N or M_ - Agatha Christie [18]
Mrs O’Rourke broke off abruptly as Mrs Sprot came in, closely followed by Tommy.
Tuppence immediately assumed a sprightly manner.
‘Good evening, Mr Meadowes. You look very brisk this evening.’
Tommy said:
‘Plenty of exercise, that’s the secret. A round of golf this morning and a walk along the front this afternoon.’
Millicent Sprot said:
‘I took baby down to the beach this afternoon. She wanted to paddle but I really thought it was rather cold. I was helping her build a castle and a dog ran off with my knitting and pulled out yards of it. So annoying, and so difficult picking up all the stitches again. I’m such a bad knitter.’
‘You’re getting along fine with that helmet, Mrs Blenkensop,’ said Mrs O’Rourke, suddenly turning her attention to Tuppence. ‘You’ve been just racing along. I thought Miss Minton said that you were an inexperienced knitter.’
Tuppence flushed faintly. Mrs O’Rourke’s eyes were sharp. With a slightly vexed air, Tuppence said:
‘I have really done quite a lot of knitting. I told Miss Minton so. But I think she likes teaching people.’
Everybody laughed in agreement, and a few minutes later the rest of the party came in and the gong was sounded.
The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies. Well-known hoary chestnuts were retold. The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a bump, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present. That led easily to Fifth Column activities. To denunciations of the British Fascists, of the Communists, of the Peace Party, of conscientious objectors. It was a very normal conversation of the kind that may be heard almost every day, nevertheless Tuppence watched keenly the faces and demeanour of the people as they talked, striving to catch some tell-tale expression or word. But there was nothing. Sheila Perenna alone took no part in the conversation, but that might be put down to her habitual taciturnity. She sat there, her dark rebellious face sullen and brooding.
Carl von Deinim was out tonight, so tongues could be quite unrestrained.
Sheila only spoke once toward the end of dinner.
Mrs Sprot had just said in her thin fluting voice:
‘Where I do think the Germans made such a mistake in the last war was to shoot Nurse Cavell. It turned everybody against them.’
It was then that Sheila, flinging back her head, demanded in her fierce young voice: ‘Why shouldn’t they shoot her? She was a spy, wasn’t she?’
‘Oh, no, not a spy.’
‘She helped English people to escape–in an enemy country. That’s the same thing. Why shouldn’t she be shot?’
‘Oh, but shooting a woman–and a nurse.’
Sheila got up.
‘I think the Germans were quite right,’ she said.
She went out of the window into the garden.
Dessert, consisting of some under-ripe bananas, and some tired oranges, had been on the table some time. Everyone rose and adjourned to the lounge for coffee.
Only Tommy unobtrusively betook himself to the garden. He found Sheila Perenna leaning over the terrace wall staring out at the sea. He came and stood beside her.
By her hurried, quick breathing he knew that something had upset her badly. He offered her a cigarette, which she accepted.
He said: ‘Lovely night.’
In a low intense voice the girl answered:
‘It could be…’
Tommy looked at her doubtfully. He felt, suddenly, the attraction and the vitality of this girl. There was a tumultuous life in her, a kind of compelling power. She was the kind of girl, he thought, that a man might easily lose his head over.
‘If it weren’t for the war, you mean?’ he said.
‘I don’t mean that at all. I hate the war.’
‘So do we all.’
‘Not in the way I mean. I hate the cant about it, the smugness–the horrible, horrible patriotism.’
‘Patriotism?’ Tommy was startled.