Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

Oh, we gave it to the cowman’s wife over at Staples Farm. Her eldest boy got too big to share a room with the others any more and she put him up in their loft. We get our dairy stuff from Staples. You can’t see it from here but it is only four fields away over the rise.”

“Where do you keep your spare trunks, Miss Sharpe? Have you another box-room?”

For the first time Marion hesitated. “We do have a large square trunk with a flat top, but my mother uses it to store things in. When we inherited The Franchise there was a very valuable tallboy in the bedroom my mother has, and we sold it, and used the big trunk instead.

With a chintz cover on it. My suitcases I keep in the cupboard on the first-floor landing.”

“Miss Kane, do you remember what the cases looked like?”

“Oh, yes. One was a brown leather with those sort-of caps at the corners, and the other was one of those American-looking canvas-covered ones with stripes.”

Well, that was definite enough.

Grant examined the room a little longer, studied the view from the window, and then turned to go.

“May we see the suitcases in the cupboard?” he asked Marion.

“Certainly,” Marion said, but she seemed unhappy.

On the lower landing she opened the cupboard door and stood back to let the Inspector look. As Robert moved out of their way he caught the unguarded flash of triumph on the girl’s face. It so altered her calm, rather childish, face that it shocked him. It was a savage emotion, primitive and cruel.

And very startling on the face of a demure schoolgirl who was the pride of her guardians and preceptors.

The cupboard contained shelves bearing household linen, and on the floor four suitcases. Two were expanding ones, one of pressed fibre and one of rawhide; the other two were: a brown cowhide with protected corners, and a square canvas-covered hatbox with a broad band of multi-coloured stripes down the middle.

“Are these the cases?” Grant asked.

“Yes,” the girl said. “Those two.

”

“I am not going to disturb my mother again this afternoon,” Marion said, with sudden anger. “I acknowledge that the trunk in her room is large and flat-topped. It has been there without interruption for the last three years.”

“Very good, Miss Sharpe. And now the garage, if you please.”

Down at the back of the house, where the stables had been converted long ago into garage, the little group stood and surveyed the battered old grey car.