Читать книгу 4.50 from Paddington - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 9

‘I suppose it will be all right if I just practise a few iron shots in the park?’ asked Lucy.

‘Oh, yes, certainly. Are you fond of golf?’

‘I’m not much good, but I like to keep in practice. It’s a more agreeable form of exercise than just going for a walk.’

‘Nowhere to walk outside this place,’ growled Mr Crackenthorpe. ‘Nothing but pavements and miserable little band boxes of houses. Like to get hold of my land and build more of them. But they won’t until I’m dead. And I’m not going to die to oblige anybody. I can tell you that! Not to oblige anybody!’

Emma Crackenthorpe said mildly:

‘Now, Father.’

‘I know what they think—and what they’re waiting for. All of ’em. Cedric, and that sly fox Harold with his smug face. As for Alfred, I wonder he hasn’t had a shot at bumping me off himself. Not sure he didn’t, at Christmas-time. That was a very odd turn I had. Puzzled old Quimper. He asked me a lot of discreet questions.’

‘Everyone gets these digestive upsets now and again, Father.’

‘All right, all right, say straight out that I ate too much! That’s what you mean. And why did I eat too much? Because there was too much food on the table, far too much. Wasteful and extravagant. And that reminds me—you, young woman. Five potatoes you sent in for lunch—good-sized ones too. Two potatoes are enough for anybody. So don’t send in more than four in future. The extra one was wasted to-day.’

‘It wasn’t wasted, Mr Crackenthorpe. I’ve planned to use it in a Spanish omelette to-night.’

‘Urgh!’ As Lucy went out of the room carrying the coffee tray she heard him say, ‘Slick young woman, that, always got all the answers. Cooks well, though—and she’s a handsome kind of girl.’

Lucy Eyelesbarrow took a light iron out of the set of golf clubs she had had the forethought to bring with her, and strolled out into the park, climbing over the fence.

She began playing a series of shots. After five minutes or so, a ball, apparently sliced, pitched on the side of the railway embankment. Lucy went up and began to hunt about for it. She looked back towards the house. It was a long way away and nobody was in the least interested in what she was doing. She continued to hunt for the ball. Now and then she played shots from the embankment down into the grass. During the afternoon she searched about a third of the embankment. Nothing. She played her ball back towards the house.

Then, on the next day, she came upon something. A thorn bush growing about half-way up the bank had been snapped off. Bits of it lay scattered about. Lucy examined the tree itself. Impaled on one of the thorns was a torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour. Lucy looked at it for a moment, then she took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and snipped it carefully in half. The half she had snipped off she put in an envelope which she had in her pocket. She came down the steep slope searching about for anything else. She looked carefully at the rough grass of the field. She thought she could distinguish a kind of track which someone had made walking through the long grass. But it was very faint—not nearly so clear as her own tracks were. It must have been made some time ago and it was too sketchy for her to be sure that it was not merely imagination on her part.

She began to hunt carefully down in the grass at the foot of the embankment just below the broken thorn bush. Presently her search was rewarded. She found a powder compact, a small cheap enamelled affair. She wrapped it in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket. She searched on but did not find anything more.

On the following afternoon, she got into her car and went to see her invalid aunt. Emma Crackenthorpe said kindly, ‘Don’t hurry back. We shan’t want you until dinner-time.’

‘Thank you, but I shall be back by six at the latest.’

No. 4 Madison Road was a small drab house in a small drab street. It had very clean Nottingham lace curtains, a shining white doorstep and a well-polished brass door handle. The door was opened by a tall, grim-looking woman, dressed in black with a large knob of iron-grey hair.

She eyed Lucy in suspicious appraisal as she showed her in to Miss Marple.

Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting-room which looked out on to a small tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of mats and doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean suite and two ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the fire busily engaged in crocheting.

Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss Marple.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘It looks as though you were right.’

She produced her finds and gave details of their finding.

A faint flush of achievement came into Miss Marple’s cheeks.

‘Perhaps one ought not to feel so,’ she said, ‘but it is rather gratifying to form a theory and get proof that it is correct!’

She fingered the small tuft of fur. ‘Elspeth said the woman was wearing a light-coloured fur coat. I suppose the compact was in the pocket of the coat and fell out as the body rolled down the slope. It doesn’t seem distinctive in any way, but it may help. You didn’t take all the fur?’

‘No, I left half of it on the thorn bush.’

Miss Marple nodded approval.

‘Quite right. You are very intelligent, my dear. The police will want to check exactly.’

‘You are going to the police—with these things?’

