Big Four - Agatha Christie [26]
‘I mean to say, if I have a lot of dooks and earls and viscounts and suchlike down to the country place I’ve gotten, you’ll be able to sort them out all right and put them where they should be round the dining-table?’
‘Oh! quite easily,’ I replied, smiling.
We exchanged a few more preliminaries, and then I found myself engaged. What Mr Ryland wanted was a secretary conversant with English society, as he already had an American secretary and a stenographer with him.
Two days later I went down to Hatton Chase, the seat of the Duke of Loamshire, which the American millionaire had rented for a period of six months.
My duties gave me no difficulty whatever. At one period of my life I had been private secretary to a busy member of Parliament, so I was not called upon to assume a role unfamiliar to me. Mr Ryland usually entertained a large party over the weekend, but the middle of the week was comparatively quiet. I saw very little of Mr Appleby, the American secretary, but he seemed a pleasant, normal young American, very efficient in his work. Of Miss Martin, the stenographer, I saw rather more. She was a pretty girl of about twenty-three or four, with auburn hair and brown eyes that could look mischievous enough upon occasion, though they were usually cast demurely down. I had an idea that she both disliked and distrusted her employer, though, of course, she was careful never to hint at anything of the kind, but the time came when I was unexpectedly taken into her confidence.
I had, of course, carefully scrutinized all the members of the household. One or two of the servants had been newly engaged, one of the footmen, I think, and some of the housemaids. The butler, the house keeper, and the chef were the duke’s own staff, who had consented to remain on in the establishment. The housemaids I dismissed as unimportant; I scrutinized James, the second footman, very carefully; but it was clear that he was an under-footman and an under-footman only. He had, indeed, been engaged by the butler. A person of whom I was far more suspicious was Deaves, Ryland’s valet, whom he had brought over from New York with him. An Englishman by birth, with an irreproachable manner, I yet harboured vague suspicions about him.
I had been at Hatton Chase three weeks and not an incident of any kind had arisen which I could lay my finger on in support of our theory. There was no trace of the activities of the Big Four. Mr Ryland was a man of overpowering force and personality, but I was coming to believe that Poirot had made a mistake when he associated him with that dread organization. I even heard him mention Poirot in a casual way at dinner one night.
‘Wonderful little man, they say. But he’s a quitter. How do I know? I put him on a deal, and he turned me down the last minute. I’m not taking any more of your Monsieur Hercule Poirot.’
It was at moments such as these that I felt my cheek pads most wearisome!
And then Miss Martin told me a rather curious story. Ryland had gone to London for the day, taking Appleby with him. Miss Martin and I were strolling together in the garden after tea. I liked the girl very much, she was so unaffected and so natural. I could see that there was something on her mind, and at last out it came.
‘Do you know, Major Neville,’ she said, ‘I am really thinking of resigning my post here.’
I looked somewhat astonished, and she went on hurriedly.
‘Oh! I know it’s a wonderful job to have got, in a way. I suppose most people would think me a fool to throw it up. But I can’t stand abuse, Major Neville. To be sworn at like a trooper is more than I can bear. No gentleman would do such a thing.’
‘Has Ryland been swearing at you?’
She nodded.
‘Of course, he’s always rather irritable and short tempered. That one expects. It’s all in the day’s work. But to fly into such an absolute fury—over nothing at all. He really looked as though he could have murdered me! And, as I say, over nothing at all!’
‘Tell me about it?’ I said, keenly interested.
‘As you know, I open all Mr Ryland’s letters.