Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [48]
‘Then comes the discovery of the body. You give your verdict. But it does not go as easily as you thought. Doubts are raised. You fall back on a second line of defence. Williamson repeats the conversation he has overheard Smethurst having with you. It is taken to refer to Hensley and you add a damaging little invention of your own about a leakage in Hensley’s department. And then I make a final test. I mention the sand and the socks. You are holding a handful of sand. I send you to find the socks so that we may know the truth. But by that I did not mean what you thought I meant. I had already examined Hensley’s socks. There was no sand in either of them. You put it there.’
Mr Samuel Long lit a cigarette. ‘I give it up,’ he said. ‘My luck’s turned. Well, I had a good run while it lasted. They were getting hot on my trail when I reached Egypt. I came across Loftus. He was going to join up in Baghdad–and he knew none of them there. It was too good a chance to be missed. I bought him. It cost me twenty thousand pounds. What was that to me? Then, by cursed ill luck, I run into Smethurst–an ass if there ever was one! He was my fag at Eton. He had a bit of hero worship for me in those days. He didn’t like the idea of giving me away. I did my best and at last he promised to say nothing till we reached Baghdad. What chance should I have then? None at all. There was only one way–to eliminate him. But I can assure you I am not a murderer by nature. My talents lie in quite another direction.’
His face changed–contracted. He swayed and pitched forward.
O’Rourke bent over him.
‘Probably prussic acid–in the cigarette,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘The gambler has lost his last throw.’
He looked around him–at the wide desert. The sun beat down on him. Only yesterday they had left Damascus–by the Gate of Baghdad.
‘Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?’
The House at Shiraz
I
It was six in the morning when Mr Parker Pyne left for Persia after a stop in Baghdad.
The passenger space in the little monoplane was limited, and the small width of the seats was not such as to accommodate the bulk of Mr Parker Pyne with anything like comfort. There were two fellow travellers–a large, florid man whom Mr Parker Pyne judged to be of a talkative habit and a thin woman with pursed-up lips and a determined air.
‘At any rate,’ thought Mr Parker Pyne, ‘they don’t look as though they would want to consult me professionally.’
Nor did they. The little woman was an American missionary, full of hard work and happiness, and the florid man was employed by an oil company. They had given their fellow traveller a résumé of their lives before the plane started.
‘I am merely a tourist, I am afraid,’ Mr Parker Pyne had said deprecatingly. ‘I am going to Teheran and Ispahan and Shiraz.’
And the sheer music of the names enchanted him so much as he said them that he repeated them. Teheran. Ispahan. Shiraz.
Mr Parker Pyne looked out at the country below him. It was flat desert. He felt the mystery of these vast, unpopulated regions.
At Kermanshah the machine came down for passport examinations and customs. A bag of Mr Parker Pyne’s was opened. A certain small cardboard box was scrutinized with some excitement. Questions were asked. Since Mr Parker Pyne did not speak or understand Persian, the matter was difficult.
The pilot of the machine strolled up. He was a fair-haired young German, a fine-looking man, with deep-blue eyes and a weatherbeaten face. ‘Please?’ he inquired pleasantly.
Mr Parker Pyne, who had been indulging in some excellent realistic pantomime without, it seemed, much success, turned to him with relief. ‘It’s bug powder,’ he said. ‘Do you think you could explain it to them?’
The pilot looked puzzled. ‘Please?’
Mr Parker Pyne repeated his plea in German. The pilot grinned and translated