Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans Read online

  'That's the concussion,' explained George. 'Now, then, lie doggo just where you are. I think I heard a bicycle bell.' Sure enough, at that moment, a boy of about seventeen came whistling round the corner. He stopped at once, delighted with the pleasurable spectacle that met his eyes.

  'Ooer!' he ejaculated,' 'as there been an accident?' 'No,' said George sarcastically. 'The young lady ran her car into the wall on purpose.' Accepting, as he was meant to do, this remark as irony rather than the simple truth which it was, the boy said with relish: 'Looks bad, don't she? Is she dead?' 'Not yet,' said George. 'She must be taken somewhere at once. I'm a doctor. What's this place in here?' 'Merroway Court. Belongs to Mr Bassington-ffrench. He's a JP, he is.' 'She must be carried there at once,' said George authoritatively.

  'Here, leave your bicycle and lend me a hand.' Only too willing, the boy propped his bicycle against the wall and came to assist. Between them George and the boy carried Frankie up the drive to a pleasant old-fashioned-looking manor house.

  Their approach had been observed, for an elderly butler came out to meet them.

  'There's been an accident,' said George curtly. 'Is there a room I can carry this lady into? She must be attended to at once.' The butler went back into the hall in a flustered way. George and the boy followed him up closely, still carrying the limp body of Frankie. The butler had gone into a room on the left and from there a woman emerged. She was tall, with red hair, and about thirty years of age. Her eyes were a light clear blue.

  She dealt with the situation quickly.

  'There is a spare bedroom on the ground floor,' she said.

  'Will you bring her in there? Ought I to telephone for a doctor?' 'I am a doctor,' explained George. 'I was passing in my car and saw the accident occur.' 'Oh! how very fortunate. Come this way, will you?' She showed them the way into a pleasant bedroom with windows giving on the garden.

  'Is she badly hurt?' she inquired.

  'I can't tell yet.' Mrs Bassington-ffrench took the hint and retired. The boy accompanied her and launched out into a description of the accident as though he had been an actual witness of it.

  'Run smack into the wall she did. Car's all smashed up.

  There she was lying on the ground with her hat all dinted in.

  The gentleman, he was passing in his car ' He proceeded ad lib till got rid of with a half-crown.

  Meanwhile Frankie and George were conversing in careful whispers.

  'George, darling, this won't blight your career, will it? They won't strike you off the register, or whatever it is, will they?' 'Probably,' said George gloomily. 'That is, if it ever comes out.' 'It won't,' said Frankie. 'Don't worry, George. I shan't let you down.' She added thoughtfully: 'You did it very well. I've never heard you talk so much before.' George sighed. He looked at his watch.

  'I shall give my examination another three minutes,' he said.

  'What about the car?' 'I'll arrange with a garage to have that cleared up.' 'Good.' George continued to study his watch. Finally he said with an air of relief: 'Time.' 'George,' said Frankie, 'you've been an angel. I don't know why you did it.' 'No more do I,' said George. 'Damn fool thing to do.' He nodded to her.

  'Bye bye. Enjoy yourself.' 'I wonder if I shall,' said Frankie.

  She was thinking of that cool impersonal voice with the slight American accent.

  George went in search of the owner of it, whom he found waiting for him in the drawing-room.

  'Well,' he said abruptly. 'I'm glad to say it's not so bad as I feared. Concussion very slight and already passing off. She ought to stay quietly where she is for a day or so, though.' He paused. 'She seems to be a Lady Frances Derwent.' 'Oh, fancy!' said Mrs Bassington-ffrench. 'Then I know some cousins of hers - the Draycotts - quite well.' 'I don't know if it's inconvenient for you to have her here,' said George. 'But if she could stay where she is for a day or two...' Here George paused.

