and then said gravely:
‘This is between you and me, Clement. Mrs Lestrange is doomed.’
‘What?’
‘She’s a dying woman. I give her a month at longest. Do you wonder that I want to keep her from being badgered and questioned?’
He went on:
‘When she turned into this road that evening it was here she came – to this house.’
‘You haven’t said so before.’
‘I didn’t want to create talk. Six to seven isn’t my time for seeing patients, and everyone knows that. But you can take my word for it that she was here.’
‘She wasn’t here when I came for you, though. I mean, when we discovered the body.’
‘No,’ he seemed perturbed. ‘She’d left – to keep an appointment.’
‘In what direction was the appointment? In her own house?’
‘I don’t know, Clement. On my honour, I don’t know.’
I believed him, but –
‘And supposing an innocent man is hanged?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No one will be hanged for the murder of Colonel Protheroe. You can take my word for that.’
But that is just what I could not do. And yet the certainty in his voice was very great.
‘No one will be hanged,’ he repeated.
‘This man, Archer –’
He made an impatient movement.
‘Hasn’t got brains enough to wipe his fingerprints off the pistol.’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said dubiously.
Then I remembered something, and taking the little brownish crystal I had found in the wood from my pocket, I held it out to him and asked him what it was.
‘H’m,’ he hesitated. ‘Looks like picric acid. Where did you find it?’
‘That,’ I replied, ‘is Sherlock Holmes’s secret.’
He smiled.
‘What is picric acid?’
‘Well, it’s an explosive.’
‘Yes, I know that, but it’s got another use, hasn’t it?’
He nodded.
‘It’s used medically – in solution for burns. Wonderful stuff.’
I held out my hand, and rather reluctantly he handed it back to me.
‘It’s of no consequence probably,’ I said. ‘But I found it in rather an unusual place.’
‘You won’t tell me where?’
Rather childishly, I wouldn’t.
He had his secrets. Well, I would have mine.
I was a little hurt that he had not confided in me more fully.
Chapter 26
I was in a strange mood when I mounted