They do it with mirrors - Agatha Christie [54]
‘Yes.’
‘She was hanged?’
‘Yes. But you know it’s not at all sure that she did it. The husband was an arsenic eater — they didn’t understand so much about those things then.’
‘She soaked flypapers.’
‘The maid’s evidence, we always thought, was definitely malicious.’
‘And Pippa was her daughter?’
‘Yes. Eric and I determined to give the child a fresh start in life — with love and care and all the things a child needs. We succeeded. Pippa was — herself. The sweetest, happiest creature imaginable.’
Miss Marple was silent a long time.
Carrie Louise turned away from the dressing table.
‘I’m ready now. Perhaps you’ll ask the Inspector or whatever he is to come up to my sitting-room. He won’t mind, I’m sure.’
II
Inspector Curry did not mind. In fact he rather welcomed the chance of seeing Mrs Serrocold on her own territory.
As he stood there waiting for her, he looked round him curiously. It was not his idea of what he termed to himself ‘a rich woman’s boudoir.’
It had an old-fashioned couch and some rather uncomfortable looking Victorian chairs with twisted woodwork backs. The chintzes were old and faded but of an attractive pattern displaying the Crystal Palace. It was one of the smaller rooms, though even then it was larger than the drawing-room of most modern houses. But it had a cosy rather crowded appearance with its little tables, its bric-à-brac, and its photographs. Curry looked at an old snapshot of two little girls, one dark and lively, the other plain and staring out sulkily on the world from under a heavy fringe. He had seen that same expression that morning. ‘Pippa and Mildred’ was written on the photograph. There was a photograph of Eric Gulbrandsen hanging on the wall, with a gold mount and a heavy ebony frame. Curry had just found a photograph of a good-looking man with eyes crinkling with laughter who he presumed was John Restarick when the door opened and Mrs Serrocold came in.
She wore black, a floating and diaphanous black. Her little pink and white face looked unusually small under its crown of silvery hair, and there was a frailness about her that caught sharply at Inspector Curry’s heart. He understood at that moment a good deal that had perplexed him earlier in the morning. He understood why people were so anxious to spare Caroline Louise Serrocold everything that could be spared her.
And yet, he thought, she isn’t the kind that would ever make a fuss…
She greeted him, asked him to sit down, and took a chair near him. It was less he who put her at her ease than she who put him at his. He started to ask his questions and she answered them readily and without hesitation. The failure of the lights, the quarrel between Edgar Lawson and her husband, the shot they had heard…
‘It did not seem to you that the shot was in the house?’
‘No, I thought it came from outside. I thought it might have been the backfire of a car.’
‘During the quarrel between your husband and this young fellow Lawson in the study, did you notice anybody leaving the Hall?’
‘Wally had already gone to see about the lights. Miss Bellever went out shortly afterwards — to get something, but I can’t remember what.’
‘Who else left the Hall?’
‘Nobody, so far as I know.’
‘Would you know, Mrs Serrocold?’
She reflected a moment.
‘No, I don’t think I should.’
‘You were completely absorbed in what you could hear going on in the study?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were apprehensive as to what might happen there?’
‘No — no, I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t think anything would really happen.’
‘But Lawson had a revolver?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was threatening your husband with it?’
‘Yes. But he didn’t mean it.’
Inspector Curry felt his usual slight exasperation at this statement. So she was another of them!
‘You can’t possibly have been sure of that, Mrs Serrocold.’
‘Well, but I was sure. In my own mind, I mean. What is it the young people say — putting on an act? That’s what I felt it was. Edgar’s only a boy. He was being melodramatic and silly and fancying himself as a bold desperate character. Seeing himself as the wronged hero in