The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey Read Free Book Online

hesitated. “We do have a large square trunk with a flat top, but my mother uses it to store thingsin. When we inherited The Franchise there was a very valuable tall-boy in the bedroom my mother has, and we sold it, and used the big trunk instead. With a chintz cover on it. My suitcases I keep in the cupboard on the first-floor landing.”
    â€œMiss Kane, do you remember what the cases looked like?”
    â€œOh, yes. One was a brown leather with those sort-of caps at the corners, and the other was one of those American-looking canvas-covered ones with stripes.”
    Well, that was definite enough.
    Grant examined the room a little longer, studied the view from the window, and then turned to go.
    â€œMay we see the suitcases in the cupboard?” he asked Marion.
    â€œCertainly,” Marion said, but she seemed unhappy.
    On the lower landing she opened the cupboard door and stood back to let the Inspector look. As Robert moved out of their way he caught the unguarded flash of triumph on the girl’s face. It so altered her calm, rather childish, face that it shocked him. It was a savage emotion, primitive and cruel. And very startling on the face of a demure schoolgirl who was the pride of her guardians and preceptors.
    The cupboard contained shelves bearing household linen, and on the floor four suitcases. Two were expanding ones, one of pressed fibre and one of rawhide; the other two were: a brown cowhide with protected corners, and a square canvas-covered hatbox with a broad band of multi-coloured stripes down the middle.
    â€œAre these the cases?” Grant asked.
    â€œYes,” the girl said. “Those two.”
    â€œI am not going to disturb my mother again this afternoon,” Marion said, with sudden anger. “I acknowledge that the trunk in her room is large and flat-topped. It has been there without interruption for the last three years.”
    â€œVery good, Miss Sharpe. And now the garage, if you please.”
    Down at the back of the house, where the stables had been converted long ago into a garage, the little group stood and surveyed the battered old grey car. Grant read out the girl’s untechnical description of it as recorded in her statement. It fitted, but it would fit equally well at least a thousand cars on the roads of Britain today, Blair thought. It was hardly evidence at all. “ ‘One of the wheels was painted a different shade from the others and didn’t look as if it belonged. The different wheel was the one in front on my side as it was standing at the pavement,’ ” Grant finished.
    In silence the four people looked at the darker grey of the near front wheel. There seemed nothing to say.
    â€œThank you very much, Miss Sharpe,” Grant said at length, shutting his notebook and putting it away. “You have been very courteous and helpful and I am grateful to you. I shall be able to get you on the telephone any time in the next few days, I suppose, if I want to talk to you further?”
    â€œOh, yes, Inspector. We have no intention of going anywhere.”
    If Grant was aware of her too-ready comprehension he did not show it.
    He handed over the girl to the matron and they left without a backward glance. Then he and Hallam took their leave, Hallam still with an air of apologising for trespass.
    Marion had gone out into the hall with them, leaving Blair in the drawing-room, and when she came back she was carrying a tray with sherry and glasses.
    â€œI don’t ask you to stay for dinner,” she said, putting down the tray and beginning to pour the wine, “partly because our ‘dinner’ is usually a very scratch supper and not at all what you are used to. (Did you know that your aunt’s meals are famous in Milford? Even I had heard about them.) And partly because—well, because, as my mother said, Broadmoor is a little out of your line, I expect.”
    â€œAbout that,” Robert said. “You