Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [32]
‘Ah yes. I was talking to him at the dinner table. I hadn’t met him before.’
‘He is said to be very important,’ said Milly Jean. ‘He’s the President of PBF as you know.’
‘One should know all those things,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘PBF and DCV. LYH. And all the world of initials.’
‘Hateful,’ said Milly Jean. ‘Hateful. All these initials, no personalities, no people any more. Just initials. What a hateful world! That’s what I sometimes think. What a hateful world. I want it to be different, quite, quite different–’
Did she mean that? He thought for one moment that perhaps she did. Interesting…
II
Grosvenor Square was quietness itself. There were traces of broken glass still on the pavements. There were even eggs, squashed tomatoes and fragments of gleaming metal. But above, the stars were peaceful. Car after car drove up to the Embassy door to collect the home-going guests. The police were there in the corners of the square but without ostentation. Everything was under control. One of the political guests leaving spoke to one of the police officers. He came back and murmured, ‘Not too many arrests. Eight. They’ll be up at Bow Street in the morning. More or less the usual lot. Petronella was here, of course, and Stephen and his crowd. Ah well. One would think they’d get tired of it one of these days.’
‘You live not very far from here, don’t you?’ said a voice in Sir Stafford Nye’s ear. A deep contralto voice. ‘I can drop you on my way.’
‘No, no. I can walk perfectly. It’s only ten minutes or so.’
‘It will be no trouble to me, I assure you,’ said the Countess Zerkowski. She added, ‘I’m staying at the St James’s Tower.’
The St James’s Tower was one of the newer hotels.
‘You are very kind.’
It was a big, expensive-looking hire car that waited. The chauffeur opened the door, the Countess Renata got in and Sir Stafford Nye followed her. It was she who gave Sir Stafford Nye’s address to the chauffeur. The car drove off.
‘So you know where I live?’ he said.
‘Why not?’
He wondered just what that answer meant: Why not?
‘Why not indeed,’ he said. ‘You know so much, don’t you?’ He added, ‘It was kind of you to return my passport.’
‘I thought it might save certain inconveniences. It might be simpler if you burnt it. You’ve been issued with a new one, I presume–’
‘You presume correctly.’
‘Your bandit’s cloak you will find in the bottom drawer of your tallboy. It was put there tonight. I believed that perhaps to purchase another one would not satisfy you, and indeed that to find one similar might not be possible.’
‘It will mean more to me now that it has been through certain–adventures,’ said Stafford Nye. He added, ‘It has served its purpose.’
The car purred through the night.
The Countess Zerkowski said:
‘Yes. It has served its purpose since I am here–alive…’
Sir Stafford Nye said nothing. He was assuming, rightly or not, that she wanted him to ask questions, to press her, to know more of what she had been doing, of what fate she had escaped. She wanted him to display curiosity, but Sir Stafford Nye was not going to display curiosity. He rather enjoyed not doing so. He heard her laugh very gently. Yet he fancied, rather surprisingly, that it was a pleased laugh, a laugh of satisfaction, not of stalemate.
‘Did you enjoy your evening?’ she said.
‘A good party, I think, but Milly Jean always gives good parties.’
‘You know her well then?’
‘I knew her when she was a girl in New York before she married. A pocket Venus.’
She looked at him in faint surprise.
‘Is that your term for her?’
‘Actually,