Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [44]
“Is there anything—what—are there—”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Fortescue. There are only just a few more questions I would like to ask you.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course, Inspector. It’s all so dreadful, isn’t it? So very dreadful.”
She sat down rather nervously in an armchair. Inspector Neele sat down in the small, straight chair near her. He studied her rather more carefully than he had done heretofore. In someways a mediocre type of woman, he thought—and thought also that she was not very happy. Restless, unsatisfied, limited in mental outlook, yet he thought she might have been efficient and skilled in her own profession of hospital nurse. Though she had achieved leisure by her marriage with a well-to-do man, leisure had not satisfied her. She bought clothes, read novels and ate sweets, but he remembered her avid excitement on the night of Rex Fortescue’s death, and he saw in it not so much a ghoulish satisfaction but rather a revelation of the arid deserts of boredom which encompassed her life. Her eyelids fluttered and fell before his searching glance. They gave her the appearance of being both nervous and guilty, but he could not be sure that that was really the case.
“I’m afraid,” he said soothingly, “we have to ask people questions again and again. It must be very tiresome for you all. I do appreciate that, but so much hangs, you understand, on the exact timing of events. You came down to tea rather late, I understand? In fact, Miss Dove came up and fetched you.”
“Yes. Yes, she did. She came and said tea was in. I had no idea it was so late. I’d been writing letters.”
Inspector Neele just glanced over at the writing desk.
“I see,” he said. “Somehow or other, I thought you’d been out for a walk.”
“Did she say so? Yes—now I believe you’re right. I had been writing letters; then it was so stuffy and my head ached so I went out and—er—went for a walk. Only round the garden.”
“I see. You didn’t meet anyone?”
“Meet anyone?” She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I just wondered if you’d seen anybody or anybody had seen you during this walk of yours.”
“I saw the gardener in the distance, that’s all.” She was looking at him suspiciously.
“Then you came in, came up here to your room and you were just taking your things off when Miss Dove came to tell you that tea was ready?”
“Yes. Yes, and so I came down.”
“And who was there?”
“Adele and Elaine, and a minute or two later Lance arrived. My brother-in-law, you know. The one who’s come back from Kenya.”
“And then you all had tea?”
“Yes, we had tea. Then Lance went up to see Aunt Effie and I came up here to finish my letters. I left Elaine there with Adele.”
He nodded reassuringly.
“Yes. Miss Fortescue seems to have been with Mrs. Fortescue for quite five or ten minutes after you left. Your husband hadn’t come home yet?”
“Oh no. Percy—Val—didn’t get home until about half past six or seven. He’d been kept up in town.”
“He came back by train?”
“Yes. He took a taxi from the station.”
“Was it unusual for him to come back by train?”
“He does sometimes. Not very often. I think he’d been to places in the city where it’s rather difficult to park the car. It was easier for him to take a train home from Cannon Street.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele. He went on: “I asked your husband if Mrs. Fortescue had made a will before she died. He said he thought not. I suppose you don’t happen to have any idea?”
To his surprise Jennifer Fortescue nodded vigorously.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Adele made a will. She told me so.”
“Indeed! When was this?”
“Oh, it wasn’t very long ago. About a month ago, I think.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Inspector Neele.
Mrs. Percival leant forward eagerly. Her face now was all animation. She clearly enjoyed exhibiting her superior knowledge.
“Val didn’t know about it,” she said. “Nobody knew. It just happened that I found out about it. I was in the street. I had just come out of the stationer’s, then I saw Adele coming out of the solicitor’s office. Ansell and Worrall’s, you know. In the High Street.”
“Ah,” said