c9

"No, no, indeed."

 

"You'll want to go through her things? After the inquest, perhaps?"

 

"I thought I'd stay here a couple of days, go through things, and clear everything up."

 

"Sleep here, you mean?"

 

"Yes. Is there any difficulty?"

 

"Oh no, Mrs Banks, of course not. I'll put fresh sheets on my bed, and I can doss down here on the couch quite well."

 

"But there's Aunt Cora's room, isn't there? I can sleep in that."

 

"You - you wouldn't mind?"

 

"You mean because she was murdered there? Oh no, I wouldn't mind. I'm very tough, Miss Gilchrist. It's been - I mean - it's all right again?"

 

Miss Gilchrist understood the question.

 

"Oh yes, Mrs Banks. All the blankets sent away to the cleaners and Mrs Panter and I scrubbed the whole room out thoroughly. And there are plenty of spare blankets. But come up and see for yourself."

 

She led the way upstairs and Susan followed her.

 

The room where Cora Lansquenet had died was clean and fresh and curiously devoid of any sinister atmosphere. Like the sitting-room it contained a mixture of modern utility and elaborately painted furniture. It represented Cora's cheerful tasteless personality. Over the mantelpiece an oil painting showed a buxom young woman about to enter her bath.

 

Susan gave a slight shudder as she looked at it and Miss Gilchrist said:

 

"That was painted by Mrs Lansquenet's husband. There are a lot of more of his pictures in the dining-room downstairs."

 

"How terrible."

 

"Well, I don't care very much for that style of painting myself - but Mrs Lansquenet was very proud of her husband as an artist and thought that his work was sadly unappreciated."

 

"Where are Aunt Cora's own pictures?"

 

"In my room. Would you like to see them?"

 

Miss Gilchrist displayed her treasures proudly.

 

Susan remarked that Aunt Cora seemed to have been fond of sea coast resorts.

 

"Oh yes. You see, she lived for many years with Mr Lansquenet at a small fishing village in Brittany. Fishing boats are always so picturesque, are they not?"

 

"Obviously," Susan murmured. A whole series of picture postcards could, she thought, have been made from Cora Lansquenet's paintings which were faithful to detail and very highly coloured. They gave rise to the suspicion that they might actually have been painted from picture postcards.

 

But when she hazarded this opinion Miss Gilchrist was indignant. Mrs Lansquenet always painted from Nature! Indeed, once she had had a touch of the sun from reluctance to leave a subject when the light was just right.

 

"Mrs Lansquenet was a real artist," said Miss Gilchrist reproachfully.

 

She glanced at her watch and Susan said quickly:

 

"Yes, we ought to start for the inquest. Is it far? Shall I get the car?"

 

It was only five minutes' walk, Miss Gilchrist assured her. So they set out together on foot. Mr Entwhistle, who had come down by train, met them and shepherded them into the Village Hall.

 

There seemed to be a large number of strangers present. The inquest was not sensational. There was evidence of identification of the deceased. Medical evidence as to the nature of the wounds that had killed her. There were no signs of a struggle. Deceased was probably under a narcotic at the time she was attacked and would have been taken quite unawares. Death was unlikely to have occurred later than four-thirty.

 

Between

 

two

 

and

 

four-thirty

 

was

 

the

 

nearest

 

approximation. Miss Gilchrist testified to finding the body. A police constable and Inspector Morton gave their evidence. The Coroner summed up briefly. The jury made no bones about the verdict, "Murder by some person or persons unknown."

 

It was over. They came out again into the sunlight. Half a dozen cameras clicked. Mr Entwhistle shepherded Susan and Miss Gilchrist into the King's Arms, where he had taken the precaution to arrange for lunch to be served in a private room behind the bar.

 

"Not a very good lunch, I am afraid," he said apologetically.

 

But the lunch was not at all bad. Miss Gilchrist sniffed a little and murmured that "it was all so dreadful," but cheered up and tackled the Irish stew with appetite after Mr Entwhistle had insisted on her drinking a glass of sherry. He said to Susan:

 

"I'd no idea you were coming down today, Susan. We could have come together."

