The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [28]
I cast my mind back to the curates I had known at Little Hampsley. Some of them I had liked, some of them I had not, but certainly none of them had been quite like Mr Chichester. They had been human–he was a glorified type.
I was debating all this when Sir Eustace Pedler passed down the deck. Just as he was abreast of Mr Chichester, he stooped and picked up a piece of paper which he handed to him, remarking, ‘You’ve dropped something.’
He passed on without stopping, and so probably did not notice Mr Chichester’s agitation. I did. Whatever it was he had dropped, its recovery agitated him considerably. He turned a sickly green, and crumpled up the sheet of paper into a ball. My suspicions were accentuated a hundredfold.
He caught my eye, and hurried into explanations.
‘A–a–fragment of a sermon I was composing,’ he said with a sickly smile.
‘Indeed?’ I rejoined politely.
A fragment of a sermon, indeed! No, Mr Chichester–too weak for words!
He soon left me with a muttered excuse. I wished, oh, how I wished, that I had been the one to pick up that paper and not Sir Eustace Pedler! One thing was clear, Mr Chichester could not be exempted from my list of suspects. I was inclined to put him top of the three.
After lunch, when I came up to the lounge for coffee, I noticed Sir Eustace and Pagett sitting with Mrs Blair and Colonel Race. Mrs Blair welcomed me with a smile, so I went over and joined them. They were talking about Italy.
‘But it is misleading,’ Mrs Blair insisted. ‘Aqua calda certainly ought to be cold water–not hot.’
‘You’re not a Latin scholar,’ said Sir Eustace, smiling.
‘Men are so superior about their Latin,’ said Mrs Blair. ‘But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.’
‘Quite right,’ said Colonel Race. ‘I always do.’
‘But I love the Italians,’ continued Mrs Blair. ‘They’re so obliging–though even that has its embarrassing side. You ask them the way somewhere, and instead of saying “first to the right, second to the left” or something that one could follow, they pour out a flood of well-meaning directions, and when you look bewildered they take you kindly by the arm and walk all the way there with you.’
‘Is that your experience in Florence, Pagett?’ asked Sir Eustace, turning with a smile to his secretary.
For some reason the question seemed to disconcert Mr Pagett. He stammered and flushed.
‘Oh, quite so, yes–er quite so.’
Then with a murmured excuse, he rose and left the table.
‘I am beginning to suspect Guy Pagett of having committed some dark deed in Florence,’ remarked Sir Eustace, gazing after his secretary’s retreating figure. ‘Whenever Florence or Italy is mentioned, he changes the subject or bolts precipitately.’
‘Perhaps he murdered someone there,’ said Mrs Blair hopefully. ‘He looks–I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, Sir Eustace–but he does look as though he might murder someone.’
‘Yes, pure Cinquecento! It amuses me sometimes–especially when one knows as well as I do how essentially law-abiding and respectable the poor fellow really is.’
‘He’s been with you some time, hasn’t he, Sir Eustace?’ asked Colonel Race.
‘Six years,’ said Sir Eustace with a deep sigh.
‘He must be quite invaluable to you,’ said Mrs Blair.
‘Oh, invaluable! Yes, quite invaluable.’ The poor man sounded even more depressed, as though the invaluableness of Mr Pagett was a secret grief to him. Then he added more briskly: ‘But his face should really inspire you with confidence, my dear lady. No self-respecting murderer would ever consent to look like one. Crippen, now, I believe, was one of the pleasantest fellows imaginable.’
‘He was caught on a liner, wasn’t he?’ murmured Mrs Blair.
There was a slight rattle behind us. I turned quickly. Mr Chichester had dropped his coffee-cup.
Our party soon broke up; Mrs Blair went below to sleep and I went out on deck.