that kind. But you could see that Major Burnaby was
really awfully rattled by it. I think that actually he be-lieved
in it more than anybody else. But I thought poor
little Mr. Rycroft was going to have a heart attack or
something, yet he must be used to that kind of thing
because he does a lot of psychic research, and as for
Ronnie, Ronnie Garfield you know--he looked as though
he had seen a ghost--actually seen one. Even mother
was awfully upet--more than I have ever seen her be-fore."
Agatha Christie
"It must have been most spooky," said Emily. "I wish
I had been there to see."
"It was rather horrid really. We all pretended that it
was--just fun, you know, but it didn't seem like that.
And then Major Burnaby suddenly made up his mind to
go over to Exhampton and we all tried to stop him, and
said he would be buried in a snowdrift, but he would
go. And there we sat, after he had gone, all feeling dread-ful
and worried. And then, last night--no, yesterday
morning--we got the news."
"You think it was Captain Trevelyan's spirit?" said
Emily in an awed voice. "Or do you think it was clair-voyance
or telepathy?"
"Oh, I don't know. But I shall never, never laugh at
these things again."
The parlormaid entered with a folded piece of paper
on a salver which she handed to Violet.
The parlormaid withdrew and Violet unfolded the pa-per,
glanced over it and handled it to Emily.
"There you are," she said. "As a matter of fact you are
just in time. This murder business has upset the servants.
They think it's dangerous to live in this out of the way
part. Mother lost her temper with them yesterday eve-ning
and has sent them all packing. They are going after
lunch. We are going to get two men instead--a house-parlorman
and a kind of butler chauffeur. I think it will
answer much better."
"Servants are silly, aren't they?" said Emily.
"It isn't even as if Captain Trevelyan had been killed
in this house."
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llurder at Hazelmoor
"What made ¥ uu think of coming to live here?" asked
Emily, trying to make the question sound artless and
girlishly natural.
"Oh, we thmht it would be rather fun," said Violet.
"Don't you ad it rather dull?"
"Oh, no, I 10v th country."
But her eyes avoid¢d Emily's. Just for a moment she
looked suspici0a and afraid.
She stirred m, "- in her chair and Emily rose rather
'easily
reluctantly to le¥ feet.
"I must be g0ihg noW," she said. "Thank you so much,
Miss Willett. I du hope your mother will be all right."
"Oh, she's quite well really. It's only the servants--
and all the worr ,,
"Of course.'
Adroitly, unpe mewed by the others, Emily managed
to discard her gove on a small table. Violet Willett
accompanied hee to the front door and they took leave
of each other with a few pleasant remarks.
The padormail wlo had opened the door to Emily
had unlocked it, but as violet Willett closed it behind
her retreating gtest [Z inily caught no sound of the key
being turned. V/hen she reached the gate therefore, she
retraced her stegs slo,vlY.
Her visit had aore thaa confirmed the theories she
held about Sittaf%d Iouse. There was something queer
going on here. S he didn't think Violet Willett was directly
implicate&-thtt is unless she was a very clever
actress indeed. Bht there was something wrong, and that
something must h%e a conraection with the tragedy. There
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Agatha Christie
must be some link between the Willetts and Captain
Trevelyan, and in that link there might lie the clue to
the whole mystery.
She came up to the front door, turned the handle very
gently and passed across the threshold. The hall was
deserted. Emily paused uncertain what to do next. She
had her excuse--the gloves left thoughtfully behind in
the drawing-room. She stood stock still listening. There
was no sound anywhere except a very faint murmur of
voices from upstairs. As quietly as possible Emily crept
to the foot of the stairs and stood looking up. Then, very
gingerly she ascended a step at a time. This was rather
more risky. She could hardly pretend that her gloves
had walked of their own accord to the first floor, but she
had a burning desire to overhear something of the con-versation
that was going on upstairs. Modern builders
never made their doors fit well, in Emily's opinion. You
could hear a murmur of voices down here. Therefbre, if
you reached the door itself you would hear plainly the
conversation that was going on inside the room. Another
step--one more again .... Two women's voices--Violet
and her mother without doubt.