 

"I know I said I wouldn't. But it seemed rather mean for none of the family to be there. I rang up George but he said he was very busy and couldn't possibly make it, and Rosamund had an audition and Uncle Timothy, of course, is a crock. So it had to be me."

 

"Your husband didn't come with you?"

 

"Greg had to settle up with his tiresome shop."

 

Seeing a startled look in Miss Gilchrist's eye, Susan said: "My husband works in a chemist's shop."

 

A husband in retail trade did not quite square with Miss Gilchrist's impression of Susan's smartness, but she said valiantly: "Oh yes, just like Keats."

 

"Greg's no poet," said Susan.

 

She added:

 

"We've got great plans for the future - a double-barrelled establishment - Cosmetics and Beauty parlour and a laboratory for special preparations."

 

"That will be much nicer," said Miss Gilchrist approvingly. Something like Elizabeth Arden who is really a Countess, so I have been told - or is that Helena Rubinstein? In any case," she added kindly, "a pharmacist's is not in the least like an ordinary shop - a draper, for instance, or a grocer."

 

"You kept a tea-shop, you said, didn't you?"

 

"Yes, indeed," Miss Gilchrist's face lit up. That the Willow Tree had ever been "trade" in the sense that a shop was trade, would never have occurred to her. To keep a tea-shop was in her mind the essence of gentility. She started telling Susan about the Willow Tree.

 

Mr Entwhistle, who had heard about it before, let his mind drift to other matters. When Susan had spoken to him twice without his answering he hurriedly apologised.

 

"Forgive me, my dear, I was thinking, as a matter of fact, about your Uncle Timothy. I am a little worried."

 

"About Uncle Timothy? I shouldn't be. I don't believe really there's anything the matter with him. He's just a hypochondriac."

 

"Yes - yes, you may be right. I confess it was not his health that was worrying me. It's Mrs Timothy. Apparently she's fallen downstairs and twisted her ankle. She's laid up and your uncle is in a terrible state."

 

"Because he'll have to look after her instead of the other way about?

 

Do him a lot of good," said Susan.

 

"Yes - yes, I dare say. But will your poor aunt get any looking after?

 

That is really the question. With no servants in the house."

 

"Life is really hell for elderly people," said Susan. "They live in a kind of Georgian Manor house, don't they?"

 

Mr Entwhistle nodded.

 

They came rather warily out of the King's Arms, but the Press seemed to have dispersed.

 

A couple of reporters were lying in wait for Susan by the cottage door. Shepherded by Mr Entwhistle she said a few necessary and non- committal words. Then she and Miss Gilchrist went into the cottage and Mr Entwhistle returned to the King's Arms where he had booked a room. The funeral was to be on the following day.

 

"My car's still in the quarry," said Susan. "I'd forgotten about it. I'll drive it along to the village later."

 

Miss Gilchrist said anxiously:

 

"Not too late. You won't go out after dark, will you?"

 

Susan looked at her and laughed.

 

"You don't think there's a murderer still hanging about, do you?"

 

"No - no, I suppose not." Miss Gilchrist looked embarrassed.

 

"But it's exactly what she does think," thought Susan. "How amazing!"

 

Miss Gilchrist had vanished towards the kitchen.

 

"I'm sure you'd like tea early. In about half an hour, do you think, Mrs Banks?"

 

Susan thought that tea at half-past three was overdoing it, but she was charitable enough to realise that "a nice cup of tea" was Miss Gilchrist's idea of restoration for the nerves and she had her own reasons for wishing to please Miss Gilchrist, so she said:

 

"Whenever yon like, Miss Gilchrist."

 

A happy clatter of kitchen implements began and Susan went into the sitting-room. She had only been there a few minutes when the bell sounded and was succeeded by a very precise little rat-tat-tat.

 

Susan came out into the hall and Miss Gilchrist appeared at the kitchen door wearing an apron and wiping floury hands on it.

 

"Oh dear, who do you think that can be?"

 

"More reporters, I expect," said Susan.

 

"Oh dear, how annoying for you, Mrs Banks."

 

"Oh well, never mind, I'll attend to it."

 

"I was just going to make a few scones for tea."

 

Susan went towards the front door and Miss Gilchrist hovered uncertainly. Susan wondered whether she thought a man with a hatchet was waiting outside.