Читать книгу Sad Cypress - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 12

It was no mere housemaid who wakened Elinor the following morning. It was Mrs Bishop in person, rustling in her old-fashioned black, and weeping unashamedly.

‘Oh, Miss Elinor, she’s gone…’

‘What?’

Elinor sat up in bed.

‘Your dear aunt. Mrs Welman. My dear mistress. Passed away in her sleep.’

‘Aunt Laura? Dead?’

Elinor stared. She seemed unable to take it in.

Mrs Bishop was weeping now with more abandon.

‘To think of it,’ she sobbed. ‘After all these years! Eighteen years I’ve been here. But indeed it doesn’t seem like it…’

Elinor said slowly:

‘So Aunt Laura died in her sleep—quite peacefully… What a blessing for her!’

Mrs Bishop wept.

‘So sudden. The doctor saying he’d call again this morning and everything just as usual.’

Elinor said rather sharply:

‘It wasn’t exactly sudden. After all, she’s been ill for some time. I’m just so thankful she’s been spared more suffering.’

Mrs Bishop said tearfully that there was indeed that to be thankful for. She added:

‘Who’ll tell Mr Roderick?’

Elinor said:

‘I will.’

She threw on a dressing-gown and went along to his door and tapped. His voice answered, saying, ‘Come in.’

She entered.

‘Aunt Laura’s dead, Roddy. She died in her sleep.’

Roddy, sitting up in bed, drew a deep sigh.

‘Poor dear Aunt Laura! Thank God for it, I say. I couldn’t have borne to see her go on lingering in the state she was yesterday.’

Elinor said mechanically:

‘I didn’t know you’d seen her?’

He nodded rather shamefacedly.

‘The truth is, Elinor, I felt the most awful coward, because I’d funked it! I went along there yesterday evening. The nurse, the fat one, left the room for something—went down with a hot-water bottle, I think—and I slipped in. She didn’t know I was there, of course. I just stood a bit and looked at her. Then, when I heard Mrs Gamp stumping up the stairs again, I slipped away. But it was—pretty terrible!’

Elinor nodded.

‘Yes, it was.’

Roddy said:

‘She’d have hated it like hell—every minute of it!’

‘I know.’

Roddy said:

‘It’s marvellous the way you and I always see alike over things.’

Elinor said in a low voice:

‘Yes it is.’

He said:

‘We’re both feeling the same thing at this minute: just utter thankfulness that she’s out of it all…’

Nurse O’Brien said:

‘What is it, Nurse? Can’t you find something?’

Nurse Hopkins, her face rather red, was hunting through the little attaché-case that she had laid down in the hall the preceding evening.

She grunted:

‘Most annoying. How I came to do such a thing I can’t imagine!’

‘What is it?’

Nurse Hopkins replied not very intelligibly:

‘It’s Eliza Rykin—that sarcoma, you know. She’s got to have double injections—night and morning—morphine. Gave her the last tablet in the old tube last night on my way here, and I could swear I had the new tube in here, too.’

‘Look again. Those tubes are so small.’

Nurse Hopkins gave a final stir to the contents of the attaché-case.

‘No, it’s not here! I must have left it in my cupboard after all! Really, I did think I could trust my memory better than that. I could have sworn I took it out with me!’

‘You didn’t leave the case anywhere, did you, on the way here?’

‘Of course not!’ said Nurse Hopkins sharply.

‘Oh, well, dear,’ said Nurse O’Brien, ‘it must be all right?’

‘Oh, yes! The only place I’ve laid my case down was here in this hall, and nobody here would pinch anything! Just my memory, I suppose. But it vexes me, if you understand, Nurse. Besides, I shall have to go right home first to the other end of the village and back again.’

Nurse O’Brien said:

‘Hope you won’t have too tiring a day, dear, after last night. Poor old lady. I didn’t think she would last long.’

‘No, nor I. I daresay Doctor will be surprised!’

Nurse O’Brien said with a tinge of disapproval:

‘He’s always so hopeful about his cases.’

