Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [54]
Muriel King hung back. ‘They’ll never believe me,’ she said nervously. ‘Her family and all. They wouldn’t believe she could act the way she did.’
‘Leave it to me,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘I know something of the family history, you see. Come, child, don’t go on playing the coward. Remember, there’s a young man sighing his heart out. We had better arrange that it is in his plane you fly to Baghdad.’
The girl smiled and blushed. ‘I’m ready,’ she said simply. Then, as she moved towards the door, she turned back. ‘You said you knew I was not Lady Esther Carr before you saw me. How could you possibly tell that?’
‘Statistics,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.
‘Statistics?’
‘Yes. Both Lord and Lady Micheldever had blue eyes. When the consul mentioned that their daughter had flashing dark eyes I knew there was something wrong. Brown-eyed people may produce a blue-eyed child, but not the other way about. A scientific fact, I assure you.’
‘I think you’re wonderful!’ said Muriel King.
The Pearl of Price
I
The party had had a long and tiring day. They had started from Amman early in the morning with a temperature of ninety-eight in the shade, and had come at last just as it was growing dark into the camp situated in the heart of that city of fantastic and preposterous red rock which is Petra.
There were seven of them, Mr Caleb P. Blundell, that stout and prosperous American magnate. His dark and good-looking, if somewhat taciturn, secretary, Jim Hurst. Sir Donald Marvel, M.P., a tired-looking English politician. Doctor Carver, a world-renowned elderly archaeologist. A gallant Frenchman, Colonel Dubosc, on leave from Syria. A Mr Parker Pyne, not perhaps so plainly labelled with his profession, but breathing an atmosphere of British solidity. And lastly, there was Miss Carol Blundell–pretty, spoiled, and extremely sure of herself as the only woman among half a dozen men.
They dined in the big tent, having selected their tents or caves for sleeping in. They talked of politics in the Near East–the Englishman cautiously, the Frenchman discreetly, the American somewhat fatuously, and the archaeologist and Mr Parker Pyne not at all. Both of them, it seemed, preferred the rôle of listeners. So also did Jim Hurst.
Then they talked of the city they had come to visit.
‘It’s just too romantic for words,’ said Carol. ‘To think of those–what do you call ’em–Nabataeans living here all that while ago, almost before time began!’
‘Hardly that,’ said Mr Parker Pyne mildly. ‘Eh, Doctor Carver?’
‘Oh, that’s an affair of a mere two thousand years back, and if racketeers are romantic, then I suppose the Nabataeans are too. They were a pack of wealthy blackguards, I should say, who compelled travellers to use their own caravan routes, and saw to it that all other routes were unsafe. Petra was the storehouse of their racketeering profits.’
‘You think they were just robbers?’ asked Carol. ‘Just common thieves?’
‘Thieves is a less romantic word, Miss Blundell. A thief suggests a pretty pilferer. A robber suggests a larger canvas.’
‘What about a modern financier?’ suggested Mr Parker Pyne with a twinkle.
‘That’s one for you, Pop!’ said Carol.
‘A man who makes money benefits mankind,’ said Mr Blundell sententiously.
‘Mankind,’ murmured Mr Parker Pyne, ‘is so ungrateful.’
‘What is honesty?’ demanded the Frenchman. ‘It is a nuance, a convention. In different countries it means different things. An Arab is not ashamed of stealing. He is not ashamed of lying. With him it is from whom he steals or to whom he lies that matters.’
‘That is the point of view–yes,’ agreed Carver.
‘Which shows the superiority of the West over the East,’ said Blundell. ‘When these poor creatures get education–’
Sir Donald entered languidly into the conversation. ‘Education is rather rot, you know. Teaches fellows a lot of useless things. And what I mean is, nothing alters what you are.’
‘You mean?’
‘Well, what I mean to say is, for instance, once a thief, always a thief.’
There was a dead silence for a moment. Then Carol began talking feverishly