Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [57]
Dubosc and Hurst began searching about.
‘It must be just here,’ said the Frenchman. ‘It can’t have rolled away, because there is nowhere for it to roll to. The place is like a square box.’
‘It can’t have rolled into a crack?’ queried Carol.
‘There’s not a crack anywhere,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘You can see for yourself. The place is perfectly smooth. Ah, you have found something, Colonel?’
‘Only a little pebble,’ said Dubosc, smiling and throwing it away.
Gradually a different spirit–a spirit of tension–came over the search. They were not said aloud, but the words ‘eighty thousand dollars’ were present in everybody’s mind.
‘You are sure you had it, Carol?’ snapped her father. ‘I mean, perhaps you dropped it on the way up.’
‘I had it just as we stepped on to the plateau here,’ said Carol. ‘I know, because Doctor Carver pointed out to me that it was loose and he screwed it up for me. That’s so, isn’t it, Doctor?’
Doctor Carver assented. It was Sir Donald who voiced the thoughts in everybody’s mind.
‘This is a rather unpleasant business, Mr Blundell,’ he said. ‘You were telling us last night what the value of these earrings is. One of them alone is worth a small fortune. If this earring is not found, and it does not look as though it will be found, every one of us will be under a certain suspicion.’
‘And for one, I ask to be searched,’ broke in Colonel Dubosc. ‘I do not ask, I demand it as a right!’
‘You search me too,’ said Hurst. His voice sounded harsh.
‘What does everyone else feel?’ asked Sir Donald, looking around.
‘Certainly,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.
‘An excellent idea,’ said Doctor Carver.
‘I’ll be in on this too, gentlemen,’ said Mr Blundell. ‘I’ve got my reasons, though I don’t want to stress them.’
‘Just as you like, of course, Mr Blundell,’ said Sir Donald courteously.
‘Carol, my dear, will you go down and wait with the guides?’
Without a word the girl left them. Her face was set and grim. There was a despairing look upon it that caught the attention of one member of the party, at least. He wondered just what it meant.
The search proceeded. It was drastic and thorough–and completely unsatisfactory. One thing was certain. No one was carrying the earring on his person. It was a subdued little troop that negotiated the descent and listened half-heartedly to the guide’s descriptions and information.
Mr Parker Pyne had just finished dressing for lunch when a figure appeared at the door of his tent.
‘Mr Pyne, may I come in?’
‘Certainly, my dear young lady, certainly.’
Carol came in and sat down on the bed. Her face had the same grim look upon it that he had noticed earlier in the day.
‘You pretend to straighten out things for people when they are unhappy, don’t you?’ she demanded.
‘I am on holiday, Miss Blundell. I am not taking any cases.’
‘Well, you’re going to take this one,’ said the girl calmly. ‘Look here, Mr Pyne, I’m just as wretched as anyone could well be.’
‘What is troubling you?’ he asked. ‘Is it the business of the earring?’
‘That’s just it. You’ve said enough. Jim Hurst didn’t take it, Mr Pyne. I know he didn’t.’
‘I don’t quite follow you, Miss Blundell. Why should anyone assume he had?’
‘Because of his record. Jim Hurst was once a thief, Mr Pyne. He was caught in our house. I–I was sorry for him. He looked so young and desperate–’
‘And so good-looking,’ thought Mr Parker Pyne.
‘I persuaded Pop to give him a chance to make good. My father will do anything for me. Well, he gave Jim his chance and Jim has made good. Father’s come to rely on him and to trust him with all his business secrets. And in the end he’ll come around altogether, or would have if this hadn’t happened.’
‘When you say “come around”–?’
‘I mean that I want to marry Jim and he wants to marry me.’
‘And Sir Donald?’
‘Sir Donald is Father’s idea. He’s not mine. Do you think I want to marry a stuffed fish like Sir Donald?’
Without expressing any views as to this description of the young Englishman, Mr Parker Pyne asked: ‘And Sir Donald himself?’
‘I dare say he thinks