The Clocks - Agatha Christie [77]
“And you decided you were not sufficiently in sympathy with your husband’s aims?”
“No, I wouldn’t put it like that at all! My view is entirely personal. I believe it always is with women in the end, unless of course one is a fanatic. And then women can be very fanatical, but I wasn’t. I’ve never been anything more than mildly left-wing.”
“Was your husband mixed up in the Larkin business?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he might have been. He never told me anything or spoke to me about it.”
She looked at me suddenly with more animation.
“We’d better get it quite clear, Mr. Lamb. Or Mr. Wolf in Lamb’s clothing, or whatever you are. I loved my husband, I might have been fond enough of him to go with him to Moscow, whether I agreed with what his politics were or not. He wanted me to bring the boys. I didn’t want to bring the boys! It was as simple as that. And so I decided I’d have to stay with them. Whether I shall ever see Michael again or not I don’t know. He’s got to choose his way of life and I’ve got to choose mine, but I did know one thing quite definitely. After he talked about it to me. I wanted the boys brought up here in their own country. They’re English. I want them to be brought up as ordinary English boys.”
“I see.”
“And that I think is all,” said Mrs. Ramsay, as she got up.
There was now a sudden decision in her manner.
“It must have been a hard choice,” I said gently. “I’m very sorry for you.”
I was, too. Perhaps the real sympathy in my voice got through to her. She smiled very slightly.
“Perhaps you really are … I suppose in your job you have to try and get more or less under people’s skins, know what they’re feeling and thinking. It’s been rather a knockout blow for me, but I’m over the worst of it … I’ve got to make plans now, what to do, where to go, whether to stay here or go somewhere else. I shall have to get a job. I used to do secretarial work once. Probably I’ll take a refresher course in shorthand and typing.”
“Well, don’t go and work for the Cavendish Bureau,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Girls who are employed there seem to have rather unfortunate things happen to them.”
“If you think I know anything at all about that, you’re wrong. I don’t.”
I wished her luck and went. I hadn’t learnt anything from her. I hadn’t really thought I should. But one has to tidy up the loose ends.
III
Going out of the gate I almost cannoned into Mrs. McNaughton. She was carrying a shopping bag and seemed very wobbly on her feet.
“Let me,” I said and took it from her. She was inclined to clutch it from me at first, then she leaned her head forward, peering at me, and relaxed her grip.
“You’re the young man from the police,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”
I carried the shopping bag to her front door and she teetered beside me. The shopping bag was unexpectedly heavy. I wondered what was in it. Pounds of potatoes?
“Don’t ring,” she said. “The door isn’t locked.”
Nobody’s door seemed ever to be locked in Wilbraham Crescent.
“And how are you getting on with things?” she asked chattily. “He seems to have married very much below him.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Who did—I’ve been away,” I explained.
“Oh, I see. Shadowing someone, I suppose. I meant that Mrs. Rival. I went to the inquest. Such a common-looking woman. I must say she didn’t seem much upset by her husband’s death.”
“She hadn’t see him for fifteen years,” I explained.
“Angus and I have been married for twenty years.” She sighed. “It’s a long time. And so much gardening now that he isn’t at the university … It makes it difficult to know what to do with oneself.”
At that moment, Mr. McNaughton, spade in hand, came round the corner of the house.
“Oh, you’re back, my dear. Let me take the things—”
“Just put it in the kitchen,” said Mrs. McNaughton to me swiftly—her elbow nudged me. “Just the Cornflakes and the eggs and a melon,” she said to her husband, smiling brightly.
I deposited