Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie [7]
“He’ll be all right. He’s quite uneducated and completely credulous—actually believes things he reads in his own papers. Anyway Bridget will fix him. Bridget’s all right. I’ll answer for her.”
Luke drew a deep breath.
“Jimmy, old scout, it looks as though the thing is going to be easy. You’re a wonder. If you can really fix up with your cousin—”
“That will be absolutely OK. Leave it to me.”
“I’m no end grateful to you.”
Jimmy said:
“All I ask is, if you’re hunting down a homicidal murderer, let me be in at the death!”
He added sharply:
“What is it?”
Luke said slowly:
“Just something I remembered my old lady saying to me. I’d said to her that it was a bit thick to do a lot of murders and get away with it, and she answered that I was wrong—that it was very easy to kill…” He stopped, and then said slowly, “I wonder if that’s true, Jimmy? I wonder if it is—”
“What?”
“Easy to kill….”
Three
WITCH WITHOUT BROOMSTICK
I
The sun was shining when Luke came over the hill and down into the little country town of Wychwood-under-Ashe. He had bought a secondhand Standard Swallow, and he stopped for a moment on the brow of the hill and switched off the engine.
The summer day was warm and sunny. Below him was the village, singularly unspoilt by recent developments. It lay innocently and peacefully in the sunlight—mainly composed of a long straggling street that ran along under the overhanging brow of Ashe Ridge.
It seemed singularly remote, strangely untouched. Luke thought, “I’m probably mad. The whole thing’s fantastic.”
Had he really come here solemnly to hunt down a killer—simply on the strength of some garrulous ramblings on the part of an old lady, and a chance obituary notice?
He shook his head.
“Surely these things don’t happen,” he murmured. “Or—do they? Luke, my boy, it’s up to you to find out if you’re the world’s most credulous prize ass, or if your policeman’s nose has led you hot on the scent.”
He switched on the engine, threw in the gear and drove gently down the twisting road and so entered the main street.
Wychwood, as has been said, consists mainly of its one principal street. There were shops, small Georgian houses, prim and aristocratic, with whitened steps and polished knockers, there were picturesque cottages with flower gardens. There was an inn, the Bells and Motley, standing a little back from the street. There was a village green and a duck pond, and presiding over them a dignified Georgian house which Luke thought at first must be his destination, Ashe Manor. But on coming nearer he saw that there was a large painted board announcing that it was the Museum and Library. Farther on there was an anachronism, a large white modern building, austere and irrelevant to the cheerful haphazardness of the rest of the place. It was, Luke gathered, a local Institute and Lads’ Club.
It was at this point that he stopped and asked the way to his destination.
He was told that Ashe Manor was about half a mile farther on—he would see the gates on his right.
Luke continued his course. He found the gates easily—they were of new and elaborate wrought iron. He drove in, caught a gleam of red brick through the trees, and turned a corner of the drive to be stupefied by the appalling and incongruous castellated mass that greeted his eyes.
While he was contemplating the nightmare, the sun went in. He became suddenly conscious of the overlying menace of Ashe Ridge. There was a sudden sharp gust of wind, blowing back the leaves of the trees, and at that moment a girl came round the corner of the castellated mansion.
Her black hair was blown up off her head by the sudden gust and Luke was reminded of a picture he had once seen—Nevinson’s “Witch.” The long pale delicate face, the black hair flying up to the stars. He could see this girl on a broomstick flying up to the moon….
She came straight towards him.
“You must be Luke Fitzwilliam. I’m Bridget Conway.”
He took the hand she held out. He could see her now as she was—not in a sudden moment of fantasy. Tall, slender, a long delicate face with