Poirot said gently: “Surely. You have known Linnet Ridgeway, I understand, since she was quite a child.”
“Oh! that—” His face altered, became less alert. “I beg pardon, I didn’t quite get you. Yes, as I told you this morning, I’ve known Linnet since she was a cute little thing in pinafores.”
“You were on terms of close intimacy with her father?”
“That’s so. Melhuish Ridgeway and I were very close—very close.”
“You were so intimately associated that on his death he appointed you business guardian to his daughter and trustee to the vast fortune she inherited?”
“Why, roughly, that is so.” The wariness was back again. The note was more cautious. “I was not the only trustee, naturally; others were associated with me.”
“Who have since died?”
“Two of them are dead. The other, Mr. Sterndale Rockford, is alive.”
“Your partner?”
“Yes.”
“Mademoiselle Ridgeway, I understand, was not yet of age when she married?”
“She would have been twenty-one next July.”
“And in the normal course of events she would have come into control of her fortune then?”
“Yes.”
“But her marriage precipitated matters?”
Pennington’s jaw hardened. He shot out his chin at them aggressively.
“You’ll pardon me, gentlemen, but what exact business is all this of yours?”
“If you dislike answering the question—”
“There’s no dislike about it. I don’t mind what you ask me. But I don’t see the relevance of all this.”
“Oh, but surely, Monsieur Pennington”—Poirot leaned forward, his eyes green and catlike—“there is the question of motive. In considering that, financial considerations must always be taken into account.”
Pennington said sullenly: “By Ridgeway’s will, Linnet got control of her dough when she was twenty-one or when she married.”
“No conditions of any kind?”
“No conditions.”
“And it is a matter, I am credibly assured, of millions.”
“Millions it is.”
Poirot said softly: “Your responsibility, Mr. Pennington, and that of your partner, has been a very grave one.”
Pennington replied curtly: “We’re used to responsibility. Doesn’t worry us any.”
“I wonder.”
Something in his tone flicked the other man on the raw. He asked angrily: “What the devil do you mean?”
Poirot replied with an air of engaging frankness: “I was wondering, Mr. Pennington, whether Linnet Ridgeway’s sudden marriage caused any—consternation, in your office?”