The Clocks - Agatha Christie [54]
“What about an early lunch?” I suggested. “You haven’t got to go back to your typewriting place, have you?”
“No. It’s closed until two o’clock.”
“Come along then. How do you react to Chinese food? I see there’s a little Chinese restaurant just down the street.”
Sheila looked hesitant.
“I’ve really got to do some shopping.”
“You can do it afterwards.”
“No, I can’t—some of the shops close between one and two.”
“All right then. Will you meet me there? In half an hour’s time?”
She said she would.
I went along to the seafront and sat there in a shelter. As the wind was blowing straight in from the sea, I had it to myself.
I wanted to think. It always infuriates one when other people know more about you than you know about yourself. But old Beck and Hercule Poirot and Dick Hardcastle, they all had seen quite clearly what I was now forced to admit to myself was true.
I minded about this girl—minded in a way I had never minded about a girl before.
It wasn’t her beauty—she was pretty, pretty in rather an unusual way, no more. It wasn’t her sex appeal—I had met that often enough—had been given the full treatment.
It was just that, almost from the first, I had recognized that she was my girl.
And I didn’t know the first damned thing about her!
II
It was just after two o’clock that I walked into the station and asked for Dick. I found him at his desk leafing over a pile of stuff. He looked up and asked me what I had thought of the inquest.
I told him I thought it had been a very nicely managed and gentlemanly performance.
“We do this sort of thing so well in this country.”
“What did you think of the medical evidence?”
“Rather a facer. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“You were away. Did you consult your specialist?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I believe I remember him vaguely. A lot of moustache.”
“Oceans of it,” I agreed. “He’s very proud of that moustache.”
“He must be quite old.”
“Old but not gaga,” I said.
“Why did you really go to see him? Was it purely the milk of human kindness?”
“You have such a suspicious policeman’s mind, Dick! It was mainly that. But I admit to curiosity, too. I wanted to hear what he had to say about our own particular setup. You see, he’s always talked what I call a lot of cock about its being easy to solve a case by just sitting in your chair, bringing the tips of your fingers symmetrically together, closing your eyes and thinking. I wanted to call his bluff.”
“Did he go through that procedure for you?”
“He did.”
“And what did he say?” Dick asked with some curiosity.
“He said,” I told him, “that it must be a very simple murder.”
“Simple, my God!” said Hardcastle, roused. “Why simple?”
“As far as I could gather,” I said, “because the whole setup was so complex.”
Hardcastle shook his head. “I don’t see it,” he said. “It sounds like one of those clever things that young people in Chelsea say, but I don’t see it. Anything else?”
“Well, he told me to talk to the neighbours. I assured him we had done so.”
“The neighbours are even more important now in view of the medical evidence.”
“The presumption being that he was doped somewhere else and brought to Number 19 to be killed?”
Something familiar about the words struck me.
“That’s more or less what Mrs. What’s-her-name, the cat woman, said. It struck me at the time as a rather interesting remark.”
“Those cats,” said Dick, and shuddered. He went on: “We’ve found the weapon, by the way. Yesterday.”
“You have? Where?”
“In the cattery. Presumably thrown there by the murderer after the crime.”
“No fingerprints, I suppose?”
“Carefully wiped. And it could be anybody’s knife—slightly used—recently sharpened.”
“So it goes like this. He was doped—then brought to Number 19—in a car? Or how?”
“He could have been brought from one of the houses with an adjoining garden.”
“Bit risky, wouldn’t it have been?”
“It would need audacity,” Hardcastle agreed, “and it would need a very good knowledge of the neighbourhood’s habits. It’s more likely that he would have been brought in a car.