Sleeping Murder, стр. 22

Mrs Mountford’s back parlour was a comfortable room. It had a round table covered with a cloth, and some old-fashioned armchairs and a stern-looking but unexpectedly well-sprung sofa against the wall. There were china dogs and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, and a framed coloured representation of the Princess Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. On another wall was the King in Naval uniform, and a photograph of Mr Mountford in a group of other bakers and confectioners. There was a picture made with shells and a watercolour of a very green sea at Capri. There were a great many other things, none of them with any pretensions to beauty or the higher life; but the net result was a happy, cheerful room where people sat round and enjoyed themselves whenever there was time to do so.

Mrs Mountford, nee Pagett, was short and round and dark-haired with a few grey streaks in the dark. Her sister, Edith Pagett, was tall and dark and thin. There was hardly any grey in her hair though she was at a guess round about fifty.

‘Fancy now,’ Edith Pagett was saying. ‘Little Miss Gwennie. You must excuse me, m’am, speaking like that, but it does take one back. You used to come into my kitchen, as pretty as could be. “Winnies,” you used to say. “Winnies.” And what you meant was raisins-though why you called them winnies is more than I can say. But raisins was what you meant and raisins it was I used to give you, sultanas, that is, on account of the stones.’

Gwenda stared hard at the upright figure and the red cheeks and black eyes, trying to remember-to remember-but nothing came. Memory was an inconvenient thing.

‘I wish I could remember-’ she began.

‘It’s not likely that you would. Just a tiny little mite, that’s all you were. Nowadays nobody seems to want to go in a house where there’s children. I can’t see it, myself. Children give life to a house, that’s what I feel. Though nursery meals are always liable to cause a bit of trouble. But if you know what I mean, m’am, that’s the nurse’s fault, not the child’s. Nurses are nearly always difficult-trays and waiting upon and one thing and another. Do you remember Layonee at all, Miss Gwennie? Excuse me, Mrs Reed, I should say.’

‘Leonie? Was she my nurse?’

‘Swiss girl, she was. Didn’t speak English very well, and very sensitive in her feelings. Used to cry a lot if Lily said something to upset her. Lily was house-parlourmaid. Lily Abbott. A young girl and pert in her ways and a bit flighty. Many a game Lily used to have with you, Miss Gwennie. Play peep-bo through the stairs.’

Gwenda gave a quick uncontrollable shiver.

The stairs…

Then she said suddenly, ‘I remember Lily. She put a bow on the cat.’

‘There now, fancy you remembering that! On your birthday it was, and Lily she was all for it, Thomas must have a bow on. Took one off the chocolate box, and Thomas was mad about it. Ran off into the garden and rubbed through the bushes until he got it off. Cats don’t like tricks being played on them.’

‘A black and white cat.’

‘That’s right. Poor old Tommy. Caught mice something beautiful. A real proper mouser.’ Edith Pagett paused and coughed primly. ‘Excuse me running on like this, m’am. But talking brings the old days back. You wanted to ask me something?’

‘I like hearing you talk about the old days,’ said Gwenda. ‘That’s just what I want to hear about. You see, I was brought up by relations in New Zealand and of course they could never tell me anything about-about my father, and my stepmother. She-she was nice, wasn’t she?’

‘Very fond of you, she was. Oh yes, she used to take you down to the beach and play with you in the garden. She was quite young herself, you understand. Nothing but a girl, really. I often used to think she enjoyed the games as much as you did. You see she’d been an only child, in a manner of speaking. Dr Kennedy, her brother, was years and years older and always shut up with his books. When she wasn’t away at school, she had to play by herself…’

Miss Marple, sitting back against the wall, asked gently, ‘You’ve lived in Dillmouth all your life, haven’t you?’

‘Oh yes, madam. Father had the farm up behind the hill-Rylands it was always called. He’d no sons, and Mother couldn’t carry on after he died, so she sold it and bought the little fancy shop at the end of the High Street. Yes, I’ve lived here all my life.’

‘And I suppose you know all about everyone in Dillmouth?’

‘Well, of course it used to be a small place, then. Though there used always to be a lot of summer visitors as long as I can remember. But nice quiet people who came here every year, not these trippers and charabancs we have nowadays. Good families they were, who’d come back to the same rooms year after year.’

‘I suppose,’ said Giles, ‘that you knew Helen Kennedy before she was Mrs Halliday?’

‘Well, I knewof her, so to speak, and I may have seen her about. But I didn’t know her proper until I went into service there.’

‘And you liked her,’ said Miss Marple.

Edith Pagett turned towards her.

