“He was murdered, wasn’t he?”
Such a ridiculous thing to say. Ridiculous! Quite ridiculous! Much too ridiculous to mention to Inspector Morton.
Of course, after he had seen Miss Gilchrist….
Supposing that Miss Gilchrist, although it was unlikely, could throw any light on what Richard had said to Cora.
“I thought from what he said—” What had Richard said?
“I must see Miss Gilchrist at once,” said Mr. Entwhistle to himself.
III
Miss Gilchrist was a spare faded-looking woman with short, irongrey hair. She had one of those indeterminate faces that women around fifty so often acquire.
She greeted Mr. Entwhistle warmly.
“I’m so glad you have come, Mr. Entwhistle. I really know so little about Mrs. Lansquenet’s family, and of course I’ve never, never had anything to do with a murder before. It’s too dreadful!”
Mr. Entwhistle felt quite sure that Miss Gilchrist had never before had anything to do with murder. Indeed, her reaction to it was very much that of his partner.
“One reads about them, of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, relegating crimes to their proper sphere. “And even that I’m not very fond of doing. So sordid, most of them.”
Following her into the sitting room Mr. Entwhistle was looking sharply about him. There was a strong smell of oil paint. The cottage was overcrowded, less by furniture, which was much as Inspector Morton had described it, than by pictures. The walls were covered with pictures, mostly very dark and dirty oil paintings. But there were watercolour sketches as well, and one or two still lifes. Smaller pictures were stacked on the window seat.
“Mrs. Lansquenet used to buy them at sales,” Miss Gilchrist explained. “It was a great interest to her, poor dear. She went to all the sales round about. Pictures go so cheap, nowadays, a mere song. She never paid more than a pound for any of them, sometimes only a few shillings, and there was a wonderful chance, she always said, of picking up something worthwhile. She used to say that this was an Italian Primitive that might be worth a lot of money.”
Mr. Entwhistle looked at the Italian Primitive pointed out to him dubiously. Cora, he reflected, had never really known anything about pictures. He’d eat his hat if any of these daubs were worth a five pound note!
“Of course,” said Miss Gilchrist, noticing his expression, and quick to sense his reaction, “I don’t know much myself, though my father was a painter—not a very successful one, I’m afraid. But I used to do watercolours myself as a girl and I heard a lot of talk about painting and that made it nice for Mrs. Lansquenet to have someone she could talk to about painting and who’d understand. Poor dear soul, she cared so much about artistic things.”
“You were fond of her?”
A foolish question, he told himself. Could she possibly answer “no”? Cora, he thought, must have been a tiresome woman to live with.
“Oh yes,” said Miss Gilchrist. “We got on very well together. In some ways, you know, Mrs. Lansquenet was just like a child. She said anything that came into her head. I don’t know that her judgement was always very good—”
One does not say of the dead—“She was a thoroughly silly woman”—Mr. Entwhistle said, “She was not in any sense an intellectual woman.”
“No—no—perhaps not. But she was very shrewd, Mr. Entwhistle. Really very shrewd. It quite surprised me sometimes—how she managed to hit the nail on the head.”
Mr. Entwhistle looked at Miss Gilchrist with more interest. He thought that she was no fool herself.
“You were with Mrs. Lansquenet for some years, I think?”
“Three and a half.”
“You—er—acted as companion and also did the—er—well—looked after the house?”
It was evident that he had touched on a delicate subject. Miss Gilchrist flushed a little.
“Oh yes, indeed. I did most of the cooking— I quite enjoy cooking—and did some dusting and light housework. None of the rough, of course.” Miss Gilchrist’s tone expressed a firm principle. Mr. Entwhistle, who had no idea what “the rough” was, made a soothing murmur.
