Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie [31]
“Do you like Mr. Ellsworthy?”
“Emphatically no.”
“Geoffrey—Dr. Thomas, you know, doesn’t like him either.”
“And you?”
“Oh, no—I think he’s dreadful.” She drew a little nearer. “There’s a lot of talk about him. I was told that he had some queer ceremony in the Witches’ Meadow—a lot of his friends came down from London—frightfully queer-looking people. And Tommy Pierce was a kind of acolyte.”
“Tommy Pierce?” said Luke sharply.
“Yes. He had a surplice and a red cassock.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, some time ago—I think it was in March.”
“Tommy Pierce seems to have been mixed-up in everything that ever took place in this village.”
Rose said:
“He was frightfully inquisitive. He always had to know what was going on.”
“He probably knew a bit too much in the end,” said Luke grimly.
Rose accepted the words at their face value.
“He was rather an odious little boy. He liked cutting up wasps and he teased dogs.”
“The kind of boy whose decease is hardly to be regretted!”
“No, I suppose not. It was terrible for his mother, though.”
“I gather she has five blessings left to console her. She’s got a good tongue, that woman.”
“She does talk a lot, doesn’t she?”
“After buying a few cigarettes from her, I feel I know the full history of everyone in the place!”
Rose said ruefully:
“That’s the worst of a place like this. Everybody knows everything about everybody else.”
“Oh, no,” said Luke.
She looked at him inquiringly.
Luke said with significance:
“No one human being knows the full truth about another human being.”
Rose’s face grew grave. She gave a slight involuntary shiver.
“No,” she said slowly. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Not even one’s nearest and dearest,” said Luke.
“Not even—” she stopped. “Oh, I suppose you’re right—but I wish you wouldn’t say frightening things like that, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
“Does it frighten you?”
Slowly she nodded her head.
Then she turned abruptly.
“I must be going now. If—if you have nothing better to do—I mean if you could—do come and see us. Mother would—would like to see you because of your knowing friends of daddy’s long ago.”
She walked slowly away down the road. Her head was bent a little as though some weight of care of perplexity bowed it down.
Luke stood looking after her. A sudden wave of solicitude swept over him. He felt a longing to shield and protect this girl.
From what? Asking himself the question, he shook his head with a momentary impatience at himself. It was true that Rose Humbleby had recently lost her father, but she had a mother, and she was engaged to be married to a decidedly attractive young man who was fully adequate to anything in the protection line. Then why should he, Luke Fitzwilliam, be assailed by this protection complex?
Good old sentimentality to the fore again, thought Luke. The protective male! Flourishing in the Victorian era, going strong in the Edwardian, and still showing signs of life despite what our friend Lord Whitfield would call the rush and strain of modern life!
“All the same,” he said to himself as he strolled on towards the looming mass of Ashe Ridge, “I like that girl. She’s much too good for Thomas—a cool, superior devil like that.”
A memory of the doctor’s last smile on the doorstep recurred to him. Decidedly smug it had been! Complacent!
The sound of footsteps a little way ahead roused Luke from his slightly irritable meditations. He looked up to see young Mr. Ellsworthy coming down the path from the hillside. His eyes were on the ground and he was smiling to himself. His expression struck Luke disagreeably. Ellsworthy was not so much walking as prancing—like a man who keeps time to some devilish little jig running in his brain. His smile was a strange secret contortion of the lips—it had a gleeful slyness that was definitely unpleasant.
Luke had stopped, and Ellsworthy was nearly abreast of him when he at last looked up. His eyes, malicious and dancing, met the other man’s for just a minute before recognition came. Then, or so it seemed to Luke, a complete change came over the man. Where a minute before there had been