Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [80]
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘at least, well, yes. It’s something–’ He paused.
‘Yes, Albert knows,’ said Tuppence, ‘but it’s not that kind of one. Now then, I’ll just tell you in a minute, but you’d better have something first. A cocktail or a whisky or something. And I’ll have something too.’
She more or less put Tommy wise to the events of the afternoon. Tommy said ‘good gracious’ again and added: ‘The things you get yourself into, Tuppence. Was any of it interesting?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tuppence. ‘When six people are talking at once, and most of them can’t talk properly and they all say different things–you see, you don’t really know what they’re saying. But yes, I think I’ve got a few ideas for dealing with things.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there is a lot of legend, I think, going on about something that was once hidden here and was a secret connected with the 1914 war, or even before it.’
‘Well, we know that already, don’t we?’ said Tommy. ‘I mean, we’ve been briefed to know that.’
‘Yes. Well, there are a few old tales still going around the village here. And everybody has got ideas about it put into their heads by their Aunt Marias or their Uncle Bens and it’s been put into their Aunt Marias by their Uncle Stephens or Aunty Ruth or Grandmother Something else. It’s been handed down for years and years. Well, one of the things might be the right one, of course.’
‘What, lost among all the others?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘like a needle in the haystack?
‘I’m going to select a few what I call likely possibilities. People who might tell one something that they really did hear. I shall have to isolate them from everybody else, at any rate for a short period of time, and get them to tell me exactly what their Aunt Agatha or Aunt Betty or old Uncle James told them. Then I shall have to go on to the next one and possibly one of them might give me a further inkling. There must be something, you know, somewhere.’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘I think there’s something, but we don’t know what it is.’
‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I mean you’ve got to have some idea what a thing actually is before you go looking for it.’
‘I don’t think it’s gold ingots on a Spanish Armada ship,’ said Tuppence, ‘and I don’t think it’s anything hidden in the smugglers’ cave.’
‘Might be some super brandy from France,’ said Tommy hopefully.
‘It might,’ said Tuppence, ‘but that wouldn’t be really what we’re looking for, would it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tommy. ‘I think it might be what I’m looking for sooner or later. Anyway, it’s something I should enjoy finding. Of course it might be a sort of letter or something. A sexy letter that you could blackmail someone about, about sixty years ago. But I don’t think it would cut much ice nowadays, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. But we’ve got to get some idea sooner or later. Do you think we’ll ever get anywhere, Tommy?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tommy. ‘I got a little bit of help today.’
‘Oh. What about?’
‘Oh, about the census.’
‘The what?’
‘The census. There seems to have been a census in one particular year–I’ve got the year written down–and there were a good many people staying in this house with the Parkinsons.’
‘How on earth did you find all that out?’
‘Oh, by various methods of research by my Miss Collodon.’
‘I’m getting jealous of Miss Collodon.’
‘Well, you needn’t be. She’s very fierce and she ticks me off a good deal, and she is no ravishing beauty.’
‘Well, that’s just as well,’ said Tuppence. ‘But what has the census got to do with it?’
‘Well, when Alexander said it must be one of us it could have meant, you see, someone who was in the house at that time and therefore you had to enter up their names on the census register. Anyone who spent the night under your roof, and I think probably there are records of these things in the census files. And if you know the right people–I don’t mean I know them now, but I can get to know them through people I do know–then I think I could perhaps get a short list.’
‘Well, I admit,’ said Tuppence, ‘you have ideas all right. For goodness