The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [27]
‘Here’s your Colonel,’ I said, as the tall soldierly figure of Colonel Race appeared on the deck.
‘He’s not my Colonel particularly. In fact he admires you very much, gipsy girl. So don’t run away.’
‘I want to tie something round my head. It will be more comfortable than a hat.’
I slipped quickly away. For some reason or other I was uncomfortable with Colonel Race. He was one of the few people who were capable of making me feel shy.
I went down to my cabin and began looking for something with which I could restrain my rebellious locks. Now I am a tidy person, I like my things always arranged in a certain way and I keep them so. I had no sooner opened my drawer than I realized that somebody had been disarranging my things. Everything had been turned over and scattered. I looked in the other drawers and the small hanging cupboard. They told the same tale. It was as though someone had been making a hurried and ineffectual search for something.
I sat down on the edge of the bunk with a grave face. Who had been searching my cabin and what had they been looking for? Was it the half-sheet of paper with scribbled figures and words? I shook my head, dissatisfied. Surely that was past history now. But what else could there be?
I wanted to think. The events of last night, though exciting, had not really done anything to elucidate matters. Who was the young man who had burst into my cabin so abruptly? I had not seen him on board previously, either on deck or in the saloon. Was he one of the ship’s company or was he a passenger? Who had stabbed him? Why had they stabbed him? And why, in the name of goodness, should Cabin No 17 figure so prominently? It was all a mystery, but there was no doubt that some very peculiar occurrences were taking place on the Kilmorden Castle.
I counted off on my fingers the people on whom it behoved me to keep watch.
Setting aside my visitor of the night before, but promising myself that I would discover him on board before another day had passed, I selected the following persons as worthy of my notice:
(1) Sir Eustace Pedler. He was the owner of the Mill House, and his presence on the Kilmorden Castle seemed something of a coincidence.
(2) Mr Pagett, the sinister-looking secretary, whose eagerness to obtain Cabin 17 had been so very marked. N.B.–Find out whether he had accompanied Sir Eustace to Cannes.
(3) The Rev. Edward Chichester. All I had against him was his obstinacy over Cabin 17, and that might be entirely due to his own peculiar temperament. Obstinacy can be an amazing thing.
But a little conversation with Mr Chichester would not come amiss, I decided. Hastily tying a handkerchief round my hair, I went up on deck again, full of purpose. I was in luck. My quarry was leaning against the rail, drinking beef tea. I went up to him.
‘I hope you’ve forgiven me over Cabin 17,’ I said, with my best smile.
‘I consider it unchristian to bear a grudge,’ said Mr Chichester coldly. ‘But the purser had distinctly promised me that cabin.’
‘Pursers are such busy men, aren’t they?’ I said vaguely. ‘I suppose they’re bound to forget sometimes.’
Mr Chichester did not reply.
‘Is this your first visit to South Africa?’ I inquired conversationally.
‘To South Africa, yes. But I have worked for the last two years amongst the cannibal tribes in the interior of East Africa.’
‘How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?’
‘Escapes?’
‘Of being eaten, I mean?’
‘You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.’
‘I didn’t know that cannibalism was a sacred subject,’ I retorted, stung.
As the words left my lips, another idea struck me. If Mr Chichester had indeed spent the last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sun-burnt? His skin was as pink and white as a baby’s. Surely there was something fishy