N or M_ - Agatha Christie [73]
Mr Grant added his quota.
‘When Haydock went off this morning, our people took charge at Smugglers’ Rest. We nabbed the boat this evening.’
‘And now, Tuppence,’ said Tommy. ‘Your story.’
‘Well, to begin with, I’ve been the most frightful fool all along! I suspected everybody here except Mrs Sprot! I did once have a terrible feeling of menace, as though I was in danger–that was after I overheard the telephone message about the fourth of the month. There were three people there at the time–I put down my feeling of apprehension to either Mrs Perenna or Mrs O’Rourke. Quite wrong–it was the colourless Mrs Sprot who was the really dangerous personality.
‘I went muddling on, as Tommy knows, until after he disappeared. Then I was just cooking up a plan with Albert when suddenly, out of the blue, Anthony Marsdon turned up. It seemed all right to begin with–the usual sort of young man that Deb often has in tow. But two things made me think a bit. First I became more and more sure as I talked to him that I hadn’t seen him before and that he never had been to the flat. The second was that, though he seemed to know all about my working at Leahampton, he assumed that Tommy was in Scotland. Now, that seemed all wrong. If he knew about anyone, it would be Tommy he knew about, since I was more or less unofficial. That struck me as very odd.
‘Mr Grant had told me that Fifth Columnists were everywhere–in the most unlikely places. So why shouldn’t one of them be working in Deborah’s show? I wasn’t convinced, but I was suspicious enough to lay a trap for him. I told him that Tommy and I had fixed up a code for communicating with each other. Our real one, of course, was a Bonzo postcard, but I told Anthony a fairy tale about the Penny plain, tuppence coloured saying.
‘As I hoped, he rose to it beautifully! I got a letter this morning which gave him away completely.
‘The arrangements had been all worked out beforehand. All I had to do was to ring up a tailor and cancel a fitting. That was an intimation that the fish had risen.’
‘Coo-er!’ said Albert. ‘It didn’t half give me a turn. I drove up with a baker’s van and we dumped a pool of stuff just outside the gate. Aniseed, it was–or smelt like it.’
‘And then–’ Tuppence took up the tale. ‘I came out and walked in it. Of course it was easy for the baker’s van to follow me to the station and someone came up behind me and heard me book to Yarrow. It was after that that it might have been difficult.’
‘The dogs followed the scent well,’ said Mr Grant. ‘They picked it up at Yarrow station and again on the track the tyre had made after you rubbed your shoe on it. It led us down to the copse and up again to the stone cross and after you where you had walked over the downs. The enemy had no idea we could follow you easily after they themselves had seen you start and driven off themselves.’
‘All the same,’ said Albert, ‘it gave me a turn. Knowing you were in that house and not knowing what might come to you. Got in a back window, we did, and nabbed the foreign woman as she came down the stairs. Come in just in the nick of time, we did.’
‘I knew you’d come,’ said Tuppence. ‘The thing was for me to spin things out as long as I could. I’d have pretended to tell if I hadn’t seen the door opening. What was really exciting was the way I suddenly saw the whole thing and what a fool I’d been.’
‘How did you see it?’ asked Tommy.
‘Goosey, goosey, gander,’ said Tuppence promptly. ‘When I said that to Commander Haydock he went absolutely livid. And not just because it was silly and rude. No, I saw at once that it meant something to him. And then there was the expression on that woman’s face–Anna–it was like the Polish woman’s, and then, of course, I thought of Solomon and I saw the whole thing.’
Tommy gave a sigh of