“Mrs. Panter from the village came in for that. Twice a week regularly. You see, Mr. Entwhistle, I could not have contemplated being in any way a servant. When my little tea shop failed—such a disaster—it was the war, you know. A delightful place. I called it the Willow Tree and all the china was blue willow pattern—sweetly pretty—and the cakes really good—I’ve always had a hand with cakes and scones. Yes, I was doing really well and then the war came and supplies were cut down and the whole thing went bankrupt—a war casualty, that is what I always say, and I try to think of it like that. I lost the little money my father left me that I had invested in it, and of course I had to look round for something to do. I’d never been trained for anything. So I went to one lady but it didn’t answer at all—she was so rude and overbearing—and then I did some office work—but I didn’t like that at all, and then I came to Mrs. Lansquenet and we suited each other from the start—her husband being an artist and everything.” Miss Gilchrist came to a breathless stop and added mournfully: “But how I loved my dear, dear little tea shop. Such nice people used to come to it!”
Looking at Miss Gilchrist, Mr. Entwhistle felt a sudden stab of recognition—a composite picture of hundreds of ladylike figures approaching him in numerous Bay Trees, Ginger Cats, Blue Parrots, Willow Trees and Cosy Corners, all chastely encased in blue or pink or orange overalls and taking orders for pots of china tea and cakes. Miss Gilchrist had a Spiritual Home—a ladylike tea shop of Ye Olde Worlde variety with a suitable genteel clientèle. There must, he thought, be large numbers of Miss Gilchrists all over the country, all looking much alike with mild patient faces and obstinate upper lips and slightly wispy grey hair.
Miss Gilchrist went on:
“But really I must not talk about myself. The police have been very kind and considerate. Very kind indeed. An Inspector Morton came over from headquarters and he was most understanding. He even arranged for me to go and spend the night at Mrs. Lake’s down the lane but I said ‘No.’ I felt it my duty to stay here with all Mrs. Lansquenet’s nice things in the house. They took the—the—” Miss Gilchrist gulped a little—“the body away, of course, and locked up the room, and the Inspector told me there would be a constable on duty in the kitchen all night—because of the broken window—it has been reglazed this morning, I am glad to say—where was I? Oh yes, so I said I should be quite all right in my own room, though I must confess I did pull the chest of drawers across the door and put a big jug of water on the windowsill. One never knows—and if by any chance it was a maniac—one does hear of such things….”
Here Miss Gilchrist ran down. Mr. Entwhistle said quickly:
“I am in possession of all the main facts. Inspector Morton gave them to me. But if it would not distress you too much to give me your own account—?”
“Of course, Mr. Entwhistle. I know just what you feel. The police are so impersonal, are they not? Rightly so, of course.”
“Mrs. Lansquenet got back from the funeral the night before last,” Mr. Entwhistle prompted.
“Yes, her train didn’t get in until quite late. I had ordered a taxi to meet it as she told me to. She was very tired, poor dear—as was only natural—but on the whole she was in quite good spirits.”
“Yes, yes. Did she talk about the funeral at all?”
“Just a little. I gave her a cup of hot milk—she didn’t want anything else—and she told me that the church had been quite full and lots and lots of flowers—oh! and she said that she was sorry not to have seen her other brother—Timothy—was it?”
“Yes, Timothy.”
“She said it was over twenty years since she had seen him and that she hoped he would have been there, but she quite realized he would have thought it better not to come under the circumstances, but that his wife was there and that she’d never been able to stand Maude—oh dear, I do beg your pardon, Mr. Entwhistle—it j
ust slipped out—I never meant—”
“Not at all. Not at all,” said Mr. Entwhistle encouragingly. “I am no relation, you know. And I believe that Cora and her sister-in-law never hit it off very well.”
“Well, she almost said as much. ‘I always knew Maude would grow into one of those bossy interfering women,’ is what she said. And then she was very tired and said she’d go to bed at once— I’d got her hot-water bottle in all ready—and she went up.”
“She said nothing else that you can remember specially?”
“She had no premonition, Mr. Entwhistle, if that is what you mean. I’m sure of that. She was really, you know, in remarkably good spirits—apart from tiredness and the—the sad occasion. She asked me how I’d like to go to Capri. To Capri! Of course I said it would be too wonderful—it’s a thing I’d never dreamed I’d ever do—and she said, ‘We’ll go!’ Just like that. I gathered—of course it wasn’t actually mentioned—that her brother had left her an annuity or something of the kind.”
