The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [46]
“Well, you see, Mrs. Tuckerton, it’s not quite his usual style, and that makes it interesting to—er—”
She saved me the trouble of continuing.
“I’m afraid I’m terribly stupid about that sort of thing—architecture, I mean, and archaeology and all that. But you mustn’t mind my ignorance—”
I didn’t mind at all. I preferred it.
“Of course all that sort of thing is terribly interesting,” said Mrs. Tuckerton.
I said that we specialists, on the contrary, were usually terribly dull and very boring on our own particular subject.
Mrs. Tuckerton said she was sure that that wasn’t true, and would I like to have tea first and see the house afterwards, or see round the house and then have tea.
I hadn’t bargained for tea—my appointment had been for three thirty, but I said that perhaps the house first.
She showed me round, chatting vivaciously most of the time, and thus relieving me of uttering any architectural judgements.
It was lucky, she said, that I’d come now. The house was up for sale—“It’s too big for me—since my husband’s death”—and she believed there was a purchaser already, though the agents had only had it on their books for just over a week.
“I wouldn’t have liked you to see it when it was empty. I think a house needs to be lived in, if one is really to appreciate it, don’t you, Mr. Easterbrook?”
I would have preferred this house unlived in, and unfurnished, but naturally I could not say so. I asked her if she was going to remain in the neighborhood.
“Really, I’m not quite sure. I shall travel a little first. Get into the sunshine. I hate this miserable climate. Actually I think I shall winter in Egypt. I was there two years ago. Such a wonderful country, but I expect you know all about it.”
I knew nothing about Egypt and said so.
“I expect you’re just being modest,” she said gaily and vaguely. “This is the dining room. It’s octagonal. That’s right, isn’t it? No corners.”
I said she was quite right and praised the proportions.
Presently, the tour was completed, we returned to the drawing room and Mrs. Tuckerton rang for tea. It was brought in by the seedy-looking manservant. There was a vast Victorian silver teapot which could have done with a clean.
Mrs. Tuckerton sighed as he left the room.
“After my husband died, the married couple he had had for nearly twenty years insisted on leaving. They said they were retiring, but I heard afterwards that they took another post. A very highly-paid one. I think it’s absurd, myself, to pay these high wages. When you think what servants’ board and lodging costs—to say nothing of their laundry.”
Yes, I thought, mean. The pale eyes, the tight mouth—avarice was there.
There was no difficulty in getting Mrs. Tuckerton to talk. She liked talking. She liked, in particular, talking about herself. Presently, by listening with close attention, and uttering an encouraging word now and then, I knew a good deal about Mrs. Tuckerton. I knew, too, more than she was conscious of telling me.
I knew that she had married Thomas Tuckerton, a widower, five years ago. She had been “much, much younger than he was.” She had met him at a big seaside hotel where she had been a bridge hostess. She was not aware that that last fact had slipped out. He had had a daughter at school near there—“so difficult for a man to know what to do with a girl when he takes her out.
“Poor Thomas, he was so lonely… His first wife had died some years back and he missed her very much.”
Mrs. Tuckerton’s picture of herself continued. A gracious kindly woman taking pity on this ageing lonely man. His deteriorating health and her devotion.
“Though, of course, in the last stages of his illness I couldn’t really have any friends of my own.”
Had there been, I wondered, some men friends whom Thomas Tuckerton had thought undesirable? It might explain the terms of his will.
Ginger had looked up the terms of his will for me at Somerset House.