The Clocks - Agatha Christie [53]
Once she said aloud:
“But it couldn’t have been like that … It couldn’t have been like she said….”
Suddenly, with an air of one making a resolution, she turned off from the High Street and along Albany Road in the direction of Wilbraham Crescent.
Since the day that the Press had announced that a murder had been committed at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, large numbers of people had gathered in front of the house every day to have a good look at it. The fascination mere bricks and mortar can have for the general public under certain circumstances is a truly mysterious thing. For the first twenty-four hours a policeman had been stationed there to pass people along in an authoritative manner. Since then interest had lessened; but had still not ceased entirely. Tradesmen’s delivery vans would slacken speed a little as they passed, women wheeling prams would come to a four or five minute stop on the opposite pavement and stare their eyes out as they contemplated Miss Pebmarsh’s neat residence. Shopping women with baskets would pause with avid eyes and exchange pleasurable gossip with friends.
“That’s the house—that one there….”
“The body was in the sitting room … No, I think the sitting room’s the room at the front, the one on the left….”
“The grocer’s man told me it was the one on the right.”
“Well, of course it might be, I’ve been into Number 10 once and there, I distinctly remember the dining room was on the right, and the sitting room was on the left….”
“It doesn’t look a bit as though there had been a murder done there, does it … ?”
“The girl, I believe, came out of the gate screaming her head off….”
“They say she’s not been right in her head since … Terrible shock, of course….”
“He broke in by a back window, so they say. He was putting the silver in a bag when this girl came in and found him there….”
“The poor woman who owns the house, she’s blind, poor soul. So, of course, she couldn’t know what was going on.”
“Oh, but she wasn’t there at the time….”
“Oh, I thought she was. I thought she was upstairs and heard him. Oh, dear, I must get on to the shops.”
These and similar conversations went on most of the time. Drawn as though by a magnet, the most unlikely people arrived in Wilbraham Crescent, paused, stared, and then passed on, some inner need satisfied.
Here, still puzzling in her mind, Edna Brent found herself jostling a small group of five or six people who were engaged in the favourite pastime of looking at the murder house.
Edna, always suggestible, stared also.
So that was the house where it happened! Net curtains in the windows. Looked ever so nice. And yet a man had been killed there. Killed with a kitchen knife. An ordinary kitchen knife. Nearly everybody had got a kitchen knife….
Mesmerized by the behaviour of the people round her, Edna, too, stared and ceased to think….
She had almost forgotten what had brought her here….
She started when a voice spoke in her ear.
She turned her head in surprised recognition.
Sixteen
COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE
I
I noticed when Sheila Webb slipped quietly out of the Coroner’s Court. She’d given her evidence very well. She had looked nervous but not unduly nervous. Just natural, in fact. (What would Beck say? “Quite a good performance.” I could hear him say it!)
I took in the surprise finish of Doctor Rigg’s evidence. (Dick Hardcastle hadn’t told me that, but he must have known) and then I went after her.
“It wasn’t so bad after all, was it?” I said, when I had caught her up.
“No. It was quite easy really. The coroner was very nice.” She hesitated. “What will happen next?”
“He’ll adjourn the inquest—for further evidence. A fortnight probably or until they can identify the dead man.”
“You think they will identify him?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “They’ll identify him all right. No doubt of that.”
She shivered. “It’s cold today.”
It wasn