By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [72]
‘I’m sorry, Albert, but I think I’m going to have to disappoint you. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing of that kind in that nice old family desk which once belonged to my Uncle William. Another man who turned crusty in his old age besides being stone deaf and having a very bad temper.’
‘What I thought is,’ said Albert, ‘it wouldn’t do any harm to look, would it?’ He added virtuously, ‘It needed cleaning out anyway. You know how old things are with old ladies. They don’t turn them out much–not when they’re rheumatic and find it hard to get about.’
Tommy paused for a moment or two. He remembered that Tuppence and he had looked quickly through the drawers of the desk, had put their contents such as they were in two large envelopes and removed a few skeins of wool, two cardigans, a black velvet stole and three fine pillow-cases from the lower drawers which they had placed with other clothing and odds and ends for disposal. They had also looked through such papers as there had been in the envelopes after their return home with them. There had been nothing there of particular interest.
‘We looked through the contents, Albert,’ he said. ‘Spent a couple of evenings really. One or two quite interesting old letters, some recipes for boiling ham, some other recipes for preserving fruit, some ration books and coupons and things dating back to the war. There was nothing of any interest.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Albert, ‘but that’s just papers and things, as you might say. Just ordinary go and come what everybody gets holed up in desks and drawers and things. I mean real secret stuff. When I was a boy, you know, I did six months with an antique dealer–helping him fake up things as often as not. But I got to know about secret drawers that way. They usually run to the same pattern. Three or four well-known kinds and they very it now and then. Don’t you think, sir, you ought to have a look? I mean, I didn’t like to go it meself with you not here. I would have been presuming.’ He looked at Tommy with the air of a pleading dog.
‘Come on, Albert,’ said Tommy, giving in. ‘Let’s go and presume.’
‘A very nice piece of furniture,’ thought Tommy, as he stood by Albert’s side, surveying this specimen of his inheritance from Aunt Ada. ‘Nicely kept, beautiful old polish on it, showing the good workmanship and craftsmanship of days gone by.’
‘Well, Albert,’ he said, ‘go ahead. This is your bit of fun. But don’t go and strain it.’
‘Oh, I was ever so careful. I didn’t crack it, or slip knives into it or anything like that. First of all we let down the front and put it on these two slab things that pull out. That’s right, you see, the flap comes down this way and that’s where the old lady used to sit. Nice little mother-of-pearl blotting case your Aunt Ada had. It was in the left-hand drawer.’
‘There are these two things,’ said Tommy.
He drew out two delicate pilastered shallow vertical drawers.
‘Oh, them, sir. You can push papers in them, but there’s nothing really secret about them. The most usual place is to open the little middle cupboard–and then at the bottom of it usually there’s a little depression and you slide the bottom out and there’s a space. But there’s other ways and places. This desk is the kind that has a kind of well underneath.’
‘That’s not very secret either, is it? You just slide back a panel–’
‘The point is, it looks as though you’d found all there was to find. You push back the panel, there’s the cavity and you can put a good many things in there that you want to keep a bit from being pawed over and all that. But that’s not all, as you might say. Because you see, here there’s a little piece of wood in front, like a little ledge. And you can pull that up, you see.’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘yes, I can see that. You pull that up.’
‘And you’ve got a secret cavity here, just behind the middle lock.’
‘But there’s nothing in it.’
‘No,’ said Albert, ‘it looks disappointing. But if you slip your