The Unexpected Guest

by Agatha Christie

  'Oh yes, sir,' Angell replied. 'I remember it quite well.'

  The inspector got up from the desk and went across to the valet. Seeing the desk chair empty. Sergeant Cadwallader promptly took the opportunity to sit down. 'What happened?' the inspector asked Angell. 'Tell me about the accident.'

  'Mr Warwick was driving along the main street, and a little boy ran out of a house there,' Angell told him. 'Or it might have been the inn. I think it was. There was no chance of stopping. Mr Warwick ran over him before he could do a thing about it.'

  'He was speeding, was he?' asked the inspector.

  'Oh no, sir. That was brought out very clearly at the inquest. Mr Warwick was well within the speed limit.'

  'I know that's what he said,' the inspector commented.

  'It was quite true, sir,' Angell insisted. 'Nurse Warburton – a nurse Mr Warwick employed at the time – she was in the car, too, and she agreed.'

  The inspector walked across to one end of the sofa. 'Did she happen to look at the speedometer at the time?' he queried.

  'I believe Nurse Warburton did happen to see the speedometer,' Angell replied smoothly. 'She estimated that they were going at between twenty and twenty-five miles an hour. Mr Warwick was completely exonerated.'

  'But the boy's father didn't agree?' the inspector asked.

  'Perhaps that's only natural, sir,' was Angell's comment.

  'Had Mr Warwick been drinking?'

  Angel's reply was evasive. 'I believe he had had a glass of sherry, sir,' He and Inspector Thomas exchanged glances. Then the inspector crossed to the french windows, taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose. 'Well, I think that'll do for now,' he told the valet.

  Angell rose and went to the door. After a moment's hesitation, he turned back into the room. 'Excuse me, sir,' he said. 'But was Mr Warwick shot with his own gun?'

  The inspector turned to him. 'That remains to be seen,' he observed. 'Whoever it was who shot him collided with Mr Starkwedder, who was coming up to the house to try to get help for his stranded vehicle. In the collision, the man dropped a gun. Mr Starkwedder picked it up – this gun.' He pointed to the gun on the table.

  'I see, sir. Thank you, sir,' said Angell as he turned to the door again.

  'By the way,' added the inspector, 'were there any visitors to the house yesterday? Yesterday evening in particular?'

  Angell paused for just a moment, then eyed the inspector shiftily. 'Not that I can recall, sir – at present,' he replied. He left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Inspector Thomas went back to the desk. 'If you ask me,' he said quietly to the sergeant, 'that fellow's a nasty bit of goods. Nothing you can put your finger on, but I don't like him.'

  'I'm of the same opinion as you, regarding that,' Cadwallader replied. 'He's not a man I would trust, and what's more, I'd say there may have been something fishy about that accident.' Suddenly realizing that the inspector was standing over him, he got up quickly from his chair. The inspector took the notes Cadwallader had been making, and began to peruse them. 'Now I wonder if Angell knows something he hasn't told us about last night,' he began, and then broke off. 'Hello, what's this? "'Tis misty in November, But seldom in December." That's not Keats, I hope?'

  'No,' said Sergeant Cadwallader proudly. 'That's Cadwallader.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The inspector thrust Cadwallader's notebook back at him roughly, as the door opened and Miss Bennett came in, closing the door carefully behind her. 'Inspector,' she said, 'Mrs Warwick is very anxious to see you. She is fussing a little.' She added quickly, 'I mean Mrs Warwick senior, Richard's mother. She doesn't admit it, but I don't think she's in the best of health, so please be gentle with her. Will you see her now?'

  'Oh, certainly,' replied the inspector. 'Ask her to come in.'

  Miss Bennett opened the door, beckoning, and Mrs Warwick came in. 'It's all right, Mrs Warwick,' the housekeeper assured her, leaving the room and shutting the door behind her.

  'Good morning, madam,' the inspector said. Mrs Warwick did not return his greeting, but came directly to the point. 'Tell me, Inspector,' she ordered, 'what progress are you making?'

  'It's rather early to say that, madam,' he replied, 'but you can rest assured that we're doing everything we can.'

  Mrs Warwick sat on the sofa, placing her stick against the arm. 'This man MacGregor,' she asked. 'Has he been seen hanging about locally? Has anyone noticed him?'

