Agatha Christie - The Clocks

‘She’s usually a cheerful bird-but we all have our ups and downs,’ said another man, a gloomy-looking individual.

‘If anyone had told me,’ said the first man, ‘that Jerry Grainger would come in fifth, way behind Queen Caroline, I wouldn’t have believed it. If you ask me, there’s been hanky-panky. Racing’s not straight nowadays. Dope the horses, they do. All of ’em.’

Mrs Rival had come out of the Peacock’s Arms. She looked up uncertainly at the sky. Yes, perhaps it was going to rain. She walked along the street, hurrying slightly, took a turn to the left, a turn to the right and stopped before a rather dingy-looking house. As she took out a key and went up the front steps a voice spoke from the area below, and a head poked round a corner of the door and looked up at her.

‘Gentleman waiting for you upstairs.’

‘For me?’

Mrs Rival sounded faintly surprised.

‘Well, if you call him a gentleman. Well dressed and all that, but not quite Lord Algernon Vere de Vere, I would say.’

Mrs Rival succeeded in finding the keyhole, turned the key in it and entered.

The house smelled of cabbage and fish and eucalyptus. The latter smell was almost permanent in this particular hall. Mrs Rival’s landlady was a great believer in taking care of her chest in winter weather and began the good work in mid-September. Mrs Rival climbed the stairs, aiding herself with the banisters. She pushed open the door on the first floor and went in, then she stopped dead and took a step backwards.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’

Detective Inspector Hardcastle rose from the chair where he was sitting.

‘Good evening, Mrs Rival.’

‘What do you want?’ asked Mrs Rival with less finesse than she would normally have shown.

‘Well, I had to come up to London on duty,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘and there were just one or two things I thought I’d like to take up with you, so I came along on the chance of finding you. The-er-the woman downstairs seemed to think you might be in before long.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Rival. ‘Well, I don’t see-well-’

Inspector Hardcastle pushed forward a chair.

‘Do sit down,’ he said politely.

Their positions might have been reversed, he the host and she the guest. Mrs Rival sat down. She stared at him very hard.

‘What did you mean by one or two things?’ she said.

‘Little points,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘little points that come up.’

‘You mean-about Harry?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Now look here,’ said Mrs Rival, a slight belligerence coming into her voice; at the same time as an aroma of spirits came clearly to Inspector Hardcastle’s nostrils. ‘I’ve had Harry. I don’t want to think of him any more. I came forward, didn’t I, when I saw his picture in the paper? I came and told you about him. It’s all a long time ago and I don’t want to be reminded of it. There’s nothing more I can tell you. I’ve told you everything I could remember and now I don’t want to hear any more about it.’

‘It’s quite a small point,’ said Inspector Hardcastle. He spoke gently and apologetically.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Mrs Rival, rather ungraciously. ‘What is it? Let’s have it.’

‘You recognized the man as your husband or the man you’d gone through a form of marriage with about fifteen years ago. That is right, is it not?’

‘I should have thought that by this time you would have known exactly how many years ago it was.’

‘Sharper than I thought,’ Inspector Hardcastle said to himself. He went on.

‘Yes, you’re quite right there. We looked it up. You were married on May 15th, 1948.’

‘It’s always unlucky to be a May bride, so they say,’ said Mrs Rival gloomily. ‘It didn’t bring me any luck.’

‘In spite of the years that have elapsed, you were able to identify your husband quite easily.’

Mrs Rival moved with some slight uneasiness.

‘He hadn’t aged much,’ she said, ‘always took care of himself, Harry did.’

‘And you were able to give us some additional identification. You wrote to me, I think, about a scar.’

‘That’s right. Behind his left ear it was. Here,’ Mrs Rival raised a hand and pointed to the place.

‘Behind his left ear?’ Hardcastle stressed the word.

‘Well-’ she looked momentarily doubtful, ‘yes. Well, I think so. Yes I’m sure it was. Of course one never does know one’s left from one’s right in a hurry, does one? But, yes, it was the left side of his neck. Here.’ She placed her hand on the same spot again.

‘And he did it shaving, you say?’

‘That’s right. The dog jumped up on him. A very bouncy dog we had at the time. He kept rushing in-affectionate dog. He jumped up on Harry and he’d got the razor in his hand, and it went in deep. It bled a lot. It healed up but he never lost the mark.’ She was speaking now with more assurance.

‘That’s a very valuable point, Mrs Rival. After all, one man sometimes looks very like another man, especially when a good many years have passed. But to find a man closely resembling your husband who has a scar in the identical place-well that makes the identification very nice and safe, doesn’t it? It seems that we really have something to go on.’

‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ said Mrs Rival.

‘And this accident with the razor happened-when?’

Mrs Rival considered a moment.

‘It must have been about-oh, about six months after we were married. Yes, that was it. We got the dog that summer, I remember.’

‘So it took place about October or November, 1948. Is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And after your husband left you in 1951…’

‘He didn’t so much leave me as I turned him out,’ said Mrs Rival with dignity.

‘Quite so. Whichever way you like to put it. Anyway, after you turned your husband out in 1951 you never saw him again until you saw his picture in the paper?’

‘Yes. That’s what I told you.’

‘And you’re quite sure about that, Mrs Rival?’

‘Of course I’m sure. I never set eyes on Harry Castleton since that day until I saw him dead.’

‘That’s odd, you know,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘that’s very odd.’

‘Why-what do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s a very curious thing, scar tissue. Of course, it wouldn’t mean much to you or me. A scar’s a scar. But doctors can tell a lot from it. They can tell roughly, you know, how long a man has had a scar.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘Well, simply this, Mrs Rival. According to our police surgeon and to another doctor whom we consulted, that scar tissue behind your husband’s ear shows very clearly that the wound in question could not be older than about five to six years ago.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Rival. ‘I don’t believe it. I-nobody can tell. Anyway that wasn’t when…’

‘So you see,’ proceeded Hardcastle in a smooth voice, ‘if that wound made a scar only five or six years ago, it means that if the man was your husband he had no scar at the time when he left you in 1951.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t. But anyway it was Harry.’

‘But you’ve never seen him since, Mrs Rival. So if you’ve never seen him since, how would you know that he had acquired a scar five or six years ago?’

‘You mix me up,’ said Mrs Rival, ‘you mix me up badly. Perhaps it wasn’t as long ago as 1948-You can’t remember all these things. Anyway, Harry had that scar and I know it.’

‘I see,’ said Inspector Hardcastle and he rose to his feet. ‘I think you’d better think over that statement of yours very carefully, Mrs Rival. You don’t want to get into trouble, you know.’