Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘Somebody,’ he said, ‘has removed every photo of Sonia Goedler from this album.’

Chapter 18

The Letters

I

‘Sorry to worry you again, Mrs Haymes.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Phillipa coldly.

‘Shall we go into this room here?’

‘The study? Yes, if you like, Inspector. It’s very cold. There’s no fire.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not for long. And we’re not so likely to be overheard here.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Not to me, Mrs Haymes. It might to you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you told me, Mrs Haymes, that your husband was killed fighting in Italy?’

‘Well?’

‘Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have told me the truth—that he was a deserter from his regiment.’

He saw her face grow white, and her hands close and unclose themselves.

She said bitterly:

‘Do you have to rake up everything?’

Craddock said dryly:

‘We expect people to tell us the truth about themselves.’

She was silent. Then she said:

‘Well?’

‘What do you mean by “Well?”, Mrs Haymes?’

‘I mean, what are you going to do about it? Tell everybody? Is that necessary—or fair—or kind?’

‘Does nobody know?’

‘Nobody here. Harry’—her voice changed—‘my son, he doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to know—ever.’

‘Then let me tell you that you’re taking a very big risk, Mrs Haymes. When the boy is old enough to understand, tell him the truth. If he finds out by himself some day—it won’t be good for him. If you go on stuffing him up with tales of his father dying like a hero—’

‘I don’t do that. I’m not completely dishonest. I just don’t talk about it. His father was—killed in the war. After all, that’s what it amounts to—for us.’

‘But your husband is still alive?’

‘Perhaps. How should I know?’

‘When did you see him last, Mrs Haymes?’

Phillipa said quickly:

‘I haven’t seen him for years.’

‘Are you quite sure that’s true? You didn’t, for instance, see him about a fortnight ago?’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘It never seemed to me very likely that you met Rudi Scherz in the summerhouse here. But Mitzi’s story was very emphatic. I suggest, Mrs Haymes, that the man you came back from work to meet that morning was your husband.’

‘I didn’t meet anybody in the summerhouse.’

‘He was hard up for money, perhaps, and you supplied him with some?’

‘I’ve not seen him, I tell you. I didn’t meet anybody in the summerhouse.’

‘Deserters are often rather desperate men. They often take part in robberies, you know. Hold-ups. Things of that kind. And they have foreign revolvers very often that they’ve brought back from abroad.’

‘I don’t know where my husband is. I haven’t seen him for years.’

‘Is that your last word, Mrs Haymes?’

‘I’ve nothing else to say.’

II

Craddock came away from his interview with Phillipa Haymes feeling angry and baffled.

‘Obstinate as a mule,’ he said to himself angrily.

He was fairly sure that Phillipa was lying, but he hadn’t succeeded in breaking down her obstinate denials.

He wished he knew a little more about ex-Captain Haymes. His information was meagre. An unsatisfactory Army record, but nothing to suggest that Haymes was likely to turn criminal.

And anyway Haymes didn’t fit in with the oiled door.

Someone in the house had done that, or someone with easy access to it.

He stood looking up the staircase, and suddenly he wondered what Julia had been doing up in the attic. An attic, he thought, was an unlikely place for the fastidious Julia to visit.

What had she been doing up there?

He ran lightly up to the first floor. There was no one about. He opened the door out of which Julia had come and went up the narrow stairs to the attic.

There were trunks there, old suitcases, various broken articles of furniture, a chair with a leg off, a broken china lamp, part of an old dinner service.

He turned to the trunks and opened the lid of one.

Clothes. Old-fashioned, quite good-quality women’s clothes. Clothes belonging, he supposed, to Miss Blacklock, or to her sister who had died.

He opened another trunk.

Curtains.