Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [80]
Mademoiselle Blanche stayed for a while by the swimming pool. She watched Eileen Rich diving. Then Ann Shapland, too, climbed up and dived—very well, too. There was laughing and squeals from the girls.
A bell rang, and Mademoiselle Blanche went in to take her junior class. They were inattentive and tiresome, but Mademoiselle Blanche hardly noticed. She would soon have done with teaching forever.
She went up to her room to tidy herself for supper. Vaguely, without really noticing, she saw that, contrary to her usual practice, she had thrown her garden coat across a chair in the corner instead of hanging it up as usual.
She leaned forward, studying her face in the glass. She applied powder, lipstick—
The movement was so quick that it took her completely by surprise. Noiseless! Professional. The coat on the chair seemed to gather itself together, drop to the ground and in an instant behind Mademoiselle Blanche a hand with a sandbag rose and, as she opened her lips to scream, fell, dully, on the back of her neck.
Twenty-two
INCIDENT IN ANATOLIA
Mrs. Upjohn was sitting by the side of the road overlooking a deep ravine. She was talking partly in French and partly with gestures to a large and solid-looking Turkish woman who was telling her with as much detail as possible under these difficulties of communications all about her last miscarriage. Nine children she had had, she explained. Eight of them boys, and five miscarriages. She seemed as pleased at the miscarriages as she did at the births.
“And you?” she poked Mrs. Upjohn amiably in the ribs. “Combien?—garçons?—filles?—combien?” She held up her hands ready to indicate on the fingers.
“Une fille,” said Mrs. Upjohn.
“Et garçons?”
Seeing that she was about to fall in the Turkish woman’s estimation, Mrs. Upjohn in a surge of nationalism proceeded to perjure herself. She held up five fingers of her right hand.
“Cinq,” she said.
“Cinq garçons? Très bien!”
The Turkish woman nodded with approbation and respect. She added that if only her cousin who spoke French really fluently was here they could understand each other a great deal better. She then resumed the story of her last miscarriage.
The other passengers were sprawled about near them, eating odd bits of food from the baskets they carried with them. The bus, looking slightly the worse for wear, was drawn up against an overhanging rock, and the driver and another man were busy inside the bonnet. Mrs. Upjohn had lost complete count of time. Floods had blocked two of the roads, détours had been necessary and they had once been stuck for seven hours until the river they were fording subsided. Ankara lay in the not impossible future and that was all she knew. She listened to her friend’s eager and incoherent conversation, trying to gauge when to nod admiringly, when to shake her head in sympathy.
A voice cut into her thoughts, a voice highly incongruous with her present surroundings.
“Mrs. Upjohn, I believe,” said the voice.
Mrs. Upjohn looked up. A little way away a car had driven up. The man standing opposite her had undoubtedly alighted from it. His face was unmistakably British, as was his voice. He was impeccably dressed in a grey flannel suit.
“Good heavens,” said Mrs. Upjohn. “Dr. Livingstone?”
“It must seem rather like that,” said the stranger pleasantly. “My name’s Atkinson. I’m from the Consulate in Ankara. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for two or three days, but the roads have been cut.”
“You wanted to get in touch with me? Why?” Suddenly Mrs. Upjohn rose to her feet. All traces of the gay traveller had disappeared. She was all mother, every inch of her. “Julia?” she said sharply. “Has something happened to Julia?”
“No, no,” Mr. Atkinson reassured her. “Julia’s quite all right. It’s not that at all. There’s been a spot of trouble