Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [78]
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘yes. It sounded rather like that.’
The front door opened. Janet, by reason of her intellectual superiority, stood there first. Behind her was Clarence, and behind him was a tall boy with a squint who appeared to answer to the name of Bert.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Beresford,’ said Janet. ‘Everybody is so pleased that you are coming. I think perhaps you’d better take an umbrella, the weather forecast was not very good today.’
‘I’ve got to go that way anyway,’ said Albert, ‘so I’ll come with you a short part of it.’
Certainly, Tuppence thought, Albert was always very protective. Perhaps just as well, but she did not think that either Janet, Bert or Clarence was likely to be a danger to her. The walk took about twenty minutes. When the red building was reached they went through the gate, up to the door and were received by a stout woman of about seventy.
‘Ah, so we’ve got visitors. I’m so pleased you could come, my dear, so pleased.’ She patted Tuppence upon the shoulder. ‘Yes, Janet, thank you very much. Yes. This way. Yes. None of you need wait unless you like, you know.’
‘Oh I think the boys will be very disappointed if they didn’t wait to hear a little about what all this is about,’ said Janet.
‘Well, I think, you know, there are not so very many of us here. Perhaps it would be better for Mrs Beresford, not so worrying if there weren’t too many of us. I wonder, Janet, if you would just go into the kitchen and tell Mollie that we are quite ready for tea to be brought in now.’
Tuppence had not really come for tea, but she could hardly say so. Tea appeared rather rapidly. It was excessively weak, it was served with some biscuits and some sandwiches with a rather nasty type of paste in between them with an extra fishy taste. Then they sat around and seemed slightly at a loss.
An old man with a beard who looked to Tuppence as though he was about a hundred came and sat firmly by her.
‘I’d best have a word with you first, I think, my lady,’ he said, elevating Tuppence to the peerage. ‘Seeing as I’m about the oldest here and have heard more of the stories of the old days than anyone else. A lot of history about this place, you know. Oh, a lot of things has happened here, not that we can go into everything at once, can we? But we’ve all–oh, we’ve all heard something about the things that went on.’
‘I gather,’ said Tuppence, hastily rushing in before she could be introduced to some topic in which she had no interest whatever, ‘I understand that quite a lot of interesting things went on here, not so much in the last war, but in the war before that, or even earlier. Not that any of your memories would go back as far as that. But one wonders perhaps if you could have heard things, you know, from your elderly relations.’
‘Ah, that’s right,’ said the old man, ‘that’s right. Heard a lot, I did, from my Uncle Len. Yes, ah, he was a great chap, was Uncle Len. He knew about a lot of things. He knew what went on. It was like what went on down in the house on the quay before the last war. Yes, a bad show, that. What you call one of those fakists–’
‘Fascists,’ said one of the elderly ladies, a rather prim one with grey hair and a lace fichu rather the worse for wear round her neck.
‘Well, fascist if you like to say it that way, what does it matter? Ah yes, one of those he was. Yes. Same sort of thing as that chap in Italy. Mussolini or something, wasn’t it? Anyway, some sort of fishy name like that. Mussels or cockles. Oh yes, he did a lot of harm here. Had meetings, you know. All sorts of things like that. Someone called Mosley