Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [60]
‘I should forget it,’ said Tommy. ‘None of them sounds right.’
‘I shall go and see that photographer man this afternoon, I think. Want to come?’
‘No,’ said Tommy. ‘I think I shall god own and bathe.’
‘Bathe? It’ll be awfully cold.’
‘Never mind. I feel I need something cold, bracing and refreshing to remove all the taste of cobwebs, the various remains of which seem to be clinging round my ears and round my neck and some even seem to have got between my toes.’
‘This does seem a very dirty job,’ said Tuppence. ‘Well, I’ll go and see Mr Durrell or Durrance, if that’s his name. There was another letter, Tommy, which you haven’t opened.’
‘Oh, I didn’t see it. Ah well, that might be something.’
‘Who is it from?’
‘My researcher,’ said Tommy, in a rather grand voice. ‘The one who has been running about England, in and out of Somerset House looking up deaths, marriages and births, consulting newspaper files and census returns. She’s very good.’
‘Good and beautiful?’
‘Not beautiful so that you’d notice it,’ said Tommy.
‘I’m glad of that,’ said Tuppence. ‘You know, Tommy, now that you’re getting on in years you might–you might get some rather dangerous ideas about a beautiful helper.’
‘You don’t appreciate a faithful husband when you’ve got one,’ said Tommy.
‘All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,’ said Tuppence.
‘You have the wrong kind of friends,’ said Tommy.
Chapter 5
Interview with Colonel Pikeaway
Tommy drove through Regent’s Park, then he passed through various roads he’d not been through for years. Once when he and Tuppence had had a flat near Belsize Park, he remembered walks on Hampstead Heath and a dog they had had who’d enjoyed the walks. A dog with a particularly self-willed nature. When coming out of the flat he had always wished to turn to the left on the road that would lead to Hampstead Heath. The efforts of Tuppence or Tommy to make him turn to the right and go into shopping quarters were usually defeated. James, a Sealyham of obstinate nature, had allowed his heavy sausage-like body to rest flat on the pavement, he would produce a tongue from his mouth and give every semblance of being a dog tired out by being given the wrong kind of exercise by those who owned him. People passing by usually could not refrain from comment.
‘Oh, look at that dear little dog there. You know, the one with the white hair–looks rather like a sausage, doesn’t he? And panting, poor fellow. Those people of his, they won’t let him go the way he wants to, he looks tired out, just tired out.’
Tommy had taken the lead from Tuppence and had pulled James firmly in the opposite direction from the one he wanted to go.
‘Oh dear,’ said Tuppence, ‘can’t you pick him up, Tommy?’
‘What, pick up James? He’s too much of a weight.’
James, with a clever manoeuvre, turned his sausage body so that he was facing once more in the direction of his expectation.
‘Look, poor little doggie, I expect he wants to go home, don’t you?’
James tugged firmly on his lead.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Tuppence, ‘we’ll shop later. Come on, we’ll have to let James go where he wants to go. He’s such a heavy dog, you can’t make him do anything else.’
James looked up and wagged his tail. ‘I quite agree with you,’ the wag seemed to say. ‘You’ve got the point at last. Come on. Hampstead Heath it is.’ And it usually had been.
Tommy wondered. He’d got the address of the place where he was going. The last time he had been to see Colonel Pikeaway it had been in Bloomsbury. A small poky room full of smoke. Here, when he reached the address, it was a small, nondescript house fronting on the heath not far from the birthplace of Keats. It did not look particularly artistic or interesting.
Tommy rang a bell. An old woman with a close resemblance to what Tommy imagined a witch might look like, with a sharp nose and a sharp chin which almost met each other, stood there, looking hostile.
‘Can I see Colonel Pikeaway?’
‘Don’t know I’m sure,’ said the witch. ‘Who would you be now?