Murder of a Snob Read Online Free Page B

“We—er—began with your marriage some thirty years ago.”
    â€œThat’s right!” she applauded. “In Jo’burg, as they call it, meaning Johannesburg. In South Africa, y’know.” She mentioned a politician who was once well known in Empire politics. “He had a delicate stomach—died of it in the end—and when he had to go to Africa for the Government he took his cook with him. The cook was me.
    â€œSamuel was just finishing being a miner then. I don’t remember what he was at the time. In the fifteen months we lived together he must have had half a dozen different kinds of job, but he always brought home good money. That was the ruin of him, if you ask me.”
    She was looking towards the front door. Without change of tone, she went on: “They might have used some sort of makeshift coffin, just to take him away in.”
    â€œMrs. Cornboise! Who told you Lord Watlington was dead?”
    â€œNobody told me. Where did I get to?—oh yes!—when we were walking out, he told me he could see I was of good family—mind you, there’s nothing wrong with my family—better than his, come to that—only it wasn’t what he meant by a good family—and it came out that he thought I was a sort of paid companion, or something, to her ladyship. And I didn’t let on I was only the cook. Maybe I did wrong, but I was in love with Sam and I was twenty-eight and hadn’t had many chances, so though I didn’t tell him a single untruth I let him think what he liked and we got married almost right away.” She looked wistfully at the mortuary van. “And now it’s all ended like that! There you go, then, Sam! It seems hardly decent.”
    She watched the van turn the bend in the drive, then resumed:
    â€œWe had a little boy, but he died almost before he was born. I believe that broke Sam’s heart. Not that men are often fond of babies at that stage. But he said something about losing his heir—talking as if he was Henry VIII! It was to do with his talk about good families and the rest of it. It turned him against me. He said he still loved me and always would, but he wanted a divorce—which, of course, I wouldn’t agree to. There wasn’t any quarrel—he just sort of asked me to go.
    â€œSo back I came to England, all alone. I’ve been alone ever since, in a manner of speaking, and I’ve never really got used to it. I took to knitting about ten years ago—undervests for Sam, as he has to have wool next the skin. I must’ve sent him fifty or sixty. And he’s never once mentioned them in his letters—not even to say ‘thank you.’
    â€œWhat I was saying was, the money didn’t really help at all, when you wanted company. When I heard he’d had to have the top of his head sliced off, I went to Johannesburg, thinking they might have cut out his senses and he’d need me to look after him. But he wouldn’t even see me. And after I’d been back in London a couple of years, he wrote to say he was making a lot of money and he was sending a gentleman called Mr. Querk—I think I saw him this evening, over there with the others—he took me to an insurance office. Something was signed, which meant I was to have a nice little income all my life, whether Sam lived or died, or whatever happened to him, provided I didn’t molest him.”
    â€œSo you still have the income?” put in Crisp.
    â€œThat’s what I’m coming to, if you give me time,” she answered. “I couldn’t stand having no one to talk to, so I went back to cooking, for company. I saved most of what the insurance company paid me—and all the money Sam sent as extra presents, hoping for divorce. I reckoned I’d have a nice tidy sum ready for him if—” she glanced meaningly at Crisp’s uniform—“if anything went wrong through all that