The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [114]
16. Holland’s plan is now to try and make it appear that he spent the night at his hotel. He must see Elma as soon as he can reasonably appear at Rundel Croft. He is there before the Inspector. Emery has to be “drilled” a bit; also Jennie Merton. The delay when the Inspector calls is thus explained. Elma and Holland agree that there is no evidence but theirs that the Admiral hesitated to consent to their marriage; Holland was accepted as her fiancé. So the “will” motive will not be so serious; anyhow it can be argued that Elma is likely soon to inherit her brother’s money. If they get married she cannot be made to give evidence against her husband—and only she can say what the Admiral meant to do after dinner at the Vicarage. They have already got a licence—for the circumstances (the gun-running, the Admiral’s “negotiation,” etc.) have suggested the need to be ready to marry at short notice. They go off to London.
17. The “favourite frock” was never hidden. But it was a favourite, and therefore suitable for the occasion in London: and for the same reason Elma hesitated to let her new and untried maid pack it for her in the suit-case. She folded it herself, put it on a shelf and packed it on top after seeing the Inspector. As to her regard for her appearance—she (like some others) took more trouble before strangers than before intimates (she had no time in the Inspector’s case, of course). Her “acting” during the interview was what one would expect—partly good and partly bad.
18. As for the Vicar: when first the police come, the thing uppermost in his mind is that nothing must come out about his wife’s visit. He has his sons to think of, above all (almost his first thought). His hat can have nothing to do with it; he will stick to his story; he knows nothing about the murder and cannot be connected with it—and if the visit of the “French maid” comes out, there might be an added complication. And then, after he has maintained the “all quiet after ten-fifteen” story, comes the loss of the knife, and his discovery of ominous stains in his summer-house. He will water the garden, and if he misdirects the hose-pipe, it will merely be a sign of his worldly incompetence.
CHAPTER VII
By Dorothy L. Sayers
JOHN MARTIN FITZGERALD of Winchester, solicitor, married, in 1888, Mary Penistone, and had by her two surviving children, Walter, born in 1889 and Elma, born in 1898.
In 1909, Walter, aged twenty, got into some kind of trouble with his father and left the country. He went to China and got a job as a clerk with a tobacco company in Hong Kong, where, being idle and vicious, though handsome and attractive, he got into the opium-smuggling business.
The assistant-commissioner in the Chinese customs was a man called Wilfrid Denny, who had got into difficulties through having an extravagant wife, and was heavily in debt to a big Chinese money-lender. Denny soon found that the price of this “accommodation” was to be the turning of a blind eye to the passage of opium through the customs. This brought him into contact with Walter, who soon saw himself in a position to blackmail the weak and foolish Denny. Denny was then about forty years of age.
In 1911, the Captain in command of the cruiser Huntingdonshire, stationed at Hong Kong, was Captain Penistone, young Fitzgerald’s uncle, and to get the opium through meant getting it past Penistone. The previous Captain had been fairly easy to diddle, but Penistone was alert and incorruptible. He was then forty-three, a vigorous, jovial man, well liked by his crew, and a smart officer. As it was impossible to square him, it was necessary to get rid of him. Walter, in collusion with Denny, used his knowledge of his uncle’s character to involve him in some discreditable affair (e.g., with a woman, or in connection with the ill-treatment of natives). Penistone, though really innocent, is made to appear at the very least extremely indiscreet, and is advised to send in his papers.
Penistone never knew