Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [62]
Race said gently:
‘And you disliked Rosemary?’
‘Yes, I did. Oh! She was very lovely and very attractive and could be very charming in her way. She never bothered to be charming to me! I disliked her a good deal. I was shocked when she died—and at the way she died, but I wasn’t really sorry. I’m afraid I was rather glad.’
She paused.
‘Please, shall we talk about something else?’
Race responded quickly:
‘I’d like you to tell me exactly, in detail, everything you can remember about yesterday—from the morning onwards—especially anything George did or said.’
Ruth replied promptly, going over the events of the morning—George’s annoyance over Victor’s importunity, her own telephone calls to South America and the arrangements made and George’s pleasure when the matter was settled. She then described her arrival at the Luxembourg and George’s flurried excited bearing as host. She carried her narrative up to the final moment of the tragedy. Her account tallied in every respect with those he had already heard.
With a worried frown, Ruth voiced his own perplexity.
‘It wasn’t suicide—I’m sure it wasn’t suicide—but how can it have been murder? I mean, how can it have been done? The answer is, it couldn’t, not by one of us! Then was it someone who slipped the poison into George’s glass while we were away dancing? But if so, who could it have been? It doesn’t seem to make sense.’
‘The evidence is that no one went near the table while you were dancing.’
‘Then it really doesn’t make sense! Cyanide doesn’t get into a glass by itself!’
‘Have you absolutely no idea—no suspicion, even, who might have put the cyanide in the glass? Think back over last night. Is there nothing, no small incident, that awakens your suspicions in any degree, however small?’
He saw her face change, saw for a moment uncertainty come into her eyes. There was a tiny, almost infinitesimal pause before she answered ‘Nothing.’
But there had been something. He was sure of that. Something she had seen or heard or noticed that, for some reason or other, she had decided not to tell.
He did not press her. He knew that with a girl of Ruth’s type that would be no good. If, for some reason, she had made up her mind to keep silence, she would not, he felt sure, change her mind.
But there had been something. That knowledge cheered him and gave him fresh assurance. It was the first sign of a crevice in the blank wall that confronted him.
He took leave of Ruth after lunch and drove to Elvaston Square thinking of the woman he had just left.
Was it possible that Ruth Lessing was guilty? On the whole, he was prepossessed in her favour. She had seemed entirely frank and straightforward.
Was she capable of murder? Most people were, if you came to it. Capable not of murder in general, but of one particular individual murder. That was what made it so difficult to weed anyone out. There was a certain quality of ruthlessness about that young woman. And she had a motive—or rather a choice of motives. By removing Rosemary she had a very good chance of becoming Mrs George Barton. Whether it was a question of marrying a rich man, or of marrying the man she had loved, the removal of Rosemary was the first essential.
Race was inclined to think that marrying a rich man was not enough. Ruth Lessing was too cool-headed and cautious to risk her neck for mere comfortable living as a rich man’s wife. Love? Perhaps. For all her cool and detached manner, he suspected her of being one of those women who can be kindled to unlikely passion by one particular man. Given love of George and hate of Rosemary, she might have coolly planned and executed Rosemary’s death. The fact that it had gone off without a hitch, and that suicide had been universally accepted without demur, proved her inherent capability.
And then George had received anonymous letters (From whom? Why? That was the teasing vexing problem that never ceased to nag at him) and had grown suspicious. He had planned a trap. And Ruth had