Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [81]
II
Albert produced a very passable meal. His cooking was erratic. It had its moments of brilliance which tonight was exemplified by what he called cheese pudding, and Tuppence and Tommy preferred to call cheese soufflé. Albert reproved them slightly for the wrong nomenclature.
‘Cheese soufflé is different,’ he said, ‘got more beaten up white of egg in it than this has.’
‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence, ‘it’s very good whether it’s cheese pudding or cheese soufflé.’
Both Tommy and Tuppence were entirely absorbed with the eating of food and did not compare any more notes as to their procedure. When, however, they had both drunk two cups of strong coffee, Tuppence leaned back in her chair, uttered a deep sigh and said:
‘Now I feel almost myself again. You didn’t do much washing before dinner, did you, Tommy?’
‘I couldn’t be bothered to wait and wash,’ said Tommy. ‘Besides, I never know with you. You might have made me go upstairs to the book-room and stand on a dusty ladder and poke about on the shelves.’
‘I wouldn’t be so unkind,’ said Tuppence. ‘Now wait a minute. Let’s see where we are.’
‘Where we are or where you are?’
‘Well, where I am, really,’ said Tuppence. ‘After all, that’s the only thing I know about, isn’t it? You know where you are and I know where I am. Perhaps, that is.’
‘May be a bit of perhaps about it,’ said Tommy.
‘Pass me over my bag, will you, unless I’ve left it in the dining-room?’
‘You usually do but you haven’t this time. It’s under the foot of your chair. No–the other side.’
Tuppence picked up her handbag.
‘Very nice present, this was,’ she said. ‘Real crocodile, I think. Bit difficult to stuff things in sometimes.’
‘And apparently to take them out again,’ said Tommy.
Tuppence was wrestling.
‘Expensive bags are always very difficult for getting things out of,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Those basketwork ones are the most comfortable. They bulge to any extent and you can stir them up like you stir up a pudding. Ah! I think I’ve got it.’
‘What is it? It looks like a washing bill.’
‘Oh, it’s a little notebook. Yes, I used to write washing things in it, you know, what I had to complain about–torn pillowcase or something like that. But I thought it would come in useful, you see, because only three or four pages of it had been used. I put down here, you see, things we’ve heard. A great many of them don’t seem to have any point but there it is. I added census, by the way, when you first mentioned it. I didn’t know what it meant at that time or what you meant by it. But anyway I did add it.’
‘Fine,’ said Tommy.
‘And I put down Mrs Henderson and someone called Dodo.’
‘Who was Mrs Henderson?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose you’ll remember and I needn’t go back to it now but those were two of the names I put down that Mrs What’s-her-name, you know, the old one, Mrs Griffin mentioned. And then there was a message or a notice. Something about Oxford and Cambridge. And I’ve come across another thing in one of the old books.’
‘What about–Oxford and Cambridge? Do you mean an undergraduate?’
‘I’m not sure whether there was an undergraduate or not, I think really it was a bet on the boat race.’
‘Much more likely,’ said Tommy. ‘Not awfully apt to be useful to us.’
‘Well, one never knows. So there’s Mrs Henderson and there’s somebody who lives in a house called Apple Tree Lodge and there’s something I found on a dirty bit of paper shoved into one of the books upstairs. I don’t know if it was Catriona or whether it was in a book called Shadow of the Throne.’
‘That’s about the French Revolution. I read it when I was a boy,’ said Tommy.
‘Well, I don’t see how that comes in. At any rate, I put it down.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘It seems to be three pencil words. Grin, g-r-i-n, then hen, h-e-n and then Lo, capital L-o.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Tommy. ‘Cheshire cat–that’s a grin–Henny-Penny, that’s another fairy story, isn’t it, for the hen, and Lo–’
‘Ah,’ said Tuppence,