Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [32]
Iris thought of Hawkins—stalking out at dusk—cyanide in hand—Cyanide—Rosemary—Why did everything lead back to that—?
The thin trickle of sound that was Aunt Lucilla’s voice was going on—it had reached by now a different point—
‘—and whether one ought to send the silver to the bank or not? Lady Alexandra was saying so many burglaries—though of course we do have good shutters—I don’t like the way she does her hair myself—it makes her face look so hard—but I should think she was a hard woman. And nervy, too. Everyone is nervy nowadays. When I was a girl people didn’t know what nerves were. Which reminds me that I didn’t like the look of George lately—I wonder if he could be going to have ’flu? I’ve wondered once or twice whether he was feverish. But perhaps it is some business worry. He looks to me, you know, as though he has got something on his mind.’
Iris shivered, and Lucilla Drake exclaimed triumphantly: ‘There, I said you had a chill.’
Chapter 2
‘How I wish they had never come here.’
Sandra Farraday uttered the words with such unusual bitterness that her husband turned to look at her in surprise. It was as though his own thoughts had been put into words—the thoughts that he had been trying so hard to conceal. So Sandra, too, felt as he did? She, too, had felt that Fairhaven was spoiled, its peace impaired, by these new neighbours a mile away across the Park. He said, voicing his surprise impulsively:
‘I didn’t know you felt like that about them, too.’
Immediately, or so it seemed to him, she withdrew into herself.
‘Neighbours are so important in the country. One has either to be rude or friendly; one can’t, as in London, just keep people as amiable acquaintances.’
‘No,’ said Stephen, ‘one can’t do that.’
‘And now we’re committed to this extraordinary party.’
They were both silent, running over in their minds the scene at lunch. George Barton had been friendly, even exuberant in manner, with a kind of undercurrent of excitement of which they had both been conscious. George Barton was really very odd these days. Stephen had never noticed him much in the time preceding Rosemary’s death. George had just been there in the background, the kindly dull husband of a young and beautiful wife. Stephen had never even felt a pang of disquiet over the betrayal of George. George had been the kind of husband who was born to be betrayed. So much older—so devoid of the attractions necessary to hold an attractive and capricious woman. Had George himself been deceived? Stephen did not think so. George, he thought, knew Rosemary very well. He loved her, and he was the kind of man who was humble about his own powers of holding a wife’s interest.
All the same, George must have suffered…
Stephen began to wonder just what George had felt when Rosemary died.
He and Sandra had seen little of him in the months following the tragedy. It was not until he had suddenly appeared as a near neighbour at Little Priors that he had reentered their lives and at once, so Stephen thought, he had seemed different.
More alive, more positive. And—yes, decidedly odd.
He had been odd today. That suddenly blurted out invitation. A party for Iris’s eighteenth birthday. He did so hope Stephen and Sandra would both come. Stephen and Sandra had been so kind to them down here.
Sandra had said quickly; of course, it would be delightful. Naturally Stephen would be rather tied when they got back to London and she herself had a great many tiresome engagements, but she did hope they would be able to manage it.
‘Then let’s settle a day now, shall we?’
George’s face—florid, smiling, insistent.
‘I thought perhaps one day the week after next—Wednesday or Thursday? Thursday is November 2nd. Would that be all right? But we’ll arrange any day that suits you both.’
It had been the kind of invitation that pinned you down—there was a certain lack of social savoir-faire. Stephen noticed that Iris Marle had gone red and looked embarrassed. Sandra had been perfect. She had smilingly surrendered to the inevitable and said that Thursday, November 2nd,