The Clocks - Agatha Christie [34]
Once again Hardcastle produced his photograph.
“Have you ever seen this man, Mrs. McNaughton?”
Mrs. McNaughton stared at it with avidity.
“I’m almost sure I’ve seen him. Yes. Yes, I’m practically certain. Now, where was it? Was it the man who came and asked me if I wanted to buy a new encyclopedia in fourteen volumes? Or was it the man who came with a new model of vacuum cleaner. I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and he went out and worried my husband in the front garden. Angus was planting some bulbs, you know, and he didn’t want to be interrupted and the man went on and on saying what the thing would do. You know, how it would run up and down curtains, and would clean doorsteps and do the stairs and cushions and spring-clean things. Everything, he said, absolutely everything. And then Angus just looked up at him and said, ‘Can it plant bulbs?’ and I must say I had to laugh because it took the man quite aback and he went away.”
“And you really think that was the man in this photograph?”
“Well, no, I don’t really,” said Mrs. McNaughton, “because that was a much younger man, now I come to think of it. But all the same I think I have seen this face before. Yes. The more I look at it the more sure I am that he came here and asked me to buy something.”
“Insurance perhaps?”
“No, no, not insurance. My husband attends to all that kind of thing. We are fully insured in every way. No. But all the same—yes, the more I look at that photograph—”
Hardcastle was less encouraged by this than he might have been. He put down Mrs. McNaughton, from the fund of his experience, as a woman who would be anxious for the excitement of having seen someone connected with murder. The longer she looked at the picture, the more sure she would be that she could remember someone just like it.
He sighed.
“He was driving a van, I believe,” said Mrs. McNaughton. “But just when I saw him I can’t remember. A baker’s van, I think.”
“You didn’t see him yesterday, did you, Mrs. McNaughton?”
Mrs. McNaughton’s face fell slightly. She pushed back her rather untidy grey waved hair from her forehead.
“No. No, not yesterday,” she said. “At least—” she paused. “I don’t think so.” Then she brightened a little. “Perhaps my husband will remember.”
“Is he at home?”
“Oh, he’s out in the garden.” She pointed through the window where at this moment an elderly man was pushing a wheelbarrow along the path.
“Perhaps we might go out and speak to him.”
“Of course. Come this way.”
She led the way out through a side door and into the garden. Mr. McNaughton was in a fine state of perspiration.
“These gentlemen are from the police, Angus,” said his wife breathlessly. “Come about the murder at Miss Pebmarsh’s. There’s a photograph they’ve got of the dead man. Do you know, I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere. It wasn’t the man, was it, who came last week and asked us if we had any antiques to dispose of?”
“Let’s see,” said Mr. McNaughton. “Just hold it for me, will you,” he said to Hardcastle. “My hands are too earthy to touch anything.”
He took a brief look and remarked, “Never seen that fellow in my life.”
“Your neighbour tells me you’re very fond of gardening,” said Hardcastle.
“Who told you that—not Mrs. Ramsay?”
“No. Mr. Bland.”
Angus McNaughton snorted.
“Bland doesn’t know what gardening means,” he said. “Bedding out, that’s all he does. Shoves in begonias and geraniums and lobelia edging. That’s not what I call gardening. Might as well live in a public park. Are you interested in shrubs at all, Inspector? Of course, it’s the wrong time of year now, but I’ve one or two shrubs here that you’d be surprised at my being able to grow. Shrubs that they say only do well in Devon and Cornwall.