Clues to Christie by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page B

my mind. I’m leaving it to Cresswell.”
    “Your housekeeper?”
    “Yes. I’ve explained it to her. I make a will leaving her all I’ve got and then I don’t need to pay her any wages. Saves me a lot in current expenses, and it keeps her up to the mark. No giving me notice and walking off at any minute. Very la-di-dah and all that, isn’t she? But her father was a working plumber in a very small way. She’s nothing to give herself airs about.”
    She had by now unfolded the parchment. Picking up a pen she dipped it in the inkstand and wrote her signature, Katherine Dorothy Greenshaw.
    “That’s right,” she said. “You’ve seen me sign it, and then you two sign it, and that makes it legal.”
    She handed the pen to Raymond West. He hesitated a moment, feeling an unexpected repulsion to what he was asked to do. Then he quickly scrawled the well-known signature, for which his morning’s mail usually brought at least six demands a day.
    Horace took the pen from him and added his own minute signature.
    “That’s done,” said Miss Greenshaw.
    She moved across to the bookcase and stood looking at them uncertainly, then she opened a glass door, took out a book and slipped the folded parchment inside.
    “I’ve my own places for keeping things,” she said.
    “ Lady Audley’s Secret ,” Raymond West remarked, catching sight of the title as she replaced the book.
    Miss Greenshaw gave another cackle of laughter.
    “Best seller in its day,” she remarked. “Not like your books, eh?”
    She gave Raymond a sudden friendly nudge in the ribs. Raymond was rather surprised that she even knew he wrote books. Although Raymond West was quite a name in literature, he could hardly be described as a best seller. Though softening a little with the advent of middle-age, his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life.
    “I wonder,” Horace demanded breathlessly, “if I might just take a photograph of the clock?”
    “By all means,” said Miss Greenshaw. “It came, I believe, from the Paris exhibition.”
    “Very probably,” said Horace. He took his picture.
    “This room’s not been used much since my grandfather’s time,” said Miss Greenshaw. “This desk’s full of old diaries of his. Interesting, I should think. I haven’t the eyesight to read them myself. I’d like to get them published, but I suppose one would have to work on them a good deal.”
    “You could engage someone to do that,” said Raymond West.
    “Could I really? It’s an idea, you know. I’ll think about it.”
    Raymond West glanced at his watch.
    “We mustn’t trespass on your kindness any longer,” he said.
    “Pleased to have seen you,” said Miss Greenshaw graciously. “Thought you were the policeman when I heard you coming round the corner of the house.”
    “Why a policeman?” demanded Horace, who never minded asking questions.
    Miss Greenshaw responded unexpectedly.
    “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,” she carolled, and with this example of Victorian wit, nudged Horace in the ribs and roared with laughter.
    “It’s been a wonderful afternoon,” sighed Horace as they walked home. “Really, that place has everything. The only thing the library needs is a body. Those old-fashioned detective stories about murder in the library—that’s just the kind of library I’m sure the authors had in mind.”
    “If you want to discuss murder,” said Raymond, “you must talk to my Aunt Jane.”
    “Your Aunt Jane? Do you mean Miss Marple?” He felt a little at a loss.
    The charming old-world lady to whom he had been introduced the night before seemed the last person to be mentioned in connection with murder.
    “Oh, yes,” said Raymond. “Murder is a speciality of hers.”
    “But my dear, how intriguing. What do you really mean?”
    “I mean just that,” said Raymond. He paraphrased: “Some commit murder, some get mixed up in murders, others have murder thrust upon them. My Aunt Jane comes into the third