Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie [27]
“She killed about a dozen of her charges before the authorities tumbled to it, I believe,” said Luke.
Dr. Thomas nodded.
“Yes. She had a most sympathetic personality—devoted to children—and apparently quite genuinely heartbroken at each death. The psychology is amazing.”
“Amazing how these people get away with it,” said Luke.
He was on the doorstep now. Dr. Thomas had come out with him.
“Not amazing really,” said Dr. Thomas. “It’s quite easy, you know.”
“What is?”
“To get away with it.” He was smiling again—a charming, boyish smile. “If you’re careful. One just has to be careful—that’s all! But a clever man is extremely careful not to make a slip. That’s all there is to it.”
He smiled and went into the house.
Luke stood staring up the steps.
There had been something condescending in the doctor’s smile. Throughout their conversation Luke had been conscious of himself as a man of full maturity and of Dr. Thomas as a youthful and ingenuous young man.
Just for a moment he felt the rôles reversed. The doctor’s smile had been that of a grown-up amused by the cleverness of a child.
Nine
MRS. PIERCE TALKS
In the little shop in the High Street Luke had bought a tin of cigarettes and today’s copy of Good Cheer, the enterprising little weekly which provided Lord Whitfield with a good portion of his substantial income. Turning to the football competition, Luke, with a groan, gave forth the information that he had just failed to win a hundred and twenty pounds. Mrs. Pierce was roused at once to sympathy and explained similar disappointments on the part of her husband. Friendly relations thus established, Luke found no difficulty in prolonging the conversation.
“A great interest in football Mr. Pierce takes,” said Mr. Pierce’s spouse. “Turns to it first of all in the news, he does. And as I say, many a disappointment he’s had, but there, everybody can’t win, that’s what I say, and what I say is you can’t go against luck.”
Luke concurred heartily in these sentiments, and proceeded to advance by an easy transition to a further profound statement that troubles never come singly.
“Ah, no, indeed, sir, that I do know.” Mrs. Pierce sighed. “And when a woman has a husband and eight children—six living and buried two, that is—well, she knows what trouble is, as you may say.”
“I suppose she does—oh, undoubtedly,” said Luke. “You’ve—er—buried two, you say?”
“One no longer than a month ago,” said Mrs. Pierce with a kind of melancholy enjoyment.
“Dear me, very sad.”
“It wasn’t only sad, sir. It was a shock—that’s what it was, a shock! I came all over queer, I did, when they broke it to me. Never having expected anything of that kind to happen to Tommy, as you might say, for when a boy’s a trouble to you it doesn’t come natural to think of him being took. Now my Emma Jane, a sweet little mite she was. ‘You’ll never rear her.’ That’s what they said. ‘She’s too good to live.’ And it was true, sir. The Lord knows His own.”
Luke acknowledged the sentiment and strove to return from the subject of the saintly Emma Jane to that of the less saintly Tommy.
“Your boy died quite recently?” he said. “An accident?”
“An accident it was, sir. Cleaning the windows of the old Hall, which is now the library, and he must have lost his balance and fell—from the top windows, that was.”
Mrs. Pierce expatiated at some length on all the details of the accident.
“Wasn’t there some story,” said Luke carelessly, “of his having been seen dancing on the windowsill?”
Mrs. Pierce said that boys would be boys—but no doubt it did give the major a turn, him being a fussy gentleman.
“Major Horton?”
“Yes, sir, the gentleman with the bulldogs. After the accident happened he chanced to mention having seen our Tommy acting very rash-like—and of course it does show that if something sudden had