about.' She sighed, shaking her head, then she frowned perplexedly. 'But I don't understand. Was it you, then, who wrote to me?'
Lady Stoddart-West shook a vigorous head. 'No, no, of course I did not write to you.'
'Then…' Emma stopped.
'Then there was someone pretending to be Martine who wanted perhaps to get money out of you? That is what it must have been. But who can it be?'
Emma said slowly: 'I suppose there were people at the time, who knew?'
The other shrugged her shoulders.
'Probably, yes. But there was no one intimate with me, no one very close to me. I have never spoken of it since I came to England . And why wait all this time? It is curious, very curious.'
Emma said: 'I don't understand it. We will have to see what Inspector Craddock has to say.' She looked with suddenly softened eyes at her visitor. 'I'm so glad to know you at last, my dear.'
'And I you… Edmund spoke of you very often. He was very fond of you. I am happy in my new life, but all the same, I do not quite forget.'
Emma leaned back and heaved a deep sigh. 'It's a terrible relief,' she said. 'As long as we, feared that the dead woman might be Martine – it seemed to be tied up with the family. But now – oh, it's an absolute load off my back. I don't know who the poor soul was but she can't have had anything to do with us!'
Chapter 23
The streamlined secretary brought Harold Crackenthorpe his usual afternoon cup of tea.
'Thanks, Miss Ellis, I shall be going home early today.'
'I'm sure you ought really not to have come at all, Mr. Crackenthorpe,' said Miss Ellis. 'You look quite pulled down still.'
'I'm all right,' said Harold Crackenthorpe, but he did feel pulled down. No doubt about it, he'd had a very nasty turn. Ah, well, that was over.
Extraordinary, he thought broodingly, that Alfred should have succumbed and the old man should have come through.
After all, what was he – seventy-three – seventy-four? Been an invalid for years.
If there was one person you'd have thought would have been taken off, it would have been the old man. But no. It had to be Alfred. Alfred who, as far as Harold knew, was a healthy wiry sort of chap. Nothing much the matter with him.
He leaned back in his chair sighing. That girl was right. He didn't feel up to things yet, but he had wanted to come down to the office. Wanted to get the hang of how affairs were going. Touch and go, that's what it was! Touch and go. All this – he looked round him – the richly appointed office, the pale gleaming wood, the expensive modern chairs, it all looked prosperous enough, and a good thing too!
That's where Alfred had always gone wrong. If you looked prosperous, people thought you were prosperous. There were no rumours going around as yet about his financial stability. All the same, the crash couldn't be delayed very long. Now, if only his father had passed out instead of Alfred, as surely, surely he ought to have done.
Practically seemed to thrive on arsenic! Yes, if his father had succumbed – well, there wouldn't have been anything to worry about.
Still, the great thing was not to seem worried. A prosperous appearance. Not like poor old Alfred who always looked seedy and shiftless, who looked in fact exactly what he was. One of those smalltime speculators, never going all out boldly for the big money. In with a shady crowd here, doing a doubtful deal there, never quite rendering himself liable to prosecution but going very near the edge. And where had it got him? Short periods of affluence and then back to seediness and shabbiness once more. No broad outlook about Alfred. Taken all in all, you couldn't say Alfred was much loss. He'd never been particularly fond of Alfred and with Alfred out of the way the money that was coming to him from that old curmudgeon, his grandfather, would be sensibly increased, divided not into five shares but into four shares. Very much better.
Harold's face brightened a little. He rose, took his hat and coat and left the office. Better take it easy for a day or two.
He wasn't feeling too strong yet. His car was waiting below and very soon he was weaving through the London traffic to his house.
Darwin, his manservant, opened the door.
'Her ladyship has just arrived, sir,' he said.
For a moment Harold stared at him.
Alice ! Good heavens, was it today that Alice was coming home? He'd forgotten all about it. Good thing Darwin had warned him. It wouldn't have looked so good if he'd gone upstairs and looked too astonished at seeing her. Not that it really mattered, he supposed. Neither Alice nor he had many illusions about the feeling they had for each other. Perhaps Alice was fond of him – he didn't know.
All in all, Alice was a great disappointment to him. He hadn't been in love with her, of course, but though a plain woman she was quite a pleasant one. And her family and connections had undoubtedly been useful. Not perhaps as useful as they might have been, because in marrying Alice he had been considering the position of hypothetical children. Nice relations for his boys to have. But there hadn't been any boys, or girls either, and all that had remained had been he and Alice growing older together without much to say to each other and with no particular pleasure in each other's company.
She stayed away a good deal with relations and usually went to the Riviera in the winter. It suited her and it didn't worry him.
He went upstairs now into the drawing-room and greeted her punctiliously.
'So you're back, my dear. Sorry I couldn't meet you, but I was held up in the City. I got back as early as I could. How was San Raphael?'
Alice told him how San Raphael was.
She was a thin woman with sandy-coloured hair, a well-arched nose and vague, hazel eyes. She talked in a well-bred, monotonous and rather depressing voice. It had been a good journey back, the Channel a little rough. The Customs, as usual, very trying at Dover .
'You should come by air,' said Harold, as he always did. 'So much simpler.'
'I dare say, but I don't really like air travel. I never have. Makes me nervous.'
'Saves a lot of time,' said Harold.
Lady Alice Crackenthorpe did not answer. It was possible that her problem in life was not to save time but to occupy it.
She inquired politely after her husband's health.
'Emma's telegram quite alarmed me,' she said. 'You were all taken ill, I understand.'
'Yes, yes,' said Harold.
'I read in the paper the other day,' said Alice , 'of forty people in an hotel going down with food poisoning at the same time. All this refrigeration is dangerous, I think. People keep things too long in them.'
'Possibly,' said Harold. Should he, or should he not mention arsenic? Somehow, looking at Alice , he felt himself quite unable to do so. In Alice 's world, he felt, there was no place for poisoning by arsenic. It was a thing you read about in the papers. It didn't happen to you or your own family. But it had happened in the Crackenthorpe family…
He went up to his room and lay down for an hour or two before dressing for dinner. At dinner, tete-a-tete with his wife, the conversation ran on much the same lines. Desultory, polite. The mention of acquaintances and friends at San Raphael.
'There's a parcel for you on the hall table, a small one,' Alice said.
'Is there? I didn't notice it.'
'It's an extraordinary thing but somebody was telling me about a murdered woman having been found in a barn, or something like that. She said it was at Rutherford Hall. I suppose it must be some other Rutherford Hall.'
