Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

They have been greatly distressed, but they have not tried to dramatise the affair, or allowed the girl to be an object of interest or pity. They have taken the affair admirably.”

“And all that remains is for me to take my end of it with the same admirable detachment,” Marion Sharpe said.

“You see my position, Miss Sharpe. The girl not only describes the house in which she says she was detained; she describes the two inhabitants – and describes them very accurately. �A thin, elderly woman with soft white hair and no hat, dressed in black; and a much younger woman, thin and tall and dark like a gipsy, with no hat and a bright silk scarf round her neck.

“Oh, yes. I can think of no explanation, but I understand your position. And now I think we had better have the girl in, but before we do I should like to say—”

The door opened noiselessly, and old Mrs. Sharpe appeared on the threshold. The short pieces of white hair round her face stood up on end, as her pillow had left them, and she looked more than ever like a sibyl.

She pushed the door to behind her and surveyed the gathering with a malicious interest.

“Hah!” she said, making a sound like the throaty squawk of a hen. “Three strange men!”

“Let me present them, Mother,” Marion said, as the three got to their feet.

“This is Mr. Blair, of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet – the firm who have that lovely house at the top of the High Street.

As Robert bowed the old woman fixed him with her seagull’s eye.

“Needs re-tiling,” she said.

It did, but it was not the greeting he had expected.

It comforted him a little that her greeting to Grant was even more unorthodox. Far from being impressed or agitated by the presence of Scotland Yard in her drawing-room of a spring afternoon, she merely said in her dry voice: “You should not be sitting in that chair; you are much too heavy for it.

When her daughter introduced the local Inspector she cast one glance at him, moved her head an inch, and quite obviously dismissed him from further consideration. This, Hallam, to judge by his expression, found peculiarly shattering.

Grant looked inquiringly at Miss Sharpe.

“I’ll tell her,” she said. “Mother, the Inspector wants us to see a young girl who is waiting in a car outside the gate.