Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [4]
Iris had cried out, her voice childish, startled:
‘Oh, Rosemary, what is it?’
Rosemary sat up, swept the hair back from her disfigured face. She struggled to regain command of herself. She said quickly:
‘It’s nothing—nothing—don’t stare at me like that!’
She got up and passing her sister, she ran out of the room.
Puzzled, upset, Iris went farther into the room. Her eyes, drawn wonderingly to the writing table, caught sight of her own name in her sister’s handwriting. Had Rosemary been writing to her then?
She drew nearer, looked down on the sheet of blue notepaper with the big characteristic sprawling writing, even more sprawling than usual owing to the haste and agitation behind the hand that held the pen.
Darling Iris,
There isn’t any point in my making a will because my money goes to you anyway, but I’d like certain of my things to be given to certain people.
To George, the jewellery he’s given me, and the little enamel casket we bought together when we were engaged.
To Gloria King, my platinum cigarette case.
To Maisie, my Chinese Pottery horse that she’s always admired—
It stopped there, with a frantic scrawl of the pen as Rosemary had dashed it down and given way to uncontrollable weeping.
Iris stood as though turned to stone.
What did it mean? Rosemary wasn’t going to die, was she? She’d been very ill with influenza, but she was all right now. And anyway people didn’t die of ’flu—at least sometimes they did, but Rosemary hadn’t. She was quite well now, only weak and run down.
Iris’s eyes went over the words again and this time a phrase stood out with startling effect:
‘…my money goes to you anyway…’
It was the first intimation she had had of the terms of Paul Bennett’s will. She had known since she was a child that Rosemary had inherited Uncle Paul’s money, that Rosemary was rich whilst she herself was comparatively poor. But until this moment she had never questioned what would happen to that money on Rosemary’s death.
If she had been asked, she would have replied that she supposed it would go to George as Rosemary’s husband, but would have added that it seemed absurd to think of Rosemary dying before George!
But here it was, set down in black and white, in Rosemary’s own hand. At Rosemary’s death the money came to her, Iris. But surely that wasn’t legal? A husband or wife got any money, not a sister. Unless, of course, Paul Bennett had left it that way in his will. Yes, that must be it. Uncle Paul had said the money was to go to her if Rosemary died. That did make it rather less unfair—
Unfair? She was startled as the word leapt to her thoughts. Had she been thinking that it was unfair for Rosemary to get all Uncle Paul’s money? She supposed that, deep down, she must have been feeling just that. It was unfair. They were sisters, she and Rosemary. They were both her mother’s children. Why should Uncle Paul give it all to Rosemary?
Rosemary always had everything!
Parties and frocks and young men in love with her and an adoring husband.
The only unpleasant thing that ever happened to Rosemary was having an attack of ’flu! And even that hadn’t lasted longer than a week!
Iris hesitated, standing by the desk. That sheet of paper—would Rosemary want it left about for the servants to see?
After a minute’s hesitation she picked it up, folded it in two and slipped it into one of the drawers of the desk.
It was found there after the fatal birthday party, and provided an additional proof, if proof was necessary, that Rosemary had been in a depressed and unhappy state of mind after her illness, and had possibly been thinking of suicide even then.
Depression after influenza. That was the motive brought forward at the inquest, the motive that Iris’s evidence helped to establish. An inadequate motive, perhaps, but the only one available, and consequently accepted. It had been a bad type of influenza that year.
Neither Iris nor George Barton could have suggested any other motive—then.
Now, thinking back over the incident in the attic, Iris wondered that she could