  'Oh, of course. That will be all right, Dr -?' 'Arbuthnot. By the way, I'll see to the car business. I shall be passing a garage.' 'Thank you very much, Dr Arbuthnot. How very lucky you happened to be passing. I suppose a doctor ought to see her tomorrow just to see she's getting on all right.' 'Don't think it's necessary,' said George. 'All she needs is quiet.' 'But I should feel happier. And her people ought to know.' 'I'll attend to that,' said George. 'And as to the doctoring business - well, it seems she's a Christian Scientist and won't have doctors at any price. She wasn't too pleased at finding me in attendance.' 'Oh, dear!' said Mrs Bassingtonffrench.

  'But she'll be quite all right,' said George reassuringly. 'You can take my word for it.' 'If you really think so, Dr Arbuthnot,' said Mrs Bassingtonffrench rather doubtfully.

  'I do,' said George. 'Goodbye. Dear me. I left one of my instruments in the bedroom.' He came rapidly into the room and up to the bedside.

  Trankie,' he said in a quick whisper. 'You're a Christian Scientist. Don't forget.' 'But why?' 'I had to do it. Only way.' 'All right,' said Frankie. 'I won't forget."

  CHAPTER 12 In the Enemy's Camp

  'Well, here I am,' thought Frankie. 'Safely in the enemy's camp. Now, it's up to me.' There was a tap on the door and Mrs BassingtonfFrench entered.

  Frankie raised herself a little on her pillows.

  'I'm so frightfully sorry,' she said in a faint voice. 'Causing you all this bother.' 'Nonsense,' said Mrs Bassington-ffrench. Frankie heard anew that cool attractive drawling voice with a slight American accent, and remembered that Lord Marchington had said that one of the Hampshire Bassington-ffrenches had married an American heiress. 'Dr Arbuthnot says you will be quite all right in a day or two if you just keep quiet.' Frankie felt that she ought at this point to say something about 'error' or 'mortal mind', but was frightened of saying the wrong thing.

  'He seems nice,' she said. 'He was very kind.' 'He seemed a most capable young man,' said Mrs Bassington-ffrench. 'It was very fortunate that he just happened to be passing.' 'Yes, wasn't it? Not, of course, that I really needed him.' 'But you mustn't talk,' continued her hostess. 'I'll send my maid along with some things for you and then she can get you properly into bed.' 'It's frightfully kind of you.' 'Not at all.' Frankie felt a momentary qualm as the other woman withdrew.

  'A nice kind creature,' she said to herself. 'And beautifully unsuspecting.' For the first time she felt that she was playing a mean trick on her hostess. Her mind had been so taken up with the vision of a murderous Bassington-ffrench pushing an unsuspecting victim over a precipice that lesser characters in the drama had not entered her imagination.

  'Oh, well,' thought Frankie, 'I've got to go through with it now. But I wish she hadn't been so nice about it.' She spent a dull afternoon and evening lying in her darkened room. Mrs Bassington-ffrench looked in once or twice to see how she was but did not stay.

  The next day, however, Frankie admitted the daylight and expressed a desire for company and her hostess came and sat `with her for some time. They discovered many mutual acquaintances and friends and by the end of the day, Frankie felt, with a guilty qualm, that they had become friends.

  Mrs Bassington-ffrench referred several times to her husband and to her small boy. Tommy. She seemed a simple woman, deeply attached to her home, and yet, for some reason or other, Frankie fancied that she was not quite happy. There was an `anxious expression in her eyes sometimes that did not agree with a mind at peace with itself.

  On the third day Frankie got up and was introduced to the master of the house.

  He was a big man, heavy jowled, with a kindly but rather abstracted air. He seemed to spend a good deal of his time shut up in his study. Yet Frankie judged him to be very fond of his wife, though interesting himself very little in her concerns.

  Tommy, the small boy, was seven, and a healthy, mischievous child. Sylvia Bassington-ffrench obviously adored him.

  'It's so nice down here,' said Frankie with a sigh.

  She was lying out on a long chair in the garden.

