The Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie (best pdf ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Agatha Christie
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“I think I can explain that,” interposed Bundle. “The housemaid had polished half the floor this morning before she saw the body. You see, it was dark when she came in here. She went straight across to the windows, drew the curtains, and began on the floor, and naturally didn’t see the body which is hidden from that side of the room by the table. She didn’t see it until she came right on top of it.”
The inspector nodded.
“Well,” said Lord Caterham, eager to escape. “I’ll leave you here, inspector. You’ll be able to find me if you—er—want me. But Mr. George Lomax is coming over from Wyverne Abbey shortly, and he’ll be able to tell you far more than I could. It’s his business really. I can’t explain, but he will when he comes.”
Lord Caterham beat a precipitate retreat without waiting for a reply.
“Too bad for Lomax,” he complained. “Letting me in for this. What’s the matter, Tredwell?”
The white-haired butler was hovering deferentially at his elbow.
“I have taken the liberty, my lord, of advancing the breakfast hour as far as you are concerned. Everything is ready in the dining-room.”
“I don’t suppose for a minute I can eat anything,” said Lord Caterham gloomily, turning his footsteps in that direction. “Not for a moment.”
Bundle slipped her hand through his arm, and they entered the dining-room together. On the sideboard were half a score of heavy silver dishes, ingeniously kept hot by patent arrangements.
“Omelet,” said Lord Caterham, lifting each lid in turn. “Eggs and bacon, kidneys, devilled bird, haddock, cold ham, cold pheasant. I don’t like any of these things, Tredwell, ask the cook to poach me an egg, will you?”
“Very good, my lord.”
Tredwell withdrew. Lord Caterham, in an absent-minded fashion, helped himself plentifully to kidneys and bacon, poured himself out a cup of coffee, and sat down at the long table. Bundle was already busy with a plateful of eggs and bacon.
“I’m damned hungry,” said Bundle with her mouth full. “It must be the excitement.”
“It’s all very well for you,” complained her father. “You young people like excitement. But I’m in a very delicate state of health. Avoid all worry, that’s what Sir Abner Willis said—avoid all worry. So easy for a man sitting in his consulting-room in Harley Street to say that. How can I avoid worry when that ass Lomax lands me with a thing like this? I ought to have been firm at the time. I ought to have put my foot down.”
With a sad shake of the head, Lord Caterham rose and carved himself a plate of ham.
“Codders has certainly done it this time,” observed Bundle cheerfully. “He was almost incoherent over the telephone. He’ll be here in a minute or two, spluttering nineteen to the dozen about discretion and hushing it up.”
Lord Caterham groaned at the prospect.
“Was he up?” he asked.
“He told me,” replied Bundle, “that he had been up and dictating letters and memoranda ever since seven o’clock.”
“Proud of it, too,” remarked her father. “Extraordinarily selfish, these public men. They make their wretched secretaries get up at the most unearthly hours in order to dictate rubbish to them. If a law was passed compelling them to stop in bed until eleven, what a benefit it would be to the nation! I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t talk such balderdash. Lomax is always talking to me of my ‘position.’ As if I had any. Who wants to be a peer nowadays?”
“Nobody,” said Bundle. “They’d much rather keep a prosperous public house.”
Tredwell reappeared silently with two poached eggs in a little silver dish which he placed on the table in front of Lord Caterham.
“What’s that, Tredwell?” said the latter, looking at them with faint distaste.
“Poached eggs, my lord.”
“I hate poached eggs,” said Lord Caterham peevishly. “They’re so insipid. I don’t like to look at them even. Take them away, will you, Tredwell?”
“Very good, my lord.”
Tredwell and the poached eggs withdrew as silently as they came.
“Thank God no one gets up early in this house,” remarked Lord Caterham devoutly. “We shall have to break this to them when they do, I suppose.”
He sighed.
“I wonder who murdered him,” said Bundle. “And why?”
“That’s not our business, thank goodness,” said Lord Caterham. “That’s for the police to find out. Not that Badgworthy will ever find out anything. On the whole I rather hope it was Nosystein.”
“Meaning——”
“The All British Syndicate.”
“Why should Mr. Isaacstein murder him when he’d come down here on purpose to meet him?”
“High finance,” said Lord Caterham vaguely. “And that reminds me, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Isaacstein wasn’t an early riser. He may blow in upon us at any minute. It’s a habit in the city. I believe that, however rich you are, you always catch the 9.17.”
The sound of a motor being driven at great speed was heard through the open window.
“Codders,” cried Bundle.
Father and daughter leaned out of the window and hailed the occupant of the car as it drew up before the entrance.
“In here, my dear fellow, in here,” cried Lord Caterham, hastily swallowing his mouthful of ham.
George had no intention of climbing in through the window. He disappeared through the front door, and reappeared ushered in by Tredwell, who withdrew at once.
“Have some breakfast,” said Lord Caterham, shaking him by the hand. “What about a kidney?”
George waved the kidney aside impatiently.
“This is a terrible calamity, terrible, terrible.”
“It is indeed. Some haddock?”
“No, no. It must be hushed up—at all costs it must be hushed up.”
As Bundle had prophesied, George began to splutter.
“I understand your feelings,” said Lord Caterham sympathetically. “Try an egg and bacon, or some haddock.”
“A totally unforeseen contingency—national calamity—concessions jeopardized——”
“Take time,” said Lord Caterham. “And take some food. What you need is some food, to pull you together. Poached eggs now? There were some poached eggs here a minute or two ago.”
