Problem at Pollensa Bay - Agatha Christie [40]
‘Mr Pointz,’ said Eve when plates of hot mackerel had been set before them and the waiters had left the room.
‘Yes, young lady.’
‘Have you got that big diamond with you right now? The one you showed us last night and said you always took about with you?’
Mr Pointz chuckled.
‘That’s right. My mascot, I call it. Yes, I’ve got it with me all right.’
‘I think that’s awfully dangerous. Somebody might get it away from you in the crowd at the fair.’
‘Not they,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘I’ll take good care of that.’
‘But they might,’ insisted Eve. ‘You’ve got gangsters in England as well as we have, haven’t you?’
‘They won’t get the Morning Star,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘To begin with it’s in a special inner pocket. And anyway–old Pointz knows what he’s about. Nobody’s going to steal the Morning Star.’
Eve laughed.
‘Ugh-huh–bet I could steal it!’
‘I bet you couldn’t.’ Mr Pointz twinkled back at her.
‘Well, I bet I could. I was thinking about it last night in bed–after you’d handed it round the table, for us all to look at. I thought of a real cute way to steal it.’
‘And what’s that?’
Eve put her head on one side, her fair hair wagged excitedly. ‘I’m not telling you–now. What do you bet I couldn’t?’
Memories of Mr Pointz’s youth rose in his mind.
‘Half a dozen pairs of gloves,’ he said.
‘Gloves,’ cried Eve disgustedly. ‘Who wears gloves?’
‘Well–do you wear nylon stockings?’
‘Do I not? My best pair ran this morning.’
‘Very well, then. Half a dozen pairs of the finest nylon stockings–’
‘Oo-er,’ said Eve blissfully. ‘And what about you?’
‘Well, I need a new tobacco pouch.’
‘Right. That’s a deal. Not that you’ll get your tobacco pouch. Now I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do. You must hand it round like you did last night–’
She broke off as two waiters entered to remove the plates. When they were starting on the next course of chicken, Mr Pointz said:
‘Remember this, young woman, if this is to represent a real theft, I should send for the police and you’d be searched.’
‘That’s quite OK by me. You needn’t be quite so lifelike as to bring the police into it. But Lady Marroway or Mrs Rustington can do all the searching you like.’
‘Well, that’s that then,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘What are you setting up to be? A first class jewel thief?’
‘I might take to it as a career–if it really paid.’
‘If you got away with the Morning Star it would pay you. Even after recutting that stone would be worth over thirty thousand pounds.’
‘My!’ said Eve, impressed. ‘What’s that in dollars?’
Lady Marroway uttered an exclamation.
‘And you carry such a stone about with you?’ she said reproachfully. ‘Thirty thousand pounds.’ Her darkened eyelashes quivered.
Mrs Rustington said softly: ‘It’s a lot of money…And then there’s the fascination of the stone itself…It’s beautiful.’
‘Just a piece of carbon,’ said Evan Llewellyn.
‘I’ve always understood it’s the “fence” that’s the difficulty in jewel robberies,’ said Sir George. ‘He takes the lion’s share–eh, what?’
‘Come on,’ said Eve excitedly. ‘Let’s start. Take the diamond out and say what you said last night.’
Mr Leathern said in his deep melancholy voice, ‘I do apologize for my offspring. She gets kinder worked up–’
‘That’ll do, Pops,’ said Eve. ‘Now then, Mr Pointz–’
Smiling, Mr Pointz fumbled in an inner pocket. He drew something out. It lay on the palm of his hand, blinking in the light.
‘A diamond…’
Rather stiffly, Mr Pointz repeated as far as he could remember his speech of the previous evening on the Merrimaid.
‘Perhaps you ladies and gentlemen would like to have a look at this? It’s an unusually beautiful stone. I call it the Morning Star and it’s by way of being my mascot–goes about with me anywhere. Like to see it?’
He handed it to Lady Marroway, who took it, exclaimed at its beauty and passed it to Mr Leathern who said, ‘Pretty good–yes, pretty good,’ in a somewhat artificial manner and in his turn passed it to Llewellyn.