Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [14]
When he finally dismissed her, she asked:
“It’s really true, is it. He’s dead?”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“Very sudden, wasn’t it? They said when they rang up from the office that he’d had a kind of fit.”
“Yes—it was a kind of fit.”
Gladys said: “A girl I used to know had fits. Come on anytime, they did. Used to scare me.”
For the moment this reminiscence seemed to overcome her suspicions.
Inspector Neele made his way to the kitchen.
His reception was immediate and alarming. A woman of vast proportions, with a red face armed with a rolling pin stepped towards him in a menacing fashion.
“Police, indeed,” she said. “Coming here and saying things like that! Nothing of the kind, I’d have you know. Anything I’ve sent in the dining room has been just what it should be. Coming here and saying I poisoned the master. I’ll have the law on you, police or no police. No bad food’s ever been served in this house.”
It was sometime before Inspector Neele could appease the irate artist. Sergeant Hay looked in grinning from the pantry and Inspector Neele gathered that he had already run the gauntlet of Mrs. Crump’s wrath.
The scene was terminated by the ringing of the telephone.
Neele went out into the hall to find Mary Dove taking the call. She was writing down a message on a pad. Turning her head over her shoulder she said: “It’s a telegram.”
The call concluded, she replaced the receiver and handed the pad on which she had been writing to the inspector. The place of origin was Paris and the message ran as follows:
Fortescue Yewtree Lodge Baydon Heath Surrey. Sorry your letter delayed. Will be with you tomorrow about teatime. Shall expect roast veal for dinner. Lance.
Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.
“So the Prodigal Son had been summoned home,” he said.
Chapter Six
At the moment when Rex Fortescue had been drinking his last cup of tea, Lance Fortescue and his wife had been sitting under the trees on the Champs Elysées watching the people walking past.
“It’s all very well to say ‘describe him,’ Pat. I’m a rotten hand at descriptions. What do you want to know? The Guvnor’s a bit of an old crook, you know. But you won’t mind that? You must be used to that more or less.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pat. “Yes—as you say—I’m acclimatized.”
She tried to keep a certain forlornness out of her voice. Perhaps, she reflected, the whole world was really crooked—or was it just that she herself had been unfortunate?
She was a tall, long-legged girl, not beautiful but with a charm that was made-up of vitality and a warm-hearted personality. She moved well, and had lovely gleaming chestnut brown hair. Perhaps from a long association with horses, she had acquired the look of a thoroughbred filly.
Crookedness in the racing world she knew about—now, it seemed, she was to encounter crookedness in the financial world. Though for all that, it seemed that her father-in-law, whom she had not yet met, was, as far as the law was concerned, a pillar of rectitude. All these people who went about boasting of “smart work” were the same—technically they always managed to be within the law. Yet it seemed to her that her Lance, whom she loved, and who had admittedly strayed outside the ringed fence in earlier days, had an honesty that these successful practitioners of the crooked lacked.
“I don’t mean,” said Lance, “that he’s a swindler—not anything like that. But he knows how to put over a fast one.”
“Sometimes,” said Pat, “I feel I hate people who put over fast ones.” She added: “You’re fond of him.” It was a statement, not a question.
Lance considered it for a moment, and then said in a surprised kind of voice:
“Do you know, darling, I believe I am.”
Pat laughed. He turned his head to look at her. His eyes narrowed. What a darling she was! He loved her. The whole thing was worth it for her sake.
“In a way, you know,” he said, “it’s hell going back. City life. Home on the 5:18. It’s not my