Free After the Funeral by Agatha Christie Page A

fond of little doggies,' she said. Dogs, indeed! Being sick and making messes all the time I've no doubt! Really, these girls are mental! So there we are, and if I have to go out any afternoon, Timothy is left quite alone in the house and if anything should happen, how could he get help? Though I do leave the telephone close by his chair so that if he felt faint he could dial Dr Barton immediately.”
    Maude led the way into the drawing-room where tea was laid ready by the fireplace, and establishing Mr Entwhistle there, disappeared, presumably to the back regions. She returned in a few minutes' time with a teapot and silver kettle, and proceeded to minister to Mr Entwhistle's needs. It was a good tea with home-made cake and fresh buns. Mr Entwhistle murmured:
    “What about Timothy?” and Maude explained briskly that she had taken Timothy his tray before she set out for the station.
    “And now,” said Maude, “he will have had his little nap and it will be the best time for him to see you. Do try and not let him excite himself too much.”
    Mr Entwhistle assured her that he would exercise every precaution.
    Studying her in the flickering firelight, he was seized by a feeling of compassion. This big, stalwart matter-of-fact woman, so healthy, so vigorous, so full of common sense, and yet so strangely, almost pitifully, vulnerable in one spot. Her love for her husband was maternal love, Mr Entwhistle decided. Maude Abernethie had borne no child and she was a woman built for motherhood. Her invalid husband had become her child, to be shielded, guarded, watched over. And perhaps, being the stronger character of the two, she had unconsciously imposed on him a state of invalidism greater than might otherwise have been the case.
    “Poor Mrs Tim,” thought Mr Entwhistle to himself.

After the Funeral
    II
    “Good of you to come, Entwhistle.”
    Timothy raised himself up in his chair as he held out a hand. He was a big man with a marked resemblance to his brother Richard. But what was strength in Richard, in Timothy was weakness. The mouth was irresolute, the chin very slightly receding, the eyes less deep-set. Lines of peevish irritability showed on his forehead.
    His invalid status was emphasised by the rug across his knees and a positive pharmacopoeia of little bottles and boxes on a table at his right hand.
    “I mustn't exert myself,” he said warningly. “Doctor's forbidden it. Keeps telling me not to worry! Worry! If he'd had a murder in his family he'd do a bit of worrying, I bet! It's too much for a man - first Richard's death - then hearing all about his funeral and his will - what a will! - and on top of that poor little Cora killed with a hatchet. Hatchet! Ugh! This country's full of gangsters nowadays - thugs - left over from the war! Going about killing defenceless women. Nobody's got the guts to put these things down - to take a strong hand. What's the country coming to, I'd like to know? What's the damned country coming to?”
    Mr Entwhistle was familiar with this gambit. It was a question almost invariably asked sooner or later by his clients for the last twenty years and he had his routine for answering it. The non-committal words he uttered could have been classified under the heading of soothing noises.
    “It all began with that damned Labour Government,” said Timothy. “Sending the whole country to blazes. And the Government we've got now is no better. Mealy-mouthed, milk-and-water socialists! Look at the state we're in! Can't get a decent gardener, can't get servants - poor Maude here has to work herself to a shadow messing about in the kitchen (by the way, I think a custard pudding would go well with the sole tonight, my dear - and perhaps a little clear soup first?). I've got to keep my strength up - Doctor Barton said so - let me see, where was I? Oh yes, Cora. It's a shock, I can tell you, to a man, when he hears his sister - his own sister - has been murdered! Why, I had palpitations for twenty