Agatha Christie

“ But why did you go to Marlow?”
“It was wrong of me, but natural under the circumstances—yes, I still feel natural under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” I cried desperately.
For the first time Pagett seemed to recognize that I was asking him a question. His mind detached itself from the peculiarities of Sir Eustace and his own justification and came to rest on me.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Beddingfeld,” he said stiffly, “but I fail to see your concern in the matter.”
He was back in the train now, leaning down to speak to me. I felt desperate. What could one do with a man like that? ”

“ Harry and I were together and we should never be separated again. Yet all through I was conscious of some barrier between us—a constraint on his part, the reason of which I could not fathom.
Sir Eustace had been driven off in an opposite direction accompanied by a strong guard. He waved his hand airily to us on departing.
I came out on to the stoep early on the following morning and looked across the veld in the direction of Johannesburg. I could see the great dumps glistening in the pale morning sunshine, and I could hear the low rumbling mutter of the guns. The Revolution was not over yet. ”

“ Guy Pagett is my secretary, a zealous, painstaking, hard-working fellow, admirable in every respect. I know no one who annoys me more. For a long time I have been racking my brains as to how to get rid of him. But you cannot very well dismiss a secretary because he prefers work to play, likes getting up early in the morning, and has positively no vices. The only amusing thing about the fellow is his face. He has the face of a fourteenth-century poisoner—the sort of man the Borgias got to do their odd jobs for them. ”

“ Why, of all the houses in Great Britain, choose the Mill House? What harm had I ever done the woman that she must needs get herself murdered there?”
Suzanne made one of her sympathetic noises again and Sir Eustace proceeded in a still more aggrieved tone.
“And, if that’s not enough, the fellow who murdered her has the impudence, the colossal impudence, to attach himself to me as my secretary. My secretary, if you please! I’m tired of secretaries, I won’t have any more secretaries. Either they’re concealed murderers or else they’re drunken brawlers. Have you seen Pagett’s black eye? ”

“ CHAPTER XXVIII
(Extract from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)
As I remarked once before, I am essentially a man of peace. I yearn for a quiet life—and that’s just the one thing I don’t seem able to have. I am always in the middle of storms and alarms. The relief of getting away from Pagett with his incessant nosing out of intrigues was enormous, and Miss Pettigrew is certainly a useful creature. ”

“ To return to our expedition, after Sir Eustace had backed out, Miss Pettigrew said she would remain at home in case he might want her. And at the very last minute Suzanne sent down a message to say she had a headache. So Colonel Race and I drove off alone.
He is a strange man. One doesn’t notice it so much in a crowd. But, when one is alone with him, the sense of his personality seems really almost overpowering. He becomes more taciturn, and yet his silence seems to say more than speech might do.
It was so that day that we drove to the Matoppos through the soft yellow brown scrub. ”

“ So here I was, with twenty-five pounds in my pocket, facing the world and pursuing my adventure.
It was on the fourth day that the stewardess finally urged me up on deck. Under the impression that I should die quicker below, I had steadfastly refused to leave my bunk. She now tempted me with the advent of Madeira. Hope rose in my breast. I could leave the boat and go ashore and be a parlourmaid there. Anything for dry land.
Muffled in coats and rugs, and weak as a kitten on my legs, I was hauled up and deposited, an inert mass, on a deck-chair. I lay there with my eyes closed, hating life. ”

“ He was very nearly in as bad a temper as the morning we arrived at Cape Town—when he bounced the peaches on the floor and they squashed! Evidently arriving early in the morning at places is bad for his temperament. He cursed the porters, he cursed the waiters at breakfast, he cursed the whole hotel management, he would doubtless have liked to curse Miss Pettigrew who hovered around with her pencil and pad, but I don’t think even Sir Eustace would have dared to curse Miss Pettigrew. She’s just like the efficient secretary in a book. ”

“ Here with me at Kimberley. Suzanne Blair.”
I don’t think I ever really believed in the annihilation of Anne. There is something peculiarly indestructible about that young woman—she is like the patent balls that one gives to terriers. She has an extraordinary knack of turning up smiling. I still don’t see why it was necessary for her to walk out of the hotel in the middle of the night in order to get to Kimberley. There was no train, anyway. She must have put on a pair of angel’s wings and flown there. And I don’t suppose she will ever explain. Nobody does—to me. I always have to guess. ”

