4:50 From Paddington (Miss Marple 8)

“He is unable to do so,” said the lawyer dryly. “By the terms of his father’s will.”

“Perhaps you’ll tell me about the will?”

“Why should I?”

Inspector Craddock smiled.

“Because I can look it up myself if I want to, at Somerset House.”

Against his will, Mr. Wimborne gave a crabbed little smile.

“Quite right, Inspector. I was merely protesting that the information you ask for is quite irrelevant. As to Josiah Crackenthorpe’s will, there is no mystery about it. He left his very considerable fortune in trust, the income from it to be paid to his son Luther for life, and after Luther’s death the capital to be divided equally between Luther’s children, Edmund, Cedric, Harold, Alfred, Emma and Edith. Edmund was killed in the war, and Edith died four years ago, so that on Luther Crackenthorpe’s decease the money will be divided between Cedric, Harold, Alfred, Emma and Edith’s son Alexander Eastley.”

“And the house?”

“That will go to Luther Crackenthorpe’s eldest surviving son or his issue.”

“Was Edmund Crackenthorpe married?”

“No.”

“So the property will actually go—?”

“To the next son— Cedric.”

“Mr. Luther Crackenthorpe himself cannot dispose of it?”

“No.”

“And he has no control of the capital.”

“No.”

“Isn’t that rather unusual? I suppose,” said Inspector Craddock shrewdly, “that his father didn’t like him.”

“You suppose correctly,” said Mr. Wimborne. “Old Josiah was disappointed that his eldest son showed no interest in the family business—or indeed in business of any kind. Luther spent his time travelling abroad and collecting objets d’art. Old Josiah was very unsympathetic to that kind of thing. So he left his money in trust for the next generation.”

“But in the meantime the next generation have no income except what they make or what their father allows them, and their father has a considerable income but no power of disposal of the capital.”

“Exactly. And what all this has to do with the murder of an unknown young woman of foreign origin I cannot imagine!”

“It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it,” Inspector Craddock agreed promptly, “I just wanted to ascertain all the facts.”

Mr. Wimborne looked at him sharply, then, seemingly satisfied with the result of his scrutiny, rose to his feet.

“I am proposing now to return to London,” he said. “Unless there is anything further you wish to know?”

He looked from one man to the other.

“No, thank you, sir.”

The sound of the gong rose fortissimo from the hall outside.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Wimborne. “One of the boys, I think, must have been performing.”

Inspector Craddock raised his voice, to be heard above the clamour, as he said:

“We’ll leave the family to have lunch in peace, but Inspector Bacon and I would like to return after it—say at two fifteen—and have a short interview with every member of the family.”

“You think that is necessary?”

“Well…” Craddock shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just an off chance. Somebody might remember something that would give us a clue to the woman’s identity.”

“I doubt it, Inspector. I doubt it very much. But I wish you good luck. As I said just now, the sooner this distasteful business is cleared up, the better for everybody.”

Shaking his head, he went slowly out of the room.

II

Lucy had gone straight to the kitchen on getting back from the inquest, and was busy with preparations for lunch when Bryan Eastley put his head in.

“Can I give you a hand in any way?” he asked. “I’m handy about the house.”

Lucy gave him a quick, slightly preoccupied glance. Bryan had arrived at the inquest direct in his small M.G. car, and she had not as yet had much time to size him up.

What she saw was likeable enough. Eastley was an amiable-looking young man of thirty-odd with brown hair, rather plaintive blue eyes and an enormous fair moustache.

“The boys aren’t back yet,” he said, coming in and sitting on the end of the kitchen table. “It will take ’em another twenty minutes on their bikes.”

Lucy smiled.

“They were certainly determined not to miss anything.”

“Can’t blame them. I mean to say—first inquest in their young lives and right in the family so to speak.”

“Do you mind getting off the table, Mr. Eastley? I want to put the baking dish down there.”

Bryan obeyed.

“I say, that fat’s corking hot. What are you going to put in it?”

“Yorkshire pudding.”

“Good old Yorkshire. Roast beef of old England, is that the menu for today?”

“Yes.”

“The funeral baked meats, in fact. Smells good.” He sniffed appreciatively. “Do you mind my gassing away?”

“If you came in to help I’d rather you helped.” She drew another pan from the oven. “Here—turn all these potatoes over so that they brown on the other side….”

Bryan obeyed with alacrity.

“Have all these things been fizzling away in here while we’ve been at the inquest? Supposing they’d been all burnt up.”

“Most improbable. There’s a regulating number on the oven.”

“Kind of electric brain, eh, what? Is that right?”

Lucy threw a swift look in his direction.

“Quite right. Now put the pan in the oven. Here, tak

e the cloth. On the second shelf— I want the top for the Yorkshire pudding.”

Bryan obeyed, but not without uttering a shrill yelp.

“Burnt yourself?”

“Just a bit. It doesn’t matter. What a dangerous game cooking is!”

“I suppose you never do your own cooking?”

“As a matter of fact I do—quite often. But not this sort of thing. I can boil an egg—if I don’t forget to look at the clock. And I can do eggs and bacon. And I can put a steak under the grill or open a tin of soup. I’ve got one of those little electric whatnots in my flat.”

“You live in London?”

“If you call it living—yes.”

His tone was despondent. He watched Lucy shoot in the dish with the Yorkshire pudding mixture.

“This is awfully jolly,” he said and sighed.

Her immediate preoccupations over, Lucy looked at him with more attention.

“What is—this kitchen?”

“Yes. Reminds me of our kitchen at home—when I was a boy.”

It struck Lucy that there was something strangely forlorn about Bryan Eastley. Looking closely at him, she realized that he was older than she had at first thought. He must be close on forty. It seemed difficult to think of him as Alexander’s father. He reminded her of innumerable young pilots she had known during the war when she had been at the impressionable age of fourteen. She had gone on and grown up into a post-war world—but she felt as though Bryan had not gone on, but had been passed by in the passage of years. His next words confirmed this. He had subsided on to the kitchen table again.

“It’s a difficult sort of world,” he said, “isn’t it? To get your bearings in, I mean. You see, one hasn’t been trained for it.”

Lucy recalled what she had heard from Emma.

“You were a fighter pilot, weren’t you?” she said. “You’ve got a D.F.C.”

“That’s the sort of thing that puts you wrong. You’ve got a gong and so people try to make it easy for you. Give you a job and all that. Very decent of them. But they’re all admin. jobs, and one simply isn’t any good at that sort of thing. Sitting at a desk getting tangled up in figures. I’ve had ideas of my own, you know, tried out a wheeze or two. But you can’t get the backing. Can’t get the chaps to come in and put down the money. If I had a bit of capital—”