After the funeral – Agatha Christie
She’d remembered him all right. “Why, it’s Lanscombe!” she’d said and seemed ever so pleased to see him. Ah, they’d all been fond of him in the old days and when there was a dinner party they’d crept down to the pantry and he’d gave them jelly and Charlotte Russe when it came out of the dining-room. They’d all known old Lanscombe, and now there was hardly anyone who remembered. Just the younger lot whom
he could never keep clear in his mind and who just thought of him as a butler who’d been there a long time. A lot of strangers, he had thought, when they all arrived for the funeral – and a seedy lot of strangers at that! Not Mrs Leo – she was different. She and Mr Leo had come here off and on ever since Mr Leo married. She was a nice lady, Mrs Leo – a real lady. Wore proper clothes and did her hair well and looked what she was. And the master had always ben fond of her. A pity that she and Mr Leo had never had any children…
Lanscombe roused himself; what was he doing standing here and dreaming about old days with so much to be done? The blinds were all attended to on the ground floor now, and he’d told Janet to go upstairs and do the bedrooms. He and Janet and the cook had gone to the funeral service in the church but instead of going on to the Crematorium they’d driven back to the house to get the blinds up and the lunch ready. Cold lunch, of course, it had to be. Ham and chicken and tongue and salad. With cold lemon souffl and apple tart to follow. Hot soup first – and he’d better go along and see that Marjorie had got it on ready to serve, for they’d be back in a minute or two now for certain.
Lanscombe broke into a shuffling trot across the room. His gaze, abstracted and uncurious, just swept up to the picture over this mantelpiece – the companion portrait to the one in the green drawing- room. It was a nice painting of white satin and pearls. The human being round whom they were draped and clasped was not nearly so impressive. Meek features, a rosebud mouth, hair parted in the middle. A woman both modest and unassuming. The only thing really worthy of note about Mrs Cornelius Abernethie had been her name – Coralie.
For over sixty years after their original appearance, Coral Cornplasters and the allied “Coral” foot preparations still held their own. Whther there had ever been anything outstanding about Coral Cornplasters nobody could say – but they had appealed to the public fancy. On a foundation of Coral Cornplasters ther had arisen this neo- Gothic palace, its acres of gardens, and the money that had paid out an income to seven sons and daughters and had allowed Richard Abernethie to die three days ago a very rich man.
II
Looking into the kitchen with a word of admonition, Lanscombe was snapped at by Marjorie, the cook. Marjorie was young, only twenty- seven, and was a constant irritation to Lanscombe as being so far removed from what his conception of a proper cook should be. She had no dignity and no proper appreciation of his, Lanscombe’s position. She frequently called the house “a proper old mausoleum” and complained of the immense area of the kitchen, scullery and larder, saying that it was a “day’s walk to get round them all.” She had been at Enderby two years and only stayed because in the first place the money was good, and in the second because Mr Abernethie had really appreciated her cooking. She cooked very well. Janet, who stood by the kitchen table, refreshing herself with a cup of tea, was an elderly housemaid who, although enjoying frequent acid disputes with Lanscombe, was nevertheless usually in alliance with him against the younger generation as represented by Marjorie. The fourth person in the kitchen was Mrs Jacks, who “came in” to lend assistance where it was wanted and who had much enjoyed the funeral.
“Beautiful it was,” she said with a decorous sniff as she replenished her cup. “Nineteen cars and the church quite full and the Canon read the service beautiful, I thought. A nice fine day for it, too. Ah, poor dear Mr Aberenthie, there’s not many like him left in the world. Respected by all, he was.”
There was the note of a horn and the sound of a car coming up the drive, and Mrs Jacks put down her cup and exclaimed: “Here they are.”
Marjorie turned up the gas under her large saucepan of creamy chicken soup. The large kitchen range of the days of Victorian grandeur stood cold and unused, like an altar of the past.
The cars drove up one after the other and the people issuing from them in their black clothes moved rather uncertainly across the hall and into the big green drawing-room. In the bigg steel grate a fire was burning, tribute to the first chill of the autumn days and calculated to counteract the further chill of standing about at a funeral.
Lanscombe entered the room, offering glasses of sherry on a silver tray.
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