The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [11]
“I will, sir. This hat was found in your boat early this morning. Your boat was drifting with the tide up-stream. And in her was the dead body of your opposite neighbour, Admiral Penistone—murdered, Mr. Mount.”
CHAPTER II
By G. D. H. and M. Cole
BREAKING THE NEWS
“MURDERED! Good God!” the Vicar said—and it was well known, the Inspector reflected, that the Vicar of Lingham had a ridiculously exaggerated respect for the Third Commandment. He had stepped back a pace at the shock of the news, and some of the colour was fading from his cheeks. “But—murdered. … How—what do you mean, Inspector?”
“I mean,” said Rudge, “that Admiral Penistone was stabbed to the heart some time before midnight last night—and his body placed in your boat.”
“But what—why … ? How could he have been?”
“And your hat,” the Inspector remorselessly amplified, “was lying in the boat beside him. So you see,” he added, “that the first thing I had to do was to make enquiries at your house.”
The Vicar turned on his heel abruptly. “Come into my study,” he said. “We can talk better there—I don’t suppose you want my sons, at present?” The Inspector shook his head, and followed him into a quiet, brown room with wide sash windows, the very model of what a clerical study, owned by a none too tidy cleric, should be. As he led the way in, the Vicar stumbled over something, and with a little gasp caught hold of the table for support. “You—you must excuse me,” he muttered, as he motioned the Inspector to a chair and sank into one himself. “This is—a very great shock. Now, will you tell me what I can do for you?”
Rudge scanned him a minute before replying. Undoubtedly he had received a very great shock. He was pale; his hands were none too steady; and his breath was coming and going quickly. Whether the cause was merely the sudden impact of violent death on a sheltered clerical life, or whether there was some graver reason, the Inspector did not know enough to decide. At any rate, there was no sense in causing further alarm at the moment. So when he spoke it was in a gentle reassuring tone.
“What I want to find out immediately, Mr. Mount, is exactly what happened last night, as far as you know it. Admiral Penistone, you say, came over to dine with his niece—what is the lady’s name, by the way?”
“Fitzgerald—Miss Elma Fitzgerald. She is his sister’s daughter, I understand.”
“About what age?”
“Oh—I should say a year or two over thirty.”
“Thank you. They arrived—when?”
“Just before seven-thirty. In their boat.”
“And left?”
“Slightly after ten. I can’t fix it to the minute, I’m afraid; but they were just taking their leave when the church clock struck, and Admiral Penistone said, ‘Hurry up, I want to get back before midnight’—or something of that sort; and within a very few minutes they were gone.”
“And you saw them off?”
“Yes. I went down to the landing-stage with them, and Peter—that’s my eldest son—helped them to start. It’s sometimes a little awkward getting off, if the current is running strongly.”
“Did you actually see them land?”
“Yes. It wasn’t dark. I watched them take the boat into the Admiral’s boat-house, and then, a little later, I saw them come out of the boat-house, and go up to the house.”
“I should have thought those trees at the back of the boat-house would have screened them from you,” said the Inspector, who had made good use of his eyes. “Or do you mean they were crossing the lawn?”
The Vicar looked at him with respect. “No, they were in the trees,” he said. “But Miss Fitzgerald had on a white dress, and I saw it showing through them.”
“But Admiral Penistone hadn’t a white dress?”
“No. … I suppose,” the Vicar reflected, “that now you mention it I couldn’t say I saw the Admiral leave the boat-house—but seeing his niece I naturally concluded he was with her.”
“Very naturally,” Rudge concurred soothingly. “And