Загадочные события во Франчесе - страница 10

“No,” Marion Sharpe said. “The day, according to the Inspector, is the 28th of March. That is a long time ago, and our days here vary very little, if at all. It would be quite impossible for us to remember what we were doing on March the 28th – and most unlikely that anyone would remember for us.”

“Your maid?” Robert suggested. “Servants have ways of marking their domestic life that is often surprising.”

“We have no maid,” she said. “We find it difficult to keep one: The Franchise is so isolated.”

The moment threatened to become awkward and Robert hastened to break it.

“This girl – I don’t know her name, by the way.”

“Elisabeth Kane; known as Betty Kane.”

“Oh, yes; you did tell me. I’m sorry. This girl – may we know something about her? I take it that the police have investigated her before accepting so much of her story. Why guardians and not parents, for instance?”

“She is a war orphan. She was evacuated to the Aylesbury district as a small child. She was an only child, and was billeted with the Wynns, who had a boy four years older. About twelve months later both parents were killed, in the same ‘incident,’ and the Wynns, who had always wanted a daughter and were very fond of the child, were glad to keep her. She looks on them as her parents, since she can hardly remember the real ones.”

“I see. And her record?”

“Excellent. A very quiet girl, by every account. Good at her school work but not brilliant. Has never been in any kind of trouble, in school or out of it. ‘Transparently truthful’ was the phrase her form mistress used about her.”

“When she eventually turned up at her home, after her absence, was there any evidence of the beatings she said she had been given?”

“Oh, yes. Very definitely. The Wynns’ own doctor saw her early next morning, and his statement is that she had been very extensively knocked about. Indeed, some of the bruises were still visible much later when she made her statement to us.”

“No history of epilepsy?”

“No; we considered that very early in the inquiry. I should like to say that the Wynns are very sensible people. They have been greatly distressed, but they have not tried to dramatise the affair, or allowed the girl to be an object of interest or pity. They have taken the affair admirably.”

“And all that remains is for me to take my end of it with the same admirable detachment,” Marion Sharpe said.

“You see my position, Miss Sharpe. The girl not only describes the house in which she says she was detained; she describes the two inhabitants – and describes them very accurately. ‘A thin, elderly woman with soft white hair and no hat, dressed in black; and a much younger woman, thin and tall and dark like a gipsy, with no hat and a bright silk scarf round her neck.’”

“Oh, yes. I can think of no explanation, but I understand your position. And now I think we had better have the girl in, but before we do I should like to say—”

The door opened noiselessly, and old Mrs. Sharpe appeared on the threshold. The short pieces of white hair round her face stood up on end, as her pillow had left them, and she looked more than ever like a sibyl.

She pushed the door to behind her and surveyed the gathering with a malicious interest.

“Hah!” she said, making a sound like the throaty squawk of a hen. “Three strange men!”

“Let me present them, Mother,” Marion said, as the three got to their feet.

“This is Mr. Blair, of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet – the firm who have that lovely house at the top of the High Street.”

As Robert bowed the old woman fixed him with her seagull’s eye.

“Needs re-tiling,” she said.

It did, but it was not the greeting he had expected.

It comforted him a little that her greeting to Grant was even more unorthodox. Far from being impressed or agitated by the presence of Scotland Yard in her drawing-room of a spring afternoon, she merely said in her dry voice: “You should not be sitting in that chair; you are much too heavy for it.”

When her daughter introduced the local Inspector she cast one glance at him, moved her head an inch, and quite obviously dismissed him from further consideration. This, Hallam, to judge by his expression, found peculiarly shattering.