Mr. Entwhistle nodded.
“Poor dear. Well, I’m glad she had the pleasure of planning—at all events.” Miss Gilchrist sighed and murmured wistfully, “I don’t suppose I shall ever go to Capri now….”
“And the next morning?” Mr. Entwhistle prompted, oblivious of Miss Gilchrist’s disappointments.
“The next morning Mrs. Lansquenet wasn’t at all well. Really, she looked dreadful. She’d hardly slept at all, she told me. Nightmares. ‘It’s because you were overtired yesterday,’ I told her, and she said maybe it was. She had her breakfast in bed, and she didn’t get up all the morning, but at lunchtime she told me that she still hadn’t been able to sleep. ‘I feel so restless,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking of things and wondering.’ And then she said she’d take some sleeping tablets and try and get a good sleep in the afternoon. And she wanted me to go over by bus to Reading and change her two library books, because she’d finished them both on the train journey and she hadn’t got anything to read. Usually two books lasted her nearly a week. So I went off just after two and that—and that—was the last time—” Miss Gilchrist began to sniff. “She must have been asleep, you know. She wouldn’t have heard anything and the Inspector assures me that she didn’t suffer… He thinks the first blow killed her. Oh dear, it makes me quite sick even to think of it!”
“Please, please. I’ve no wish to take you any further over what happened. All I wanted was to hear what you could tell me about Mrs. Lansquenet before the tragedy.”
“Very natural, I’m sure. Do tell her relations that apart from having such a bad night she was really very happy and looking forward to the future.”
Mr. Entwhistle paused before asking his next question. He wanted to be careful not to lead the witness.
“She did not mention any of her relations in particular?”
“No, no, I don’t think so.” Miss Gilchrist considered. “Except what she said about being sorry not to see her brother Timothy.”
“She did not speak at all about her brother’s decease? The—er—cause of it? Anything like that?”
“No.”
There was no sign of alertness in Miss Gilchrist’s face. Mr. Entwhistle felt certain there would have been if Cora had plumped out her verdict of murder.
“He’d been ill for some time, I think,” said Miss Gilchrist vaguely, “though I must say I was surprised to hear it. He looked so very vigorous.”
Mr. Entwhistle said quickly:
“You saw him—when?”
“When he came down here to see Mrs. Lansquenet. Let me see—that was about three weeks ago.”
“Did he stay here?”
“Oh—no—just came for luncheon. It was quite a surprise. Mrs. Lansquenet hadn’t expected him. I gather there had been some family disagreement. She hadn’t seen him for years, she told me.”
“Yes, that is so.”
“It quite upset her—seeing him again—and probably realizing how ill he was—”
“She knew he was ill?”
“Oh yes, I remember quite well. Because I wondered—only in my own mind, you understand—if perhaps Mr. Abernethie might be suffering from softening of the brain. An aunt of mine—”
Mr. Entwhistle deftly sidetracked the aunt.
“Something Mrs. Lansquenet said caused you to think of softening of the brain?”
“Yes. Mrs. Lansquenet said something like ‘Poor Richard. Mortimer’s death must have aged him a lot. He sounds quite senile. All these fancies about persecution and that someone is poisoning him. Old people get like that.’ And of course, as I knew, that is only too true. This aunt that I was telling you about—was convinced the servants were trying to poison her in her food and at last would eat only boiled eggs—because, she said, you couldn’t get inside a boiled egg to poison it. We humoured her, but if it had been nowadays I don’t know what we should have done. With eggs so scarce and mostly foreign at that, so that boiling is always risky.”
Mr. Entwhistle listened to the saga of Miss Gilchrist’s aunt with deaf ears. He was very much disturbed.
He said at last, when Miss Gilchrist had twittered into silence:
“I suppose Mrs. Lansquenet didn’t take all this too seriously?”
“Oh no, Mr. Entwhistle, she quite understood.”
Mr. Entwhistle found that remark disturbing too, though not quite in the sense in which Miss Gilchrist had used it.
Had Cora Lansquenet understood? Not then, perhaps, but later. Had she understood only too well?
