The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [14]
And that was all Emery had to say. Questioned about his late master’s mood of the previous evening, he seemed to have no idea, and simply stared with a moon-faced imbecility. He “supposed he was much as usual.” The Admiral was occasionally “short” with his servants (the Inspector reflected that it would take a saint not to be short with Emery at least a dozen times a day); but beyond that his butler had nothing to say. Masters, apparently, were phenomena that were occasionally short, like pastry; but one accepted the fact, and did not conjecture about the cause. At least, not if one were as limp and uninterested as Emery appeared. No, his wife and he had only been a month with the Admiral; they had applied for the post from an advertisement; they were last with a lady and gentleman in Hove, for a year and a half. At this point, somewhat to Rudge’s relief, a much more intelligent-looking maidservant appeared, and announced that Miss Fitzgerald was awaiting him in the dining-room.
“She’s ugly!” was the Inspector’s immediate reaction on first beholding the niece of the late Admiral Penistone. And then: “No, I’m not so sure that she would be, in some lights. But she’d take a good bit of making-up, I shouldn’t wonder. And, jiminy! isn’t she sulky-looking!”
Miss Elma Fitzgerald was very pale. But it was not the pallor of fear for a possible accident to her uncle, but that peculiar to a very thick, opaque skin. She was big and heavily-made, with long limbs and broad shoulders, and would have been better suited, obviously, by long trailing draperies than by the tweed skirt and jumper which she had rather carelessly put on. She had largish, strongly-marked, but roughly-designed features, with a wide jaw and full chin, and dark brows nearly meeting in her white face. Her hair was dark and coarse, done in flat plaits around her ears, and under her eyes, which were so little open that the Inspector could not at first glance determine their colour, were lines and dark pouches. She was, to him, distinctly unattractive; and “a year or two over thirty” was, he thought, a generous description. Yet she was certainly a woman of personality, and in a kinder light and with artificial aids to lighten her skin and hide the disfiguring lines, she might even have been attractive.
“Yes?” she said in a voice that contrived to have a rasp and a drawl simultaneously. “What do you want?” At any rate, the Inspector thought, she was not going to waste his time.
“I am sorry to have to tell you, Miss Fitzgerald,” said he, “that Admiral Penistone has met with a serious accident.”
“Is he dead?” The tone was so matter-of-fact that the Inspector jumped slightly.
“I am afraid he is. But did you—were you expecting—?”
“Oh, no.” Still she had not raised her eyes. “But that’s the way the police always break things to one, don’t they? What happened?”
“I’m sorry to say,” said the Inspector, “that the Admiral was murdered.”
“Murdered?” At that the eyes did open wide for a moment. They were grey, very dark grey. They would have been fine eyes, Rudge noted, if the lashes had been longer. “But—why?”
As that was exactly what the Inspector wanted to know himself, he was momentarily brought to a stop.
“His body was found,” he said, “at half-past four this morning, drifting in a boat up-stream and stabbed to the heart.” Miss Fitzgerald merely bowed her head in acquiescence, and seemed waiting for him to continue. “Damn her!” the Inspector thought. “Hasn’t she got any natural feelings? You’d think I’d told her there was a cat on the lawn!” Aloud he said: “I’m afraid this must come as a good deal of a shock to you, madam.”
“You need not consider my feelings, Inspector,” said Elma Fitzgerald, with a glance which said, more plainly than words: “And it is a gross impertinence on your part to make any enquiries into them!” “I suppose you have some idea why—this happened? Or who did it?”
“I am afraid