“I don’t want any food,” said George. “I’ve had breakfast, and even if I hadn’t had any I shouldn’t want it. We must think what is to be done. You have told no one as yet?”
“Well, there’s Bundle and myself. And the local police. And Cartwright. And all the servants of course.”
George groaned.
“Pull yourself together, my dear fellow,” said Lord Caterham kindly. “(I wish you’d have some breakfast.) You don’t seem to realize that you can’t hush up a dead body. It’s got be buried and all that sort of thing. Very unfortunate, but there it is.”
George became suddenly calm.
“You are right, Caterham. You have called in the local police, you say? That will not do. We must have Battle.”
“Battle, murder and sudden death,” inquired Lord Caterham, with a puzzled face.
“No, no, you misunderstand me. I referred to Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard. A man of the utmost discretion. He worked with us in that deplorable business of the Party Funds.”
“What was that?” asked Lord Caterham, with some interest.
But George’s eye had fallen upon Bundle, as she sat half in and half out of the window, and he remembered discretion just in time. He rose.
“We must waste no time. I must send off some wires at once.”
“If you write them out, Bundle will send them through the telephone.”
George pulled out a fountain pen and began to write with incredible rapidity. He handed the first one to Bundle, who read it with a great deal of interest.
“God! what a name,” she remarked. “Baron How Much?”
“Baron Lolopretjzyl.”
Bundle blinked.
“I’ve got it, but it will take some conveying to the post office.”
George continued to write. Then he handed his labours to Bundle and addressed the master of the house:
“The best thing that you can do, Caterham——”
“Yes,” said Lord Caterham apprehensively.
“Is to leave everything in my hands.”
“Certainly,” said Lord Caterham, with alacrity. “Just what I was thinking myself. You’ll find the police and Dr. Cartwright in the Council Chamber. With the—er—with the body, you know. My dear Lomax, I place Chimneys unreservedly at your disposal. Do anything you like.”
“Thank you,” said George. “If I should want to consult you——”
But Lord Caterham had faded unobtrusively through the farther door. Bundle had observed his retreat with a grim smile.
“I’ll send off those telegrams at once,” she said. “You know your way to the Council Chamber?”
“Thank you, Lady Eileen.”
George hurried from the room.
Superintendent Battle Arrives
So apprehensive was Lord Caterham of being consulted by George that he spent the whole morning making a tour of his estate. Only the pangs of hunger drew him homeward. He also reflected that by now the worst would surely be over.
He sneaked into the house quietly by a small side door. From there he slipped neatly into his sanctum. He flattered himself that his entrance had not been observed, but there he was mistaken. The watchful Tredwell let nothing escape him. He presented himself at the door.
“You’ll excuse me, my lord——”
“What is it, Tredwell?”
“Mr. Lomax, my lord, is anxious to see you in the library as soon as you return.”
By this delicate method Tredwell conveyed that Lord Caterham had not yet returned unless he chose to say so.
Lord Caterham sighed, and then rose.
“I suppose it will have to be done sooner or later. In the library, you say?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Sighing again. Lord Caterham crossed the wide spaces of his ancestral home, and reached the library door. The door was locked. As he rattled the handle, it was unlocked from inside, opened a little way, and the face of George Lomax appeared, peering out suspiciously.
His face changed when he saw who it was.
“Ah, Caterham, come in. We were just wondering what had become of you.”
Murmuring something vague about duties on the estate, repairs for tenants, Lord Caterham sidled in apologetically. There were two other men in the room. One was Colonel Melrose, the Chief Constable. The other was a squarely built middle-aged man with a face so singularly devoid of expression as to be quite remarkable.
“Superintendent Battle arrived half an hour ago,” explained George. “He has been round with Inspector Badgworthy, and seen Dr. Cartwright. He now wants a few facts from us.”
They all sat down, after Lord Caterham had greeted Melrose and acknowledged his introduction to Superintendent Battle.
“I need hardly tell you, Battle,” said George, “that this is a case in which we must use the utmost discretion.”
The superintendent nodded in an offhand manner that rather took Lord Caterham’s fancy.
“That will be all right, Mr. Lomax. But no concealments from us. I understand that the dead gentleman was called Count Stanislaus—at least, that that is the name by which the household knew him. Now was that his real name?”
“It was not.”
“What was his real name?”
“Prince Michael of Herzoslovakia.”
Battle’s eyes opened just a trifle, otherwise he gave no sign.
“And what, if I may ask the question, was the purpose of his visit here? Just pleasure?”
“There was a further object, Battle. All this in the strictest confidence of course.”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Lomax.”
“Colonel Melrose?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, Prince Michael was here for the express purpose of meeting Mr. Herman Isaacstein. A loan was to be arranged on certain terms.”
“Which were?”
“I do not know the exact details. Indeed, they had not yet been arranged. But in the event of coming to the throne, Prince Michael pledged himself to grant certain oil concessions to those companies in which Mr. Isaacstein is interested. The British Government was prepared to support the claim of Prince Michael to the throne in view of his pronounced British sympathies.”
“Well,” said Superintendent Battle, “I don’t suppose I need go further into it than that. Prince Michael wanted the money, Mr. Isaacstein wanted oil, and the British Government was ready to do the heavy father. Just one question. Was anyone else after those concessions?”
“I believe an American group of financiers had made overtures to His Highness.”
“And been turned down, eh?”
But George refused to be drawn.
“Prince
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