Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [72]
Moving warily, like a much-hunted animal, Mr Parker Pyne retreated into the hotel. Not half an hour before he had been invited to sign his name in the book lying on the desk. There it was–a neat signature–C. Parker Pyne, London.
A few lines above Mr Parker Pyne noticed the entries: Mrs R. Chester, Mr Basil Chester–Holm Park, Devon.
Seizing a pen, Mr Parker Pyne wrote rapidly over his signature. It now read (with difficulty) Christopher Pyne.
If Mrs R. Chester was unhappy in Pollensa Bay, it was not going to be made easy for her to consult Mr Parker Pyne.
Already it had been a source of abiding wonder to that gentleman that so many people he had come across abroad should know his name and have noted his advertisements. In England many thousands of people read the Times every day and could have answered quite truthfully that they had never heard such a name in their lives. Abroad, he reflected, they read their newspapers more thoroughly. No item, not even the advertisement columns, escaped them.
Already his holidays had been interrupted on several occasions. He had dealt with a whole series of problems from murder to attempted blackmail. He was determined in Majorca to have peace. He felt instinctively that a distressed mother might trouble that peace considerably.
Mr Parker Pyne settled down at the Pino d’Oro very happily. There was a larger hotel not far off, the Mariposa, where a good many English people stayed. There was also quite an artist colony living all round. You could walk along by the sea to the fishing village where there was a cocktail bar where people met–there were a few shops. It was all very peaceful and pleasant. Girls strolled about in trousers with brightly coloured handkerchiefs tied round the upper halves of their bodies. Young men in berets with rather long hair held forth in ‘Mac’s Bar’ on such subjects as plastic values and abstraction in art.
On the day after Mr Parker Pyne’s arrival, Mrs Chester made a few conventional remarks to him on the subject of the view and the likelihood of the weather keeping fine. She then chatted a little with the German lady about knitting, and had a few pleasant words about the sadness of the political situation with two Danish gentlemen who spent their time rising at dawn and walking for eleven hours.
Mr Parker Pyne found Basil Chester a most likeable young man. He called Mr Parker Pyne ‘sir’ and listened most politely to anything the older man said. Sometimes the three English people had coffee together after dinner in the evening. After the third day, Basil left the party after ten minutes or so and Mr Parker Pyne was left tête-à-tête with Mrs Chester.
They talked about flowers and the growing of them, of the lamentable state of the English pound and of how expensive France had become, and of the difficulty of getting good afternoon tea.
Every evening when her son departed, Mr Parker Pyne saw the quickly concealed tremor of her lips, but immediately she recovered and discoursed pleasantly on the above-mentioned subjects.
Little by little she began to talk of Basil–of how well he had done at school–‘he was in the First XI, you know’–of how everyone liked him, of how proud his father would have been of the boy had he lived, of how thankful she had been that Basil had never been ‘wild’. ‘Of course I always urge him to be with young people, but he really seems to prefer being with me.’
She said it with a kind of nice modest pleasure in the fact.
But for once Mr Parker Pyne did not make the usual tactful response he could usually achieve so easily. He said instead:
‘Oh! well, there seem to be plenty of young people here–not in the hotel, but round about.’
At that, he noticed, Mrs Chester stiffened. She said: Of course there were a lot of artists.