N or M_ - Agatha Christie [74]
‘Tuppence, if you say that once again, I’ll shoot you myself. Saw all what? And what on earth has Solomon got to do with it?’
‘Do you remember that two women came to Solomon with a baby and both said it was hers, but Solomon said, “Very well, cut it in two.” And the false mother said, “All right.” But the real mother said, “No, let the other woman have it.” You see, she couldn’t face her child being killed. Well, that night that Mrs Sprot shot the other woman, you all said what a miracle it was and how easily she might have shot the child. Of course, it ought to have been quite plain then! If it had been her child, she couldn’t have risked that shot for a minute. It meant that Betty wasn’t her child. And that’s why she absolutely had to shoot the other woman.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, of course, the other woman was the child’s real mother.’ Tuppence’s voice shook a little.
‘Poor thing–poor hunted thing. She came over a penniless refugee and gratefully agreed to let Mrs Sprot adopt her baby.’
‘Why did Mrs Sprot want to adopt the child?’
‘Camouflage! Supreme psychological camouflage. You just can’t conceive of a master spy dragging her kid into the business. That’s the main reason why I never considered Mrs Sprot seriously. Simply because of the child. But Betty’s real mother had a terrible hankering for her baby and she found out Mrs Sprot’s address and came down here. She hung about waiting for her chance, and at last she got it and went off with the child.
‘Mrs Sprot, of course, was frantic. At all costs she didn’t want the police. So she wrote that message and pretended she found it in her bedroom, and roped in Commander Haydock to help. Then, when we’d tracked down the wretched woman, she was taking no chances, and shot her…Far from not knowing anything about firearms, she was a very fine shot! Yes, she killed that wretched woman–and because of that I’ve no pity for her. She was bad through and through.’
Tuppence paused, then she went on:
‘Another thing that ought to have given me a hint was the likeness between Vanda Polonska and Betty. It was Betty the woman reminded me of all along. And then the child’s absurd play with my shoelaces. How much more likely that she’d seen her so-called mother do that–not Carl von Deinim! But as soon as Mrs Sprot saw what the child was doing, she planted a lot of evidence in Carl’s room for us to find and added the master touch of a shoelace dipped in secret ink.’
‘I’m glad that Carl wasn’t in it,’ said Tommy. ‘I liked him.’
‘He’s not been shot, has he?’ asked Tuppence anxiously, noting the past tense.
Mr Grant shook his head.
‘He’s all right,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve got a little surprise for you there.’
Tuppence’s face lit up as she said:
‘I’m terribly glad–for Sheila’s sake! Of course we were idiots to go on barking up the wrong tree after Mrs Perenna.’
‘She was mixed up in some IRA activities, nothing more,’ said Mr Grant.
‘I suspected Mrs O’Rourke a little–and sometimes the Cayleys–’
‘And I suspected Bletchley,’ put in Tommy.
‘And all the time,’ said Tuppence, ‘it was that milk and water creature we just thought of as–Betty’s mother.’
‘Hardly milk and water,’ said Mr Grant. ‘A very dangerous woman and a very clever actress. And, I’m sorry to say, English by birth.’
Tuppence said:
‘Then I’ve no pity or admiration for her–it wasn’t even her country she was working for.’ She looked with fresh curiosity at Mr Grant. ‘You found what you wanted?’
Mr Grant nodded.
‘It was all in that battered set of duplicate children’s books.’
‘The ones that Betty said were “nasty”,’ Tuppence exclaimed.
‘They were nasty,’ said Mr Grant dryly. ‘Little Jack Horner contained very full details of our naval dispositions. Johnny Head in Air did the same for the Air Force. Military matters were appropriately embodied in: There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun.’
‘And Goosey, Goosey, Gander?’ asked Tuppence.
Mr Grant said:
‘Treated with the appropriate reagent, that book contains written in invisible ink a full list of all prominent personages who are pledged