Agatha Christie - After the Funeral

"She did no 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 realising how ill he was -"

"She knew that 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 side-tracked 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 hard-headed business man – 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 judgment, 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 south-west, from the north-west, 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.

He made a few further arrangements and then left to interview the Bank Manager and to have a further consultation with Inspector Morton.

"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!"

It seemed no less incredible to Mr Entwhistle. Timothy's life was so remote from violence that even his relations, one felt, ought to be equally exempt.

"I'm afraid one has to face the fact," said Mr Entwhistle mildly.

"I am really very worried about Timothy. It's so bad for him all this! I've got him to bed now but he insists on my persuading you to come up and see him. He wants to know a hundred things – whether there will be an inquest, and who ought to attend, and how soon after that the funeral can take place, and where, and what funds there are, and if Cora expressed any wish about being cremated or what, and if she left a will -"

Mr Entwhistle interrupted before the catalogue got too long.

"There is a will, yes. She left Timothy her executor."