Mr. Entwhistle knew that there had been no senility about Richard Abernethie. Richard had been in full possession of his faculties. He was not the man to have persecution mania in any form. He was, as he always had been, a hardheaded businessman—and his illness made no difference in that respect.
It seemed extraordinary that he should have spoken to his sister in the terms that he had. But perhaps Cora, with her odd childlike shrewdness, had read between the lines, and had crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of what Richard Abernethie had actually said.
In most ways, thought Mr. Entwhistle, Cora had been a complete fool. She had no judgement, no balance, and a crude childish point of view, but she had also the child’s uncanny knack of sometimes hitting the nail on the head in a way that seemed quite startling.
Mr. Entwhistle left it at that. Miss Gilchrist, he thought, knew no more than she had told him. He asked whether she knew if Cora Lansquenet had left a will. Miss Gilchrist replied promptly that Mrs. Lansquenet’s will was at the Bank.
With that and after making certain further arrangements he took his leave. He insisted on Miss Gilchrist’s accepting a small sum in cash to defray present expenses and told her he would communicate with her again, and in the meantime he would be grateful if she would stay on at the cottage while she was looking about for a new post. That would be, Miss Gilchrist said, a great convenience and really she was not at all nervous.
He was unable to escape without being shown round the cottage by Miss Gilchrist, and introduced to various pictures by the late Pierre Lansquenet which were crowded into the small dining room and which made Mr. Entwhistle flinch—they were mostly nudes executed with a singular lack of draughtsmanship but with much fidelity to detail. He was also made to admire various small oil sketches of picturesque fishing ports done by Cora herself.
“Polperro,” said Miss Gilchrist proudly. “We were there last year and Mrs. Lansquenet was delighted with its picturesqueness.”
Mr. Entwhistle, viewing Polperro from the southwest, from the northwest, and presumably from the several other points of the compass, agreed that Mrs. Lansquenet had certainly been enthusiastic.
“Mrs. Lansquenet promised to leave me her sketches,” said Miss Gilchrist wistfully. “I admired them so much. One can really see the waves breaking in this one, can’t one? Even if she forgot, I might perhaps have just one as a souvenir, do you think?”
“I’m sure that could be arranged,” said Mr. Entwhistle graciously.
<
br /> He made a few further arrangements and then left to interview the Bank Manager and to have a further consultation with Inspector Morton.
Five
I
“Worn out, that’s what you are,” said Miss Entwhistle in the indignant and bullying tones adopted by devoted sisters towards brothers for whom they keep house. “You shouldn’t do it, at your age. What’s it all got to do with you, I’d like to know? You’ve retired, haven’t you?”
Mr. Entwhistle said mildly that Richard Abernethie had been one of his oldest friends.
“I dare say. But Richard Abernethie’s dead, isn’t he? So I see no reason for you to go mixing yourself up in things that are no concern of yours and catching your death of cold in these nasty draughty railway trains. And murder, too! I can’t see why they sent for you at all.”
“They communicated with me because there was a letter in the cottage signed by me, telling Cora the arrangements for the funeral.”
“Funerals! One funeral after another, and that reminds me. Another of these precious Abernethies has been ringing you up— Timothy, I think he said. From somewhere in Yorkshire—and that’s about a funeral, too! Said he’d ring again later.”
A personal call for Mr. Entwhistle came through that evening. Taking it, he heard Maude Abernethie’s voice at the other end.
“Thank goodness I’ve got hold of you at last! Timothy has been in the most terrible state. This news about Cora has upset him dreadfully.”
“Quite understandable,” said Mr. Entwhistle.
“What did you say?”
“I said it was quite understandable.”
“I suppose so.” Maude sounded more than doubtful. “Do you mean to say it was really murder?”
(“It was murder, wasn’t it?” Cora had said. But this time there was no hesitation about the answer.)
“Yes, it was murder,” said Mr. Entwhistle.
“And with a hatchet, so the papers say?”
“Yes.”
“It seems quite incredible to me,” said Maude, “that Timothy’s sister—his own sister—can have been murdered with a hatchet!”