The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie [64]
‘What’s she doing here? That’s what I want to know?’ demanded Captain Wyatt. ‘Abdul!’
‘Sahib?’
‘Where’s Bully? Has she got out again?’
‘She in kitchen, Sahib.’
‘Well, don’t feed her.’ He sank back in his chair again and proceeded on his second tack. ‘What does she want here? Who’s she going to talk to in a place like this? All you old fogies will bore her stiff. I had a word with her this morning. Expect she was surprised to find a man like me in a place like this.’
He twisted his moustache.
‘She’s James Pearson’s fiancée,’ said Mr Rycroft. ‘You know—the man who has been arrested for Trevelyan’s murder.’
Wyatt dropped a glass of whisky he was just raising to his lips with a crash upon the floor. He immediately roared for Abdul and cursed him in no measured terms for not placing a table at a convenient angle to his chair. He then resumed the conversation.
‘So that’s who she is. Too good for a counter-jumper like that. A girl like that wants a real man.’
‘Young Pearson is very good-looking,’ said Mr Rycroft.
‘Good-looking—good-looking—a girl doesn’t want a barber’s block. What does that sort of young man who works in an office every day know of life? What experience has he had of reality?’
‘Perhaps the experience of being tried for murder will be sufficient reality to last him for some time,’ said Mr Rycroft dryly.
‘Police sure he did it, eh?’
‘They must be fairly sure or they wouldn’t have arrested him.’
‘Country bumpkins,’ said Captain Wyatt contemptuously.
‘Not quite,’ said Mr Rycroft. ‘Inspector Narracott struck me this morning as an able and efficient man.’
‘Where did you see him this morning?’
‘He called at my house.’
‘He didn’t call at mine,’ said Captain Wyatt in an injured fashion.
‘Well, you weren’t a close friend of Trevelyan’s or anything like that.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Trevelyan was a skinflint and I told him so to his face. He couldn’t come bossing it over me. I didn’t kowtow to him like the rest of the people here. Always dropping in—dropping in—too much dropping in. If I don’t choose to see anyone for a week, or a month, or a year, that’s my business.’
‘You haven’t seen anyone for a week now, have you?’ said Mr Rycroft.
‘No, and why should I?’ The irate invalid banged the table. Mr Rycroft was aware, as usual, of having said the wrong thing. ‘Why the bloody hell should I? Tell me that?’
Mr Rycroft was prudently silent. The Captain’s wrath subsided.
‘All the same,’ he growled, ‘if the police want to know about Trevelyan I’m the man they should have come to. I’ve knocked about the world, and I’ve got judgment. I can size a man up for what he’s worth. What’s the good of going to a lot of dodderers and old women? What they want is a man’s judgment.’
He banged the table again.
‘Well,’ said Mr Rycroft, ‘I suppose they think they know themselves what they are after.’
‘They inquired about me,’ said Captain Wyatt. ‘They would naturally.’
‘Well—er—I don’t quite remember,’ said Mr Rycroft cautiously.
‘Why can’t you remember? You’re not in your dotage yet.’
‘I expect I was—er—rattled,’ said Mr Rycroft soothingly.
‘Rattled, were you? Afraid of the police? I’m not afraid of the police. Let ’em come here. That’s what I say. I’ll show them. Do you know I shot a cat at a hundred yards the other night?’
‘Did you?’ said Mr Rycroft.
The Captain’s habit of letting off a revolver at real or imaginary cats was a sore trial to his neighbours.
‘Well, I’m tired,’ said Captain Wyatt suddenly. ‘Have another drink before you go?’
Rightly interpreting this hint, Mr Rycroft rose to his feet. Captain Wyatt continued to urge a drink upon him.
‘You’d be twice the man if you drank a bit more. A man who can’t enjoy a drink isn’t a man at all.’
But Mr Rycroft continued to decline the offer. He had already consumed one whisky and soda of most unusual strength.
‘What tea do you drink?’ asked Wyatt. ‘I don’t know anything about tea. Told Abdul to get some. Thought that girl might like to come in to tea one day. Darned pretty girl. Must do something