‘Well—not quite yet …’ Miss Marple considered: ‘It would be better, I think, to find the body first. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, but isn’t that rather a tall order? I mean, granting that your estimate is correct. The murderer pushed the body out of the train, then presumably got out himself at Brackhampton and at some time—probably that same night—came along and removed the body. But what happened after that? He may have taken it anywhere.’

‘Not anywhere,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I don’t think you’ve followed the thing to its logical conclusion, my dear Miss Eyelesbarrow.’

‘Do call me Lucy. Why not anywhere?’

‘Because, if so, he might much more easily have killed the girl in some lonely spot and driven the body away from there. You haven’t appreciated—’

Lucy interrupted.

‘Are you saying—do you mean—that this was a premeditated crime?’

‘I didn’t think so at first,’ said Miss Marple. ‘One wouldn’t—naturally. It seemed like a quarrel and a man losing control and strangling the girl and then being faced with the problem which he had to solve within a few minutes. But it really is too much of a coincidence that he should kill the girl in a fit of passion, and then look out of the window and find the train was going round a curve exactly at a spot where he could tip the body out, and where he could be sure of finding his way later and removing it! If he’d just thrown her out there by chance, he’d have done no more about it, and the body would, long before now, have been found.’

She paused. Lucy stared at her.

‘You know,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully, ‘it’s really quite a clever way to have planned a crime—and I think it was very carefully planned. There’s something so anonymous about a train. If he’d killed her in the place where she lived, or was staying, somebody might have noticed him come or go. Or if he’d driven her out in the country somewhere, someone might have noticed the car and its number and make. But a train is full of strangers coming and going. In a non-corridor carriage, alone with her, it was quite easy—especially if you realize that he knew exactly what he was going to do next. He knew—he must have known—all about Rutherford Hall—its geographical position, I mean, its queer isolation—an island bounded by railway lines.’

‘It is exactly like that,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s an anachronism out of the past. Bustling urban life goes on all around it, but doesn’t touch it. The tradespeople deliver in the mornings and that’s all.’

‘So we assume, as you said, that the murderer comes to Rutherford Hall that night. It is already dark when the body falls and no one is likely to discover it before the next day.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘The murderer would come—how? In a car? Which way?’

Lucy considered.

‘There’s a rough lane, alongside a factory wall. He’d probably come that way, turn in under the railway arch and along the back drive. Then he could climb the fence, go along at the foot of the embankment, find the body, and carry it back to the car.’

‘And then,’ continued Miss Marple, ‘he took it to some place he had already chosen beforehand. This was all thought out, you know. And I don’t think, as I say, that he would take it away from Rutherford Hall, or if so, not very far. The obvious thing, I suppose, would be to bury it somewhere?’ She looked inquiringly at Lucy.

‘I suppose so,’ said Lucy considering. ‘But it wouldn’t be quite as easy as it sounds.’

Miss Marple agreed.

‘He couldn’t bury it in the park. Too hard work and very noticeable. Somewhere where the earth was turned already?’

‘The kitchen garden, perhaps, but that’s very close to the gardener’s cottage. He’s old and deaf—but still it might be risky.’

‘Is there a dog?’

‘No.’

‘Then in a shed, perhaps, or an outhouse?’

‘That would be simpler and quicker … There are a lot of unused old buildings; broken down pigsties, harness rooms, workshops that nobody ever goes near. Or he might perhaps thrust it into a clump of rhododendrons or shrubs somewhere.’

Miss Marple nodded.

‘Yes, I think that’s much more probable.’

There was a knock on the door and the grim Florence came in with a tray.

‘Nice for you to have a visitor,’ she said to Miss Marple, ‘I’ve made you my special scones you used to like.’

‘Florence always made the most delicious tea cakes,’ said Miss Marple.

Florence, gratified, creased her features into a totally unexpected smile and left the room.

‘I think, my dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘we won’t talk any more about murder during tea. Such an unpleasant subject!’

After tea, Lucy rose.

‘I’ll be getting back,’ she said. ‘As I’ve already told you, there’s no one actually living at Rutherford Hall who could be the man we’re looking for. There’s only an old man and a middle-aged woman, and an old deaf gardener.’

‘I didn’t say he was actually living there,’ said Miss Marple. ‘All I mean is, that he’s someone who knows Rutherford Hall very well. But we can go into that after you’ve found the body.’

‘You seem to assume quite confidently that I shall find it,’ said Lucy. ‘I don’t feel nearly so optimistic.’

‘I’m sure you will succeed, my dear Lucy. You are such an efficient person.’

‘In some ways, but I haven’t had any experience in looking for bodies.’

‘I’m sure all it needs is a little common sense,’ said Miss Marple encouragingly.

Lucy looked at her, then laughed. Miss Marple smiled back at her.

Lucy set to work systematically the next afternoon.

