The housekeeper’s face changed to defensive righteousness. ‘There’s Mr Peter,’ she said, ‘he’s no secret.’
‘Is there anybody else connected with Mr Huysmann who, to your knowledge, may have had a grudge against him?’
‘I daresay there’s several people as weren’t over-fond of him. He was a long way from being open-handed. But I can’t think of anybody who’d want to do a thing like this.’
‘Did you know that Mr Huysmann proposed to make a fresh will disinheriting his son?’
‘Oh yes. He’d been talking about that ever since Mr Peter got married.’
Gently said: ‘How long ago was that?’
The housekeeper thought for a moment. ‘It’ll be just on two years,’ she replied.
‘Did Peter know about it two years ago?’
‘Mr Huysmann told him before he got married.’
Gently nodded his slow, complacent nod. Hansom glared across at him. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to ask before we let Mrs Turner go?’ he asked bitingly.
Gently placed his fingers neatly together. ‘Was the safe door open or closed when you discovered the body?’ he said.
‘It was open.’
‘And how about the outer door?’
‘I think it was closed.’
‘Ah,’ said Gently. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘At the time the murder was discovered, are you positive that Susan and yourself were the only persons in the house?’ he asked.
The housekeeper’s face registered surprise followed by indignation. ‘If there had been anyone else I should have said so,’ she retorted magnificently.
‘Is there anybody not so far mentioned whom you would not have been surprised to find in the house at that time in the afternoon?’
She paused. ‘Well, there’s the chauffeur, but he was off duty. And there might have been someone from the yard about business.’
Gently nodded again and rested his chin on his thumbs. ‘This room we’re in,’ he said, ‘was it last cleaned before lunch yesterday?’
‘You’d best ask Susan about that. It should have been done.’
‘To your knowledge, did anybody enter it after the discovery of the murder?’
‘There was nothing to come in here about.’
Gently leant far back into his chair, elevated his paired fingers and looked through them at the ceiling. ‘During the time when you were not at your sister’s yesterday,’ he said, ‘would you have been… somewhere else… for the purpose of taking alcoholic refreshment?’
The housekeeper’s face turned scarlet. She jumped to her feet, her eyes flashing, and seemed on the point of a scathing denial. Then, with an effort, she checked herself and flung out of the room like an outraged duchess.
Gently smiled through the cage of his fingers. ‘Pass me,’ he said dreamily, ‘there’s one alibi less on my list.’
Gently was eating a peppermint cream when Susan came in. He had offered one to Hansom as a sort of olive branch, but Hansom had refused it, and after counting those that remained in the bag Gently was not sorry. He had a feeling that Norchester would not be very productive of peppermint creams on a Sunday, especially a wet Sunday, and the prospect of running short was a bleak one. Life was hard enough without a shortage of peppermint creams.
Susan was a pretty, pert blonde girl with a tilted bra and an accentuated behind. She wore a smile as a natural part of her equipment. She had a snub nose and dimples and a pleased expression, and had a general supercharged look, as though she was liable to burst out of her black dress and stockings into a fierce nudity.
The constable with the shorthand notebook sighed as she took her seat. He was a young man. Hansom ran through the preliminaries of identification and association.
‘What time did the family finish lunch, Miss Stibbons?’ he asked.
Susan leant her bewitching head on one side. ‘It would be about two o’clock, Inspector. It was quarter past when I went to clear away.’
‘Did Mr Huysmann go to his study directly after lunch?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Inspector. But he was there when I took him his coffee.’
‘When was that?’
‘It would be about half-past two, I should think.’
‘What was he doing then?’
‘He was standing by the window, looking at the garden.’
‘Did he make any remark out of the ordinary?’
The bewitching head dipped over an errant blush. ‘We-ell, Inspector…’
‘Did he lead you to suppose he was expecting a visitor?’
‘No… he didn’t give me that impression.’
Hansom looked her over thoughtfully. He was only forty himself. ‘What did Miss Huysmann do after lunch?’ he asked.
‘She took her coffee up to her room.’
‘She apparently left the house shortly afterwards to go to the pictures. She says she left at half-past two. You didn’t see her go?’
‘No, Inspector.’
‘Did she take her coffee to her room before you took Mr Huysmann’s to him?’
‘Oh yes, she came and got it from the kitchen.’
‘You didn’t hear the front-door bell between the time she took her coffee and the time you went to the study with Mr Huysmann’s?’
‘No, Inspector.’
‘Nor while you were in the study?’
‘No, I didn’t hear it at all till Mr Peter came.’
‘Because of that you were surprised to find that she had, in fact, gone out?’
‘It surprised me at the time, Inspector, but after I’d thought about it I realized she must have gone out through the kitchen.’
‘Why should she have done that?’
‘We-ell, I don’t think she would want her father to know she had gone to the pictures.’
Gently broke in: ‘Was it unusual for Miss Huysmann to go to the pictures?’
Susan embraced him in a smile of melting intensity. ‘Mr Huysmann didn’t think it proper for girls to go to them. But she went when Mr Huysmann was away on business and sometimes she pretended to go to bed early and I would let her out by the kitchen.’
‘Wasn’t it unusual for her to slip out in the afternoon, when her father might enquire after her?’
‘Ye-es… she’d never done that before.’
‘You have no doubt that she did go out?’
‘Oh no! I saw her come in with her hat and coat on.’
‘You heard nothing during the afternoon to suggest that she might still be in the house?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Miss Huysmann deceived her father over the matter of the pictures. Do you know of any other way she may have deceived him?’
Susan placed a smooth, conical finger on her dimpled chin and appeared to consider deeply. ‘He was very strict,’ she said at last.
‘You haven’t answered the question, Miss Stibbons.’
Susan came back with her take-me smile. ‘We-ell, she used to read love-stories and other books that Mr Huysmann didn’t know about…’
Gently shrugged and extended an open palm towards Hansom. In his mind’s eye the figure of the deceased timber-merchant began to take form and substance. He saw the foxy, snarling little face, the sharp, suspicious eyes, the spare figure, the raging, implacable temper of a small man with power… the man whose son had kicked free at any price, whose daughter was in league with the maid to deceive him: who declared the cinema improper while he ruffled Susan in his study… An alien little man, who had spent most of his life in a new country without making friends, shrewd, sudden, tyrannical and hypocritical…
Hansom continued with the questioning. ‘What did you do after you had taken Mr Huysmann his coffee?’
‘I cleared away the lunch things and washed up, Inspector.’
‘What time would that be?’
‘I couldn’t say, exactly. I finished washing up about quarter past three, because there was a change of programme on the wireless just then.’
‘What programme was that?’
‘It was a football match.’
‘At what time did it finish?’
‘It was just before four, I think.’
‘Who won?’ put in Gently curiously. Susan flashed him another smile. ‘The Rovers beat the Albion two-nought,’ she said. Hansom snorted.