Agatha Christie - The Clocks

‘You think, in fact, that there’s someone going up and down Wilbraham Crescent selecting a victim from every house? Really, James, that is almost blasphemous.’

‘Blasphemous, Edith?’ said Mr Waterhouse in lively surprise. Such an aspect of his remark would never have occurred to him.

‘Reminiscent of the Passover,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘Which, let me remind you, is Holy Writ.’

‘That is a little far-fetched I think, Edith,’ said Mr Waterhouse.

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‘I should like to see anyone coming here, trying to murder me,’ said Miss Waterhouse with spirit.

Her brother reflected to himself that it did seem highly unlikely. If he himself had been choosing a victim he would not have chosen his sister. If anyone were to attempt such a thing it was far more likely that the attacker would be knocked out by a poker or a lead doorstop and delivered over to the police in a bleeding and humiliated condition.

‘I just meant,’ he said, the apologetic air deepening, ‘that there are-well-clearly undesirable characters about.’

‘We don’t know very much about what did happen yet,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘All sorts of rumours are going about. Mrs Head had some extraordinary stories this morning.’

‘I expect so, I expect so,’ said Mr Waterhouse. He looked at his watch. He had no real desire to hear the stories brought in by their loquacious daily help. His sister never lost time in debunking these lurid flights of fancy, but nevertheless enjoyed them.

‘Some people are saying,’ said Miss Waterhouse, ‘that this man was the treasurer or a trustee of the Aaronberg Institute and that there is something wrong in the accounts, and that he came to Miss Pebmarsh to inquire about it.’

‘And that Miss Pebmarsh murdered him?’ Mr Waterhouse looked mildly amused. ‘A blind woman? Surely-’

‘Slipped a piece of wire round his neck and strangled him,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘He wouldn’t be on his guard, you see. Who would be with anyone blind? Not that I believe it myself,’ she added. ‘I’m sure Miss Pebmarsh is a person of excellent character. If I do not see eye to eye with her on various subjects, that is not because I impute anything of a criminal nature to her. I merely think that her views are bigoted and extravagant. After all, there are other things besides education. All these new peculiar looking grammar schools, practically built of glass. You might think they were meant to grow cucumbers in, or tomatoes. I’m sure very prejudicial to children in the summer months. Mrs Head herself told me that her Susan didn’t like their new classrooms. Said it was impossible to attend to your lessons because with all those windows you couldn’t help looking out of them all the time.’

‘Dear, dear,’ said Mr Waterhouse, looking at his watch again. ‘Well, well, I’m going to be very late, I’m afraid. Goodbye, my dear. Look after yourself. Better keep the door on the chain perhaps?’

Miss Waterhouse snorted again. Having shut the door behind her brother she was about to retire upstairs when she paused thoughtfully, went to her golf bag, removed a niblick, and placed it in a strategic position near the front door. ‘There,’ said Miss Waterhouse, with some satisfaction. Of course James talked nonsense. Still it was always as well to be prepared. The way they let mental cases out of nursing homes nowadays, urging them to lead a normal life, was in her view fraught with danger to all sorts of innocent people.

Miss Waterhouse was in her bedroom when Mrs Head came bustling up the stairs. Mrs Head was small and round and very like a rubber ball-she enjoyed practically everything that happened.

‘A couple of gentlemen want to see you,’ said Mrs Head with avidity. ‘Leastways,’ she added, ‘they aren’t really gentlemen-it’s the police.’

She shoved forward a card. Miss Waterhouse took it.

‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle,’ she read. ‘Did you show them into the drawing-room?’

‘No. I put ’em in the dinin’-room. I’d cleared away breakfast and I thought that that would be more proper a place. I mean, they’re only the police after all.’

Miss Waterhouse did not quite follow this reasoning. However she said, ‘I’ll come down.’

‘I expect they’ll want to ask you about Miss Pebmarsh,’ said Mrs Head. ‘Want to know whether you’ve noticed anything funny in her manner. They say these manias come on very sudden sometimes and there’s very little to show beforehand. But there’s usually something, some way of speaking, you know. You can tell by their eyes, they say. But then that wouldn’t hold with a blind woman, would it? Ah-’ she shook her head.

Miss Waterhouse marched downstairs and entered the dining-room with a certain amount of pleasurable curiosity masked by her usual air of belligerence.

‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle?’

‘Good morning, Miss Waterhouse.’ Hardcastle had risen. He had with him a tall, dark young man whom Miss Waterhouse did not bother to greet. She paid no attention to a faint murmur of ‘Sergeant Lamb’.

‘I hope I have not called at too early an hour,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but I imagine you know what it is about. You’ve heard what happened next door yesterday.’

‘Murder in one’s next door neighbour’s house does not usually go unnoticed,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘I even had to turn away one or two reporters who came here asking if I had observed anything.’

‘You turned them away?’

‘Naturally.’

‘You were quite right,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Of course they like to worm their way in anywhere but I’m sure you are quite capable of dealing with anything ofthat kind.’

Miss Waterhouse allowed herself to show a faintly pleasurable reaction to this compliment.

‘I hope you won’t mind us asking you the same kind of questions,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but if you did see anything at all that could be of interest to us, I can assure you we should be only too grateful. You were here in the house at the time, I gather?’

‘I don’t know when the murder was committed,’ said Miss Waterhouse.

‘We think between half past one and half past two.’

‘I was here then, yes, certainly.’

‘And your brother?’

‘He does not come home to lunch. Who exactly was murdered? It doesn’t seem to say in the short account there was in the local morning paper.’

‘We don’t yet know who he was,’ said Hardcastle.

‘A stranger?’

‘So it seems.’

‘You don’t mean he was a stranger to Miss Pebmarsh also?’

‘Miss Pebmarsh assures us that she was not expecting this particular guest and that she has no idea who he was.’

‘She can’t be sure of that,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘She can’t see.’

‘We gave her a very careful description.’

‘What kind of man was he?’

Hardcastle took a rough print from an envelope and handed it to her.

‘This is the man,’ he said. ‘Have you any idea who he can be?’

Miss Waterhouse looked at the print. ‘No. No…I’m certain I’ve never seen him before. Dear me. He looks quite a respectable man.’

‘He was a most respectable-looking man,’ said the inspector. ‘He looks like a lawyer or a business man of some kind.’

‘Indeed. This photograph is not at all distressing. He just looks as though he might be asleep.’

Hardcastle did not tell her that of the various police photographs of the corpse this one had been selected as the least disturbing to the eye.

‘Death can be a peaceful business,’ he said. ‘I don’t think this particular man had any idea that it was coming to him when it did.’

‘What does Miss Pebmarsh say about it all?’ demanded Miss Waterhouse.

‘She is quite at a loss.’