Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [96]
‘I’ve just been reading Count Hannibal,’ said Tuppence. ‘Stanley Weyman. One of his best. It was among the Alexander books upstairs.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, I was thinking that nowadays it’s really still like that. And probably always has been. All the poor children who went off to the Children’s Crusade so full of joy and pleasure and vanity, poor little souls. Thinking they’d been appointed by the Lord to deliver Jerusalem, that the seas would part in front of them so that they could walk across, as Moses did in the Bible. And now all these pretty girls and young men who appear in courts the whole time, because they’ve smashed down some wretched old age pensioner or elderly person who had just got a little money or something in the bank. And there was St Bartholomew’s Massacre. You see, all these things do happen again. Even the new fascists were mentioned the other day in connection with a perfectly respectable university. Ah well, I suppose nobody will ever really tell us anything. Do you really think that Mr Crispin will find out something more about a hiding-place that nobody’s yet discovered? Cisterns. You know, bank robberies. They often hid things in cisterns. Very damp place, I should have thought, to hide something. Do you think when he’s finished making his enquiries or whatever it is, he’ll come back here and continue looking after me–and you, Tommy?’
‘I don’t need him to look after me,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh, that’s just arrogance,’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he’ll come to say goodbye,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh yes, because he’s got very nice manners, hasn’t he?’
‘He’ll want to make sure that you’re quite all right again.’
‘I’m only wounded and the doctor’s seen to that.’
‘He’s really very keen on gardening,’ said Tommy. ‘I realize that. He really did work for a friend of his who happened to be Mr Solomon, who has been dead for some years, but I suppose it makes a good cover, that, because he can say he worked for him and people will know he worked for him. So he’ll appear to be quite bona fide.’
‘Yes, I suppose one has to think of all those things,’ said Tuppence.
The front door bell rang and Hannibal dashed from the room, tiger-style, to kill any intruder who might be wishing to enter the sacred precincts which he guarded. Tommy came back with an envelope.
‘Addressed to us both,’ he said. ‘Shall I open it?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Tuppence.
He opened it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this raises possibilities for the future.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an invitation from Mr Robinson. To you and to me. To dine with him on a date the week after next when he hopes you’ll be fully recovered and yourself again. In his country house. Somewhere in Sussex, I think.’
‘Do you think he’ll tell us anything then?’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he might,’ said Tommy.
‘Shall I take my list with me?’ said Tuppence. ‘I know it by heart now.’
She read rapidly.
‘Black Arrow, Alexander Parkinson, Oxford and Cambridge porcelain Victorian seats, Grin-hen-lo, KK, Mathilde’s stomach, Cain and Abel, Truelove…’
‘Enough,’ said Tommy. ‘It sounds mad.’
‘Well, it is mad, all of it. Think there’ll be anyone else at Mr Robinson’s?’
‘Possibly Colonel Pikeaway.’
‘In that case,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’d better take a cough lozenge with me, hadn’t I? Anyway, I do want to see Mr Robinson. I can’t believe he’s as fat and yellow as you say he is–Oh!–but, Tommy, isn’t it the week after next that Deborah is bringing the children to stay with us?’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s this next weekend as ever is.’
‘Thank goodness, so that’s all right,’ said Tuppence.
Chapter 16
The Birds Fly South
‘Was that the car?’
Tuppence came out of the front door peering curiously along the curve of the drive, eagerly awaiting the arrival of her daughter Deborah and the three children.
Albert emerged from the side door.
‘They won’t be here yet. No, that was the grocer, madam.