‘Yes, madam, I did,’ she said. There was a trace of defiance in her manner. ‘No matter what anybody says. She was as nice as could be to me always. I’d never have believed she’d do what she did do. Took my breath away, it did. Although, mind you, therehad been talk-’

She stopped rather abruptly and gave a quick apologetic glance at Gwenda.

Gwenda spoke impulsively.

‘I want to know,’ she said. ‘Please don’t think I shall mind anything you say. She wasn’t my own mother-’

‘That’s true enough, m’am.’

‘And you see, we are very anxious to-to find her. She went away from here-and she seems to have been quite lost sight of. We don’t know where she is living now, or even if she is alive. And there are reasons-’

She hesitated and Giles said quickly, ‘Legal reasons. We don’t know whether to presume death or-or what.’

‘Oh, I quite understand, sir. My cousin’s husband was missing-after Ypres it was-and there was a lot of trouble about presuming death and that. Real vexing it was for her. Naturally, sir, if there is anything I can tell you that will help in any way-it isn’t as if you were strangers. Miss Gwenda and her “winnies”. So funny you used to say it.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Giles. ‘So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just fire away. Mrs Halliday left home quite suddenly, I understand?’

‘Yes, sir, it was a great shock to all of us-and especially to the Major, poor man. He collapsed completely.’

‘I’m going to ask you right out-have you any idea who the man was she went away with?’

Edith Pagett shook her head.

‘That’s what Dr Kennedy asked me-and I couldn’t tell him. Lily couldn’t either. And of course that Layonee, being a foreigner, didn’t know a thing about it.’

‘You didn’tknow,’ said Giles. ‘But could you make a guess? Now that it’s all so long ago, it wouldn’t matter -even if the guess is all wrong. You must, surely, have had some suspicion.’

‘Well, we had our suspicions…but mind you, it wasn’t more than suspicions. And as far as I’m concerned, I never saw anything at all. But Lily who, as I told you, was a sharp kind of girl, Lily had her ideas-had had them for a long time. “Mark my words,” she used to say. “That chap’s sweet on her. Only got to see him looking at her as she pours out the tea. And does his wife look daggers!”’

‘I see. And who was the-er-chap?’

‘Now I’m afraid, sir, I just don’t remember his name. Not after all these years. A Captain-Esdale-no, that wasn’t it-Emery-no. I have a kind of feeling it began with an E. Or it might have been H. Rather an unusual kind of name. But I’ve never even thought of it for sixteen years. He and his wife were staying at the Royal Clarence.’

‘Summer visitors?’

‘Yes, but I think that he-or maybe both of them-had known Mrs Halliday before. They came to the house quite often. Anyway, according to Lily he was sweet on Mrs Halliday.’

‘And his wife didn’t like it.’

‘No, sir…But mind you, I never believed for a moment that there was anything wrong about it. And I still don’t know what to think.’ 

Gwenda asked, ‘Were they still here-at the Royal Clarence-when-when Helen-my stepmother went away?’

‘As far as I recollect they went away just about the same time, a day earlier or a day later-anyway, it was close enough to make people talk. But I never heard anything definite. It was all kept very quiet if itwas so. Quite a nine days’ wonder Mrs Halliday going off like that, so sudden. But people did say she’d always been flighty-not that I ever saw anything of the kind myself. I wouldn’t have been willing to go to Norfolk with them if I’d thought that.’

For a moment three people stared at her intently. Then Giles said, ‘Norfolk? Were they going to Norfolk?’

‘Yes, sir. They’d bought a house there. Mrs Halliday told me about three weeks before-before all this happened. She asked me if I’d come with them when they moved, and I said I would. After all, I’d never been away from Dillmouth, and I thought perhaps I’d like a change-seeing as I liked the family.’

‘I never heard they had bought a house in Norfolk,’ said Giles.

‘Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir, because Mrs Halliday seemed to want it kept very quiet. She asked me not to speak about it to anyone at all-so of course I didn’t. But she’d been wanting to go away from Dillmouth for some time. She’d been pressing Major Halliday to go, but he liked it at Dillmouth. I even believe he wrote to Mrs Findeyson whom St Catherine’s belonged to, asking if she’d consider selling it. But Mrs Halliday was dead against it. She seemed to have turned right against Dillmouth. It’s almost as though she was afraid to stop there.’

The words came out quite naturally, yet at the sound of them the three people listening again stiffened to attention.

Giles said, ‘You don’t think she wanted to go to Norfolk to be near this-the man whose name you can’t remember?’

Edith Pagett looked distressed.

‘Oh indeed, sir, I wouldn’t like to thinkthat. And I don’t think it, not for a moment. Besides I don’t think that-I remember now-they came from up North somewhere, that lady and gentleman did. Northumberland, I think it was. Anyway, they liked coming south for a holiday because it was so mild down here.’