Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [48]
‘That was for the coroner’s court. Agreed with the medical evidence and saved everybody’s feelings. That’s done every day. And there was a half-finished letter to the sister directing how her personal belongings were to be given away—showed she’d had the idea of doing away with herself in her mind. She was depressed all right, I don’t doubt, poor lady—but nine times out of ten, with women, it’s a love affair. With men it’s mostly money worries.’
‘So you knew Mrs Barton had a love affair.’
‘Yes, we soon found that out. It had been discreet—but it didn’t take much finding.’
‘Stephen Farraday?’
‘Yes. They used to meet in a little flat out Earl’s Court way. It had been going on for over six months. Say they’d had a quarrel—or possibly he was getting tired of her—well, she wouldn’t be the first woman to take her life in a fit of desperation.’
‘By potassium cyanide in a public restaurant?’
‘Yes—if she wanted to be dramatic about it—with him looking on and all. Some people have a feeling for the spectacular. From what I could find out she hadn’t much feeling for the conventions—all the precautions were on his side.’
‘Any evidence as to whether his wife knew what was going on?’
‘As far as we could learn she knew nothing about it.’
‘She may have, for all that, Kemp. Not the kind of woman to wear her heart on her sleeve.’
‘Oh, quite so. Count them both in as possibles. She for jealousy. He for his career. Divorce would have dished that. Not that divorce means as much as it used to, but in his case it would have meant the antagonism of the Kidderminster clan.’
‘What about the secretary girl?’
‘She’s a possible. Might have been sweet on George Barton. They were pretty thick at the office and there’s an idea there that she was keen on him. Actually yesterday afternoon one of the telephone girls was giving an imitation of Barton holding Ruth Lessing’s hand and saying he couldn’t do without her, and Miss Lessing came out and caught them and sacked the girl there and then—gave her a month’s money and told her to go. Looks as though she was sensitive about it all. Then the sister came into a peck of money—one’s got to remember that. Looked a nice kid, but you can never tell. And there was Mrs Barton’s other boy friend.’
‘I’m rather anxious to hear what you know about him?’
Kemp said slowly:
‘Remarkably little—but what there is isn’t too good. His passport’s in order. He’s an American citizen about whom we can’t find anything, detrimental or otherwise. He came over here, stayed at Claridge’s and managed to strike up an acquaintance with Lord Dewsbury.’
‘Confidence man?’
‘Might be. Dewsbury seems to have fallen for him—asked him to stay. Rather a critical time just then.’
‘Armaments,’ said Race. ‘There was that trouble about the new tank trials in Dewsbury’s works.’
‘Yes. This fellow Browne represented himself as interested in armaments. It was soon after he’d been up there that they discovered that sabotage business—just in the nick of time. Browne met a good many cronies of Dewsbury—he seemed to have cultivated all the ones who were connected with the armament firms. As a result he’s been shown a lot of stuff that in my opinion he ought never to have seen—and in one or two cases there’s been serious trouble in the works not long after he’s been in the neighbourhood.’
‘An interesting person, Mr Anthony Browne?’
‘Yes. He’s got a lot of charm, apparently, and plays it for all he’s worth.’
‘And where did Mrs Barton come in? George Barton hasn’t anything to do with the armament world?’
‘No. But they seem to have been fairly intimate. He may have let out something to her. You know, colonel, none better, what a pretty woman can get out of a man.’
Race nodded, taking the chief inspector’s words, as meant, to refer to the Counter-Espionage Department which he had once controlled and not—as some ignorant person might have thought—to some personal indiscretions of his own.
He said after a minute or two:
‘Have you had a go at those letters that George Barton received?’
‘Yes. Found them in his desk at his house