Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [79]
‘But in the first war there was a girl called Mary Jordan, wasn’t there?’ said Tuppence, wondering if this was a wise thing to say or not.
‘Ah yes. Said to be quite a good-looker, you know. Yes. Got hold of secrets out of the sailors and the soldiers.’
A very old lady piped up in a thin voice.
‘He’s not in the Navy and he’s not in the Army,
But he’s just the man for me.
Not in the Navy, not in the Army, he’s in the
Royal Ar-till-er-rie!’
The old man took up his personal chant when she had got thus far:
‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,
It’s a long way to go,
It’s a long way to Tipperary
And the rest of it I don’t know.’
‘Now that’s enough, Benny, that’s quite enough,’ said a firm-looking woman who seemed to be either his wife or his daughter.
Another old lady sang in a quavering voice:
‘All the nice girls love a sailor,
All the nice girls love a tar,
All the nice girls love a sailor,
And you know what sailors are.’
‘Oh, shut up, Maudie, we’re tired of that one. Now let the lady hear something,’ said Uncle Ben. ‘Let the lady hear something. She’s come to hear something. She wants to hear where that thing there was all the fuss about was hidden, don’t you? And all about it.’
‘That sounds very interesting,’ said Tuppence, cheering up. ‘Something was hidden?’
‘Ah yes, long before my time it was but I heard all about it. Yes. Before 1914. Word was handed down, you know, from one to another. Nobody knew exactly what it was and why there was all this excitement.’
‘Something to do with the boat race it had,’ said an old lady. ‘You know, Oxford and Cambridge. I was taken once. I was taken to see the boat race in London under the bridges and everything. Oh, it was a wonderful day. Oxford won by a length.’
‘A lot of nonsense you’re all talking,’ said a grim-looking woman with iron-grey hair. ‘You don’t know anything about it, you don’t. I know more than most of you although it happened a long time before I was born. It was my Great-Aunt Mathilda who told me and she were told by her Aunty Lou. And that was a good forty years before them. Great talk about it, it was, and people went around looking for it. Some people thought as it was a gold-mine, you know. Yes, a gold ingot brought back from Australia. Somewhere like that.’
‘Damn silly,’ said an old man, who was smoking a pipe with an air of general dislike of his fellow members. ‘Mixed it up with goldfish, they did. Was as ignorant as that.’
‘It was worth a lot of money, whatever it was, or it wouldn’t have been hidden,’ said someone else. ‘Yes, lots of people come down from the government, and yes, police too. They looked around but they couldn’t find anything.’
‘Ah well, they didn’t have the right clues. There are clues, you know, if you know where to look for them.’ Another old lady nodded her head wisely. ‘There’s always clues.’
‘How interesting,’ said Tuppence. ‘Where? Where are these clues, I mean? In the village or somewhere outside it or–’
This was a rather unfortunate remark as it brought down at least six different replies, all uttered at once.
‘On the moor, beyond Tower West,’ one was saying.
‘Oh no, it’s past Little Kenny, it was. Yes, quite near Little Kenny.’
‘No, it was the cave. The cave by the sea front. Over as far as Baldy’s Head. You know, where the red rocks are. That’s it. There’s an old smugglers’ tunnel. Wonderful, it must be. Some people say as it’s there still.’
‘I saw a story once of an old Spanish main or something. Right back to the time of the Armada, it was. A Spanish boat as went down there. Full of doubloons.’
Chapter 10
Attack on Tuppence
‘Good gracious!’ said Tommy, as he returned that evening. ‘You look terribly tired, Tuppence. What have you been doing? You look worn out.’
‘I am worn out,’ said Tuppence. ‘I don’t know that I shall ever recover again. Oh dear.’
‘What have you been doing? Not climbing up and finding more books or anything?’
‘No, no,’ said Tuppence, ‘I don’t want to look at books again. I’m off books.’
‘Well, what is it? What have you been doing?’
‘Do you know what a PPC