A Pocket Full of Rye. Агата Кристи
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Название: A Pocket Full of Rye
Автор: Агата Кристи
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780007422708
isbn:
Nobody knew. Miss Bell seized a telephone directory and began looking up Doctors under D. But it was not a classified directory and doctors were not automatically listed like taxi ranks. Someone suggested a hospital—but which hospital? ‘It has to be the right hospital,’ Miss Somers insisted, ‘or else they won’t come. Because of the National Health, I mean. It’s got to be in the area.’
Someone suggested 999 but Miss Griffith was shocked at that and said it would mean the police and that would never do. For citizens of a country which enjoyed the benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of quite reasonably intelligent women showed incredible ignorance of correct procedure. Miss Bell started looking up Ambulances under A. Miss Griffith said, ‘There’s his own doctor—he must have a doctor.’ Someone rushed for the private address book. Miss Griffith instructed the office boy to go out and find a doctor—somehow, anywhere. In the private address book, Miss Griffith found Sir Edwin Sandeman with an address in Harley Street. Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a chair, wailed in a voice whose accent was noticeably less Mayfair than usual, ‘I made the tea just as usual—really I did—there couldn’t have been anything wrong in it.’
‘Wrong in it?’ Miss Griffith paused, her hand on the dial of the telephone. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘He said it—Mr Fortescue—he said it was the tea—’
Miss Griffith’s hand hovered irresolutely between Welbeck and 999. Miss Bell, young and hopeful, said: ‘We ought to give him some mustard and water—now. Isn’t there any mustard in the office?’
There was no mustard in the office.
Some short while later Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green, and Sir Edwin Sandeman met in the elevator just as two different ambulances drew up in front of the building. The telephone and the office boy had done their work.
Inspector Neele sat in Mr Fortescue’s sanctum behind Mr Fortescue’s vast sycamore desk. One of his underlings with a notebook sat unobtrusively against the wall near the door.
Inspector Neele had a smart soldierly appearance with crisp brown hair growing back from a rather low forehead. When he uttered the phrase ‘just a matter of routine’ those addressed were wont to think spitefully: ‘And routine is about all you’re capable of!’ They would have been quite wrong. Behind his unimaginative appearance, Inspector Neele was a highly imaginative thinker, and one of his methods of investigation was to propound to himself fantastic theories of guilt which he applied to such persons as he was interrogating at the time.
Miss Griffith, whom he had at once picked out with an unerring eye as being the most suitable person to give him a succinct account of the events which had led to his being seated where he was, had just left the room having given him an admirable résumé of the morning’s happenings. Inspector Neele propounded to himself three separate highly coloured reasons why the faithful doyenne of the typists’ room should have poisoned her employer’s mid-morning cup of tea, and rejected them as unlikely.
He classified Miss Griffith as (a) Not the type of a poisoner, (b) Not in love with her employer, (c) No pronounced mental instability, (d) Not a woman who cherished grudges. That really seemed to dispose of Miss Griffith except as a source of accurate information.
Inspector Neele glanced at the telephone. He was expecting a call from St Jude’s Hospital at any moment now.
It was possible, of course, that Mr Fortescue’s sudden illness was due to natural causes, but Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green had not thought so and Sir Edwin Sandeman of Harley Street had not thought so.
Inspector Neele pressed a buzzer conveniently situated at his left hand and demanded that Mr Fortescue’s personal secretary should be sent in to him.
Miss Grosvenor had recovered a little of her poise, but not much. She came in apprehensively, with nothing of the swanlike glide about her motions, and said at once defensively:
‘I didn’t do it!’
Inspector Neele murmured conversationally: ‘No?’
He indicated the chair where Miss Grosvenor was wont to place herself, pad in hand, when summoned to take down Mr Fortescue’s letters. She sat down now with reluctance and eyed Inspector Neele in alarm. Inspector Neele, his mind playing imaginatively on the themes Seduction? Blackmail? Platinum Blonde in Court? etc., looked reassuring and just a little stupid.
‘There wasn’t anything wrong with the tea,’ said Miss Grosvenor. ‘There couldn’t have been.’
‘I see,’ said Inspector Neele. ‘Your name and address, please?’
‘Grosvenor. Irene Grosvenor.’
‘How do you spell it?’
‘Oh. Like the Square.’
‘And your address?’
‘14 Rushmoor Road, Muswell Hill.’
Inspector Neele nodded in a satisfied fashion.
‘No seduction,’ he said to himself. ‘No Love Nest. Respectable home with parents. No blackmail.’
Another good set of speculative theories washed out.
‘And so it was you who made the tea?’ he said pleasantly.
‘Well, I had to. I always do, I mean.’
Unhurried, Inspector Neele took her closely through the morning ritual of Mr Fortescue’s tea. The cup and saucer and teapot had already been packed up and dispatched to the appropriate quarter for analysis. Now Inspector Neele learned that Irene Grosvenor and only Irene Grosvenor had handled that cup and saucer and teapot. The kettle had been used for making the office tea and had been refilled from the cloakroom tap by Miss Grosvenor.
‘And the tea itself?’
‘It was Mr Fortescue’s own tea, special China tea. It’s kept on the shelf in my room next door.’
Inspector Neele nodded. He inquired about sugar and heard that Mr Fortescue didn’t take sugar.
The telephone rang. Inspector Neele picked up the receiver. His face changed a little.
‘St Jude’s?’
He nodded to Miss Grosvenor in dismissal.
‘That’s all for now, thank you, Miss Grosvenor.’
Miss Grosvenor sped out of the room hurriedly.
Inspector Neele listened carefully to the thin unemotional tones speaking from St Jude’s Hospital. As the voice spoke he made a few cryptic signs with a pencil on the corner of the blotter in front of him.
‘Died СКАЧАТЬ