Unexpected Guest - Agatha Christie [2]
Laura Warwick looked up at him. ‘Hadn’t you better ring the police?’ she asked.
‘All in good time. Nothing wrong with having a cosy little chat first, is there?’ He took off his gloves, stuffed them into his overcoat pocket, and started unbuttoning his coat.
Laura Warwick’s poise began to break. ‘I don’t–’ she began. She paused and then continued, ‘Who are you? How did you happen to come here tonight?’ Without giving him time to answer, she went on, her voice now almost a shout, ‘For God’s sake, tell me who you are!’
Chapter 2
‘By all means,’ the man replied. He ran a hand through his hair, looked around the room for a moment as though wondering where or how to begin, and then continued, ‘My name’s Michael Starkwedder. I know it’s an unusual name.’ He spelt it out for her. ‘I’m an engineer. I work for Anglo-Iranian, and I’m just back in this country from a term in the Persian Gulf.’ He paused, seeming briefly to be remembering the Middle East, or perhaps trying to decide how much detail to go into, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve been down here in Wales for a couple of days, looking up old landmarks. My mother’s family came from this part of the world and I thought I might buy a little house.’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘The last two hours–more like three, I should think–I’ve been hopelessly lost. Driving round all the twisting lanes in South Wales, and ending up in a ditch! Thick fog everywhere. I found a gate, groped my way to this house, hoping to get hold of a telephone or perhaps, if I was lucky, get put up for the night. I tried the handle of the french window there, found it wasn’t locked, so I walked in. Whereupon I find–’ He gestured towards the wheelchair, indicating the body slumped in it.
Laura Warwick looked up at him, her eyes expressionless. ‘You knocked on the window first–several times,’ she murmured.
‘Yes, I did. Nobody answered.’
Laura caught her breath. ‘No, I didn’t answer.’ Her voice was now almost a whisper.
Starkwedder looked at her, as though trying to make her out. He took a step towards the body in the wheelchair, then turned back to the woman on the sofa. To encourage her into speaking again, he repeated, ‘As I say, I tried the handle, the window wasn’t locked, so I came in.’
Laura stared down into her brandy glass. She spoke as though she were quoting. ‘“The door opens and the unexpected guest comes in.”’ She shivered slightly. ‘That saying always frightened me when I was a child. “The unexpected guest”.’ Throwing her head back she stared up at her unexpected visitor, and exclaimed with sudden intensity, ‘Oh, why don’t you ring up the police and get it over?’
Starkwedder walked over to the body in the chair. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘In a moment, perhaps. Can you tell me why you shot him?’
The note of irony returned to Laura’s voice as she answered him. ‘I can give you some excellent reasons. For one thing, he drank. He drank excessively. For another, he was cruel. Unbearably cruel. I’ve hated him for years.’ Catching the sharp look Starkwedder gave her at this, she continued angrily, ‘Oh, what do you expect me to say?’
‘You’ve hated him for years?’ Starkwedder murmured as though to himself. He looked thoughtfully at the body. ‘But something–something special–happened tonight, didn’t it?’ he asked.
‘You’re quite right,’ Laura replied emphatically. ‘Something special indeed happened tonight. And so–I took the gun off the table from where it was lying beside him, and–and I shot him. It was as simple as that.’ She threw an impatient glance at Starkwedder as she continued, ‘Oh, what’s the good of talking about it? You’ll only have to ring up the police in the end. There’s no way out.’ Her voice dropped as she repeated, ‘No way out!’
Starkwedder looked at her from across the room. ‘It’s not quite as simple as you think,’ he observed.
‘Why isn’t it simple?