  'I don't know whether it's the bang on the he
ad, or what it is, but I just don't feel I want to move. I'd like to lie here for days and days.' 'Well, do,' said Sylvia Bassington-ffrench in her calm, incurious tones. 'No, really, I mean it. Don't hurry back to town. You see,' she went on, 'it's a great pleasure to me to have you here. You're so bright and amusing. It quite cheers me up.' 'So she needs cheering up,' flashed across Frankie's mind.

  At the same time she felt ashamed of herself.

  'I feel we really have become friends,' continued the other woman.

  Frankie felt still more ashamed.

  It was a mean thing she was doing - mean - mean - mean.

  She would give it up! Go back to town Her hostess went on: 'It won't be too dull here. Tomorrow my brother-in-law is coming back. You'll like him, I'm sure. Everyone likes Roger.' 'He lives with you?' 'Off and on. He's a restless creature. He calls himself the ne'er-do-weel of the family, and perhaps it's true in a way. He never sticks to a job for long - in fact I don't believe he's ever done any real work in his life. But some people just are like that - especially in old families. And they're usually people with a great charm of manner. Roger is wonderfully sympathetic. I don't know what I should have done without him this spring when Tommy was ill.' 'What was the matter with Tommy?' 'He had a bad fall from the swing. It must have been tied on to a rotten branch and the branch gave way. Roger was very upset because he was swinging the child at the time - you know, giving him high ones, such as children love. We thought at first Tommy's spine was hurt, but it turned out to be a very slight injury and he's quite all right now.' 'He certainly looks it,' said Frankie, smiling, as she heard faint yells and whoops in the distance.

  'I know. He seems in perfect condition. It's such a relief.

  He's had bad luck in accidents. He was nearly drowned last winter.' 'Was he really?' said Frankie thoughtfully.

  She no longer meditated returning to town. The feeling of guilt had abated.

  Accidents!

  Did Roger Bassington-ffrench specialize in accidents, she wondered.

  She said: 'If you're sure you mean it, I'd love to stay a little longer. But won't your husband mind my butting in like this?' 'Henry?' Mrs Bassington-ffrench's lips curled in a strange expression. 'No, Henry won't mind. Henry never minds anything - nowadays.' Frankie looked at her curiously.

  'If she knew me better she'd tell me something,' she thought to herself. 'I believe there are lots of odd things going on in this household.' Henry Bassington-ffrench joined them for tea and Frankie studied him closely. There was certainly something odd about the man. His type was an obvious one - a jovial, sport-loving, simple country gentleman. But such a man ought not to sit twitching nervously, his nerves obviously on edge, now sunk in an abstraction from which it was impossible to rouse him, now giving out bitter and sarcastic replies to anything said to him.

  Not that he was always like that. Later that evening, at dinner, he showed out in quite a new light. He joked, laughed, told stories, and was, for a man of his abilities, quite brilliant. Too brilliant, Frankie felt. The brilliance was just as unnatural and out of character.

  'He has such queer eyes,' she thought. 'They frighten me a little.' And yet surely she did not suspect Henry Bassingtonffrench of anything? It was his brother, not he, who had been in Marchbolt on that fatal day.

  As to the brother, Frankie looked forward to seeing him with eager interest. According to her and to Bobby, the man was a murderer. She was going to meet a murderer face to face.

  She felt momentarily nervous.

  Yet, after all, how could he guess?

  How could he, in any way, connect her with a successfully accomplished crime?

  'You're making a bogey for yourself out of nothing,' she said to herself.

  Roger Bassington-ffrench arrived just before tea on the following afternoon.

  Frankie did not meet him till tea time. She was still supposed to 'rest' in the afternoon.

  When she came out on to the lawn where tea was laid, Sylvia said smiling: 'Here is our invalid. This is my brother-in-law. Lady Frances Derwent.' Frankie saw a tall, slender young man of something over thirty with very pleasant eyes. Although she could see what Bobby meant by saying he ought to have a monocle and a toothbrush moustache, she herself was more inclined to notice the intense blue of his eyes. They shook hands.

  He said: 'I've been hearing all about the way you tried to break down the park wall.' 'I'll admit,' said Frankie, 'that I'm the world's worst driver.

