Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [59]
‘What you said last night came into my mind–about a suggestible witness. I thought the girl was that type. As we reached the summit I told her her earring was loose. I pretended to tighten it. What I really did was to press the point of a small pencil into her ear. A few minutes later I dropped a little pebble. She was quite ready to swear then that the earring had been in her ear and had just dropped off. In the meantime I pressed the pearl into a lump of Plasticine in my pocket. That’s my story. Not a very edifying one. Now for your turn.’
‘There isn’t much of my story,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘You were the only man who’d picked up things from the ground–that’s what made me think of you. And finding that little pebble was significant. It suggested the trick you’d played. And then–’
‘Go on,’ said Carver.
‘Well, you see, you’d talked about honesty a little too vehemently last night. Protesting overmuch–well, you know what Shakespeare says. It looked, somehow, as though you were trying to convince yourself. And you were a little too scornful about money.’
The face of the man in front of him looked lined and weary. ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said. ‘It’s all up with me now. You’ll give the girl back her geegaw, I suppose? Odd thing, the barbaric instinct for ornamentation. You find it going back as far as Palaeolithic times. One of the first instincts of the female sex.’
‘I think you misjudge Miss Carol,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘She has brains–and what is more, a heart. I think she will keep this business to herself.’
‘Father won’t, though,’ said the archaeologist.
‘I think he will. You see “Pop” has his own reasons for keeping quiet. There’s no forty-thousand-dollar touch about this earring. A mere fiver would cover its value.’
‘You mean–?’
‘Yes. The girl doesn’t know. She thinks they are genuine, all right. I had my suspicions last night. Mr Blundell talked a little too much about all the money he had. When things go wrong and you’re caught in the slump–well, the best thing to do is to put a good face on it and bluff. Mr Blundell was bluffing.’
Suddenly Doctor Carver grinned. It was an engaging small-boy grin, strange to see on the face of an elderly man.
‘Then we’re all poor devils together,’ he said.
‘Exactly,’ said Mr Parker Pyne and quoted, ‘“A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.”’
Death on the Nile
I
Lady Grayle was nervous. From the moment of coming on board the S.S. Fayoum she complained of everything. She did not like her cabin. She could bear the morning sun, but not the afternoon sun. Pamela Grayle, her niece, obligingly gave up her cabin on the other side. Lady Grayle accepted it grudgingly.
She snapped at Miss MacNaughton, her nurse, for having given her the wrong scarf and for having packed her little pillow instead of leaving it out. She snapped at her husband, Sir George, for having just bought her the wrong string of beads. It was lapis she wanted, not carnelian. George was a fool!
Sir George said anxiously, ‘Sorry, me dear, sorry. I’ll go back and change ’em. Plenty of time.’
She did not snap at Basil West, her husband’s private secretary, because nobody ever snapped at Basil. His smile disarmed you before you began.
But the worst of it fell assuredly to the dragoman–an imposing and richly dressed personage whom nothing could disturb.
When Lady Grayle caught sight of a stranger in a basket chair and realized that he was a fellow passenger, the vials of her wrath were poured out like water.
‘They told me distinctly at the office that we were the only passengers! It was the end of the season and there was no one else going!’
‘That right lady,’ said Mohammed calmly. ‘Just you and party and one gentleman, that’s all.’
‘But I was told that there would be only ourselves.’
‘That quite right, lady.’
‘It’s not all right! It was a lie! What is that man doing here?’
‘He come later, lady. After you take tickets. He only decide to come this morning.’
‘It’s an absolute swindle!