Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [8]
A faint smile came to the girl’s lips. ‘I don’t think they will–not after the way you hit them. Oh, it was splendid of you!’
Major Wilbraham blushed under the warmth of her glance of admiration. ‘Nothin’ at all,’ he said indistinctly. ‘All in day’s work. Lady being annoyed. Look here, if you take my arm, can you walk? It’s been a nasty shock, I know.’
‘I’m all right now,’ said the girl. However, she took the proffered arm. She was still rather shaky. She glanced behind her at the house as they emerged through the gate. ‘I can’t understand it,’ she murmured. ‘That’s clearly an empty house.’
‘It’s empty, right enough,’ agreed the major, looking up at the shuttered windows and general air of decay.
‘And yet it is Whitefriars.’ She pointed to a half-obliterated name on the gate. ‘And Whitefriars was the place I was to go.’
‘Don’t worry about anything now,’ said Wilbraham. ‘In a minute or two we’ll be able to get a taxi. Then we’ll drive somewhere and have a cup of coffee.’
At the end of the lane they came out into a more frequented street, and by good fortune a taxi had just set down a fare at one of the houses. Wilbraham hailed it, gave an address to the driver and they got in.
‘Don’t try to talk,’ he admonished his companion. ‘Just lie back. You’ve had a nasty experience.’
She smiled at him gratefully.
‘By the way–er–my name is Wilbraham.’
‘Mine is Clegg–Freda Clegg.’
Ten minutes later, Freda was sipping hot coffee and looking gratefully across a small table at her rescuer.
‘It seems like a dream,’ she said. ‘A bad dream.’ She shuddered. ‘And only a short while ago I was wishing for something to happen–anything! Oh, I don’t like adventures.’
‘Tell me how it happened.’
‘Well, to tell you properly I shall have to talk a lot about myself, I’m afraid.’
‘An excellent subject,’ said Wilbraham, with a bow.
‘I am an orphan. My father–he was a sea captain–died when I was eight. My mother died three years ago. I work in the city. I am with the Vacuum Gas Company–a clerk. One evening last week I found a gentleman waiting to see me when I returned to my lodgings. He was a lawyer, a Mr Reid from Melbourne.
‘He was very polite and asked me several questions about my family. He explained that he had known my father many years ago. In fact, he had transacted some legal business for him. Then he told me the object of his visit. “Miss Clegg,” he said, “I have reason to suppose that you might benefit as the result of a financial transaction entered into by your father several years before he died.” I was very much surprised, of course.
‘“It is unlikely that you would ever have heard anything of the matter,” he explained. “John Clegg never took the affair seriously, I fancy. However, it has materialized unexpectedly, but I am afraid any claim you might put in would depend on your ownership of certain papers. These papers would be part of your father’s estate, and of course it is possible that they have been destroyed as worthless. Have you kept any of your father’s papers?”
‘I explained that my mother had kept various things of my father’s in an old sea chest. I had looked through it cursorily, but had discovered nothing of interest.
‘“You would hardly be likely to recognize the importance of these documents, perhaps,” he said, smiling.
‘Well, I went to the chest, took out the few papers it contained and brought them to him. He looked at them, but said it was impossible to say off-hand what might or might not be connected with the matter in question. He would take them away with him and would communicate with me if anything turned up.
‘By the last post on Saturday I received a letter from him in which he suggested that I come to his house to discuss the matter. He gave me the address: Whitefriars, Friars Lane, Hampstead. I was to be there at a quarter to eleven this morning.
‘I was a little late finding the place. I hurried through the gate and up towards the house, when suddenly