  But I was driving an awful old rattle-trap. My own car was laid up and I bought a cheap one secondhand.' 'She was rescued from the ruins by a very good-looking young doctor,' said Sylvia.

  'He was rather sweet,' agreed Frankie.

  Tommy arrived at this moment and flung himself upon his uncle with squeaks of joy.

  'Have you brought me a Homby train? You said you would.

  You said you would.' 'Oh, Tommy! You mustn't ask for things,' said Sylvia.

  'That's all right, Sylvia. It was a promise. I've got your train all right, old man.' He looked casually at his sister-in-law. 'Isn't Henry coming to tea?' 'I don't think so.' The constrained note was in her voice. 'He isn't feeling awfully well today, I imagine.' Then she said impulsively: 'Oh, Roger, I'm glad you're back.' He put his hand on her arm for a minute.

  'That's all right, Sylvia, old girl.' After tea, Roger played trains with his nephew.

  Frankie watched them, her mind in a turmoil.

  Surely this wasn't the sort of man to push people over cliffs!

  This charming young man couldn't be a cold-blooded murderer!

  But, then - she and Bobby must have been wrong all along.

  Wrong, that is, about this part of it.

  She felt sure now that it wasn't Bassington-ffrench who had pushed Pritchard over the cliff.

  Then who was it?

  She was still convinced he had been pushed over. Who had done it? And who had put the morphia in Bobby's beer?

  With the thought of morphia suddenly the explanation of Henry Bassington-ffrench's peculiar eyes came to her, with their pin-point pupils.

  Was Henry Bassington-ffrench a drug fiend?

  CHAPTER 13 Alan Carstairs

  Strangely enough, she received confirmation of this theory no later than the following day, and it came from Roger.

  They had been playing a single at tennis against each other and were sitting afterwards sipping iced drinks.

  They had been talking about various indifferent subjects and Frankie had become more and more sensible of the charm of someone who had, like Roger Bassington-ffrench, travelled about all over the world. The family ne'er-do-weel, she could not help thinking, contrasted very favourably with his heavy, serious-minded brother.

  A pause had fallen while these thoughts were passing through Frankie's mind. It was broken by Roger - speaking this time in an entirely different tone of voice.

  'Lady Frances, I'm going to do a rather peculiar thing. I've known you less than twenty-four hours, but I feel instinctively that you're the one person I can ask advice from.' 'Advice?' said Frankie, surprised.

  'Yes. I can't make up my mind between two different courses of action.' He paused. He was leaning forward, swinging a racquet between his knees, a light frown on his forehead. He looked worried and upset.

  'It's about my brother. Lady Frances.' 'Yes?' 'He is taking drugs. I am sure of it.' 'What makes you think so?' asked Frankie.

  'Everything. His appearance. His extraordinary changes of mood. And have you noticed his eyes? The pupils are like pinpoints.'

  'I had noticed that,' admitted Frankie. 'What do you think it is?' 'Morphia or some form of opium.' 'Has it been going on for long?' 'I date the beginning of it from about six months ago. I remember that he complained of sleeplessness a good deal.

  How he first came to take the stuff, I don't know, but I think it must have begun soon after then.' 'How does he get hold of it?' inquired Frankie practically.

  'I think it comes to him by post. Have you noticed that he
is particularly nervous and irritable some days at tea time?' 'Yes, I have.' 'I suspect that that is when he has finished up his supply and is waiting for more. Then, after the six o'clock post has come, he goes into his study and emerges for dinner in quite a different mood.' Frankie nodded. She remembered that unnatural brilliance of conversation sometimes at dinner.

  'But where does the supply come from?' she asked.

  'Ah, that I don't know. No reputable doctor would give it to him. There are, I suppose, various sources where one could get it in London by paying a big price.' Frankie nodded thoughtfully.

  She was remembering having said to Bobby something about a gang of drug smugglers and his replying that one could not mix up too many crimes. It was queer that so soon in their investigations they should have come upon the traces of such a thing.