Spider's Web - Agatha Christie [34]
‘Well, he must have had some reason,’ the Inspector pointed out.
‘I suppose so,’ Clarissa agreed. ‘But I’ve no idea what it could have been.’
The Inspector thought for a moment, and then tried another line of approach. ‘Do you think that perhaps he wanted to see your husband?’ he suggested.
‘Oh, no,’ Clarissa replied quickly, ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t. Henry and he never liked each other.’
‘Oh!’ the Inspector exclaimed. ‘They never liked each other. I didn’t realize that. Had there been a quarrel between them?’
Again Clarissa spoke quickly to forestall a new and potentially dangerous line of enquiry. ‘Oh no,’ she assured the Inspector, ‘no, they hadn’t quarrelled. Henry just thought he wore the wrong shoes.’ She smiled engagingly. ‘You know how odd men can be.’
The Inspector’s look suggested that this was something of which he was personally ignorant. ‘You’re absolutely certain that Costello wouldn’t have come back here to see you?’ he asked again.
‘Me?’ Clarissa echoed innocently. ‘Oh no, I’m sure he didn’t. What reason could he possibly have?’
The Inspector took a deep breath. Then, speaking slowly and deliberately, he asked her, ‘Is there anybody else in the house he might have wanted to see? Now please think carefully before you answer.’
Again, Clarissa gave him her look of bland innocence. ‘I can’t think who,’ she insisted. ‘I mean, who else is there?’
The Inspector rose, turned his chair around and put it back against the bridge table. Then, pacing slowly about the room, he began to muse. ‘Mr Costello comes here,’ he began slowly, ‘and returns the articles which the first Mrs Hailsham-Brown had taken from your husband by mistake. Then he says good-bye. But then he comes back to the house.’
He went across to the French windows. ‘Presumably he effects an entrance through these windows,’ he continued, gesturing at them. ‘He is killed–and his body is pushed into that recess–all in a space of about ten to twenty minutes.’
He turned back to face Clarissa. ‘And nobody hears anything?’ he ended, on a rising inflection. ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’
‘I know,’ Clarissa agreed. ‘I find it just as difficult to believe. It’s really extraordinary, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is,’ the Inspector agreed, his tone distinctly ironical. He tried one last time. ‘Mrs Hailsham-Brown, are you absolutely sure that you didn’t hear anything?’ he asked her pointedly.
‘I heard nothing at all,’ she answered. ‘It really is fantastic.’
‘Almost too fantastic,’ the Inspector commented grimly. He paused, then went over to the hall door and held it open. ‘Well, that’s all for the present, Mrs Hailsham-Brown.’
Clarissa rose and walked rather quickly towards the library door, only to be intercepted by the Inspector. ‘Not that way, please,’ he instructed her, and led her over to the hall door.
‘But I think, really, I’d rather join the others,’ she protested.
‘Later, if you don’t mind,’ said the Inspector tersely.
Very reluctantly, Clarissa went out through the hall door.
Chapter 14
The Inspector closed the hall door behind Clarissa, then went over to Constable Jones who was still writing in his notebook. ‘Where’s the other woman? The gardener. Miss–er–Peake?’ the Inspector asked.
‘I put her on the bed in the spare room,’ the Constable told his superior. ‘After she came out of the hysterics, that is. A terrible time I had with her, laughing and crying something terrible, she was.’
‘It doesn’t matter if Mrs Hailsham-Brown goes and talks to her,’ the Inspector told him. ‘But she’s not to talk to those three men. We’ll have no comparing of stories, and no prompting. I hope you locked the door from the library to the hall?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the Constable assured him. ‘I’ve got the key here.’
‘I don’t know what to make of them at all,’ the Inspector confessed to his colleague. ‘They’re all highly respectable people. Hailsham-Brown’s a Foreign Office diplomat, Hugo Birch is a JP whom we know, and Hailsham-Brown’s other two guests seem decent upper-class types–well, you know what I mean…But there’s something funny going on.