The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [116]
Walter is now becoming bolder. He has grown a beard and changed his appearance, and one day he turns up on Denny’s doorstep. Denny must now keep him and establish him firmly in his new personality as Mr. X. If not—up goes the monkey!
Denny is harried from pillar to post. He knows (from what Walter has told him in moments of expansiveness), however, that there is one person in England whom “Mr. X” does not want to meet, and that is Mr. Mount. Mr. Mount knows enough about “Mr. X” as Mr. X to make any place too hot to hold him. Denny consults Crockford, discovers that Mount has taken a living at Lingham and takes a house in the same neighbourhood. Walter, returning from a trip abroad, finds that Denny has fled to sanctuary. He tries to dislodge Denny, but Denny sits tight.
But now a new source of trouble begins. Denny writes in agitation to Walter. He has heard from the Admiral. The Admiral—after all these years!—is most tiresomely starting to ask questions about that dead-and-buried business in Hong Kong. He looks as though he really suspected something. Denny is doing his best to be amiable and noncommittal, but it is all dreadfully difficult.
Walter feels that a little spying ought to be done. He hunts up his former mistress, Mrs. Mount, over whom he still exerts great influence, and makes her go as French maid to his sister, under the name of Célie Blanc. She is to find out what she can about who comes to the house and what the Admiral is doing, and to act as liaison between Walter and Elma. For the Admiral, suspecting that Elma knows where Walter is, is beginning to keep her under strict control and supervise her correspondence.
To Elma, of course, Walter is the poor, wronged boy who never gets a chance. She is anxious to get him his money, by fair means or foul. As the scheme to prove the death was a failure, she now wants to make over her own share of the money to him. Fortunately, Holland has fallen desperately in love with her sulky beauty. Though temperamentally disinclined to marriage, she is keen to marry Holland to get the money. The Admiral has a pretty shrewd idea of this, and therefore tries to oppose the marriage. Elma, of course, does not confide in Holland—he is a tool of the Admiral’s. Everybody is in a conspiracy to keep dear Walter out of his own. She therefore breaks off open correspondence with Walter, and treats the Admiral with the contempt he deserves.
Holland has been told by the Admiral that if he marries Elma, she will probably send all her money to this scamp of a brother. But Holland, being in love, says he wants Elma, not her money. The Admiral says: “You won’t get my consent.” Holland replies: “I don’t care.” But Elma does care. The control of the money is what she is marrying him for. The situation drags on. Elma alternates between encouraging Holland and rebuffing him. If she seems too affectionate he will urge marriage without the Admiral’s consent; if she appears too mercenary he may get put off altogether. As he is the only man whom she has much opportunity of meeting nowadays, and no other suitor seems forthcoming, she must keep him on the lead if possible.
Mrs. Mount is a weak sort of woman, still infatuated by Walter. I think she knows him to be Fitzgerald all right, but supposes, like Elma, that he has been deeply wronged. Walter is quite cocksure that she is completely under his thumb, and, as a bait, has promised to marry her if she succeeds in helping him to get the money.
Very well, then. The Admiral comes to the conclusion that the one person who really can help him to find Walter and disentangle the Chinese