N or M_ - Agatha Christie [30]
Mr Meadowes did not. His only wish was to get away from the smell. Mrs Perenna thereupon accompanied him to a small bedroom, the door of which happened to be just opposite the door of Mrs Blenkensop’s room, and summoned the adenoidal semi-idiotic Beatrice to ‘move Mr Meadowes’ things’. She would, she explained, send for ‘a man’ to take up the floor and search for the origin of the smell.
Matters were settled satisfactorily on this basis.
II
The second incident was Mr Meadowes’ hay fever. That was what he called it at first. Later he admitted doubtfully that he might just possibly have caught cold. He sneezed a good deal, and his eyes ran. If there was a faint elusive suggestion of raw onion floating in the breeze in the vicinity of Mr Meadowes’ large silk handkerchief nobody noticed the fact, and indeed a pungent amount of eau de cologne masked the more penetrating odour.
Finally, defeated by incessant sneezing and nose-blowing, Mr Meadowes retired to bed for the day.
It was on the morning of that day that Mrs Blenkensop received a letter from her son Douglas. So excited and thrilled was Mrs Blenkensop that everybody at Sans Souci heard about it. The letter had not been censored at all, she explained, because fortunately one of Douglas’s friends coming on leave had brought it, so for once Douglas had been able to write quite fully.
‘And it just shows,’ declared Mrs Blenkensop, wagging her head sagely, ‘how little we know really of what is going on.’
After breakfast she went upstairs to her room, opened the japanned box and put the letter away. Between the folded pages were some unnoticeable grains of rice powder. She closed the box again, pressing her fingers firmly on its surface.
As she left her room she coughed, and from opposite came the sound of a highly histrionic sneeze.
Tuppence smiled and proceeded downstairs.
She had already made known her intention of going up to London for the day–to see her lawyer on some business and to do a little shopping.
Now she was given a good send-off by the assembled boarders and entrusted with various commissions–‘only if you have time, of course’.
Major Bletchley held himself aloof from this female chatter. He was reading his paper and uttering appropriate comments aloud. ‘Damned swines of Germans. Machine-gunning civilian refugees on the roads. Damned brutes. If I were our people–’
Tuppence left him still outlining what he would do if he were in charge of operations.
She made a detour through the garden to ask Betty Sprot what she would like as a present from London.
Betty ecstatically clasping a snail in two hot hands gurgled appreciatively. In response to Tuppence’s suggestions–‘A pussy. A picture-book? Some coloured chalks to draw with?’–Betty decided, ‘Betty dwar.’ So the coloured chalks were noted down on Tuppence’s list.
As she passed on meaning to rejoin the drive by the path at the end of the garden she came unexpectedly upon Carl von Deinim. He was standing leaning on the wall. His hands were clenched, and as Tuppence approached he turned on her, his usually impassive face convulsed with emotion.
Tuppence paused involuntarily and asked:
‘Is anything the matter?’
‘Ach, yes, everything is the matter.’ His voice was hoarse and unnatural. ‘You have a saying here that a thing is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, have you not?’
Tuppence nodded.
Carl went on bitterly:
‘That is what I am. It cannot go on, that is what I say. It cannot go on. It would be best, I think, to end everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
The young man said:
‘You have spoken kindly to me. You would, I think, understand. I fled from my own country because of injustice and cruelty. I came here to find freedom. I hated Nazi Germany. But, alas, I am still a German. Nothing can alter that.’
Tuppence murmured:
‘You may have difficulties, I know–’
‘It is not that. I am a German, I tell you. In my heart–in my feeling.