“ A man hunted down. They know me here as Harry Parker—they think I’ve been away on a trek up country, but any day they may put two and two together—and then the blow will fall. You’re so young, Anne, and so beautiful—with the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world’s before you—love, life, everything. ”

“ Things that one would shrink from attempting normally are easily tackled in a flush of anger. Without giving myself time to reflect, I walked straight to the house of Lord Nasby.
Lord Nasby was the millionaire owner of the Daily Budget. He owned other papers—several of them, but the Daily Budget was his special child. It was as the owner of the Daily Budget that he was known to every householder in the United Kingdom. Owing to the fact that an itinerary of the great man’s daily proceedings had just been published, I knew exactly where to find him at this moment. ”

“ Like all dreamers, however, I could not let my dream alone. We poor humans are so anxious not to miss anything.
“This is South Africa,” I kept saying to myself industriously, “South Africa, South Africa. You are seeing the world. This is the world. You are seeing it. Think of it, Anne Beddingfeld, you pudding-head. You’re seeing the world.”
I had thought that I had the boat deck to myself, but now I observed another figure leaning over the rail, absorbed as I had been in the rapidly approaching city. ”

“ Sir Eustace turned suddenly.
“Very clever. Very creditable. But I’ve still a word to say. If I’ve lost the trick, so have you. You’ll never be able to bring the murder of Nadina home to me. I was in Marlow on that day, that’s all you’ve got against me. No one can prove that I even knew the woman. But you knew her, you had a motive for killing her—and your record’s against you. You’re a thief, remember, a thief. There’s one thing you don’t know, perhaps. I’ve got the diamonds. ”

“ Nadina slipped into it, and sat smiling to herself, whilst one long white hand beat a slow tattoo on the glass of the dressing-table.
The Count was prompt to avail himself of the privilege accorded to him—a man of medium height, very slim, very elegant, very pale, extraordinarily weary. In feature, little to take hold of, a man difficult to recognize again if one left his mannerisms out of account. He bowed over the dancer’s hand with exaggerated courtliness. ”

“ Because, after all, honeymoons don’t last forever—you’re not here, Anne, so I can safely say that without having you fly out at me like a little wild-cat—Love in the wilderness will last a good while, but one day you will suddenly begin to dream of houses in Park Lane, sumptuous furs, Paris frocks, the largest thing in motors and the latest thing in perambulators, French maids and Norland nurses! ”

“ My next visitor was Mr. Flemming, Papa’s London solicitor. He came down specially from town to see me. An ardent anthropologist himself, he was a great admirer of Papa’s works. He was a tall, spare man with a thin face and grey hair. He rose to meet me as I entered the room and, taking both my hands in his, patted them affectionately.
“My poor child,” he said. “My poor, poor child.”
Without conscious hypocrisy, I found myself assuming the demeanour of a bereaved orphan. ”

“ I pointed out to her that no one could possibly tell it had been taken from the back of the train. She looked at me pityingly.
“I shall write underneath it: ‘Taken from the train. Engine going round a curve.’”
“You could write that under any snapshot of a train,” I said. Women never think of these simple things.
“I’m glad we’ve come up here in daylight,” cried Anne Beddingfeld. “I shouldn’t have seen this if I’d gone last night to Durban, should I?”
“No,” said Colonel Race, smiling. “You’d have waked up to-morrow morning to find yourself in the Karoo, a hot, dusty desert of stones and rocks.” ”

“ Just like a doctor, or a butcher, or a plumber——”
“Or any other business man,” finished Nadina. “It should not surprise us. That is what the ‘Colonel’ has always been—an excellent man of business. He has organized crime as another man might organize a boot factory. Without committing himself, he has planned and directed a series of stupendous coups, embracing every branch of what we might call his ‘profession.’ Jewel robberies, forgery, espionage (the latter very profitable in war-time) , sabotage, discreet assassination, there is hardly anything he has not touched. ”