  'Enquiries have gone out about that,' the inspector informed her. 'But so far there's been no record of a stranger being seen in the locality.'

  'That poor little boy,' Mrs Warwick continued. 'The one Richard ran over, I mean. I suppose it must have unhinged the father's brain. I know they told me he was very violent and abusive at the time. Perhaps that was only natural. But after two years! It seems incredible.'

  'Yes,' the inspector agreed, 'it seems a long time to wait.''

  'But he was a Scot, of course,' Mrs Warwick recalled. 'A MacGregor. A patient, dogged people, the Scots.'

  'Indeed they are,' exclaimed Sergeant Cadwallader, forgetting himself and thinking out loud. ' "There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make,"' he continued, but the inspector immediately gave him a sharp look of disapproval, which quietened him.

  'Your son had no preliminary warning?' Inspector Thomas asked Mrs Warwick. 'No threatening letter? Anything of that kind?'

  'No, I'm sure he hadn't,' she replied quite firmly. 'Richard would have said so. He would have laughed about it.'

  'He wouldn't have taken it seriously at all?' the inspector suggested.

  'Richard always laughed at danger,' said Mrs Warwick. She sounded proud of her son.

  'After the accident,' the inspector continued, 'did your son offer any compensation to the child's father?'

  'Naturally,' Mrs Warwick replied. 'Richard was not a mean man. But it was refused. Indignantly refused, I may say.'

  'Quite so,' murmured the inspector.

  'I understand MacGregor's wife was dead,' Mrs Warwick recalled. 'The boy was all he had in the world. It was a tragedy, really.'

  'But in your opinion it was not your son's fault?' the inspector asked. When Mrs Warwick did not answer, he repeated his question. 'I said – it was not your son's fault?'

  She remained silent a moment longer before replying, 'I heard you.'

  'Perhaps you don't agree?' the inspector persisted.

  Mrs Warwick turned away on the sofa, embarrassed, fingering a cushion. 'Richard drank too much,' she said finally. 'And of course he'd been drinking that day.'

  'A glass of sherry?' the inspector prompted her.

  'A glass of sherry!' Mrs Warwick repeated with a bitter laugh. 'He'd been drinking pretty heavily. He did drink – very heavily. That decanter there –' She indicated the decanter on the table near the armchair in the french windows. 'That decanter was filled every evening, and it was always practically empty in the morning.'

  Sitting on the stool and facing Mrs Warwick, the inspector said to her, quietly, 'So you think that your son was to blame for the accident?'

  'Of course he was to blame,' she replied. 'I've never had the least doubt of it.'

  'But he was exonerated,' the inspector reminded her.

  Mrs Warwick laughed. 'That nurse who was in the car with him? That Warburton woman?' she snorted. 'She was a fool, and she was devoted to Richard. I expect he paid her pretty handsomely for her evidence, too.'

  'Do you actually know that?' the inspector asked, sharply.

  Mrs Warwick's tone was equally sharp as she replied, 'I don't know anything, but I arrive at my own conclusions.'

  The inspector went across to Sergeant Cadwallader and took his notes from him, while Mrs Warwick continued. 'I'm telling you all this now,' she said, 'because what you want is the truth, isn't it? You want to be sure there's sufficient incentive for murder on the part of that little boy's father. Well, in my opinion, there was. Only, I didn't think that after all this
time –' Her voice trailed away into silence.

  The inspector looked up from the notes he had been consulting. 'You didn't hear anything last night?' he asked her.

  'I'm a little deaf, you know,' Mrs Warwick replied quickly. 'I didn't know anything was wrong until I heard people talking and passing my door. I came down, and young Jan said, "Richard's been shot. Richard's been shot." I thought at first-' She passed her hand over her eyes. 'I thought it was a joke of some kind.'

  'Jan is your younger son?' the inspector asked her.

  'He's not my son,' Mrs Warwick replied. The inspector looked at her quickly as she went on, 'I divorced my husband many years ago. He remarried. Jan is the son of the second marriage.' She paused, then continued. 'It sounds more complicated than it is, really. When both his parents died, the boy came here. Richard and Laura had just been married then. Laura has always been very kind to Richard's half-brother. She's been like an elder sister to him, really.'

