N or M_ - Agatha Christie [56]
Doubtless he would communicate with Tuppence in his special way, or else turn up, very shortly.
Nevertheless, Tuppence was unable to avoid a certain feeling of uneasiness. She decided that in her role of Mrs Blenkensop it would be perfectly natural to display some curiosity and even anxiety. She went without more ado in search of Mrs Perenna.
Mrs Perenna was inclined to be short with her upon the subject. She made it clear that such conduct on the part of one of her lodgers was not to be condoned or glossed over. Tuppence exclaimed breathlessly:
‘Oh, but he may have met with an accident. I’m sure he must have done. He’s not at all that sort of man–not at all loose in his ideas, or anything of that kind. He must have been run down by a car or something.’
‘We shall probably soon hear one way or another,’ said Mrs Perenna.
But the day wore on and there was no sign of Mr Meadowes.
In the evening, Mrs Perenna, urged on by the pleas of her boarders, agreed extremely reluctantly to ring up the police.
A sergeant called at the house with a notebook and took particulars. Certain facts were then elicited. Mr Meadowes had left Commander Haydock’s house at half-past ten. From there he had walked with a Mr Walters and a Dr Curtis as far as the gate of Sans Souci, where he had said goodbye to them and turned into the drive.
From that moment, Mr Meadowes seemed to have disappeared into space.
In Tuppence’s mind, two possibilities emerged from this.
When walking up the drive, Tommy may have seen Mrs Perenna coming towards him, have slipped into the bushes and then have followed her. Having observed her rendezvous with some unknown person, he might then have followed the latter, whilst Mrs Perenna returned to Sans Souci. In that case, he was probably very much alive, and busy on a trail. In which case the well-meant endeavours of the police to find him might prove most embarrassing.
The other possibility was not so pleasant. It resolved itself into two pictures–one that of Mrs Perenna returning ‘out of breath and dishevelled’–the other, one that would not be laid aside, a picture of Mrs O’Rourke standing smiling in the window, holding a heavy hammer.
That hammer had horrible possibilities.
For what should a hammer be doing lying outside?
As to who had wielded it, that was more difficult. A good deal depended on the exact time when Mrs Perenna had re-entered the house. It was certainly somewhere in the neighbourhood of half-past ten, but none of the bridge party happened to have noted the time exactly. Mrs Perenna had declared vehemently that she had not been out except just to look at the weather. But one does not get out of breath just looking at the weather. It was clearly extremely vexing to her to have been seen by Mrs Sprot. With ordinary luck the four ladies might have been safely accounted for as busy playing bridge.
What had the time been exactly?
Tuppence found everybody extremely vague on the subject.
If the time agreed, Mrs Perenna was clearly the most likely suspect. But there were other possibilities. Of the inhabitants of Sans Souci, three had been out at the time of Tommy’s return. Major Bletchley had been out at the cinema–but he had been to it alone, and the way that he had insisted on retailing the whole picture so meticulously might suggest to a suspicious mind that he was deliberately establishing an alibi.
Then there was the valetudinarian Mr Cayley who had gone for a walk all round the garden. But for the accident of Mrs Cayley’s anxiety over her spouse, no one might have ever heard of that walk and might have imagined Mr Cayley to have remained securely encased in rugs like a mummy in his chair on the terrace. (Rather unlike him, really, to risk the contamination of the night air so long.)
And there was Mrs O’Rourke herself, swinging the hammer, and smiling…
IV
‘What’s the matter, Deb? You’re looking worried, my sweet.’
Deborah Beresford started, and then laughed, looking frankly into Tony Marsdon’s sympathetic brown eyes. She liked