She poked round outhouses, prodded the briars which wreathed the old pigsties, and was peering into the boiler room under the greenhouse when she heard a dry cough and turned to find old Hillman, the gardener, looking at her disapprovingly.

‘You be careful you don’t get a nasty fall, miss,’ he warned her. ‘Them steps isn’t safe, and you was up in the loft just now and the floor there ain’t safe neither.’

Lucy was careful to display no embarrassment.

‘I expect you think I’m very nosy,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was just wondering if something couldn’t be made out of this place—growing mushrooms for the market, that sort of thing. Everything seems to have been let go terribly.’

‘That’s the master, that is. Won’t spend a penny. Ought to have two men and a boy here, I ought, to keep the place proper, but won’t hear of it, he won’t. Had all I could do to make him get a motor mower. Wanted me to mow all that front grass by hand, he did.’

‘But if the place could be made to pay—with some repairs?’

‘Won’t get a place like this to pay—too far gone. And he wouldn’t care about that, anyway. Only cares about saving. Knows well enough what’ll happen after he’s gone—the young gentlemen’ll sell up as fast as they can. Only waiting for him to pop off, they are. Going to come into a tidy lot of money when he dies, so I’ve heard.’

‘I suppose he’s a very rich man?’ said Lucy.

‘Crackenthorpe’s Fancies, that’s what they are. The old gentleman started it, Mr Crackenthorpe’s father. A sharp one he was, by all accounts. Made his fortune, and built this place. Hard as nails, they say, and never forgot an injury. But with all that, he was open-handed. Nothing of the miser about him. Disappointed in both his sons, so the story goes. Give ’em an education and brought ’em up to be gentlemen—Oxford and all. But they were too much of gentlemen to want to go into the business. The younger one married an actress and then smashed himself up in a car accident when he’d been drinking. The elder one, our one here, his father never fancied so much. Abroad a lot, he was, bought a lot of heathen statues and had them sent home. Wasn’t so close with his money when he was young—come on him more in middle age, it did. No, they never did hit it off, him and his father, so I’ve heard.’

Lucy digested this information with an air of polite interest. The old man leant against the wall and prepared to go on with his saga. He much preferred talking to doing any work.

‘Died before the war, the old gentleman did. Terrible temper he had. Didn’t do to give him any cause, he wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘And after he died, this Mr Crackenthorpe came and lived here?’

‘Him and his family, yes. Nigh grown up they was by then.’

‘But surely … Oh, I see, you mean the 1914 war.’

‘No, I don’t. Died in 1928, that’s what I mean.’

Lucy supposed that 1928 qualified as ‘before the war’ though it was not the way she would have described it herself.

She said: ‘Well, I expect you’ll be wanting to go on with your work. You mustn’t let me keep you.’

‘Ar,’ said old Hillman without enthusiasm, ‘not much you can do this time of day. Light’s too bad.’

Lucy went back to the house, pausing to investigate a likely-looking copse of birch and azalea on her way.

She found Emma Crackenthorpe standing in the hall reading a letter. The afternoon post had just been delivered.

‘My nephew will be here tomorrow—with a school-friend. Alexander’s room is the one over the porch. The one next to it will do for James Stoddart-West. They’ll use the bathroom just opposite.’

‘Yes, Miss Crackenthorpe. I’ll see the rooms are prepared.’

‘They’ll arrive in the morning before lunch.’ She hesitated. ‘I expect they’ll be hungry.’

‘I bet they will,’ said Lucy. ‘Roast beef, do you think? And perhaps treacle tart?’

‘Alexander’s very fond of treacle tart.’

The two boys arrived on the following morning. They both had well-brushed hair, suspiciously angelic faces, and perfect manners. Alexander Eastley had fair hair and blue eyes, Stoddart-West was dark and spectacled.

They discoursed gravely during lunch on events in the sporting world, with occasional references to the latest space fiction. Their manner was that of elderly professors discussing palaeolithic implements. In comparison with them, Lucy felt quite young.

The sirloin of beef vanished in no time and every crumb of treacle tart was consumed.

Mr Crackenthorpe grumbled: ‘You two will eat me out of house and home.’

Alexander gave him a blue-eyed reproving glance.

‘We’ll have bread and cheese if you can’t afford meat, Grandfather.’

‘Afford it? I can afford it. I don’t like waste.’

‘We haven’t wasted any, sir,’ said Stoddart-West, looking down at his plate which bore clear testimony of that fact.

‘You boys both eat twice as much as I do.’

‘We’re at the body-building stage,’ Alexander explained. ‘We need a big intake of proteins.’

The old man grunted.