Nurse Hopkins, as she prepared to depart, said:

‘Ah, he’s young! He hasn’t our experience.’

On which gloomy pronouncement she departed.

Dr Lord raised himself up on his toes. His sandy eyebrows climbed right up his forehead till they nearly got merged in his hair.

He said in surprise:

‘So she’s conked out—eh?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

On Nurse O’Brien’s tongue exact details were tingling to be uttered, but with stern discipline she waited.

Peter Lord said thoughtfully:

‘Conked out?’

He stood for a moment thinking, then he said sharply:

‘Get me some boiling water.’

Nurse O’Brien was surprised and mystified, but true to the spirit of hospital training, hers not to reason why. If a doctor had told her to go and get the skin of an alligator she would have murmured automatically, ‘Yes, Doctor,’ and glided obediently from the room to tackle the problem.

Roderick Welman said:

‘Do you mean to say that my aunt died intestate—that she never made a will at all?’

Mr Seddon polished his eyeglasses. He said:

‘That seems to be the case.’

Roddy said:

‘But how extraordinary!’

Mr Seddon gave a deprecating cough.

‘Not so extraordinary as you might imagine. It happens oftener than you would think. There’s a kind of superstition about it. People will think they’ve got plenty of time. The mere fact of making a will seems to bring the possibility of death nearer to them. Very odd—but there it is!’

Roddy said:

‘Didn’t you ever—er—expostulate with her on the subject?’

Mr Seddon replied drily:

‘Frequently.’

‘And what did she say?’

Mr Seddon sighed.

‘The usual things. That there was plenty of time! That she didn’t intend to die just yet! That she hadn’t made up her mind definitely, exactly how she wished to dispose of her money!’

Elinor said:

‘But surely, after her first stroke—?’

Mr Seddon shook his head.

‘Oh, no, it was worse then. She wouldn’t hear the subject mentioned!’

Roddy said:

‘Surely that’s very odd?’

Mr Seddon said again:

‘Oh, no. Naturally, her illness made her much more nervous.’

Elinor said in a puzzled voice:

‘But she wanted to die…’

Polishing his eyeglasses, Mr Seddon said:

‘Ah, my dear Miss Elinor, the human mind is a very curious piece of mechanism. Mrs Welman may have thought she wanted to die; but side by side with that feeling there ran the hope that she would recover absolutely. And because of that hope, I think she felt that to make a will would be unlucky. It isn’t so much that she didn’t mean to make one, as that she was eternally putting it off.

‘You know,’ went on Mr Seddon, suddenly addressing Roddy in an almost personal manner, ‘how one puts off and avoids a thing that is distasteful—that you don’t want to face?’

Roddy flushed. He muttered:

‘Yes, I—I—yes, of course. I know what you mean.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mr Seddon. ‘Mrs Welman always meant to make a will, but tomorrow was always a better day to make it than today! She kept telling herself that there was plenty of time.’

Elinor said slowly:

‘So that’s why she was so upset last night—and in such a panic that you should be sent for…’

Mr Seddon replied:

‘Undoubtedly!’

Roddy said in a bewildered voice:

‘But what happens now?’

‘To Mrs Welman’s estate?’ The lawyer coughed. ‘Since Mrs Welman died intestate, all her property goes to her next of kin—that is, to Miss Elinor Carlisle.’

Elinor said slowly.

‘All to me?’

‘The Crown takes a certain percentage,’ Mr Seddon explained.

He went into details.

He ended:

‘There are no settlements or trusts. Mrs Welman’s money was hers absolutely to do with as she chose. It passes, therefore, straight to Miss Carlisle. Er—the death duties, I am afraid, will be somewhat heavy, but even after their payment, the fortune will still be a considerable one, and it is very well invested in sound gilt-edged securities.’

Elinor said:

‘But Roderick—’

Mr Seddon said with a little apologetic cough:

‘Mr Welman is only Mrs Welman’s husband’s nephew. There is no blood relationship.’

‘Quite,’ said Roddy.

Elinor said slowly:

‘Of course, it doesn’t much matter which of us gets it, as we’re going to be married.’