Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [44]
‘You seem to know everything,’ said Tommy. ‘I beg your pardon. Perhaps that’s rather rude of me. But it really is very exciting to come across someone who does seem to know about everything.’
‘Well, I’ve often had a finger in the pie, as you might say. You know, come into things on the side-lines, or in the background. One hears a good deal. One hears a good deal from one’s old cronies too, who were in it up to the neck and who knew the lot. I expect you begin to find that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s quite true. I meet old friends, you know, and they’ve seen other old friends and there’re quite a lot of things that, well, one’s friends knew and you knew. You didn’t get together just then but now you do hear about them and they’re very interesting sometimes.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘I see where you’re going–where you’re tending, you might say. It’s interesting that you should come across this.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Tommy, ‘that I don’t really know–I mean, perhaps we’re being rather silly. I mean, we bought this house to live in, the sort of house we wanted. We’ve done it up the way we want and we’re trying to get the garden in some kind of shape. But I mean, I don’t want to get tied up in this sort of stuff again. It’s just pure curiosity on our part. Something that happened long ago and you can’t help thinking about it or wanting to know why. But there’s no point in it. It’s not going to do anybody any good.’
‘I know. You just want to know. Well, that’s the way the human being is made. That’s what leads us to explore things, to go and fly to the moon, to bother about underwater discoveries, to find natural gas in the North Sea, to find oxygen supplied to us by the sea and not by the trees and forests. Quite a lot of things they’re always finding out about. Just through curiosity. I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. Goes to sleep all the winter and doesn’t eat anything more than grass as far as I know, to live all the summer. Not an interesting life perhaps, but a very peaceful one. On the other hand–’
‘On the other hand one might say man is more like a mongoose.’
‘Good. You’re a reader of Kipling. I’m so glad. Kipling’s not appreciated as much as he should be nowadays. He was a wonderful chap. A wonderful person to read nowadays. His short stories, amazingly good, they are. I don’t think it’s ever been realized enough.’
‘I don’t want to make a fool of myself,’ said Tommy. ‘I don’t want to mix myself up with a lot of things which have nothing to do with me. Not anything to do with anybody nowadays, I should say.’
‘That you never know,’ said Mr Robinson.
‘I mean, really,’ said Tommy, who was now completely swamped in a cloud of guilt for having disturbed a very important man, ‘I mean, I’m not just trying to find out things.’
‘Got to try and find out things just to satisfy your wife, I suppose. Yes, I’ve heard of her. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her, I don’t think. Rather wonderful person, isn’t she?’
‘I think so,’ said Tommy.
‘That’s good hearing. I like people who stick together and enjoy their marriage and go on enjoying it.’
‘Really, I’m like the tortoise, I suppose. I mean, there we are. We’re old and we’re tired, and although we’ve got very good health for our age, we don’t want to be mixed up in anything nowadays. We’re not trying to butt into anything. We just–’
‘I know. I know,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘Don’t keep apologizing for it. You want to know. Like the mongoose, you want to know. And Mrs Beresford, she wants to know. Moreover, I should say from all I’ve heard of her and been told of her, I should say she will get to know somehow.’
‘You think she’s more likely to do it than I am?’
‘Well, I don’t think perhaps you’re quite as keen on finding out things as she is, but I think you’re just as likely to get on to it because I