Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [63]
‘You heard him speak?’
‘Aren’t I telling you so? She dodges back inside and he calls out, “Oh, go on, get out of here. I’m fed up.” That’s nice way for a man to talk to a girl. But they ask for it! Hussies!’
Poirot said, ‘You did not report this to the police?’
She fixed him with a basilisk stare and totteringly rose out of her chair. Standing over him and glaring down on him, she said:
‘I have never had anything to do with the police. The police indeed! I, in a police court?’
Quiverering with rage and with one last malevolent glance at Poirot she left the room.
Poirot sat for a few minutes thoughtfully caressing his moustache, then he went in search of Beatrice Lippincott.
‘Oh, yes, M. Poirot, you mean old Mrs Leadbetter? Canon Leadbetter’s widow. She comes here every year, but of course between ourselves she is rather a trial. She’s really frightfully rude to people sometimes, and she doesn’t seem to understand that things are different nowadays. She’s nearly eighty, of course.’
‘But she is clear in her mind? She knows what she is saying?’
‘Oh, yes. She’s quite a sharp old lady — rather too much so sometimes.’
‘Do you know who a young woman was who visited the murdered man on Tuesday night?’
Beatrice looked astonished.
‘I don’t remember a young woman coming to visit him at any time. What was she like?’
‘She was wearing an orange scarf round her head and I should fancy a good deal of make-up. She was in No. 5 talking to Arden at a quarter past ten on Tuesday night.’
‘Really, M. Poirot, I’ve no idea whatsoever.’
Thoughtfully Poirot went along in search of Superintendent Spence.
Spence listened to Poirot’s story in silence. Then he leaned back in his chair and nodded his head slowly.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How often you come back to the same old formula. Cherchez la femme.’
The Superintendent’s French accent was not as good as Sergeant Graves’, but he was proud of it. He got up and went across the room. He came back holding something in his hand. It was a lipstick in a gilt cardboard case.
‘We had this indication all along that there might be a woman mixed up in it,’ he said.
Poirot took the lipstick and smeared a little delicately on the back of his hand. ‘Good quality,’ he said. ‘A dark cherry red — worn by a brunette probably.’
‘Yes. It was found on the floor of No. 5. It had rolled under the chest of drawers and of course just possibly it might have been there some time. No fingerprints on it. Nowadays, of course, there isn’t the range of lipsticks there used to be — just a few standard makes.’
‘And you have no doubt made your inquiries?’
Spence smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘as you put it, we have made our inquiries. Rosaleen Cloade uses this type of lipstick. So does Lynn Marchmont. Frances Cloade uses a more subdued colour. Mrs Lionel Cloade doesn’t use lipstick at all. Mrs Marchmont uses a pale mauve shade. Beatrice Lippincott doesn’t appear to use anything as expensive as this — nor does the chambermaid, Gladys.’
He paused.
‘You have been thorough,’ said Poirot.
‘Not thorough enough. It looks now as though an outsider is mixed up in it — some woman, perhaps, that Underhay knew in Warmsley Vale.’
‘And who was with him at a quarter past ten on Tuesday evening?’
‘Yes,’ said Spence. He added with a sigh, ‘This lets David Hunter out.’
‘It does?’
‘Yes. His lordship has consented to make a statement at last. After his solicitor had been along to make him see reason. Here’s his account of his own movements.’
Poirot read a neat typed memorandum.
Left London 4.16 train for Warmsley Heath. Arrived there 5.30. Walked to Furrowbank by footpath.
‘His reason for coming down,’ the Superintendent broke in, ‘was, according to him, to get certain things he’d left behind, letters and papers, a cheque-book, and to see if some shirts had come back from the laundry — which, of course, they hadn’t! My word, laundry’s a problem nowadays. Four ruddy weeks since they