Death Among the Sunbathers by E.R. Punshon Read Free Book Online Page B

and Mitchell went on,
    â€˜You said Mr Curtis wasn’t doing very well in business?’
    â€˜Hit like everyone else,’ Keene asserted. ‘Not that that mattered with Jo earning what she did – well up to four figures, I suppose. He has a bottle factory in Shoreditch somewhere, he bought when he left the Navy two or three years ago.’
    â€˜There was a small profit last year,’ Sybil put in. ‘Not much, but it was a profit, Jo told me.’
    Mitchell asked for the address, and Ferris duly noted it down, thinking to himself that the financial position of that factory would have to be carefully investigated. He could remember more cases than one in which a harassed business man’s mind had given way and he had sought refuge in murder and suicide. Was that what had happened here? Ferris asked himself.
    Something of the same idea had entered Mitchell’s mind, and he asked,
    â€˜You have no idea where Mr Curtis can be? It seems strange we can get no word of him.’
    â€˜I’ll ring up their flat again,’ Sybil said, and once more she got no reply. ‘It’s very strange,’ she said, coming back into the room with the news of her failure.
    â€˜Do you remember ever hearing Mrs Curtis say anything about the Leadeane sun bathing place?’ Mitchell asked her. ‘Have you any idea why she should think of writing about it?’
    â€˜Oh, she was always writing about anything,’ Keene interposed. ‘Her job,’ he said vaguely.
    â€˜I told her,’ Sybil added, as Mitchell still looked at her as if awaiting her own reply, ‘that Mr Keene went there sometimes and she was rather interested. I don’t know if that’s what made her think of writing about it.’
    â€˜You go in for sun-bathing then, Mr Keene?’ Mitchell observed, and Keene nodded a somewhat sulky response.
    But it was not a subject he seemed to want to say much about. He had been there. It was a very well-conducted place. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. In the first place he went there because Mr Esmond Bryan, who ran it, had become a client of his, and had interested him in it. Personally he was sure it was good for him; Horry Hunter thought the same. He and Horry both felt all the better for their visits to Leadeane.
    â€˜Horry Hunter’s a chap I know,’ he explained to Mitchell.
    Mitchell saw that Ferris, always busy with his note-book, had looked up quickly, and guessed that he, too, had noticed this fresh coincidence of names. Mitchell said,
    â€˜Is it the Mr Hunter who has a wholesale fur business in Howland Yard?’
    Keene looked rather startled, even uneasy, as he answered in the affirmative.
    â€˜Mrs Curtis know him, or Mr Curtis?’ Mitchell inquired.
    â€˜No, not that I know of. Why?’
    â€˜We have information Mrs Curtis was seen in Howland Yard this morning,’ answered Mitchell.
    But both the two young people looked blank at this, and thought there must be some mistake. It was possible Mr Hunter’s name might have been mentioned before her, but that was all. They were fairly certain she had never met him; there was no conceivable reason why she should wish to see him, or why she should go to his place of business.
    â€˜The only time I ever mentioned Mr Hunter that I remember,’ Sybil said, ‘was once when something was being said about our going to Kenya. Jo always said we should never be able to sell the business for enough to give us a start there, and I told her we knew Mr Hunter was thinking of doing exactly the same thing – getting rid of his business here, I mean, and starting fresh somewhere else.’
    â€˜Had the same idea as you, Mr Keene?’ Mitchell remarked, while Ferris’s pencil wrote steadily on.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know,’ mumbled Keene. ‘We talked about it sometimes when we met at Leadeane.’
    They were interrupted by a sound of someone calling, and