Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [35]
He gripped her shoulder.
‘Be quiet, Sandra. Rosemary’s dead.’
‘Is she? Sometimes—she feels very much alive…’
Chapter 3
Halfway across the Park Iris said:
‘Do you mind if I don’t come back with you, George? I feel like a walk. I thought I’d go up over Friar’s Hill and come down through the wood. I’ve had an awful headache all day.’
‘My poor child. Do go. I won’t come with you—I’m expecting a fellow along some time this afternoon and I’m not quite sure when he’ll turn up.’
‘Right. Goodbye till tea-time.’
She turned abruptly and made off at right angles to where a belt of larches showed on the hillside.
When she came out on the brow of the hill she drew a deep breath. It was one of those close humid days common in October. A dank moisture coated the leaves of the trees and the grey cloud hung low overhead promising yet more rain shortly. There was not really much more air up here on the hill than there had been in the valley, but Iris felt nevertheless as though she could breathe more freely.
She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and stared down into the valley to where Little Priors nestled demurely in its wooded hollow. Farther to the left, Fairhaven Manor showed a glimpse of rose red on brick.
Iris stared out sombrely over the landscape, her chin cupped in her hand.
The slight rustle behind her was hardly louder than the drip of the leaves, but she turned her head sharply as the branches parted and Anthony Browne came through them.
She cried half angrily: ‘Tony! Why do you always have to arrive like—like a demon in a pantomime?’
Anthony dropped to the ground beside her. He took out his cigarette case, offered her one and when she shook her head took one himself and lighted it. Then inhaling the first puff he replied:
‘It’s because I’m what the papers call a Mystery Man. I like appearing from nowhere.’
‘How did you know where I was?’
‘An excellent pair of bird glasses. I heard you were lunching with the Farradays and spied on you from the hillside when you left.’
‘Why don’t you come to the house like an ordinary person?’
‘I’m not an ordinary person,’ said Anthony in a shocked tone. ‘I’m very extraordinary.’
‘I think you are.’
He looked at her quickly. Then he said:
‘Is anything the matter?’
‘No, of course not. At least—’
She paused. Anthony said interrogatively:
‘At least?’
She drew a deep breath.
‘I’m tired of being down here. I hate it. I want to go back to London.’
‘You’re going soon, aren’t you?’
‘Next week.’
‘So this was a farewell party at the Farradays’?’
‘It wasn’t a party. Just them and one old cousin.’
‘Do you like the Farradays, Iris?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think I do very much—although I shouldn’t say that because they’ve really been very nice to us.’
‘Do you think they like you?’
‘No, I don’t. I think they hate us.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Is it?’
‘Oh, not the hatred—if true. I meant the use of the word “us”. My question referred to you personally.’
‘Oh, I see…I think they like me quite well in a negative sort of way. I think it’s us as a family living next door that they mind about. We weren’t particular friends of theirs—they were Rosemary’s friends.’
‘Yes,’ said Anthony, ‘as you say they were Rosemary’s friends—not that I should imagine Sandra Farraday and Rosemary were ever bosom friends, eh?’
‘No,’ said Iris. She looked faintly apprehensive but Anthony smoked peacefully. Presently he said:
‘Do you know what strikes me most about the Farradays?’
‘What?’
‘Just that—that they are the Farradays. I always think of them like that—not as Stephen and Sandra, two individuals linked by the State and the Established Church—but as a definite dual entity—the Farradays. That is rarer than you would think. They are two people with a common aim, a common way of life, identical hopes and fears and beliefs. And the odd part of it is that they are actually very dissimilar in character. Stephen Farraday, I should say, is a man of very wide intellectual scope, extremely sensitive to outside