Curtain - Agatha Christie [58]
Norton sighed. He said it wasn’t quite so simple as that.
‘You see, you might have read something rather embarrassing, Hastings.’
‘That would embarrass the other person, you mean? I suppose you’d have to pretend you hadn’t actually read anything – that you’d discovered your mistake in time.’
‘Yes.’ Norton said it after a moment’s pause, and he did not seem to feel that he had yet arrived at a satisfactory solution.
He said rather wistfully: ‘I wish I did know what I ought to do.’
I said that I couldn’t see that there was anything else he could do.
Norton said, the perplexed frown still on his forehead: ‘You see, Hastings, there’s rather more to it than that. Supposing that what you read was – well, rather important, to someone else again, I mean.’
I lost patience. ‘Really, Norton, I don’t see what you do mean. You can’t go about reading other people’s private letters, can you?’
‘No, no, of course not. I didn’t mean that. And anyway, it wasn’t a letter at all. I only said that to try and explain the sort of thing. Naturally anything you saw or heard or read – by accident – you’d keep to yourself, unless –’
‘Unless what?’
Norton said slowly: ‘Unless it was something you ought to speak about.’
I looked at him with suddenly awakened interest. He went on: ‘Look here, think of it this way, supposing you saw something through a – a keyhole –’
Keyholes made me think of Poirot! Norton was stumbling on:
‘What I mean is, you’d got a perfectly good reason for looking through the keyhole – the key might have stuck and you just looked to see if it was clear – or – or some quite good reason – and you never for one minute expected to see what you did see . . .’
For a moment or two I lost thread of his stumbling sentences, for enlightenment had come to me. I remembered a day on a grassy knoll and Norton swinging up his glasses to see a speckled woodpecker. I remembered his immediate distress and embarrassment, his endeavours to prevent me from looking through the glasses in my turn. At the moment I had leaped to the conclusion that what he had seen was something to do with me – in fact that it was Allerton and Judith. But supposing that that was not the case? That he had seen something quite different? I had assumed that it was something to do with Allerton and Judith because I was so obsessed by them at that time that I could think of nothing else.
I said abruptly: ‘Was it something you saw through those glasses of yours?’
Norton was both startled and relieved. ‘I say, Hastings, how did you guess?’
‘It was that day when you and I and Elizabeth Cole were up on that knoll, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And you didn’t want me to see?’
‘No. It wasn’t – well, I mean it wasn’t meant for any of us to see.’
‘What was it?’
Norton frowned again. ‘That’s just it. Ought I to say? I mean it was – well, it was spying. I saw something I wasn’t meant to see. I wasn’t looking for it – there really was a speckled woodpecker – a lovely fellow, and then I saw the other thing.’
He stopped. I was curious, intensely curious, yet I respected his scruples.
I asked: ‘Was it – something that mattered?’
He said slowly: ‘It might matter. That’s just it. I don’t know.’
I asked then: ‘Has it something to do with Mrs Franklin’s death?’
He started. ‘It’s queer you should say that.’
‘Then it has?’
‘No – no, not directly. But it might have.’ He said slowly: ‘It would throw a different light on certain things. It would mean that – Oh, damn it all, I don’t know what to do!’
I was in a dilemma. I was agog with curiosity, yet I felt that Norton was very reluctant to say what he had seen. I could understand that. I should have felt the same myself. It is always unpleasant to come into possession of a piece of information that has been acquired in what the outside world would consider a dubious manner.
Then an idea struck me.
‘Why not consult Poirot?’
‘Poirot?’ Norton seemed a little doubtful.
‘Yes, ask his advice.’
‘Well,’ said Norton slowly, ‘it’s an idea. Only, of course, he’s a foreigner –’ he stopped,