N or M_ - Agatha Christie [25]
He was taken into the cave which gave the place its name, and Haydock pointed out enthusiastically how it could have been used.
Major Bletchley did not accompany the two men on their tour, but remained peacefully sipping his drink on the terrace. Tommy gathered that the Commander’s spy hunt with its successful issue was that good gentleman’s principal topic of conversation, and that his friends had heard it many times.
In fact, Major Bletchley said as much when they were walking down to Sans Souci a little later.
‘Good fellow, Haydock,’ he said. ‘But he’s not content to let a good thing alone. We’ve heard all about that business again and again until we’re sick of it. He’s as proud of the whole bag of tricks up there as a cat of its kittens.’
The simile was not too far-fetched, and Tommy assented with a smile.
The conversation then turning to Major Bletchley’s own successful unmasking of a dishonest bearer in 1923, Tommy’s attention was free to pursue its own inward line of thought punctuated by sympathetic ‘Not reallys?’–‘You don’t say so?’ and ‘What an extraordinary business’ which was all Major Bletchley needed in the way of encouragement.
More than ever now Tommy felt that when the dying Farquhar had mentioned Sans Souci he had been on the right track. Here, in this out of the world spot, preparations had been made a long time beforehand. The arrival of the German Hahn and his extensive installation showed clearly enough that this particular part of the coast had been selected for a rallying point, a focus of enemy activity.
That particular game had been defeated by the unexpected activity of the suspicious Commander Haydock. Round one had gone to Britain. But supposing that Smugglers’ Rest had been only the first outpost of a complicated scheme of attack? Smugglers’ Rest, that is to say, had represented sea communications. Its beach, inaccessible save for the path down from above, would lend itself admirably to the plan. But it was only a part of the whole.
Defeated on that part of the plan by Haydock, what had been the enemy’s response? Might not he have fallen back upon the next best thing–that is to say, Sans Souci. The exposure of Hahn had come about four years ago. Tommy had an idea, from what Sheila Perenna had said, that it was very soon after that that Mrs Perenna had returned to England and bought Sans Souci. The next move in the game?
It would seem therefore that Leahampton was definitely an enemy centre–that there were already installations and affiliations in the neighbourhood.
His spirits rose. The depression engendered by the harmless and futile atmosphere of Sans Souci disappeared. Innocent as it seemed, that innocence was no more than skin deep. Behind that innocuous mask things were going on.
And the focus of it all, so far as Tommy could judge, was Mrs Perenna. The first thing to do was to know more about Mrs Perenna, to penetrate behind her apparently simple routine of running her boarding establishment. Her correspondence, her acquaintances, her social or war-working activities–somewhere in all these must lie the essence of her real activities. If Mrs Perenna was the renowned woman agent–M–then it was she who controlled the whole of the Fifth Column activities in this country. Her identity would be known to few–only to those at the top. But communications she must have with her chiefs of staff, and it was those communications that he and Tuppence had got to tap.
At the right moment, as Tommy saw well enough, Smugglers’ Rest could be seized and held–by a few stalwarts operating from Sans Souci. That moment was not yet, but it might be very near.
Once the German army was established in control of the channel ports in France and Belgium, they could concentrate on the invasion and subjugation of Britain, and things were certainly going very badly in France at the moment.
Britain’s Navy was all-powerful on the sea, so the attack must come by air and by internal treachery