Agatha Christie - The Unexpected Guest

'Good Lord! MacGregor,' Miss Bennett exclaimed, moving behind the sofa.

Laura rose. Mrs Warwick frowned. 'You mean,' she said, '– that man – the father – the child that was run over – ?'

'Of course, MacGregor,' Laura murmured to herself as she sat in the armchair.

Jan went up to the body. 'Look – it's all newspaper – cut up,' he said in excitement. Starkwedder again restrained him. 'No, don't touch it,' he ordered. 'It's got to be left for the police.' He stepped towards the telephone. 'Shall I – ?'

'No,' said Mrs Warwick firmly. 'I will.' Taking charge of the situation, and summoning her courage, she went to the desk and started to dial. Jan moved excitedly to the stool and knelt upon it. 'The man that ran away,' he asked Miss Bennett. 'Do you think he – ?'

'Ssh, Jan,' Miss Bennett said to him firmly, while Mrs Warwick spoke quietly but in a clear, authoritative voice on the telephone. 'Is that the police station? This is Llangelert House. Mr Richard Warwick's house. Mr Warwick has just been found – shot dead.'

She went on speaking into the phone. Her voice remained low, but the others in the room listened intently. 'No, he was found by a stranger,' they heard her say. 'A man whose car had broken down near the house, I believe . . . Yes, I'll tell him. I'll phone the inn. Will one of your cars be able to take him there when you've finished here? . . . Very well.'

Turning to face the company, Mrs Warwick announced, 'The police will be here as soon as they can in this fog. They'll have two cars, one of which will return right away to take this gentleman' – she gestured at Starkwedder – 'to the inn in the village. They want him to stay overnight and be available to talk to them tomorrow.'

'Well, since I can't leave with my car still in the ditch, that's fine with me,' Starkwedder exclaimed. As he spoke, the door to the corridor opened, and a dark-haired man of medium height in his mid-forties entered the room, tying the cord of his dressing-gown. He suddenly stopped short just inside the door. 'Is something the matter, madam?' he asked, addressing Mrs Warwick. Then, glancing past her, he saw the body of Richard Warwick. 'Oh, my God,' he exclaimed.

'I'm afraid there's been a terrible tragedy, Angell,' Mrs Warwick replied. 'Mr Richard has been shot, and the police are on their way here.' Turning to Starkwedder, she said, 'This is Angell. He's – he was Richard's valet.'

The valet acknowledged Starkwedder's presence with a slight, absent-minded bow. 'Oh, my God,' he repeated, as he continued to stare at the body of his late employer.

At eleven the following morning, Richard Warwick's study looked somewhat more inviting than it had on the previous foggy evening. For one thing, the sun was shining on a cold, clear, bright day, and the french windows were wide open. The body had been removed overnight, and the wheelchair had been pushed into the recess, its former central place in the room now occupied by the armchair. The small table had been cleared of everything except decanter and ashtray. A good-looking young man in his twenties with short dark hair, dressed in a tweed sports jacket and navy-blue trousers, was sitting in the wheelchair, reading a book of poems* After a few moments, he got up. 'Beautiful,' he said to himself. 'Apposite and beautiful.' His voice was soft and musical, with a pronounced Welsh accent.

The young man closed the book he had been reading, and replaced it on the bookshelves in the recess. Then, after surveying the room for a minute or two, he walked across to the open french windows, and went out onto the terrace. Almost immediately, a middle-aged, thick-set, somewhat poker-faced man carrying a briefcase entered the room from the hallway. Going to the armchair which faced out onto the terrace, he put his briefcase on it, and looked out of the windows. 'Sergeant Cadwallader!' he called sharply.

The younger man turned back into the room. 'Good morning. Inspector Thomas,' he said, and then continued, with a lilt in his voice, '"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the maturing sun".'

The inspector, who had begun to unbutton his overcoat, stopped and looked intently at the young sergeant. 'I beg your pardon?' he asked, with a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice.

'That's Keats,' the sergeant informed him, sounding quite pleased with himself. The inspector responded with a baleful look at him, then shrugged, took off his coat, placed it on the wheelchair in the recess, and came back for his briefcase.

'You'd hardly credit the fine day it is,' Sergeant Cadwallader went on. 'When you think of the terrible time we had getting here last night. The worst fog I've known in years. "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes." That's T.S. Eliot.' He waited for a reaction to his quotation from the inspector, but got none, so continued, 'It's no wonder the accidents piled up the way they did on the Cardiff road.'

'Might have been worse,' was his inspector's uninterested comment.

'I don't know about that,' said the sergeant, warming to his subject. 'At Porthcawl, that was a nasty smash. One killed and two children badly injured. And the mother crying her heart out there on the road. "The pretty wretch left crying" –'

The inspector interrupted him. 'Have the fingerprint boys finished their job yet?' he asked.

Suddenly realizing that he had better get back to the business in hand, Sergeant Cadwallader replied, 'Yes, sir. I've got them all ready here for you.' He picked up a folder from the desk and opened it. The inspector sat in the desk chair and started to examine the first sheet of fingerprints in the folder. 'No trouble from the household about taking their prints?' he asked the sergeant casually.

'No trouble whatever,' the sergeant told him. 'Most obliging they were – anxious to help, as you might say. And that is only to be expected.'

'I don't know about that,' the inspector observed. I've usually found most people kick up no end of a fuss. Seem to think their prints are going to be filed in the Rogues' Gallery.' He took a deep breath, stretching his arms, and continued to study the prints. 'Now, let's see. Mr Warwick – that's the deceased. Mrs Laura Warwick, his wife. Mrs Warwick senior, that's his mother. Young Jan Warwick, Miss Bennett and – who's this? Angle? Oh, Angell. Ah yes, that's his nurse-attendant, isn't it? And two other sets of prints. Let's see now – Hm. On outside of window, on decanter, on brandy glass overlaying prints of Richard Warwick and Angell and Mrs Laura Warwick, on cigarette lighter – and on the revolver. That will be that chap Michael Starkwedder. He gave Mrs Warwick brandy, and of course it was he who carried the gun in from the garden.'

Sergeant Cadwallader nodded slowly. 'Mr Starkwedder,' he growled, in a voice of deep suspicion.

The inspector, sounding amused, asked, 'You don't like him?'

'What's he doing here? That's what I'd like to know,' the sergeant replied. 'Running his car into a ditch and coming up to a house where there's been a murder done?'

The inspector turned in his chair to face his young colleague. 'You nearly ran our car into the ditch last night, coming up to a house where there'd been a murder done. And as to what he's doing here, he's been here ^ in this vicinity – for the last week, looking around for a small house or cottage.'

The sergeant looked unconvinced, and the inspector turned back to the desk, adding wryly, 'It seems he had a Welsh grandmother and he used to come here for holidays when he was a boy.'

Mollified, the sergeant conceded, 'Ah, well now, if he had a Welsh grandmother, that's a different matter, isn't it?' He raised his right arm and declaimed, '"One road leads to London , One road leads to Wales . My road leads me seawards, To the white dipping sails." He was a fine poet, John Masefield. Very underrated.'