The Hollow - Agatha Christie [54]
Elsie Patterson knew the answer to that one. ‘You’ve got your children. You’ve got to live for them.’
Zena, sobbing and crying, ‘My Daddy’s dead!’ Throwing herself on her bed. Terry, pale, inquiring, shedding no tears.
An accident with a revolver, she had told them–poor Daddy has had an accident.
Beryl Collins (so thoughtful of her) had confiscated the morning papers so that the children should not see them. She had warned the servants too. Really, Beryl had been most kind and thoughtful.
Terence coming to his mother in the dim drawing-room, his lips pursed close together, his face almost greenish in its odd pallor.
‘Why was Father shot?’
‘An accident, dear. I–I can’t talk about it.’
‘It wasn’t an accident. Why do you say what isn’t true? Father was killed. It was murder. The paper says so.’
‘Terry, how did you get hold of a paper? I told Miss Collins–’
He had nodded–queer repeated nods like a very old man.
‘I went out and bought one, of course. I knew there must be something in them that you weren’t telling us, or else why did Miss Collins hide them?’
It was never any good hiding truth from Terence. That queer, detached, scientific curiosity of his had always to be satisfied.
‘Why was he killed, Mother?’
She had broken down then, becoming hysterical.
‘Don’t ask me about it–don’t talk about it–I can’t talk about it…it’s all too dreadful.’
‘But they’ll find out, won’t they? I mean, they have to find out. It’s necessary.’
So reasonable, so detached. It made Gerda want to scream and laugh and cry. She thought: ‘He doesn’t care–he can’t care–he just goes on asking questions. Why, he hasn’t cried, even.’
Terence had gone away, evading his Aunt Elsie’s ministrations, a lonely little boy with a stiff, pinched face. He had always felt alone. But it hadn’t mattered until today.
Today, he thought, was different. If only there was someone who would answer questions reasonably and intelligently.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, he and Nicholson Minor were going to make nitroglycerine. He had been looking forward to it with a thrill. The thrill had gone. He didn’t care if he never made nitroglycerine.
Terence felt almost shocked at himself. Not to care any more about scientific experiment. But when a chap’s father had been murdered…He thought: ‘My father–murdered.’
And something stirred–took root–grew…a slow anger.
Beryl Collins tapped on the bedroom door and came in. She was pale, composed, efficient. She said:
‘Inspector Grange is here.’ And as Gerda gasped and looked at her piteously, Beryl went on quickly: ‘He said there was no need for him to worry you. He’ll have a word with you before he goes, but it is just routine questions about Dr Christow’s practice and I can tell him everything he wants to know.’
‘Oh thank you, Collie.’
Beryl made a rapid exit and Gerda sighed out:
‘Collie is such a help. She’s so practical.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Patterson. ‘An excellent secretary, I’m sure. Very plain, poor girl, isn’t she? Oh, well, I always think that’s just as well. Especially with an attractive man like John.’
Gerda flamed out at her:
‘What do you mean, Elsie? John would never–he never–you talk as though John would have flirted or something horrid if he had had a pretty secretary. John wasn’t like that at all.’
‘Of course not, darling,’ said Mrs Patterson. ‘But after all, one knows what men are like!’
In the consulting-room Inspector Grange faced the cool, belligerent glance of Beryl Collins. It was belligerent, he noted that. Well, perhaps that was only natural.
‘Plain bit of goods,’ he thought. ‘Nothing between her and the doctor, I shouldn’t think. She may have been sweet on him, though. It works that way sometimes.’
But not this time, he came to the conclusion, when he leaned back in his chair a quarter of an hour later. Beryl Collins’s answers to his questions had been models of clearness. She replied promptly, and obviously had every detail of the doctor’s practice at her finger-tips. He shifted his ground and began to probe gently into the relations existing between John Christow and