Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie [21]
“H’m—I see.” He made a wry face. “Damn it all, you’ve made me nervous ever since I got here! You look so confoundedly intelligent.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bridget drily. “What did you expect?”
“Well, I really hadn’t thought about it.”
But she went on calmly:
“A fluffy little person—with just enough brains to realize her opportunities and marry her boss?”
Luke made a confused noise. She turned a cool amused glance on him.
“I quite understand. It’s all right. I’m not annoyed.”
Luke chose effrontery.
“Well, perhaps, it was something faintly approaching that. But I didn’t think much about it.”
She said slowly:
“No, you wouldn’t. You don’t cross your fences till you get to them.”
But Luke was despondent.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt I did my stuff pretty rottenly! Has Lord Whitfield seen through me too?”
“Oh, no. If you said you’d come down here to study the habits of water beetles and write a monograph about them, it would have been OK with Gordon. He’s got a beautiful believing mind.”
“All the same I wasn’t a bit convincing! I got rattled somehow.”
“I cramped your style,” said Bridget. “I saw that. It rather amused me, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, it would! Women with any brains are usually cold-bloodedly cruel.”
Bridget murmured:
“One has to take one’s pleasures as one can in this life!” She paused a minute, then said: “Why are you down here, Mr. Fitzwilliam?”
They had returned full circle to the original question. Luke had been aware that it must be so. In the last few seconds he had been trying to make up his mind. He looked up now and met her eyes—shrewd inquiring eyes that met his with a calm, steady gaze. There was a gravity in them which he had not quite expected to find there.
“It would be better, I think,” he said meditatively, “not to tell you anymore lies.”
“Much better.”
“But the truth’s awkward…Look here, have you yourself formed any opinion—I mean has anything occurred to you about my being here?”
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully.
“What was your idea? Will you tell me? I fancy it may help somehow.”
Bridget said quietly:
“I had an idea that you came down here in connection with the death of that girl, Amy Gibbs.”
“That’s it, then! That’s what I saw—what I felt—whenever her name cropped up! I knew there was something. So you thought I came down about that?”
“Didn’t you?”
“In a way—yes.”
He was silent—frowning. The girl beside him sat equally silent, not moving. She said nothing to disturb his train of thought.
He made up his mind.
“I’ve come down here on a wild goose chase—on a fantastical and probably quite absurd and melodramatic supposition. Amy Gibbs is part of that whole business. I’m interested to find out exactly how she died.”
“Yes, I thought so.”
“But dash it all—why did you think so? What is there about her death that—well—aroused your interest?”
Bridget said:
“I’ve thought—all along—that there was something wrong about it. That’s why I took you to see Miss Waynflete.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks so too.”
“Oh.” Luke thought back rapidly. He understood now the underlying suggestions of that intelligent spinster’s manner. “She thinks as you do—that there’s something—odd about it?”
Bridget nodded.
“Why exactly?”
“Hat paint, to begin with.”
“What do you mean, hat paint?”
“Well, about twenty years ago, people did paint hats—one season you had a pink straw, next season a bottle of hat paint and it became dark blue—then perhaps another bottle and a black hat! But nowadays—hats are cheap—tawdry stuff to be thrown away when out of fashion.”
“Even girls of the class of Amy Gibbs?”
“I’d be more likely to paint a hat than she would! Thrift’s gone out. And there’s another thing. It was red hat paint.”
“Well?”
“And Amy Gibbs had red hair—carrots!”
“You mean it doesn’t go together?”
Bridget nodded.
“You wouldn’t wear a scarlet hat with carroty hair. It’s the sort of thing a man wouldn’t realize, but