Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [63]
‘The point is really, will you enjoy yourself? Well, I think you will. When you get tired, by the way, when doing anything, stop doing it.’
‘I shall still drink glasses of water if the water tastes of rotten eggs. Not because I like them or because frankly I think they do me any good. But it has a sort of mortifying feeling. It’s like old women in our village always used to be. They always wanted a nice, strong medicine either coloured black or purple or deep pink, heavily flavoured with peppermint. They thought that did much more good than a nice little pill or a bottle that only appeared to be full of ordinary water without any exotic colouring.’
‘You know too much about human nature,’ said Dr Donaldson.
‘You’re very nice to me,’ said Lady Matilda. ‘I appreciate it. Amy!’
‘Yes, Lady Matilda?’
‘Get me an atlas, will you. I’ve lost track of Bavaria and the countries round it.’
‘Let me see now. An atlas. There’ll be one in the library, I suppose. There must be some old atlases about, dating back to about 1920 or thereabouts, I suppose.’
‘I wondered if we had anything a little more modern.’
‘Atlas,’ said Amy, deep in reflection.
‘If not, you can buy one and bring it along tomorrow morning. It’s going to be very difficult because all the names are different, the countries are different, and I shan’t know where I am. But you’ll have to help me with that. Find a big magnifying glass, will you? I have an idea I was reading in bed with one the other day and it probably slipped down between the bed and the wall.’
Her requirements took a little time to satisfy but the atlas, the magnifying glass and an older atlas by which to check, were finally produced and Amy, nice woman that she was, Lady Matilda thought, was extremely helpful.
‘Yes, here it is. It still seems to be called Monbrügge or something like that. It’s either in the Tyrol or Bavaria. Everything seems to have changed places and got different names–’
II
Lady Matilda looked around her bedroom in the Gasthaus. It was well appointed. It was very expensive. It combined comfort with an appearance of such austerity as might lead the inhabitant to identify herself with an ascetic course of exercises, diet and possibly painful courses of massage. Its furnishings, she thought, were interesting. They provided for all tastes. There was a large framed Gothic script on the wall. Lady Matilda’s German was not as good as it had been in her girlhood, but it dealt, she thought, with the golden and enchanting idea of a return to youth. Not only did youth hold the future in its hands but the old were being nicely indoctrinated to feel that they themselves might know such a second golden flowering.
Here there were gentle aids so as to enable one to pursue the doctrine of any of the many paths in life which attracted different classes of people. (Always presuming that they had enough money to pay for it.) Beside the bed was a Gideon Bible such as Lady Matilda when travelling in the United States had often found by her bedside. She picked it up approvingly, opened it at random and dropped a finger on one particular verse. She read it, nodding her head contentedly and made a brief note of it on a note pad that was lying on her bed table. She had often done that in the course of her life–it was her way of obtaining divine guidance at short notice.
I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.
She made further researches of the room. Handily placed but not too apparent was an Almanach de Gotha, modestly situated on a lower shelf on the bedside table. A most invaluable book for those who wished to familiarize themselves with the higher strata of society reaching back for several hundred years and which were still being observed and noted and checked by those