Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [38]
“Poor devil,” said Giles. “And I suppose he was just crazy about her.”
“Oh, I don’t know … I shouldn’t think so, really. Anyway, I’m sure he wouldn’t be our malevolent murderer. He’s not my idea of a murderer at all.”
“You don’t really know a lot about murderers, though, do you, my sweet?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—I was thinking about quiet Lizzie Borden—only the jury said she didn’t do it. And Wallace, a quiet man whom the jury insisted did kill his wife, though the sentence was quashed on appeal. And Armstrong who everybody said for years was such a kind unassuming fellow. I don’t believe murderers are ever a special type.”
“I really can’t believe that Walter Fane—”
Gwenda stopped.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
But she was remembering Walter Fane polishing his eyeglasses and the queer blind stare of his eyes when she had first mentioned St. Catherine’s.
“Perhaps,” she said uncertainly, “he was crazy about her….”
Fourteen
EDITH PAGETT
Mrs. Mountford’s back parlour was a comfortable room. It had a round table covered with a cloth, and some old-fashioned armchairs and a stern-looking but unexpectedly well-sprung sofa against the wall. There were china dogs and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, and a framed coloured representation of the Princess Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. On another wall was the King in Naval uniform, and a photograph of Mr. Mountford in a group of other bakers and confectioners. There was a picture made with shells and a watercolour of a very green sea at Capri. There were a great many other things, none of them with any pretensions to beauty or the higher life; but the net result was a happy, cheerful room where people sat round and enjoyed themselves whenever there was time to do so.
Mrs. Mountford, née Pagett, was short and round and darkhaired with a few grey streaks in the dark. Her sister, Edith Pagett, was tall and dark and thin. There was hardly any grey in her hair though she was at a guess round about fifty.
“Fancy now,” Edith Pagett was saying. “Little Miss Gwennie. You must excuse me, m’am, speaking like that, but it does take one back. You used to come into my kitchen, as pretty as could be. ‘Winnies,’ you used to say. ‘Winnies.’ And what you meant was raisins—though why you called them winnies is more than I can say. But raisins was what you meant and raisins it was I used to give you, sultanas, that is, on account of the stones.”
Gwenda stared hard at the upright figure and the red cheeks and black eyes, trying to remember—to remember—but nothing came. Memory was an inconvenient thing.
“I wish I could remember—” she began.
“It’s not likely that you would. Just a tiny little mite, that’s all you were. Nowadays nobody seems to want to go in a house where there’s children. I can’t see it, myself. Children give life to a house, that’s what I feel. Though nursery meals are always liable to cause a bit of trouble. But if you know what I mean, m’am, that’s the nurse’s fault, not the child’s. Nurses are nearly always difficult—trays and waiting upon and one thing and another. Do you remember Layonee at all, Miss Gwennie? Excuse me, Mrs. Reed, I should say.”
“Léonie? Was she my nurse?”
“Swiss girl, she was. Didn’t speak English very well, and very sensitive in her feelings. Used to cry a lot if Lily said something to upset her. Lily was house-parlourmaid. Lily Abbott. A young girl and pert in her ways and a bit flighty. Many a game Lily used to have with you, Miss Gwennie. Play peep-bo through the stairs.”
Gwenda gave a quick uncontrollable