Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [52]
The general had a choleric desire to express himself in several blistering ways at once, but only succeeded in saying, ‘Old friend of mine, Major Race,’ at which introduction, Patricia lost interest in Race and bent a beatific smile on Chief Inspector Kemp.
With cool generalship, she shepherded them out of the room and into her own sitting-room, firmly shutting her father in his study.
‘Poor daddy,’ she observed. ‘He will fuss. But he’s quite easy to manage really.’
The conversation then proceeded on most amicable lines but with very little result.
‘It’s maddening really,’ said Patricia. ‘Probably the only chance in my life that I shall ever have of being right on the spot when a murder was done—it is a murder, isn’t it? The papers were very cautious and vague, but I said to Gerry on the telephone that it must be murder. Think of it, a murder done right close by me and I wasn’t even looking!’
The regret in her voice was unmistakable.
It was evident enough that, as the chief inspector had gloomily prognosticated, the two young people who had got engaged only a week previously had had eyes only for each other.
With the best will in the world, a few personalities were all that Patricia Brice-Woodworth could muster.
‘Sandra Farraday was looking very smart, but then she always does. That was a Schiaparelli model she had on.’
‘You know her?’ Race asked.
Patricia shook her head.
‘Only by sight. He looks rather a bore, I always think. So pompous, like most politicians.’
‘Did you know any of the others by sight?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I’d never seen any of them before—at least I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t suppose I would have noticed Sandra Farraday if it hadn’t been for the Schiaparelli.’
‘And you’ll find,’ said Chief Inspector Kemp grimly as they left the house, ‘that Master Tollington will be exactly the same—only there won’t even have been a Skipper—skipper what—sounds like a sardine—to attract his attention.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ agreed Race, ‘that the cut of Stephen Farraday’s dress suit will have caused him any heart pangs.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the inspector. ‘Let’s try Christine Shannon. Then we’ll have finished with the outside chances.’
Miss Shannon was, as Chief Inspector Kemp had stated, a blonde lovely. The bleached hair, carefully arranged, swept back from a soft vacant baby-like countenance. Miss Shannon might be as Inspector Kemp had affirmed, dumb—but she was eminently easy to look at, and a certain shrewdness in the large baby-blue eyes indicated that her dumbness only extended in intellectual directions and that where horse sense and a knowledge of finance were indicated, Christine Shannon was right on the spot.
She received the two men with the utmost sweetness, pressing drinks upon them and when these were refused, urging cigarettes. Her flat was small and cheaply modernistic.
‘I’d just love to be able to help you, chief inspector. Do ask me any questions you like.’
Kemp led off with a few conventional questions about the bearing and demeanour of the party at the centre table.
At once Christine showed herself to be an unusually keen and shrewd observer.
‘The party wasn’t going well—you could see that. Stiff as stiff could be. I felt quite sorry for the old boy—the one who was giving it. Going all out he was to try and make things go—and just as nervous as a cat on wires—but all he could do didn’t seem to cut any ice. The tall woman he’d got on his right was as stiff as though she’d swallowed the poker and the kid on his left was just mad, you could see, because she wasn’t sitting next to the nice-looking dark boy opposite. As for the tall fair fellow next to her he looked as though his tummy was out of order, ate his food as though he thought it would choke him. The woman next to him was doing her best, she pegged away at him, but she looked rather as though she had the jumps herself.’
‘You seem to have been able to notice a great deal, Miss Shannon,’ said Colonel Race.
‘I’ll let you into a secret. I wasn’t being so much