Suddenly there was a break in the conversation--a
sound of footsteps. Emily retreated rapidly.
When Violet Willett opened her mother's door and
came down the stairs she was surprised to find her late
guest standing in the hall peering about her in a lost dog
kind of way.
"My gloves," she explained. "I must have left them.
I came back for them."
"I expect they are in here," said Violet.
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Murder at Hazelmoor
They went into the drawing-rooln and there, sure
enough, on a little table near where Emily had been
sitting lay the missing gloves.
"Oh, thank you," said Emily. "It's so stttpid of me. I
am always leaving things."
"And you want gloves in this weather," said Violet.
"It's so cold." Once again they parted at the hall door,
and this time Emily heard the key being turned in the
lock.
She went down the drive with plenty to think about
for, as that door on the upper landing had opened, she
had heard distinctly one sentence spoken in an older
woman's fretful and plaintive voice:
"My God," the voice had wailed, "I can't bear it. Will
tonight never come?"
159
9. Theories
E M I L Y arrived back at the cottage to find her boy
friend absent. He had, Mrs. Curtis explained, gone off
with several other young gentlemen, but two telegrams
had come for the young lady. Emily took them, opened
them, and put them in the pocket of her sweater, Mrs.
Curtis eyeing them hungrily the while.
"Not bad news, I hope?" said Mrs. Curtis.
"Oh, no," said Emily.
"Always gives me a turn a telegram does," said Mrs.
Curtis.
"I know," said Emily. "Very disturbing."
At the moment she felt disinclined for anything but
solitude. She wanted to sort out and arrange her own
ideas. She went up to her own room, and taking pencil
and notepaper she set to work on a system of her own.
After twenty minutes of this exercise she was interrupted
/>
by Mr. Enderby.
"Hullo, hullo, hullo, there you are. Fleet Street has
been hard on your tracks all morning but they have just
missed you everywhere. Anyway they have had it from
me that you are not to be worried. As far as you're
concerned, I am the big noise."
He sat down on the chair, Emily was occupying the
bed, and chuckled.
"Envy and malice isn't in it!" he said. "I have been
handing them out the goods. I know everyone and I am
x6o
Murder at Hazelmoor
right in it. It's too good to be true. I keep pinching myself
and feeling I will wake up in a minute. I say, have you
noticed the fog?"
"It won't stop me going to Exeter this afternoon, will
it?" said Emily.
"Do you want to go to Exeter?"
"Yes. I have to meet Mr. Dacres there. My solicitor,
you know--the one who is undertaking Jim's defence.
He wants to see me. And I think I shall pay a visit to
Jim's Aunt Jennifer, while I am there. After all, Exeter
is only half an hour away."
"Meaning she might have nipped over by train and
batted her brother over the head and nobody would have
noticed her absence."
"Oh, I know it sounds rather improbable but one has
to go into everything. Not that I want it to be Aunt
Jennifer--I don't. I would much rather it was Martin
Dering. I hate the sort of man who presumes on going
to be a brother-in-law and does things in public that you
can't smack his face for."
"Is he that kind?"
"Very much that kind. He's an ideal person for a
murderer--always getting telegrams from bookmakers
and losing money on horses. It's annoying that he's got
such a good alibi. Mr. Dacres told me about it. A pub-lisher
and a literary dinner seems so very unbreakable
and respectable."
"A literary dinner," said Enderby. "Friday night. Mar-tin
Dering--let me see--Martin Dering--why, yes--I
am almost sure of it. Dash it all I am quite sure of it,
but I can clinch things by wiring to Carruthers."
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Agatha Christie
"What are you talking about?" said Emily.
"Listen. You know I came down to Exhampton on
Friday evening. Well, there was a bit of information I
was going to get from a pal of mine, another newspaper
man, Carruthers his name is. He was coming round to
see me about half past six if he could--before he went
on to some literary dinner--he is rather a big bug, Car-ruthers,
and if he couldn't make it he would send me a
line to Exhampton. Well, he didn't make it and he did
send me a line."
"What has all this got to do with it?" said Emily.
