AGATHA CHRISTIE. By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Tuppence joined them just as they reached the drawing-room door. Sir Philip Starke rose as she came into the room, rearranged her chair and sat down beside her.

‘Is that the way you like it, Mrs Beresford?’ ‘ ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s very comfortable.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear -‘ his voice had a vague charm to it, though it had some elements of a ghostlike voice, far-away, lacking in resonance, yet with a curious depth – ‘about your accident,’ he said. ‘It’s so sad nowadays – all the accidents there are.’ His eyes were wandering over her face and she thought to herself, ‘He’s making just as much a study of me as I made of him.’ She gave a sharp half-glance at Tommy, but Tommy was talking to Emma Boscowan.

‘What made you come to Sutton Chancellor in the first place, Mrs Beresford?’ ‘Oh, we’re looking for a house in the country in a vague sort of way,’ said Tuppence. ‘My husband was away-from home attending some congress or other and I thought I’d have a tour round a likely part of the countryside – just to see what there was going, and the kind of price one would have to pay, you kI1oW.’

‘I hear you went and looked at the house by the canal bridge?’

‘Yes, I did. I believe I’d once noticed it from the train. It’s a very attractive-looking house – from the outside.’

‘Yes. I should imagine, though, that even the outside needs a great deal doing to it, to the roof and things like that. Not so attractive on the wrong side, is it?’

‘No, it seems to me a curious way to divide up a house.’

‘Oh well,’ said Philip Starke, ‘people have different ideas, don’t they?’

‘You never lived in it, did you?’ asked Tuppence.

‘No, no, indeed. My house was burnt down many years ago.

There’s part of it left still. I expect you’ve seen it or had it pointed out to you. It’s above this vicarage, you know, a bit up the hill. At least what they call a hill in this part of the world.

It was never much to boast of. My father built it way back in 1890 or so. A proud mansion. Gothic overlays, a touch of Balmoral. Our architects nowadays rather admire that kind of thing again, though actually forty years ago it was shuddered at. It had everything a so-called gentleman’s house ought to have.’ His voice was gently ironic. ‘A billiard room, a morning room, ladies’ parlour, colossal dining-room, a ballroom, about fourteen bedrooms, and once had – or so I should imagine – a staff of fourteen servants to look after it.’

‘You sound as though you never liked it much yourself.’

‘I never did. I was a disappointment to my father. He was a very successful industrialist. He hoped I would follow in his footsteps. I didn’t. He treated me very well. He gave me a large income, or allowance – as it used to be called – and let me go my own way.’

‘I heard you were a botanist.’

‘Well, that was one of my great relaxations. I used to go looking for wild flowers, especially in the Balkans. Have you ever been to the Balkans looking for wild flowers? It’s a wonderful place for them.’

‘It sounds very attractive. Then you used to come back and live here?’ ‘I haven’t lived here for a great many years now. In fact, I’ve never been back to live here since my wife died.’

‘Oh,’ said Tuppence, slightly embarrassed. ‘Oh, I’m – I’m ‘It’s quite a long time ago now. She died before the war. In 1938. She was a very beautiful woman,’ he said.

‘Do you have pictures of her in your house here still?’

‘Oh no, the house is empty. All the furniture, pictures and things were sent away to be stored. There’s just a bedroom and an office and a sitting-room where my agent comes, or I come if I have to come down here and see to any estate business.’ ‘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.’

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