Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [13]
“If I ask you questions I shall expect answers,” Colonel Pikeaway pointed out.
“Naturally.”
“Doesn’t seem natural to you, son. Did Bob Rawlinson say anything to you before he flew out of Ramat? He was in Ali’s confidence if anyone was. Come now, let’s have it. Did he say anything?”
“As to what, sir?”
Colonel Pikeaway stared hard at him and scratched his ear.
“Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “Hush up this and don’t say that. Overdo it in my opinion! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you don’t know, and there it is.”
“I think there was something—” Edmundson spoke cautiously and with reluctance. “Something important that Bob might have wanted to tell me.”
“Ah,” said Colonel Pikeaway, with the air of a man who has at last pulled the cork out of a bottle. “Interesting. Let’s have what you know.”
“It’s very little, sir. Bob and I had a kind of simple code. We’d cottoned on to the fact that all the telephones in Ramat were being tapped. Bob was in the way of hearing things at the Palace, and I sometimes had a bit of useful information to pass on to him. So if one of us rang the other up and mentioned a girl or girls, in a certain way, using the term ‘out of this world’ for her, it meant something was up!”
“Important information of some kind or other?”
“Yes. Bob rang me up using those terms the day the whole show started. I was to meet him at our usual rendezvous—outside one of the banks. But rioting broke out in that particular quarter and the police closed the road. I couldn’t make contact with Bob or he with me. He flew Ali out the same afternoon.”
“I see,” said Pikeaway. “No idea where he was telephoning from?”
“No. It might have been anywhere.”
“Pity.” He paused and then threw out casually:
“Do you know Mrs. Sutcliffe?”
“You mean Bob Rawlinson’s sister? I met her out there, of course. She was there with a schoolgirl daughter. I don’t know her well.”
“Were she and Bob Rawlinson very close?”
Edmundson considered.
“No, I shouldn’t say so. She was a good deal older than he was, and rather much of the elder sister. And he didn’t much like his brother-in-law—always referred to him as a pompous ass.”
“So he is! One of our prominent industrialists—and how pompous can they get! So you don’t think it likely that Bob Rawlinson would have confided an important secret to his sister?”
“It’s difficult to say—but no, I shouldn’t think so.”
“I shouldn’t either,” said Colonel Pikeaway.
He sighed. “Well, there we are, Mrs. Sutcliffe and her daughter are on their way home by the long sea route. Dock at Tilbury on the Eastern Queen tomorrow.”
He was silent for a moment or two, whilst his eyes made a thoughtful survey of the young man opposite him. Then, as though having come to a decision, he held out his hand and spoke briskly.
“Very good of you to come.”
“I’m only sorry I’ve been of such little use. You’re sure there’s nothing I can do?”
“No. No. I’m afraid not.”
John Edmundson went out.
The discreet young man came back.
“Thought I might have sent him to Tilbury to break the news to the sister,” said Pikeaway. “Friend of her brother’s—all that. But I decided against it. Inelastic type. That’s the F.O. training. Not an opportunist. I’ll send round what’s his name.”
“Derek?”
“That’s right,” Colonel Pikeaway nodded approval. “Getting to know what I mean quite well, ain’t you?”
“I try my best, sir.”
“Trying’s not enough. You have to succeed. Send me along Ronnie first. I’ve got an assignment for him.”
II
Colonel Pikeaway was apparently just going off to sleep again when the young man called Ronnie entered the room. He was tall, dark, muscular, and had a gay and rather impertinent manner.
Colonel Pikeaway looked at him for a moment or two and then grinned.
“How’d you like to penetrate into a girls’ school?” he asked.
“A girls’ school?” The young man lifted his eyebrows. “That will be something new! What are they up to? Making bombs in the chemistry class?”
“Nothing of that kind. Very superior high-class school. Meadowbank.”
“Meadowbank!” the young man whistled. “I can’t believe