Unexpected Guest - Agatha Christie [21]
‘Could be,’ Inspector Thomas replied laconically.
The telephone rang. Expecting his sergeant to answer it, the inspector looked meaningfully at him, but Cadwallader had become immersed in his notes as he strolled across to the armchair and sat, completely oblivious of the phone. After a while, realizing that the sergeant’s mind was elsewhere, no doubt in the process of composing a poem, the inspector sighed, crossed to the desk, and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Yes, speaking…Starkwedder, he came in? He gave you his prints?…Good…yes–well, ask him to wait…yes, I shall be back in half an hour or so…yes, I want to ask him some more questions…Yes, goodbye.’
Towards the end of this conversation, Miss Bennett had entered the room, and was standing by the door. Noticing her, Sergeant Cadwallader rose from his armchair and took up a position behind it. ‘Yes?’ said Miss Bennett with an interrogative inflection. She addressed the inspector. ‘You want to ask me some questions? I’ve got a good deal to do this morning.’
‘Yes, Miss Bennett,’ the inspector replied. ‘I want to hear your account of the car accident with the child in Norfolk.’
‘The MacGregor child?’
‘Yes, the MacGregor child. You remembered his name very quickly last night, I hear.’
Miss Bennett turned to close the door behind her. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I have a very good memory for names.’
‘And no doubt,’ the inspector continued, ‘the occurrence made some impression on you. But you weren’t in the car yourself, were you?’
Miss Bennett seated herself on the sofa. ‘No, no, I wasn’t in the car,’ she told him. ‘It was the hospital nurse Mr Warwick had at the time. A Nurse Warburton.’
‘Did you go to the inquest?’ the inspector asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘But Richard told us about it when he came back. He said the boy’s father had threatened him, had said he’d get even with him. We didn’t take it seriously, of course.’
Inspector Thomas came closer to her. ‘Had you formed any particular impression about the accident?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
The inspector regarded Miss Bennett for a moment, and then said, ‘I mean do you think it happened because Mr Warwick had been drinking?’
She made a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, I suppose his mother told you that,’ she snorted. ‘Well, you mustn’t go by all she says. She’s got a prejudice against drink. Her husband–Richard’s father–drank.’
‘You think, then,’ the inspector suggested to her, ‘that Richard Warwick’s account was true, that he was driving well within the speed limit, and that the accident could not have been avoided?’
‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t have been the truth,’ Miss Bennett insisted. ‘Nurse Warburton corroborated his evidence.’
‘And her word was to be relied upon?’
Clearly taking exception to what she seemed to regard as an aspersion on her profession, Miss Bennett said with some asperity, ‘I should hope so. After all, people don’t go around telling lies–not about that sort of thing. Do they?’
Sergeant Cadwallader, who had been following the questioning, now broke in. ‘Oh, do they not, indeed!’ he exclaimed. ‘The way they talk sometimes, you’d think that not only were they within the speed limit, but that they’d managed to get into reverse at the same time!’
Annoyed at this latest interruption, the inspector turned slowly and looked at the sergeant. Miss Bennett also regarded the young man in some surprise. Embarrassed, Sergeant Cadwallader looked down at his notes, and the inspector turned again to Miss Bennett. ‘What I’m getting at is this,’ he told her. ‘In the grief and stress of the moment, a man might easily threaten revenge for an accident that had killed his child. But on reflection, if things were as stated, he would surely have realized that the accident was not Richard Warwick’s fault.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
The inspector paced slowly about the room as he continued, ‘If, on the other hand, the car had been driven erratically and at excessive speed–if the car had been, shall we say,