Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [67]
‘It is getting late,’ she said. ‘My son has not returned yet.’
The pleasant little man beamed at her. ‘True. Monsieur dismissed the mules. He wished to return on foot. He should have been here by now, but doubtless he has lingered on the way.’ He smiled happily.
‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Peters abruptly, ‘have you any bad characters in the neighbourhood?’
Bad characters was a term not embraced by the little man’s knowledge of English. Mrs Peters made her meaning plainer. She received in reply an assurance that all around Delphi were very good, very quiet people–all well disposed towards foreigners.
Words trembled on her lips, but she forced them back. That sinister threat tied her tongue. It might be the merest bluff. But suppose it wasn’t? A friend of hers in America had had a child kidnapped, and on her informing the police, the child had been killed. Such things did happen.
She was nearly frantic. What was she to do? Ten thousand pounds–what was that?–between forty or fifty thousand dollars! What was that to her in comparison with Willard’s safety? But how could she obtain such a sum? There were endless difficulties just now as regarded money and the drawing of cash. A letter of credit for a few hundred pounds was all she had with her.
Would the bandits understand this? Would they be reasonable? Would they wait?
When her maid came to her, she dismissed the girl fiercely. A bell sounded for dinner, and the poor lady was driven to the dining-room. She ate mechanically. She saw no one. The room might have been empty as far as she was concerned.
With the arrival of fruit, a note was placed before her. She winced, but the handwriting was entirely different from that which she had feared to see–a neat, clerkly English hand. She opened it without much interest, but she found its contents intriguing:
At Delphi you can no longer consult the oracle (so it ran), but you can consult Mr Parker Pyne.
Below that there was a cutting of an advertisement pinned to the paper, and at the bottom of the sheet a passport photograph was attached. It was the photograph of her bald-headed friend of the morning.
Mrs Peters read the printed cutting twice.
Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne.
Happy? Happy? Had anyone ever been so unhappy? It was like an answer to prayer.
Hastily she scribbled on a loose sheet of paper she happened to have in her bag:
Please help me. Will you meet me outside the hotel in ten minutes?
She enclosed it in an envelope and directed the waiter to take it to the gentleman at the table by the window. Ten minutes later, enveloped in a fur coat, for the night was chilly, Mrs Peters went out of the hotel and strolled slowly along the road to the ruins. Mr Parker Pyne was waiting for her.
‘It’s just the mercy of heaven you’re here,’ said Mrs Peters breathlessly. ‘But how did you guess the terrible trouble I’m in. That’s what I want to know.’
‘The human countenance, my dear madam,’ said Mr Parker Pyne gently. ‘I knew at once that something had happened, but what it is I am waiting for you to tell me.’
Out it came in a flood. She handed him the letter, which he read by the light of his pocket torch.
‘H’m,’ he said. ‘A remarkable document. A most remarkable document. It has certain points–’
But Mrs Peters was in no mood to listen to a discussion of the finer points of the letter. What was she to do about Willard? Her own dear, delicate Willard.
Mr Parker Pyne was soothing. He painted an attractive picture of Greek bandit life. They would be especially careful of their captive, since he represented a potential gold mine. Gradually he calmed her down.
‘But what am I to do?’ wailed Mrs Peters.
‘Wait until tomorrow,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘That is, unless you prefer to go straight to the police.’
Mrs Peters interrupted him with a shriek of terror. Her darling Willard would be murdered out of hand!
‘You think I’ll get Willard back safe and sound?’
‘There is no doubt of that,