Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [34]
‘You slipped down in your chair,’ said Mrs Gardner. “Oh!” you says. “Oh!” just like that. And then: “I’m falling asleep,” you says in a dreamy voice. “I’m falling asleep.” And fall asleep you did, and we put you to bed and sent for the doctor, and here you’ve been ever since.’
‘I suppose,’ Mrs Rymer ventured, ‘there isn’t any way you could know who I am–apart from my face, I mean.’
‘Well, that’s a queer thing to say,’ said Mrs Gardner. ‘What is there to go by better than a person’s face, I’d like to know? There’s your birthmark, though, if that satisfies you better.’
‘A birthmark?’ said Mrs Rymer, brightening. She had no such thing.
‘Strawberry mark just under the right elbow,’ said Mrs Gardner. ‘Look for yourself, my dear.’
‘This will prove it,’ said Mrs Rymer to herself. She knew that she had no strawberry mark under the right elbow. She turned back the sleeve of her nightdress. The strawberry mark was there.
Mrs Rymer burst into tears.
IV
Four days later Mrs Rymer rose from her bed. She had thought out several plans of action and rejected them.
She might show the paragraph in the paper to Mrs Gardner and explain. Would they believe her? Mrs Rymer was sure they would not.
She might go to the police. Would they believe her? Again she thought not.
She might go to Mr Pyne’s office. That idea undoubtedly pleased her best. For one thing, she would like to tell that oily scoundrel what she thought of him. She was debarred from putting this plan into operation by a vital obstacle. She was at present in Cornwall (so she had learned), and she had no money for the journey to London. Two and fourpence in a worn purse seemed to represent her financial position.
And so, after four days, Mrs Rymer made a sporting decision. For the present she would accept things! She was Hannah Moorhouse. Very well, she would be Hannah Moorhouse. For the present she would accept that role, and later, when she had saved sufficient money, she would go to London and beard the swindler in his den.
And having thus decided, Mrs Rymer accepted her role with perfect good temper, even with a kind of sardonic amusement. History was repeating itself indeed. This life reminded her of her girlhood. How long ago that seemed!
V
The work was a bit hard after her years of soft living, but after the first week she found herself slipping into the ways of the farm.
Mrs Gardner was a good-tempered, kindly woman. Her husband, a big, taciturn man, was kindly also. The lank, shambling man of the photograph had gone; another farmhand came in his stead, a good-humoured giant of forty-five, slow of speech and thought, but with a shy twinkle in his blue eyes.
The weeks went by. At last the day came when Mrs Rymer had enough money to pay her fare to London. But she did not go. She put it off. Time enough, she thought. She wasn’t easy in her mind about asylums yet. That scoundrel, Parker Pyne, was clever. He’d get a doctor to say she was mad and she’d be clapped away out of sight with no one knowing anything about it.
‘Besides,’ said Mrs Rymer to herself, ‘a bit of a change does one good.’
She rose early and worked hard. Joe Welsh, the new farmhand, was ill that winter, and she and Mrs Gardner nursed him. The big man was pathetically dependent on them.
Spring came–lambing time; there were wild flowers in the hedges, a treacherous softness in the air. Joe Welsh gave Hannah a hand with her work. Hannah did Joe’s mending.
Sometimes, on Sundays, they went for a walk together. Joe was a widower. His wife had died four years before. Since her death he had, he frankly confessed it, taken a drop too much.
He didn’t go much to the Crown nowadays. He bought himself some new clothes. Mr and Mrs Gardner laughed.
Hannah made fun of Joe. She teased him about his clumsiness. Joe didn’t mind. He looked bashful but happy.
After spring came summer–a good summer that year. Everyone worked hard.
Harvest was over. The leaves were red and golden on the trees.
It was October eighth when Hannah looked up one day