The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie [51]
Sittaford House had a solid oak front door, a neat bell pull, an immense wire mat, and a brilliantly polished brass letter box. It represented, as Emily could not fail to see, comfort and decorum. A neat and conventional parlourmaid answered the bell.
Emily deduced the journalist evil had been before her as the parlourmaid said at once in a distant tone, ‘Mrs Willett is not seeing anyone this morning.’
‘I have brought a note from Miss Percehouse,’ said Emily.
This clearly altered matters. The parlourmaid’s face expressed indecision, then she shifted her ground.
‘Will you come inside, please.’
Emily was ushered into what house agents describe as ‘a well-appointed hall’, and from there into a large drawing-room. A fire was burning brightly and there were traces of feminine occupation in the room. Some glass tulips, an elaborate workbag, a girl’s hat, and a Pierrot doll with very long legs, were lying about. There were, she noticed, no photographs.
Having taken in all there was to see, Emily was warming her hands in front of the fire when the door opened and a girl about her own age came in. She was a very pretty girl, Emily noticed, smartly and expensively dressed, and she also thought that she had never seen a girl in a greater state of nervous apprehension. Not that this was apparent on the surface, however. Miss Willett was making a gallant appearance of being entirely at her ease.
‘Good morning,’ she said advancing and shaking hands. ‘I’m so sorry Mother isn’t down, but she’s spending the morning in bed.’
‘Oh, I am sorry, I’m afraid I have come at an unfortunate time.’
‘No, of course not. The cook is writing out the recipe for that cake now. We are only too delighted for Miss Percehouse to have it. Are you staying with her?’
Emily reflected with an inward smile that this was perhaps the only house in Sittaford whose members were not exactly aware of who she was and why she was there. Sittaford House had a definite regime of employers and employed. The employed might know about her—the employers clearly did not.
‘I am not exactly staying with her,’ said Emily. ‘In fact, I’m at Mrs Curtis’s.’
‘Of course the cottage is terribly small, and she has her nephew, Ronnie, with her, hasn’t she? I suppose there wouldn’t be room for you too. She’s a wonderful person, isn’t she? So much character, I always think, but I am rather afraid of her really.’
‘She’s a bully, isn’t she?’ agreed Emily cheerfully. ‘But it’s an awful temptation to be a bully, especially if people won’t stand up to you.’
Miss Willett sighed.
‘I wish I could stand up to people,’ she said. ‘We’ve had the most awful morning absolutely pestered by reporters.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Emily. ‘This is Captain Trevelyan’s house really, isn’t it?—the man who was murdered at Exhampton.’
She was trying to determine the exact cause of Violet Willett’s nervousness. The girl was clearly on the jump. Something was frightening her—and frightening her badly. She mentioned Captain Trevelyan’s name bluntly on purpose. The girl didn’t noticeably react to it in any way, but then she was probably expecting some such reference.
‘Yes, wasn’t it dreadful?’
‘Do tell me—that’s if you don’t mind talking about it?’
‘No—no—of course not—why should I?’
‘There’s something very wrong with this girl,’ thought Emily. ‘She hardly knows what she’s saying. What has made her get the wind up this morning particularly?’
‘About that table-turning,’ went on Emily. ‘I heard about it in a casual sort of way and it seemed to me so frightfully interesting—I mean so absolutely gruesome.’
‘Girlish thrills,’ she thought to herself, ‘that’s my line.’
‘Oh, it was horrid,’ said Violet. ‘That evening—I shall never forget it! We thought, of course, that it was somebody just fooling—only it seemed a very nasty kind of joke.’
‘Yes?’
‘I shall never forget when we turned the lights on—everybody looked so queer. Not Mr Duke and Major Burnaby—they are the stolid kind, they would never like to admit that they were impressed by anything of that kind. But you could see that Major Burnaby