The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [83]
There was no one in the house as far as he could tell, but he had the oddest feeling that there was someone in the garden. So strong a feeling was it that twice he stopped and turned round sharp to stare down the overgrown glories of the long, straight path. Empty of course. Only an honest blaze of sunshine greeted him. Red, white, blue and yellow heat blazed up again from the mounds of pyrethrum, the early purple daisies, the phloxes. The guardian hollyhocks stood motionless in the heavy, sun-saturated air. What’s wrong with honest sunshine and rejoicing flowers? What’s wrong with the Vicarage garden, just after tea-time on an August afternoon? He turned and resumed his slow pacing. Something was wrong.
If “C” were Mrs. Mount, then within the last quarter of an hour Mrs. Mount had been in her former husband’s garden, eating her former husband’s greengages, perfectly comfortably and at home. And now she was—where? In the house? Why should she be? But she might. He had never seen her handwriting, and it was just possible that she had written BACK AT SEVEN-THIRTY on the funeral card. And where did she get such a card unless she had been in the house? It was the sort of card you would find in a parson’s study, but hardly in a fashionable handbag. Had she written the message, written it, knowing that the servants were out, in her late husband’s study? For whom was the message? For the incomprehensible Vicar? For the handsome unknown who occasionally came to see her at the hotel? Why half-past seven? Suppose she hadn’t written the message. Suppose a maidservant had written it? Or the Vicar?
He had an impulse to go to the door and remove that telltale card, then restrained it. The card was a message for someone. Suppose that someone had not yet arrived and read it? Better not disturb the situation.
Unregretfully the Inspector cast aside all thoughts of a hot potter through the drowsy village, of unprofitable conversations with tinker, tailor and candlestick-maker, and another interview with old Neddy Ware. And more regretfully he cast aside also the pleasant, planned finale to that hot potter. No arrival at the local inn for Inspector Rudge, no deep draught of delicious beer, cooled in the well. Instead, instinctively and professionally the Inspector abandoned the open path for the little strip of lawn that ended in a shrubbery, and insinuated himself between the laurels. These began where the kitchen garden ended, and swept round the front garden, thus protecting by a twelve-foot belt of foliage the lawn and the house from the view of passers-by in the road.
The Inspector knew his duty. He glanced at his watch: it was nearing six. If anybody arrived at the Vicarage between that hour and the seven-thirty of the notice at the back door, Inspector Rudge intended to know of it. The laurels were dirty, as laurels are even in the depths of the country, and the ground below them was dusty. His coign of vantage was airless and intolerably hot. Nevertheless, there Inspector Rudge intended to remain until the writer of the card returned or its destined reader arrived.
He made himself as comfortable as he could, though he did not dare smoke; but he kept chewing-gum for such emergencies and played noughts-and-crosses with himself, patiently; for the loam upon which he lay was dry and loose as sand. As the shadows lengthened the air grew cooler and he suffered less from heat but more from midges. But it was not until the village church had struck seven that his devotion was rewarded. Voices, cheerful and unlowered, struck upon his ear. The hidden gate of the drive creaked and banged again. Footsteps sounded the other side of the impenetrable wall of laurels and holly