Inspector Morton gave their evidence. The Coroner summed up briefly. The jury made no bones about the verdict, 'Murder by some person or persons unknown.'
It was over. They came out again into the sunlight. Half a dozen cameras clicked. Mr Entwhistle shepherded Susan and Miss Gilchrist into the King's Arms, where he had taken the precaution to arrange for lunch to be served in a private room behind the bar.
'Not a very good lunch, I am afraid,' he said apologetically.
But the lunch was not at all bad. Miss Gilchrist sniffed a little and murmured that 'it was all so dreadful,' but cheered up and tackled the Irish stew with appetite after Mr Entwhistle had insisted on her drinking a glass of sherry. He said to Susan:
'I'd no idea you were coming down today, Susan. We could have come together.'
'I know I said I wouldn't. But it seemed rather mean for none of the family to be there. I rang up George but he said he was very busy and couldn't possibly make it, and Rosamund had an audition and Uncle Timothy, of course, is a crock. So it had to be me.'
'Your husband didn't come with you?'
'Greg had to settle up with his tiresome shop.'
Seeing a startled look in Miss Gilchrist's eye, Susan said: 'My husband works in a chemist's shop.'
A husband in retail trade did not quite square with Miss Gilchrist's impression of Susan's smartness, but she said valiantly: 'Oh yes, just like Keats.'
'Greg's no poet,' said Susan.
She added:
'We've got great plans for the future – a double-barrelled establishment – Cosmetics and Beauty parlour and a laboratory for special preparations.'
'That will be much nicer,' said Miss Gilchrist approvingly. Something like Elizabeth Arden who is really a Countess, so I have been told – or is that Helena Rubinstein? In any case,' she added kindly, 'a pharmacist's is not in the least like an ordinary shop – a draper, for instance, or a grocer.'
'You kept a tea-shop, you said, didn't you?'
'Yes, indeed,' Miss Gilchrist's face lit up. That the Willow Tree had ever been 'trade' in the sense that a shop was trade, would never have occurred to her. To keep a tea-shop was in her mind the essence of gentility. She started telling Susan about the Willow Tree.
Mr Entwhistle, who had heard about it before, let his mind drift to other matters. When Susan had spoken to him twice without his answering he hurriedly apologised.
'Forgive me, my dear, I was thinking, as a matter of fact, about your Uncle Timothy. I am a little worried.'
'About Uncle Timothy? I shouldn't be. I don't believe really there's anything the matter with him. He's just a hypochondriac.'
'Yes – yes, you may be right. I confess it was not his health that was worrying me. It's Mrs Timothy. Apparently she's fallen downstairs and twisted her ankle. She's laid up and your uncle is in a terrible state.'
'Because he'll have to look after her instead of the other way about? Do him a lot of good,' said Susan.
'Yes – yes, I dare say. But will your poor aunt get any looking after? That is really the question. With no servants in the house.'
'Life is really hell for elderly people,' said Susan. 'They live in a kind of Georgian Manor house, don't they?'
Mr Entwhistle nodded.
They came rather warily out of the King's Arms, but the Press seemed to have dispersed.
A couple of reporters were lying in wait for Susan by the cottage door. Shepherded by Mr Entwhistle she said a few necessary and non-committal words. Then she and Miss Gilchrist went into the cottage and Mr Entwhistle returned to the King's Arms where he had booked a room. The funeral was to be on the following day.
'My car's still in the quarry,' said Susan. 'I'd forgotten about it. I'll drive it along to the village later.'
Miss Gilchrist said anxiously:
'Not too late. You won't go out after dark, will you?'
Susan looked at her and laughed.
'You don't think there's a murderer still hanging about, do you?'
'No – no, I suppose not.' Miss Gilchrist looked embarrassed.
'But it's exactly what she does think,' thought Susan. 'How amazing!'
Miss Gilchrist had vanished towards the kitchen.
'I'm sure you'd like tea early. In about half an hour, do you think, Mrs Banks?'
Susan thought that tea at half-past three was overdoing it, but she was charitable enough to realise that 'a nice cup of tea' was Miss Gilchrist's idea of restoration for the nerves and she had her own reasons for wishing to please Miss Gilchrist, so she said:
'Whenever yon like, Miss Gilchrist.'
A happy clatter of kitchen implements began and Susan went into the sitting-room. She had only been there a few minutes when the bell sounded and was succeeded by a very precise little rat-tat-tat.
Susan came out into the hall and Miss Gilchrist appeared at the kitchen door wearing an apron and wiping floury hands on it.
'Oh dear, who do you think that can be?'
'More reporters, I expect,' said Susan.
'Oh dear, how annoying for you, Mrs Banks.'
'Oh well, never mind, I'll attend to it.'
'I was just going to make a few scones for tea.'
Susan went towards the front door and Miss Gilchrist hovered uncertainly. Susan wondered whether she thought a man with a hatchet was waiting outside.
The visitor, however proved to be an elderly gentleman who raised his hat when Susan opened the door and said, beaming at her in avuncular style.
'Mrs Banks, I think?'
'Yes.'
'My name is Guthrie – Alexander Guthrie. I was a friend – a very old friend, of Mrs Lansquenet's. You, I think, are her niece, formerly Miss Susan Abernethie?'
'That's quite right.'
'Then since we know who we are, I may come in?'
'Of course.'
Mr Guthrie wiped his feet carefully on the mat, stepped inside, divested himself of his overcoat, laid it down with his hat on a small oak chest and followed Susan into the sitting-room
'This is a melancholy occasion,' said Mr Guthrie, to whom melancholy did not seem to come naturally, his own inclination being to beam. 'Yes, a very melancholy occasion. I was in this part of the world and I felt the least I could do was to attend the inquest – and of course the funeral. Poor Cora – poor foolish Cora. I have known her, my dear Mrs Banks, since the early days of her marriage. A high-spirited girl – and she took art very seriously – took Pierre Lansquenet seriously, too – as an artist, I mean. All things considered he didn't make her too bad a husband. He strayed, if you know what I mean, yes, he strayed – but fortunately Cora took it as part of the artistic temperament. He was an artist and therefore immoral! In fact I'm not sure she didn't go further: he was immoral and therefore he must be an artist! No kind of sense in artistic matters, poor Cora – though in other ways, mind you, Cora had a lot of sense – yes, a surprising lot of sense.'
'That's what everybody seems to say,' said Susan. 'I didn't really know her.'
'No, no, cut herself off from her family because they didn't appreciate her precious Pierre. She was never a pretty girl – but she had something. She was good company! You never knew what she'd say next and you ever knew if her naivete was genuine or whether she was doing it deliberately. She made us all laugh a good deal. The eternal child – that's what we always felt about her. And really the last time I saw her (I have seen her from time to time since Pierre died) she struck me as still behaving very much like a child.'
Susan offered Mr Guthrie a cigarette, but the old gentleman shook his head.
'No thank you, my dear. I don't smoke. You must wonder why I've come? To tell you the truth I was feeling
