Murder in the Mews - Agatha Christie [66]
‘You can’t seriously suspect her.’
‘Why not, my friend? I tell you, me, I can suspect everybody! Supposing that, in spite of her apparent devotion to her husband, it is the faithful Bury she really loves?’
‘H’m,’ said Riddle. ‘In a way it has been a kind of ménage à trois for years.’
‘And there is some trouble about this company between Sir Gervase and Colonel Bury.’
‘It’s true that Sir Gervase might have been meaning to turn really nasty. We don’t know the ins-and-outs of it. It might fit in with that summons to you. Say Sir Gervase suspects that Bury has deliberately fleeced him, but he doesn’t want publicity because of a suspicion that his wife may be mixed up in it. Yes, that’s possible. That gives either of those two a possible motive. And it is a bit odd really that Lady Chevenix-Gore should take her husband’s death so calmly. All this spirit business may be acting!’
‘Then there is the other complication,’ said Poirot. ‘Miss Chevenix-Gore and Burrows. It is very much to their interest that Sir Gervase should not sign the new will. As it is, she gets everything on condition that her husband takes the family name —’
‘Yes, and Burrows’s account of Sir Gervase’s attitude this evening is a bit fishy. High spirits, pleased about something! That doesn’t fit with anything else we’ve been told.’
‘There is, too, Mr Forbes. Most correct, most severe, of an old and well-established firm. But lawyers, even the most respectable, have been known to embezzle their client’s money when they themselves are in a hole.’
‘You’re getting a bit too sensational, I think, Poirot.’
‘You think what I suggest is too like the pictures? But life, Major Riddle, is often amazingly like the pictures.’
‘It has been, so far, in Westshire,’ said the chief constable. ‘We’d better finish interviewing the rest of them, don’t you think? It’s getting late. We haven’t seen Ruth Chevenix-Gore yet, and she’s probably the most important of the lot.’
‘I agree. There is Miss Cardwell, too. Perhaps we might see her first, since that will not take long, and interview Miss Chevenix-Gore last.
‘Quite a good idea.’
Chapter 9
That evening Poirot had only given Susan Cardwell a fleeting glance. He examined her now more attentively. An intelligent face, he thought, not strictly good-looking, but possessing an attraction that a merely pretty girl might envy. Her hair was magnificent, her face skilfully made-up. Her eyes, he thought, were watchful.
After a few preliminary questions, Major Riddle said:
‘I don’t know how close a friend you are of the family, Miss Cardwell?’
‘I don’t know them at all. Hugo arranged that I should be asked down here.’
‘You are, then, a friend of Hugo Trent’s?’
‘Yes, that’s my position. Hugo’s girl-friend.’ Susan Cardwell smiled as she drawled out the words.
‘You have known him a long time?’
‘Oh, no, just a month or so.’
She paused and then added:
‘I’m by way of being engaged to him.’
‘And he brought you down here to introduce you to his people?’
‘Oh, dear no, nothing like that. We were keeping it very hush-hush. I just came down to spy out the land. Hugo told me the place was just like a madhouse. I thought I’d better come and see for myself. Hugo, poor sweet, is a perfect pet, but he’s got absolutely no brains. The position, you see, was rather critical. Neither Hugo nor I have any money, and old Sir Gervase, who was Hugo’s main hope, had set his heart on Hugo making a match of it with Ruth. Hugo’s a bit weak, you know. He might agree to this marriage and count on being able to get out of it later.’
‘That idea did not commend itself to you, mademoiselle?’ inquired Poirot gently.
‘Definitely not. Ruth might have gone all peculiar and refused to divorce him or something. I put my foot down. No trotting off to St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, until I could be there dithering with a sheaf of lilies.’
‘So you came down to study the situation for yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Eh bien!’ said Poirot.
‘Well, of course, Hugo was right!