As the two boys left the table, Lucy heard Alexander say apologetically to his friend:

‘You mustn’t pay any attention to my grandfather. He’s on a diet or something and that makes him rather peculiar. He’s terribly mean, too. I think it must be a complex of some kind.’

Stoddart-West said comprehendingly:

‘I had an aunt who kept thinking she was going bankrupt. Really, she had oodles of money. Pathological, the doctor said. Have you got that football, Alex?’

After she had cleared away and washed up lunch, Lucy went out. She could hear the boys calling out in the distance on the lawn. She herself went in the opposite direction, down the front drive and from there she struck across to some clumped masses of rhododendron bushes. She began to hunt carefully, holding back the leaves and peering inside. She moved from clump to clump systematically, and was raking inside with a golf club when the polite voice of Alexander Eastley made her start.

‘Are you looking for something, Miss Eyelesbarrow?’

‘A golf ball,’ said Lucy promptly. ‘Several golf balls in fact. I’ve been practising golf shots most afternoons and I’ve lost quite a lot of balls. I thought that to-day I really must find some of them.’

‘We’ll help you,’ said Alexander obligingly.

‘That’s very kind of you. I thought you were playing football.’

‘One can’t go on playing footer,’ explained Stoddart-West. ‘One gets too hot. Do you play a lot of golf?’

‘I’m quite fond of it. I don’t get much opportunity.’

‘I suppose you don’t. You do the cooking here, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you cook the lunch to-day?’

‘Yes. Was it all right?’

‘Simply wizard,’ said Alexander. ‘We get awful meat at school, all dried up. I love beef that’s pink and juicy inside. That treacle tart was pretty smashing, too.’

‘You must tell me what things you like best.’

‘Could we have apple meringue one day? It’s my favourite thing.’

‘Of course.’

Alexander sighed happily.

‘There’s a clock golf set under the stairs,’ he said. ‘We could fix it up on the lawn and do some putting. What about it, Stodders?’

‘Good-oh!’ said Stoddart-West.

‘He isn’t really Australian,’ explained Alexander courteously. ‘But he’s practising talking that way in case his people take him out to see the Test Match next year.’

Encouraged by Lucy, they went off to get the clock golf set. Later, as she returned to the house, she found them setting it out on the lawn and arguing about the position of the numbers.

‘We don’t want it like a clock,’ said Stoddart-West. ‘That’s kid’s stuff. We want to make a course of it. Long holes and short ones. It’s a pity the numbers are so rusty. You can hardly see them.’

‘They need a lick of white paint,’ said Lucy. ‘You might get some tomorrow and paint them.’

‘Good idea.’ Alexander’s face lit up. ‘I say, I believe there are some old pots of paint in the Long Barn—left there by the painters last hols. Shall we see?’

‘What’s the Long Barn?’ asked Lucy.

Alexander pointed to a long stone building a little way from the house near the back drive.

‘It’s quite old,’ he said. ‘Grandfather calls it a Leak Barn and says its Elizabethan, but that’s just swank. It belonged to the farm that was here originally. My great-grandfather pulled it down and built this awful house instead.’

He added: ‘A lot of grandfather’s collection is in the barn. Things he had sent home from abroad when he was a young man. Most of them are pretty awful, too. The Long Barn is used sometimes for whist drives and things like that. Women’s Institute stuff. And Conservative Sales of Work. Come and see it.’

Lucy accompanied them willingly.

There was a big nail-studded oak door to the barn.

Alexander raised his hand and detached a key on a nail just under some ivy to the right hand of the top of the door. He turned it in the lock, pushed the door open and they went in.

At a first glance Lucy felt that she was in a singularly bad museum. The heads of two Roman emperors in marble glared at her out of bulging eyeballs, there was a huge sarcophagus of a decadent Greco-Roman period, a simpering Venus stood on a pedestal clutching her falling draperies. Besides these works of art, there were a couple of trestle tables, some stacked-up chairs, and sundry oddments such as a rusted hand mower, two buckets, a couple of moth-eaten car seats, and a green painted iron garden seat that had lost a leg.

‘I think I saw the paint over here,’ said Alexander vaguely. He went to a corner and pulled aside a tattered curtain that shut it off.

They found a couple of paint pots and brushes, the latter dry and stiff.

‘You really need some turps,’ said Lucy.

They could not, however, find any turpentine. The boys suggested bicycling off to get some, and Lucy urged them to do so. Painting the clock golf numbers would keep them amused for some time, she thought.

The boys went off, leaving her in the barn.

‘This really could do with a clear up,’ she had murmured.

‘I shouldn’t bother,’ Alexander advised her. ‘It gets cleaned up if it’s going to be used for anything, but it’s practically never used this time of year.’