The Clocks - Agatha Christie [83]
“Yes,” I said, “very stupid.”
Here Ingrid made her appearance once more.
“I come soon,” she said reassuringly. “I come very soon now.”
She departed again. Geraldine said:
“We don’t really want her. She gets worried about meals. Of course this is the only one she has to cook except breakfast. Daddy goes down to the restaurant in the evening and he has something sent up for me from there. Just fish or something. Not a real dinner.” Her voice sounded wistful.
“What time do you usually have your lunch, Geraldine?”
“My dinner, you mean? This is my dinner. I don’t have dinner in the evening, it’s supper. Well, I really have my dinner at any time Ingrid happens to have cooked it. She’s rather funny about time. She has to get breakfast ready at the right time because Daddy gets so cross, but midday dinner we have anytime. Sometimes we have it at twelve o’clock and sometimes I don’t get it till two. Ingrid says you don’t have meals at a particular time, you just have them when they’re ready.”
“Well, it’s an easy idea,” I said. “What time did you have your lunch—dinner, I mean—on the day of the murder?”
“That was one of the twelve o’clock days. You see, Ingrid goes out that day. She goes to the cinema or to have her hair done and a Mrs. Perry comes and keeps me company. She’s terrible, really. She pats one.”
“Pats one?” I said, slightly puzzled.
“You know, on the head. Says things like ‘dear little girlie.’ She’s not,” said Geraldine, “the kind of person you can have any proper conversation with. But she brings me sweets and that sort of thing.”
“How old are you, Geraldine?”
“I’m ten. Ten and three months.”
“You seem to me very good at intelligent conversation,” I said.
“That’s because I have to talk to Daddy a lot,” said Geraldine seriously.
“So you had your dinner early on that day of the murder?”
“Yes, so Ingrid could get washed up and go off just after one.”
“Then you were looking out of the window that morning, watching people.”
“Oh, yes. Part of the time. Earlier, about ten o’clock, I was doing a crossword puzzle.”
“I’ve been wondering whether you could possibly have seen Mr. Curry arriving at the house?”
Geraldine shook her head.
“No. I didn’t. It is rather odd, I agree.”
“Well, perhaps he got there quite early.”
“He didn’t go to the front door and ring the bell. I’d have seen him.”
“Perhaps he came in through the garden. I mean through the other side of the house.”
“Oh, no,” said Geraldine. “It backs on other houses. They wouldn’t like anyone coming through their garden.”
“No, no, I suppose they wouldn’t.”
“I wish I knew what he’d looked like,” said Geraldine.
“Well, he was quite old. About sixty. He was clean-shaven and he had on a dark grey suit.”
Geraldine shook her head.
“It sounds terribly ordinary,” she said with disapprobation.
“Anyway,” I said, “I suppose it’s difficult for you to remember one day from another when you’re lying here and always looking.”
“It’s not at all difficult.” She rose to the challenge. “I can tell you everything about that morning. I know when Mrs. Crab came and when she left.”
“That’s the daily cleaning woman, is it?”
“Yes. She scuttles, just like a crab. She’s got a little boy. Sometimes she brings him with her, but she didn’t that day. And then Miss Pebmarsh goes out about ten o’clock. She goes to teach children at a blind school. Mrs. Crab goes away about twelve. Sometimes she has a parcel with her that she didn’t have when she came. Bits of butter, I expect, and cheese, because Miss Pebmarsh can’t see. I know particularly well what happened that day because you