Spider's Web - Agatha Christie [26]
‘A strange car? What do you mean?’
‘I wondered at the time whose it might be,’ Elgin recalled. ‘It seemed a curious place to leave it.’
‘Was there anybody in it?’
‘Not so far as I could see, sir.’
‘Go and take a look at it, Jones,’ the Inspector ordered his Constable.
‘Jones!’ Clarissa exclaimed involuntarily, with a start.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Inspector, turning to her.
Clarissa recovered herself quickly. Smiling at him, she murmured, ‘It’s nothing–just–I didn’t think he looked very Welsh.’
The Inspector gestured to Constable Jones and to Elgin, indicating that they should go. They left the room together, and a silence ensued. After a moment, Jeremy moved to sit on the sofa and began to eat the sandwiches. The Inspector put his hat and gloves on the armchair, and then, taking a deep breath, addressed the assembled company.
‘It seems,’ he declared, speaking slowly and deliberately, ‘that someone came here tonight who is unaccounted for.’ He looked at Clarissa. ‘You’re sure you weren’t expecting anyone?’ he asked her.
‘Oh, no–no,’ Clarissa replied. ‘We didn’t want anyone to turn up. You see, we were just the four of us for bridge.’
‘Really?’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m fond of a game of bridge myself.’
‘Oh, are you?’ Clarissa replied. ‘Do you play Blackwood?’
‘I just like a common-sense game,’ the Inspector told her. ‘Tell me, Mrs Hailsham-Brown,’ he continued, ‘you haven’t lived here for very long, have you?’
‘No,’ she told him. ‘About six weeks.’
The Inspector regarded her steadily. ‘And there’s been no funny business of any kind since you’ve been living here?’ he asked.
Before Clarissa could answer, Sir Rowland interjected. ‘What exactly do you mean by funny business, Inspector?’
The Inspector turned to address him. ‘Well, it’s rather a curious story, sir,’ he informed Sir Rowland. ‘This house used to belong to Mr Sellon, the antique dealer. He died six months ago.’
‘Yes,’ Clarissa remembered. ‘He had some kind of accident, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ said the Inspector. ‘He fell downstairs, pitched on his head.’ He looked around at Jeremy and Hugo, and added, ‘Accidental death, they brought in. It might have been that, but it might not.’
‘Do you mean,’ Clarissa asked, ‘that somebody might have pushed him?’
The Inspector turned to her. ‘That,’ he agreed, ‘or else somebody hit him a crack on the head–’
He paused, and the tension among his hearers was palpable. Into the silence the Inspector went on. ‘Someone could have arranged Sellon’s body to look right, at the bottom of the stairs.’
‘The staircase here in this house?’ Clarissa asked nervously.
‘No, it happened at his shop,’ the Inspector informed her. ‘There was no conclusive evidence, of course–but he was rather a dark horse, Mr Sellon.’
‘In what way, Inspector?’ Sir Rowland asked him.
‘Well,’ the Inspector replied, ‘once or twice there were a couple of things he had to explain to us, as you might say. And the Narcotics Squad came down from London and had a word with him on one occasion…’ He paused before continuing, ‘but it was all no more than suspicion.’
‘Officially, that is to say,’ Sir Rowland observed.
The Inspector turned to him. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Officially.’
‘Whereas, unofficially–?’ Sir Rowland prompted him.
‘I’m afraid we can’t go into that,’ the Inspector replied. He went on, ‘There was, however, one rather curious circumstance. There was an unfinished letter on Mr Sellon’s desk, in which he mentioned that he’d come into possession of something which he described as an unparalleled rarity, which he would–’ Here the Inspector paused, as if recollecting the exact words, ‘–would guarantee wasn’t a forgery, and he was asking fourteen thousand pounds for it.’
Sir Rowland looked thoughtful. ‘Fourteen thousand pounds,’ he murmured. In a louder voice he continued, ‘Yes, that’s a lot of money indeed. Now, I wonder what it could be? Jewellery, I suppose, but the word forgery suggests–I don’t know, a picture, perhaps?’
Jeremy continued to munch at the sandwiches, as the Inspector replied,