The Clocks - Agatha Christie [82]
“I was talking to one just now,” I said, “an orange one.”
“Yes, I saw you,” said Geraldine.
“You must be very sharp,” I said. “I don’t expect you miss much, do you?”
Geraldine smiled in a pleased way. Ingrid opened the door and came in breathless.
“You are all right, yes?”
“We’re quite all right,” said Geraldine firmly. “You needn’t worry, Ingrid.”
She nodded violently and pantomimed with her hands.
“You go back, you cook.”
“Very well, I go. It is nice that you have a visitor.”
“She gets nervous when she cooks,” explained Geraldine, “when she’s trying anything new, I mean. And sometimes we have meals very late because of that. I’m glad you’ve come. It’s nice to have someone to distract you, then you don’t think about being hungry.”
“Tell me more about the people in the houses there,” I said, “and what you see. Who lives in the next house—the neat one?”
“Oh, there’s a blind woman there. She’s quite blind and yet she walks just as well as though she could see. The porter told me that. Harry. He’s very nice, Harry is. He tells me a lot of things. He told me about the murder.”
“The murder?” I said, sounding suitably astonished.
Geraldine nodded. Her eyes shone with importance at the information she was about to convey.
“There was a murder in that house. I practically saw it.”
“How very interesting.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a murder before. I mean I’ve never seen a place where a murder happened.”
“What did you—er—see?”
“Well, there wasn’t very much going on just then. You know, it’s rather an empty time of day. The exciting thing was when somebody came rushing out of the house screaming. And then of course I knew something must have happened.”
“Who was screaming?”
“Just a woman. She was quite young, rather pretty really. She came out of the door and she screamed and she screamed. There was a young man coming along the road. She came out of the gate and sort of clutched him—like this.” She made a motion with her arms. She fixed me with a sudden glance. “He looked rather like you.”
“I must have a double,” I said lightly. “What happened next? This is very exciting.”
“Well, he sort of plumped her down. You know, on the ground there and then he went back into the house and the Emperor—that’s the orange cat, I always call him the Emperor because he looks so proud—stopped washing himself and he looked quite surprised, and then Miss Pikestaff came out of her house—that’s the one there, Number 18—she came out and stood on the steps staring.”
“Miss Pikestaff?”
“I call her Miss Pikestaff because she’s so plain. She’s got a brother and she bullies him.”
“Go on,” I said with interest.
“And then all sorts of things happened. The man came out of the house again—are you sure it wasn’t you?”
“I’m a very ordinary-looking chap,” I said modestly, “there are lots like me.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” said Geraldine, somewhat unflatteringly. “Well, anyway, this man, he went off down the road and telephoned from the call box down there. Presently police began arriving.” Her eyes sparkled. “Lots of police. And they took the dead body away in a sort of ambulance thing. Of course there were lots of people by that time, staring, you know. I saw Harry there, too. That’s the porter from these flats. He told me about it afterwards.”
“Did he tell you who was murdered?”
“He just said it was a man. Nobody knew his name.”
“It’s all very interesting,” I said.
I prayed fervently that Ingrid would not choose this moment to come in again with a delectable treacle tart or other delicacy.
“But go back a little, do. Tell me earlier. Did you see this man—the man who was murdered—did you see him arrive at the house?”
“No, I didn’t. I suppose he must have been there all along.”
“You mean he lived there?”
“Oh, no, nobody lives there except Miss Pebmarsh.”
“So you know her real name?”
“Oh, yes, it was in the papers. About the murder. And the screaming girl was called Sheila Webb. Harry told me that the man who was murdered was called Mr. Curry. That’s a funny name, isn’t it, like the thing you eat. And there was a second