know that kind of Folly place, Mr. Rogers, that you've got up at the top of your woods?'
'Yes,' I said, 'what of it? My wife and I had it repaired and fixed up a bit. We used to go up there occasionally but not very often. Not lately certainly. Why?'
'Well, we've been hunting about, you know. We looked into this Folly. It wasn't locked.'
'No,' I said, 'we never bothered to lock it. There was nothing of value in there, just a few odd bits of furniture.'
'We thought it possible old Mrs. Lee had been using it but we found no traces of her. We did find this, though. I was going to show it to you anyway.' He opened a drawer and took out a small delicate gold-chased lighter. It was a woman's lighter and it had an initial on it in diamonds. The letter C. 'It wouldn't be your wife's, would it?'
'Not with the initial C. No, it's not Ellie's,' I said. 'She hadn't anything of that kind. And it's not Miss Andersen's either. Her name is Greta.'
'It was up there where somebody had dropped it. It's a classy bit of goods – cost money.'
'C,' I said, repeating the initial thoughtfully. 'I can't think of anyone who's been with us whose initial is C except Cora,' I said. 'That's my wife's stepmother. Mrs. van Stuyvesant, but I really can't see her scrambling up to the Folly along that very overgrown path. And anyway she hasn't been staying with us for quite a long time. About a month. I don't think I've ever seen her using this lighter. Perhaps I wouldn't notice anyway,' I said. 'Miss Andersen might know.'
'Well, take it up with you and show it to her.'
'I will. But if so, if it's Cora's, it seems odd that we've never seen it when we've been in the Folly lately. There's not much stuff there. You'd notice something like this lying on the floor – it was on the floor?'
'Yes, quite near the divan. Of course anybody might use that Folly. It's a handy place, you know, for a couple of lovers to meet any time. The locals are talking about. But they wouldn't be likely to have an expensive thing of this kind.'
'There's Claudia Hardcastle,' I said, 'but I doubt if she'd have anything as fancy as this. And what would she be doing in the Folly?'
'She was quite a friend of your wife's, wasn't she?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I think she was Ellie's best friend down here. And she'd know we wouldn't mind her using the Folly any time.'
'Ah,' said Sergeant Keene.
I looked at him rather hard. 'You don't think Claudia Hardcastle was a – an enemy of Ellie's do you? That would be absurd.'
'Doesn't seem any reason why she should be, I agree, but you never know with ladies.'
'I suppose -' I began and then stopped because what I was going to say would seem perhaps rather odd.
'Yes, Mr. Rogers?'
'I believe that Claudia Hardcastle was originally married to an American named Lloyd. Actually the name of my wife's principal trustee in America is Stanford Lloyd. But there must be hundreds of Lloyds and anyway it would only be a coincidence if it was the same person. And what would it have to do with all this?'
'It doesn't seem likely. But then -' he stopped.
'The funny thing is that I thought I saw Stanford Lloyd down here on the day of the – the accident – Having lunch in the George at Bartington -'
'He didn't come to see you?'
I shook my head.
'He was with someone who looked rather like Miss Hardcastle. But probably it was just a mistake on my part. You know, I suppose, that it was her brother who built our house?'
'Does she take an interest in the house?'
'No,' I said, 'I don't think she likes her brother's type of architecture.' Then I got up. 'Well, I won't take any more of your time. Try and find the gipsy.'
'We shan't stop looking, I can tell you that. Coroner wants her too.'
I said good-bye and went out of the police station. In the queer way that so often happens when you suddenly meet someone you've been talking about, Claudia Hardcastle came out of the post office just as I was passing it. We both stopped. She said with that slight embarrassment that you have when you meet someone that's been recently bereaved,
'I'm so terribly sorry, Mike, about Ellie. I won't say any more. It's beastly when people say things to you. But I have just – just to say that.'
'I know,' I said. 'You were very nice to Ellie. You made her feel at home here. I've been grateful.'
'There was one thing I wanted to ask you and I thought perhaps I'd better do it now before you go to America. I hear you're going quite soon.'
'As soon as I can. I've got a lot to see to there.'
'It was only – if you were putting your house on the market I thought it might be a thing you'd set in motion before you went away… And if so – if so, I'd rather like to have the first refusal of it.'
I stared at her. This really did surprise me. It was the last thing I'd expected.
'You mean you'd like to buy it? I thought you didn't even care for that type of architecture?'
'My brother Rudolf said to me that it was the best thing he'd done. I dare say he knows. I expect you'll want a very large price for it but I could pay it. Yes, I'd like to have it.'
I couldn't help thinking it was odd. She'd never shown the faintest appreciation of our house when she'd come to it. I wondered as I'd wondered once or twice before what her links with her half-brother really were. Had she really a great devotion to him? Sometimes I'd almost thought that she disliked him, perhaps hated him. She spoke of him certainly in a very odd way. But whatever her actual emotions were, he meant something to her.
Meant something important.
I shook my head slowly.
'I can see that you might think I'd want to sell the place and leave here because of Ellie's death,' I said. 'But actually that's not so at all. We lived here and were happy and this is the place I shall remember her best. I shan't sell Gipsy's Acre – not for any consideration! You can be quite sure of that.'
Our eyes met. It was like a kind of tussle between us. Then hers dropped.
I took my courage in both hands and spoke.
'It's no business of mine, but you were married once. Was the name of your husband Stanford Lloyd?'
She looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she said abruptly:
'Yes,' and turned away.
Chapter 21
Confusion… That's all I can remember when I look back. Newspapermen asking questions – wanting interviews – masses of letters and telegrams – Greta coping with them -
The first really startling thing was that Ellie's family were not as we had supposed in America. It was quite a shock to find that most of them were actually in England. It was understandable, perhaps, that Cora van Stuyvesant should be. She was a very restless woman, always dashing across to Europe, to Italy, to Paris, to London and back again to America, to Palm Beach, out West to the ranch; here, there and everywhere. On the actual day of Ellie's death she had been not more than fifty miles away still pursuing her whim of having a house in England. She had rushed over to stay in London for two or three days and gone to fresh house agents for fresh orders to view and had been touring round the country seeing half a dozen on that particular day.
Stanford Lloyd, it turned out, had flown over in the same plane ostensibly for a business meeting in London. These people learnt of Ellie's death, not from the cables which we had dispatched to the United States but from the public press.
An ugly wrangle developed about where Ellie should be buried. I had assumed it was only natural that she'd be buried here where she had died. Here where she and I had lived.
