N or M_ - Agatha Christie [49]
‘Remember how you first came across me?’ demanded Albert. ‘Cleanin’ of the brasses, I was, in those topnotch flats. Coo, wasn’t that hallporter a nasty bit of goods? Always on to me, he was. And the day you come along and strung me a tale! Pack of lies it was too, all about a crook called Ready Rita. Not but what some of it didn’t turn out to be true. And since then, as you might say, I’ve never looked back. Many’s the adventures we had afore we all settled down, so to speak.’
Albert sighed, and, by a natural association of ideas, Tuppence inquired after the health of Mrs Albert.
‘Oh, the missus is all right–but she doesn’t take to the Welsh much, she says. Thinks they ought to learn proper English, and as for raids–why, they’ve had two there already, and holes in the field what you could put a motor-car in, so she says. So–how’s that for safety? Might as well be in Kennington, she says, where she wouldn’t have to see all the melancholy trees and could get good clean milk in a bottle.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tuppence, suddenly stricken, ‘that we ought to get you into this, Albert.’
‘Nonsense, madam,’ said Albert. ‘Didn’t I try and join up and they were so haughty they wouldn’t look at me. Wait for my age-group to be called up, they said. And me in the pink of health and only too eager to get at them perishing Germans–if you’ll excuse the language. You just tell me how I can put a spoke in their wheel and spoil their goings on–and I’m there. Fifth Column, that’s what we’re up against, so the papers say–though what’s happened to the other four they don’t mention. But the long and short of it is, I’m ready to assist you and Captain Beresford in any way you like to indicate.’
‘Good. Now I’ll tell you what we want you to do.’
II
‘How long have you known Bletchley?’ asked Tommy as he stepped off the tee and watched with approval his ball leaping down the centre of the fairway.
Commander Haydock, who had also done a good drive, had a pleased expression on his face as he shouldered his clubs and replied:
‘Bletchley? Let me see. Oh! About nine months or so. He came here last autumn.’
‘Friend of friends of yours, I think you said?’ Tommy suggested mendaciously.
‘Did I?’ The Commander looked a little surprised. ‘No, I don’t think so. Rather fancy I met him here at the club.’
‘Bit of a mystery man, I gather?’
The Commander was clearly surprised this time.
‘Mystery man? Old Bletchley?’ He sounded frankly incredulous.
Tommy sighed inwardly. He supposed he was imagining things.
He played his next shot and topped it. Haydock had a good iron shot that stopped just short of the green. As he rejoined the other, he said:
‘What on earth makes you call Bletchley a mystery man? I should have said he was a painfully prosaic chap –typical Army. Bit set in his ideas and all that–narrow life, an Army life–but mystery!’
Tommy said vaguely:
‘Oh well, I just got the idea from something somebody said–’
They got down to the business of putting. The Commander won the hole.
‘Three up and two to play,’ he remarked with satisfaction.
Then, as Tommy had hoped, his mind, free of the preoccupation of the match, harked back to what Tommy had said.
‘What sort of mystery do you mean?’ he asked.
Tommy shrugged his shoulders.
‘Oh, it was just that nobody seemed to know much about him.’
‘He was in the Rugbyshires.’
‘Oh, you know that definitely?’
‘Well, I–well, no, I don’t know myself. I say, Meadowes, what’s the idea? Nothing wrong about Bletchley, is there?’
‘No, no, of course not.’ Tommy’s disclaimer came hastily. He had started his hare. He could now sit back and watch the Commander’s mind chasing after it.
‘Always struck me as an almost absurdly typical sort of chap,’ said Haydock.
‘Just so, just so.’
‘Ah, yes–see what you mean. Bit too much of a type, perhaps?’
‘I’m leading the witness,’ thought Tommy. ‘Still perhaps something may crop up out of the old boy’s mind.’
‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ the Commander went on thoughtfully. ‘And now I come to think of it I’ve never actually come across anyone who knew Bletchley before