“ All the things that Rayburn had said that morning came back to me with unpleasant distinctness. Tell the truth, he had said. Well, I could always do that, but was it going to help me? To begin with, would my story be believed? Would they consider it likely or possible that I had started off on this mad escapade simply on the strength of a scrap of paper smelling of moth balls? It sounded to me a wildly incredible tale. In that moment of cold sanity I cursed myself for a melodramatic idiot, and yearned for the peaceful boredom of Little Hampsly. ”

“ Pagett,” I shouted.
Never have I seen a man more taken aback. He looked as though he had seen a ghost.
In a minute or two I was having trouble with the conductor. But I took a lofty tone.
“I am Sir Eustace Pedler’s secretary,” I said haughtily. “Please take me to his private car.”
Suzanne and Colonel Race were standing on the rear observation platform. They both uttered an exclamation of utter surprise at seeing me.
“Hullo, Miss Anne,” cried Colonel Race, “where have you turned up from? I thought you’d gone to Durban. What an unexpected person you are.” ”

“ My father, Professor Beddingfeld, was one of England’s greatest living authorities on Primitive Man. He really was a genius—every one admits that. His mind dwelt in Palaeolithic times, and the inconvenience of life for him was that his body inhabited the modern world. Papa did not care for modern man—even Neolithic Man he despised as a mere herder of cattle, and he did not rise to enthusiasm until he reached the Mousterian period.
Unfortunately one cannot entirely dispense with modern men. One is forced to have some kind of truck with butchers and bakers and milkmen and greengrocers. ”

“ I answered thoughtfully, remembering our conversation on the way back from the Matoppos. “He’s a very powerful personality,” I continued, “but not at all my idea of the ‘Colonel.’ And, anyway, such an idea would be absurd. He’s in the Secret Service.”
“How do we know that he is? It’s the easiest thing in the world to throw out a hint of that kind. No one contradicts it, and the rumour spreads until every one believes it as gospel truth. It provides an excuse for all sorts of doubtful doings. Anne, do you like Race?” ”

“ Sir Eustace tried to restrain us—but in vain. I still think it was a miracle we were not left behind at some oasis of the line. South African trains don’t hoot or get excited when they are going to start off again. They just glide quietly away, and you look up from your bargaining and run for your life.
Suzanne’s amazement at seeing me climb upon the train at Cape Town can be imagined. ”

“ I realized, of course, that these films might very well be an old roll belonging to Sir Eustace Pedler which had rolled in here and had not been found when the cupboard was emptied. But I did not think so. The red paper was far too fresh-looking. It was just as dusty as it would have been had it laid there for two or three days—that is to say, since the murder. Had it been there for any length of time, it would have been thickly coated.
Who had dropped it? The woman or the man? I remembered that the contents of her handbag had appeared to be intact. ”

“ What’s the good of money? It can’t buy happiness. We’d have been happy on the island. I tell you I’m afraid of that other life—it nearly rotted me through once.”
“Did Sir Eustace know who you really were?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And Carton?”
“No. He saw us both with Nadina at Kimberley one night, but he didn’t know which was which. He accepted my statement that I was Lucas, and Nadina was deceived by his cable. She was never afraid of Lucas. He was a quiet chap—very deep. But I always had the devil’s own temper. She’d have been scared out of her life if she’d known that I’d come to life again.” ”

“ His manner was so completely natural.
“Quite right to insist on being brought straight to me,” he went on. “Minks is a fool. A clever actor—but a fool. That was Minks you saw downstairs.”
“Oh, really,” I said feebly.
“And now,” said Sir Eustace cheerfully, “let’s get down to facts. How long have you known that I was the ‘Colonel’?”
“Ever since Mr. Pagett told me that he had seen you in Marlow when you were supposed to be in Cannes.” ”

“ I said sarcastically. “Perhaps you’d like to dump some of your extra luggage in my cabin?”
Sarcasm is dangerous with a man like Pagett. He brightened up at once.
“Well, if I could get rid of the typewriter and the stationery trunk——”
The stationery trunk weighs several solid tons. It causes endless unpleasantness with the porters, and it is the aim of Pagett’s life to foist it on me. It is a perpetual struggle between us. He seems to regard it as my special personal property. I, on the other hand, regard the charge of it as the only thing where a secretary is really useful. ”