Agatha Christie - By the pricking of my thumbs

'It's never been sold?'

'No. There's some talk of having a development of the land there. I don't know. Not that I have any feeling for it. My father hoped that he was starting a kind of feudal domain. I was to succeed him and my children were to succeed me and so on and so on and so on.' He paused a minute and said then, 'But Julia and I never had any children.'

'Oh,' said Tuppence softly, 'I see.'

'So there's nothing to come here for. In fact I hardly ever do. Anything that needs to be done here Nellie Bligh does for me.'

He smiled over at her. 'She's been the most wonderful secretary. She still attends to my business affairs or anything of that kind.'

'You never come here and yet you don't want to sell it?' said Tuppence.

'There's a very good reason why not,' said Philip Starke. A faint smile passed over the austere features.

'Perhaps after all I do inherit some of my father's business sense. The land, you know, is improving enormously in value. It's a better investment than money would be, if I sold it. Appreciates every day. Some day, who knows, we'll have a grand new dormitory town built on that land.'

'Then you'll be rich?'

'Then I'll be an even richer man than I am at present,' said Sir Philip. 'And I'm quite rich enough.'

'What do you do most of the time?'

'I travel, and I have interests in London. I have a picture gallery there. I'm by way of being an art dealer. All those things are interesting. They occupy one's time - till the moment when the hand is laid on your shoulder which says "Depart".'

'Don't,' said Tuppence. 'That sounds - it gives me the shivers.'

'It needn't give you the shivers. I think you're going to have a long life, Mrs Beresford, and a very happy one.'

'Well, I'm very happy at present,' said Tuppence. 'I suppose I shall get all the aches and pains and troubles that old people do get. Deaf and blind and arthritis and a few other things.'

'You probably won't mind them as much as you think you will. If I may say so, without being rude, you and your husband seem to have a very happy life together.'

'Oh, we have,' said Tuppence. 'I suppose really,' she said, 'there's nothing in life like being happily married, is there?'

A moment later she wished she had not uttered these words.

When she looked at the man opposite her, who she felt had grieved for so many years and indeed might still be grieving for the loss of a very much loved wife, she felt even more angry with herself.

Chapter 16

THE MORNING AFTER

It was the morning after the party.

Ivor Smith and Tommy paused in their conversation and looked at each other, then they looked at Tuppence. Tuppence was staring into the grate. Her mind looked far away.

'Where have we got to?' said Tommy.

With a sigh Tuppence came back from where her thoughts had been wandering, and looked at the two men.

'It seems all tied up still to me,' she said. 'The party last night? What was it for? What did it all mean?' She looked at Ivor Smith. 'I suppose it meant something to you two. You know where we are?'

'I wouldn't go as far as that,' said Ivor. 'We're not all after the same thing, are we?'

'Not quite,' said Tuppence.

The men both looked at her inquiringly.

'All right,' said Tuppence. 'I'm a woman with an obsession. I want to find Mrs Lancaster. I want to be sure that she's all right.'

'You want to find Mrs Johnson first,' said Tommy. 'You'll never find Mrs Lancaster till you find Mrs Johnson.'

'Mrs Johnson,' said Tuppence. 'Yes, I wonder... But I suppose none of that part of it interests you,' she said to Ivor Smith.

'Oh it does, Mrs Tommy, it does very much.'

'What about Mr Eccles?'

Ivor smiled. 'I think,' he said, 'that retribution might be overtaking Mr Eccles shortly. Still, I wouldn't bank on it. He's a man who covers his tracks with incredible ingenuity. So much so, that one imagines that there aren't really any tracks at all.' He added thoughtfully under his breath, 'A great administrator. A great planner.'

'Last night -' began Tuppence, and hesitated - 'Can I ask questions?'

'You can ask them,' Tommy told her. 'But don't bank on getting any satisfactory answers from old Ivor here.'

'Sir Philip Starke,' said Tuppence - 'Where does he come in? He doesn't seem to fit as a likely criminal - unless he was the kind that...'

She stopped, hastily biting off a reference to Mrs Copleigh's wilder suppositions as to child murderers.

'Sir Philip Starke comes in as a very valuable source of information,' said Ivor Smith. 'He's the biggest landowner in these parts - and in other parts of England as well.'

'In Cumberland?'

Ivor Smith looked at Tuppence sharply. 'Cumberland? Why do you mention Cumberland? What do you know about Cumberland, Mrs Tommy?'

'Nothing,' said Tuppence. 'For some reason or other it just came into my head.' She frowned and looked perplexed. 'And a red and white striped rose on the side of a house - one of those old-fashioned roses.'

She shook her head.

'Does Sir Philip Starke own the Canal House?'

'He owns the land. He owns most of the land hereabouts.'

'Yes, he said so last night.'

'Through him, we've learned a good deal about leases and tenancies that have been cleverly obscured through legal complexities.'

'Those house agents I went to see in the Market Square. Is there something phoney about them, or did I imagine it?'

'You didn't imagine it. We're going to pay them a visit this morning. We are going to ask some rather awkward questions.'

'Good,' said Tuppence.

'We're doing quite nicely. We've cleared up the big post office robbery of 1965, and the Albury Cross robberies, and the Irish Mail train bus mess. We've found some of the loot. Clever places they manufactured in these houses. A new bath installed in one, a service flat made in another - a couple of its rooms a little smaller than they ought to have been thereby providing for an interesting recess. Oh yes, we've found out a great deal.'

'But what about the people?' said Tuppence. 'I mean the people who thought of it, or ran it - apart from Mr Eccles, I mean. There must have been others who knew something.'

'Oh yes. There were a couple of men - one who ran a night club, conveniently just off the M 1. Happy Hamish they used to call him. Slippery as an eel. And a woman they called Killer Kate - but that was a long time ago - one of our more interesting criminals. A beautiful girl, but her mental balance was doubtful. They eased her out - she might have become a danger to them. They were a strictly business concern - in it for loot - not for murder.'

'And was the Canal House one of their hideaway places?'

'At one time, Ladymead, they called it then. It's had a lot of different names in its time.'

'Just to make things more difficult, I suppose,' said Tuppence. 'Ladymead. I wonder if that ties up with some particular thing.'

'What should tie it up with?'

'Well, it doesn't really,' said Tuppence. 'It just started off another hare in my mind, if you know what I mean. The trouble is,' she added, 'I don't really know what I mean myself now. The picture, too. Boscowan painted the picture and then somebody else painted a boat into it, with a name on the boat.'

'Tiger Lily.'

'No, Waterlily. And his wife says that he didn't paint the boat.'

'Would she know?'

'I expect she would. If you were married to a painter, and especially if you were an artist yourself, I think you'd know if it was a different style of painting. She's rather frightening, I think,' said Tuppence.

'Who, Mrs Boscowan?'

'Yes. If you know what I mean, powerful. Rather overwhelming.'

'Possibly. Yes.'

'She knows things,' said Tuppence, 'but I'm not sure that she knows them because she knows them, if you know what I mean.'