  She paused, and the inspector took the opportunity to lead her back to talking about Richard Warwick. 'Yes, I see,' he said, 'but now, about your son Richard –'

  'I loved my son, Inspector,' Mrs Warwick said, 'but I was not blind to his faults, and they were very largely due to the accident that made him a cripple. He was a proud man, an outdoor man, and to have to live the life of an invalid and a semi-cripple was very galling to him. It did not, shall we say, improve his character.'

  'Yes, I see,' observed the inspector. 'Would you say his married life was happy?'

  'I haven't the least idea.' Mrs Warwick clearly had no intention of saying any more on the subject. 'Is there anything else you wish to know, Inspector?' she asked.

  'No thank you, Mrs Warwick,' Inspector Thomas replied. 'But I should like to talk to Miss Bennett now, if I may.'

  Mrs Warwick rose, and Sergeant Cadwallader went to open the door for her. 'Yes, of course,' she said. 'Miss Bennett. Benny, we call her. She's the person who can help you most. She's so practical and efficient.'

  'She's been with you for a long time?' the inspector asked.

  'Oh yes, for years and years. She looked after Jan when he was little, and before that she helped with Richard, too. Oh, yes, she's looked after all of us. A very faithful person, Benny.' Acknowledging the sergeant at the door with a nod, she left the room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sergeant Cadwallader closed the door and stood with his back against it, looking at the inspector. 'So Richard Warwick was a drinking man, eh?' he commented. 'You know, I've heard that said of him before. And all those pistols and air-guns and rifles. A little queer in the head, if you ask me.'

  'Could be,' Inspector Thomas replied laconically.

  The telephone rang. Expecting his sergeant to answer it, the inspector looked meaningfully at him, but Cadwallader had become immersed in his notes as he strolled across to the armchair and sat, completely oblivious of the phone. After a while, realizing that the sergeant's mind was elsewhere, no doubt in the process of composing a poem, the inspector sighed, crossed to the desk, and picked up the receiver.

  'Hello,' he said. 'Yes, speaking . . . Starkwedder, he came in? He gave you his prints? . . . Good . . . yes – well, ask him to wait . . . yes, I shall be back in half an hour or so . . . yes, I want to ask him some more questions . . . Yes, goodbye.'

  Towards the end of this conversation, Miss Bennett had entered the room, and was standing by the door. Noticing her, Sergeant Cadwallader rose from his armchair and took up a position behind it. 'Yes?' said Miss Bennett with an interrogative inflection. She addressed the inspector. 'You want to ask me some questions? I've got a good deal to do this morning.'

  'Yes, Miss Bennett,' the inspector replied. 'I want to hear your account of the car accident with the child in Norfolk .'

  'The MacGregor child?'

  'Yes, the MacGregor child. You remembered his name very quickly last night, I hear.'

  Miss Bennett turned to close the door behind her. 'Yes,' she agreed. 'I have a very good memory for names.'

  'And no doubt,' the inspector continued, 'the occurrence made some impression on you. But you weren't in the car yourself, were you?'

  Miss Bennett seated herself on the sofa. 'No, no, I wasn't in the car,' she told him. 'It was the hospital nurse Mr Warwick had at the time. A Nurse Warburton.'

  'Did you go to the inquest?' the inspector asked.

  'No,' she replied. 'But Richard told us about it when he came back. He said the boy's father had threatened him, had said he'd get even with him. We didn't take it seriously, of course.'

  Inspector Thomas came closer to her. 'Had you formed any particular impression about the accident?' he asked.

  'I don't know what you mean.'

  The inspector regarded Miss Bennett for a moment, and then said, 'I mean do you think it happened because Mr Warwick had been drinking?'

  She made a dismissive gesture. 'Oh, I suppose his mother told you that,' she snorted. 'Well, you mustn't go by all she says. She's got a prejudice against drink. Her husband – Richard's father –drank.'

  'You think, then,' the inspector suggested to her, 'that Richard Warwick's account was true, that he was driving well within the speed limit, and that the accident could not have been avoided?'

  'I don't see why it shouldn't have been the truth,' Miss Bennett insisted. 'Nurse Warburton corroborated his evidence.'

