Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [34]
‘You will start now, please,’ he said. ‘As soon as possible. There is much to be done, and we are late on schedule.’
Hilary recoiled for a moment. She put her hand nervously to her throat. The pearl choker she was wearing broke under the strain of her fingers. She picked up the loose pearls and crammed them into her pocket.
They all got into the station wagon. Hilary was on a long bench crowded up with Peters one side of her and Mrs Baker the other. Turning her head towards the American woman, Hilary said:
‘So you–so you–are what you might call the liaison officer, Mrs Baker?’
‘That hits it off exactly. And though I say it myself, I’m well qualified. Nobody is surprised to find an American woman getting around and travelling a lot.’
She was still plump and smiling, but Hilary sensed, or thought she sensed, a difference. The slight fatuity and surface conventionality had gone. This was an efficient, probably ruthless woman.
‘It will make a fine sensation in the headlines,’ said Mrs Baker. She laughed with some enjoyment. ‘You, I mean, my dear. Persistently dogged by ill-luck, they’ll say. First nearly losing your life in the crash at Casablanca, then being killed in this further disaster.’
Hilary realized suddenly the cleverness of the plan.
‘These others?’ she murmured. ‘Are they who they say they are?’
‘Why yes. Dr Barron is a bacteriologist, I believe. Mr Ericsson a very brilliant young physicist, Mr Peters is a research chemist, Miss Needheim, of course, isn’t a nun, she’s an endocrinologist. Me, as I say, I’m only the liaison officer. I don’t belong in this scientific bunch.’ She laughed again as she said, ‘That Hetherington woman never had a chance.’
‘Miss Hetherington–was she–was she–’
Mrs Baker nodded emphatically.
‘If you ask me, she’s been tailing you. Took over in Casablanca from whoever followed you out.’
‘But she didn’t come with us today although I urged her to?’
‘That wouldn’t have been in character,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘It would have looked a little too obvious to go back again to Marrakesh after having been there already. No, she’ll have sent a telegram or a phone message through and there’ll be someone waiting at Marrakesh to pick you up when you arrive. When you arrive! That’s a good laugh, isn’t it? Look! Look there now! Up she goes.’
They had been driving rapidly away across the desert, and now as Hilary craned forward to look through the little window, she saw a great glow behind them. A faint sound of an explosion came to her ears. Peters threw his head back and laughed. He said:
‘Six people die when plane to Marrakesh crashes!’
Hilary said almost under her breath:
‘It’s–it’s rather frightening.’
‘Stepping off into the unknown?’ It was Peters who spoke. He was serious enough now. ‘Yes, but it’s the only way. We’re leaving the Past and stepping out towards the Future.’ His face lit up with sudden enthusiasm. ‘We’ve got to get quit of all the bad, mad old stuff. Corrupt governments and the warmongers. We’ve got to go into the new world–the world of science, clean away from the scum and the driftwood.’
Hilary drew a deep breath.
‘That’s like the things my husband used to say,’ she said, deliberately.
‘Your husband?’ he shot her a quick glance. ‘Why, was he Tom Betterton?’
Hilary nodded.
‘Well, that’s great. I never knew him out in the States, though I nearly met him more than once. ZE Fission is one of the most brilliant discoveries of this age–yes, I certainly take my hat off to him. Worked with old Mannheim, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Hilary.
‘Didn’t they tell me he’d married Mannheim’s daughter. But surely you’re not–’
‘I’m his second wife,’ said Hilary, flushing a little. ‘He–his–Elsa died in America.’
‘I remember. Then he went to Britain to work there. Then he riled them by disappearing.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Walked slap out of some Paris conference into nowhere.’ He added, as though in further appreciation, ‘Lord, you can’t say They don’t organize well.’
Hilary agreed with him. The excellence of their organization was sending a cold pang of apprehension through