| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
2
looked towards it.
“Is this about the place where you stopped your car last night?” he
asked.
Alex Restarick stood back a little as though considering.
“Near enough,” he said. “It’s difficult to tell exactly because of the fog.
Yes, I should say this was the place.”
Inspector Curry stood looking round with an appraising3 eye.
The gravelled sweep of drive swept round in a slow curve, and at this
point, emerging from a screen of rhododendrons, the west façade of the
leading down to the lawns. Thereafter the drive continued in its curving
house.
“Dodgett,” said Inspector Curry.
ing space of lawn in a diagonal line towards the house, reached the ter-
race, and went in by the side door. A few moments later, the curtains of
peared out of the garden door, and ran back to rejoin them, breathing like
a steam engine.
“Two minutes and forty-two seconds,” said Inspector Curry, clicking the
these things, do they?”
His tone was pleasantly conversational11.
“I don’t run as fast as your constable,” said Alex. “I presume it is my sup-
posed movements you have been timing?”
“I’m just pointing out that you had the opportunity to do murder. That’s
all, Mr. Restarick. I’m not making any accusations—as yet.”
“I can’t run as fast as you can, but I believe I’m in better training.”
“It’s since ’aving the bronchitis last winter,” said Dodgett.
Alex turned back to the Inspector.
“Seriously, though, in spite of trying to make me uncomfortable and ob-
oh! so sensitive, such tender plants!”—his voice took on a mocking note
—“you can’t really believe I had anything to do with all this? I’d hardly
send a box of poisoned chocolates to Mrs. Serrocold and put my card in-
side, would I?”
“That might be what we are meant to think. There’s such a thing as a
“Oh, I see. How ingenious you are. By the way, those chocolates were
poisoned?”
“The six chocolates containing Kirsch flavouring in the top layer were
poisoned, yes. They contained aconitine.”
“Not one of my favourite poisons, Inspector. Personally, I have a weak-
ness for curare.”
“Curare has to be introduced into the bloodstream, Mr. Restarick, not
into the stomach.”
“How wonderfully knowledgeable15 the police force are,” said Alex admir-
ingly.
Inspector Curry cast a quiet sideways glance at the young man. He
eyes that danced with mischievous18 mockery. It would have been hard at
any time to know what Alex Restarick was thinking. A satyr—or did he
mean a faun? An overfed faun, Inspector Curry thought suddenly, and
somehow there was an unpleasantness about that idea.
A twister with brains — that’s how he would sum up Alex Restarick.
Cleverer than his brother. Mother had been a Russian or so he had heard.
“Russians” to Inspector Curry were what “Bony” had been in the early
days of the nineteenth century and what “the Huns” had been in the early
twentieth century. Anything to do with Russia was bad in Inspector
Curry’s opinion, and if Alex Restarick had murdered Gulbrandsen he
would be a very satisfactory criminal. But unfortunately Curry was by no
means convinced that he had.
“I moved the curtains as you told me, sir,” he said. “And counted thirty. I
noticed that the curtains have a hook torn off at the top. Means that
there’s a gap. You’d see the light in the room from outside.”
Inspector Curry said to Alex:
“Did you notice light streaming out from that window last night?”
“I couldn’t see the house at all because of the fog. I told you so.”
“Fog’s patchy, though. Sometimes it clears for a minute here and there.”
“It never cleared so that I could see the house—the main part, that is.
ciously unsubstantial way. It gave a perfect illusion of dock warehouses21.
As I told you, I am putting on a Limehouse Ballet and—”
“You told me,” agreed Inspector Curry.
“One gets in the habit, you know, of looking at things from the point of
view of a stage set, rather than from the point of view of reality.”
“I daresay. And yet a stage set’s real enough, isn’t it, Mr. Restarick?”
“I don’t see exactly what you mean, Inspector.”
“Well, it’s made of real materials—canvas and wood and paint and card-
as I say, is real enough, as real behind the scenes as it is in front.”
Alex stared at him.
“Now that, you know, is a very penetrating23 remark, Inspector. It’s given
me an idea.”
“For another ballet?”
“No, not for another ballet … Dear me, I wonder if we’ve all been rather
stupid?”
点击  收听单词发音
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- 发表评论
-
- 最新评论 进入详细评论页>>