  'And her word was to be relied upon?'

  Clearly taking exception to what she seemed to regard as an aspersion on her profession, Miss Bennett said with some asperity, 'I should hope so. After all, people don't go around telling lies –not about that sort of thing. Do they?'

  Sergeant Cadwallader, who had been following the questioning, now broke in. 'Oh, do they not, indeed!' he exclaimed. 'The way they talk sometimes, you'd think that not only were they within the speed limit, but that they'd managed to get into reverse at the same time!'

  Annoyed at this latest interruption, the inspector turned slowly and looked at the sergeant. Miss Bennett also regarded the young man in some surprise. Embarrassed, Sergeant Cadwallader looked down at his notes, and the inspector turned again to Miss Bennett. 'What I'm getting at is this,' he told her. 'In the grief and stress of the moment, a man might easily threaten revenge for an accident that had killed his child. But on reflection, if things were as stated, he would surely have realized that the accident was not Richard Warwick's fault.'

  'Oh,' said Miss Bennett. 'Yes, I see what you mean.'

  The inspector paced slowly about the room as he continued, 'If, on the other hand, the car had been driven erratically and at excessive speed – if the car had been, shall we say, out of control –'

  'Did Laura tell you that?' Miss Bennett interrupted him.

  The inspector turned to look at her, surprised at her mention of the murdered man's wife. 'What makes you think she told me?' he asked.

  'I don't know,' Miss Bennett replied. 'I just wondered.' Looking confused, she glanced at her watch. 'Is that all?' she asked. 'I'm very busy this morning.' She walked to the door, opened it, and was about to leave when the inspector said, 'I'd like to have a word with young Jan next, if I may.'

  Miss Bennett turned in the doorway. 'Oh, he's rather excited this morning,' she said, sounding somewhat truculent. 'I'd really be much obliged if you wouldn't talk to him – raking it all up. I've just got him calmed down.'

  'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we must ask him a few questions,' the inspector insisted.

  Miss Bennett closed the door firmly and came back into the room. 'Why can't you just find this man MacGregor, and question him?' she suggested. 'He can't have got far away.'

  'We'll find him. Don't you worry,' the inspector assured her.

  'I hope you will,' Miss Bennett retorted. 'Revenge, indeed! Why, it's not Christian.'

  'Of course,' the inspector agreed, adding meaningfully, 'especially when the accident was not Mr Warwick's fault and could not have been avoided.'

  Miss Bennett gave him a sharp look. There
was a pause, and then the inspector repeated, 'I'd like to speak to Jan, please.'

  'I don't know if I can find him,' said Miss Bennett. 'He may have gone out.' She left the room quickly. The inspector looked at Sergeant Cadwallader, nodding his head towards the door, and the sergeant followed her out. In the corridor, Miss Bennett admonished Cadwallader. 'You're not to worry him,' she said. She came back into the room. 'You're not to worry the boy,' she ordered the inspector. 'He's very easily – unsettled. He gets excited, temperamental.'

  The inspector regarded her silently for a moment, and then asked, 'Is he ever violent?'

  'No, of course not. He's a very sweet boy, very gentle. Docile, really. I simply meant that you might upset him. It's not good for children, things like murder. And that's all he is, really. A child.'

  The inspector sat in the chair at the desk. 'You needn't worry, Miss Bennett, I assure you,' he told her. 'We quite understand the position.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  Just then Sergeant, Cadwallader ushered in Jan, who rushed up to the inspector. 'Do you want me?' he cried excitedly. 'Have you caught him yet? Will there be blood on his clothes?'

  'Now, Jan,' Miss Bennett cautioned him, 'you must behave yourself. Just answer any questions the gentleman asks you.'

  Jan turned happily to Miss Bennett, and then back to the inspector. 'Oh, yes, I will,' he promised. 'But can't I ask any questions?'

  'Of course you can ask questions,' the inspector assured him kindly.

  Miss Bennett sat on the sofa. 'I'll wait while you're talking to him,' she said.

  The inspector got up quickly, went to the door and opened it invitingly. 'No thank you. Miss Bennett,' he said firmly. 'We shan't need you. And didn't you say you're rather busy this morning?'

  'I'd rather stay,' she insisted.