Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [35]
Peters spoke again. His voice was boyish with enthusiasm. For him there were no qualms, no looking back, only eagerness to go forward.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘where do we go from here?’
Hilary, too, wondered, because again much depended on that. Sooner or later there must be contacts with humanity. Sooner or later, if investigation was made, the fact that a station wagon with six people in it resembling the description of those who had left that morning by plane might possibly be noted by someone. She turned to Mrs Baker and asked, trying to make her tone the counterpart of the childish eagerness of the young American beside her.
‘Where are we going–what happens next?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Mrs Baker, and for all the pleasantness of her voice, there was something somehow ominous in those words.
They drove on. Behind them the flare of the plane still showed in the sky, showed all the more clearly because the sun was now dropping below the horizon. Night fell. Still they drove. The going was bad, since they were obviously not on any main road. Sometimes they seemed to be on field tracks, at other times they drove over open country.
For a long time Hilary remained awake, thoughts and apprehensions turning round in her head excitedly. But at last, shaken and tossed from side to side, exhaustion had its way and she fell asleep. It was a broken sleep. Various ruts and jars in the road awoke her. For a moment or two she would wonder confusedly where she was, then reality would come back to her. She would remain awake for a few moments, her thoughts racing round in confused apprehension, then once more her head would drop forward and nod, and once again she would sleep.
II
She was awakened suddenly by the car coming to an abrupt stop. Very gently Peters shook her by the arm.
‘Wake up,’ he said, ‘we seem to have arrived somewhere.’
Everyone got out of the station wagon. They were all cramped and weary. It was still dark and they seemed to have drawn up outside a house surrounded by palm trees. Some distance away they could see a few dim lights as though there were a village there. Guided by a lantern they were ushered into the house. It was a native house with a couple of giggling Berber women who stared curiously at Hilary and Mrs Calvin Baker. They took no interest in the nun.
The three women were taken to a small upstairs room. There were three mattresses on the floor and some heaps of coverings, but no other furniture.
‘I’ll say I’m stiff,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘Gets you kind of cramped, riding along the way we’ve been doing.’
‘Discomfort does not matter,’ said the nun.
She spoke with a harsh, guttural assurance. Her English, Hilary found, was good and fluent, though her accent was bad.
‘You’re living up to your part, Miss Needheim,’ said the American woman. ‘I can just see you in the convent, kneeling on the hard stones at four in the morning.’
Miss Needheim smiled contemptuously.
‘Christianity has made fools of women,’ she said. ‘Such a worship of weakness, such snivelling humiliation! Pagan women had strength. They rejoiced and conquered! And in order to conquer, no discomfort is unbearable. Nothing is too much to suffer.’
‘Right now,’ said Mrs Baker, yawning, ‘I wish I was in my bed at the Palais Djamai at Fez. What about you, Mrs Betterton? That shaking hasn’t done your concussion any good, I’ll bet.’
‘No, it hasn’t,’ Hilary said.
‘They’ll bring us something to eat presently, and then I’ll fix you up with