Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [7]
Mrs Marchmont sighed.
‘It seems so extraordinary. Gordon was such a shrewd man always. And it wasn’t, I mean, that women hadn’t tried. That last secretary but one, for instance. Really quite blatant. She was very efficient, I believe, but he had to get rid of her.’
Lynn said vaguely: ‘I suppose there’s always a Waterloo.’
‘Sixty-two,’ said Mrs Marchmont. ‘A very dangerous age. And a war, I imagine, is unsettling. But I can’t tell you what a shock it was when we got his letter from New York.’
‘What did it say exactly?’
‘He wrote to Frances — I really can’t think why. Perhaps he imagined that owing to her upbringing she might be more sympathetic. He said that we’d probably be surprised to hear that he was married. It had all been rather sudden, but he was sure we should all soon grow very fond of Rosaleen (such a very theatrical name, don’t you think, dear? I mean definitely rather bogus). She had had a very sad life, he said, and had gone through a lot although she was so young. Really it was wonderful the plucky way she had stood up to life.’
‘Quite a well-known gambit,’ murmured Lynn.
‘Oh, I know. I do agree. One has heard it so many times. But one would really think that Gordon with all his experience — still, there it is. She has the most enormous eyes — dark blue and what they call put in with a smutty finger.’
‘Attractive?’
‘Oh, yes, she is certainly very pretty. It’s not the kind of prettiness I admire.’
‘It never is,’ said Lynn with a wry smile.
‘No, dear. Really, men — but well, there’s no accounting for men! Even the most well-balanced of them do the most incredibly foolish things! Gordon’s letter went on to say that we mustn’t think for a moment that this would mean any loosening of old ties. He still considered us all his special responsibility.’
‘But he didn’t,’ said Lynn, ‘make a will after his marriage?’
Mrs Marchmont shook her head.
‘The last will he made was in 1940. I don’t know any details, but he gave us to understand at the time that we were all taken care of by it if anything should happen to him. That will, of course, was revoked by his marriage. I suppose he would have made a new will when he got home — but there just wasn’t time. He was killed practically the day after he landed in this country.’
‘And so she — Rosaleen — gets everything?’
‘Yes. The old will was invalidated by his marriage.’
Lynn was silent. She was not more mercenary than most, but she would not have been human if she had not resented the new state of affairs. It was not, she felt, at all what Gordon Cloade himself would have envisaged. The bulk of his fortune he might have left to his young wife, but certain provisions he would certainly have made for the family he had encouraged to depend upon him. Again and again he had urged them not to save, not to make provision for the future. She had heard him say to Jeremy, ‘You’ll be a rich man when I die.’ To her mother he had often said, ‘Don’t worry, Adela. I’ll always look after Lynn — you know that, and I’d hate you to leave this house — it’s your home. Send all the bills for repairs to me.’ Rowley he had encouraged to take up farming. Antony, Jeremy’s son, he had insisted should go into the Guards and he had always made him a handsome allowance. Lionel Cloade had been encouraged to follow up certain lines of medical research that were not immediately profitable and to let his practice run down.
Lynn’s thoughts were broken into. Dramatically, and with a trembling lip, Mrs Marchmont produced a sheaf of bills.
‘And look at all these,’ she wailed. ‘What am I to do? What on earth am I to do, Lynn? The bank manager wrote me only this morning that I’m overdrawn. I don’t see how I can be. I’ve been so careful. But it seems my investments just aren’t producing what they used to. Increased taxation he says. And all these yellow things, War Damage Insurance or something — one has to pay them whether one wants to or not.’
Lynn took the bills and glanced through them. There were no records of extravagance amongst them. They were for slates replaced on the roof; the mending