"Don't be so impatient, I am coming to the point. The
old chap was rather screwed when he wrote it--done
himself well at the dinner--after giving me the item I
wanted, he went on to waste a good bit of juicy descrip-tion
on me. You know--about the speeches, and what
asses so and so, a tamous novelist and a amous play-wright,
were. And he said he had been rottenly placed
at the dinner. There was an empty seat on one side of
him where the sex specialist, Martin Dering, ought to
have been, but he moved up near to a poet, who is very
well known in Blackheath, and tried to make the best of
things. Now, do you see the point?"
"Charles! Darling!" Emily became lyrical with excite-ment.
"How marvelous. Then the brute wasn't at the
dinner at all?"
"Exactly."
"You are sure you've remembered the name right?"
"I'm positive. I have torn up the letter, worse luck,
but I can always wire to Carruthers to make sure. But I
absolutely know that I'm not mistaken."
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Murder at Hazelmoor
"There's the publisher still, of course," said Emily.
"The one he spent the afternoon with. But I rather think
it was a publisher who was just going back to America,
and if so, that looks fishy. I mean it looks as though he
had selected someone who couldn't be asked without
rather a lot of trouble."
"Do you really think we have hit it?" said Charles
Enderby.
"Well, it looks like it. I think the best thing to be done
is--to go straight to that nice Inspector Narracott and
just tell him these new facts. I mean, we can't tackle an
American publisher who is on the Mauretania or the
Berengaria or somewhere. That's a job for the police."
"My word if this comes off. What a scoop!" said Mr.
Enderby. "If it does, I should think the Daily Wire couldn't
offer me less than--"
Emily broke in ruthlessly into his dreams of advance-ment.
"But we mustn't lose our heads," she said, "and throw
everything else to the wind. I must go to Exeter. I don't
suppose I shall be able to be back here until tomorrow.
But I've got a job for you."
"What kind of a job?"
Emily described her visit to the Willetts and the strange
sentence she had overheard on leaving.
"We have got absolutely and positively to find out what
is going to happen tonight. There's something in the
wind."
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"Wasn't it? But of course it may be a coincidence. Or
it may not--but you observe that the servants are being
163
Agatha Christie
cleared out of the way. Something queer is going to
happen there tonight, and you have to be on the spot to
see what it is."
"You mean I have to spend the whole night shivering
under a bush in the garden?"
"Well, you don't mind that, do you? Journalists don't
mind what they do in a good cause."
"Who told you that?"
"Never mind who told me, I know it. You will do it,
won't you?"
"Oh, rather," said Charles. "I am not going to miss
anything. If anything queer goes on at Sittaford House
tonight, I shall be in it."
Emily then told him about the luggage label.
"It's odd," said Mr. Enderby. "Australia is where the
third Pearson is, isn't it?--the youngest one. Not, of
course, that that means anything, but still it--well, there
might be a connection."
"H'm," said Emily. "I think that's all. Have you any-thing
to report on your side?"
"Well," said Charles, "I've got an idea."
"Yes?"
"The only thing is I don't know how you'll like it."
"What do you mean--how I'll like it?"
"You won't fly out over it, will you?"
"I don't suppose so. I mean I hope I can listen sensibly
and quietly to anything."
"Well, the point is," said Charles Enderby eyeing her
doubtfully, "don't think I mean to be offensive or any-thing
like that, but do you think that lad of yours is to
be depended on for the strict truth?"
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Murder at Hazelmoor
"Do you mean," said Emily, "that he did murder him
after all? You are q
uite welcome to that view if you like.
I said to you at the beginning that that was the natural
view to take, but I said we had to work on the assumption
that he didn't."
"I don't mean that," said Enderby. "I am with you in
assuming that he didn't do the old boy in. What I mean
is, how far is his own story of what happened true? He
says that he went there, had a chat with the old fellow,
and came away leaving him alive and well."
"Yes."
"Well, it just occurred to me, you don't think it's pos-sible
that he went there and actually found the old man
dead? I mean, he might have got the wind up and been
scared and not liked to say so."
Charles had propounded this theory rather dubiously
but he was relieved to find that Emily showed no signs
of flying out at him over it. Instead, she frowned and
creased her brow in thought.
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