Spider's Web - Agatha Christie [54]
His hearers looked at one another, while Sir Rowland picked up the copy of Who’s Who and began to consult it.
‘I don’t get it,’ Hugo admitted, shaking his head.
‘What did Pippa say?’ Jeremy wondered aloud.
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Clarissa. She tried to cast her mind back. ‘Something about the policeman? Or dreaming? Coming down here? Half awake?’
‘Come on, Roly,’ Hugo urged his friend. ‘Don’t be so damned mysterious. What’s this all about?’
Sir Rowland looked up. ‘What?’ he asked, absent-mindedly. ‘Oh, yes. Those autographs. Where are they?’
Hugo snapped his fingers. ‘I believe I remember Pippa putting them in that shell box over there,’ he recalled.
Jeremy went over to the bookshelves. ‘Up here?’ he asked. Locating the shell box, he took out the envelope. ‘Yes, quite right. Here we are,’ he confirmed as he took the autographs from the envelope and handed them to Sir Rowland, who had now closed Who’s Who. Jeremy put the empty envelope in his pocket while Sir Rowland examined the autographs with his eyeglass.
‘Victoria Regina, God bless her,’ murmured Sir Rowland, looking at the first of the autographs. ‘Queen Victoria. Faded brown ink. Now, what’s this one? John Ruskin–yes, that’s authentic, I should say. And this one? Robert Browning–Hm–the paper’s not as old as it ought to be.’
‘Roly! What do you mean?’ Clarissa asked excitedly.
‘I had some experience of invisible inks and that sort of thing, during the war,’ Sir Rowland explained. ‘If you wanted to make a secret note of something, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to write it in invisible ink on a sheet of paper, and then fake an autograph. Put that autograph with other genuine autographs and nobody would notice it or look at it twice, probably. Any more than we did.’
Mrs Brown looked puzzled. ‘But what could Charles Sellon have written which would be worth fourteen thousand pounds?’ she wanted to know.
‘Nothing at all, dear lady,’ Sir Rowland replied. ‘But it occurs to me, you know, that it might have been a question of safety.’
‘Safety?’ Mrs Brown queried.
‘Oliver Costello,’ Sir Rowland explained, ‘is suspected of supplying drugs. Sellon, so the Inspector tells us, was questioned once or twice by the Narcotics Squad. There’s a connection there, don’t you think?’
When Mrs Brown merely looked blank, he continued, ‘Of course, it might be just a foolish idea of mine.’ He looked down at the autograph he was holding. ‘I don’t think it would be anything elaborate on Sellon’s part. Lemon juice, perhaps, or a solution of barium chloride. Gentle heat might do the trick. We can always try iodine vapour later. Yes, let’s try a little gentle heat first.’
He rose to his feet. ‘Shall we attempt the experiment?’
‘There’s an electric fire in the library,’ Clarissa remembered. ‘Jeremy, will you get it?’
Hugo rose and tucked in his chair, while Jeremy went off to the library.
‘We can plug it in here,’ Clarissa pointed out, indicating a socket in the skirting-board running around the drawing-room.
‘The whole thing’s ridiculous,’ Mrs Brown snorted. ‘It’s too far-fetched for words.’
Clarissa disagreed. ‘No, it isn’t. I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ she declared, as Jeremy returned from the library carrying a small electric radiator. ‘Got it?’ she asked him.
‘Here it is,’ he replied. ‘Where’s the plug?’
‘Down there,’ Clarissa told him, pointing. She held the radiator while Jeremy plugged its lead into the socket, and then she put it down on the floor.
Sir Rowland took the Robert Browning autograph and stood close to the radiator. Jeremy knelt by it, and the others stood as close as possible to observe the result.
‘We mustn’t hope for too much,’ Sir Rowland warned them. ‘After all, it’s only an idea of mine, but there must have been some very good reason why Sellon kept these bits of paper in such a secret place.’
‘This takes me back years,’ Hugo recalled. ‘I remember writing secret messages with lemon juice when I was a kid.’
‘Which one shall we start with?’ Jeremy asked enthusiastically.
‘I say Queen Victoria,’ said Clarissa.
‘No, six to one on Ruskin,’ was Jeremy