The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [31]
‘As you’ve made her acquaintance, you might ask her to dine at our table tomorrow night. It’s the Fancy Dress dance. By the way, you’d better go down to the barber and select a fancy costume for me.’
‘Surely you will not go in fancy dress?’ said Pagett, in tones of horror.
I could see that it was quite incompatible with his idea of my dignity. He looked shocked and pained. I had really had no intention of donning fancy dress, but the complete discomfiture of Pagett was too tempting to be forborne.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Of course I shall wear fancy dress. So will you.’
Pagett shuddered.
‘So go down to the barber’s and see about it,’ I finished.
‘I don’t think he’ll have any out sizes,’ murmured Pagett, measuring my figure with his eye.
Without meaning it, Pagett can occasionally be extremely offensive.
‘And order a table for six in the saloon,’ I said. ‘We’ll have the Captain, the girl with the nice legs, Mrs Blair–’
‘You won’t get Mrs Blair, without Colonel Race,’ Pagett interposed. ‘He’s asked her to dine with him, I know.’
Pagett always knows everything. I was justifiably annoyed.
‘Who is Race?’ I demanded, exasperated.
As I said before, Pagett always knows everything–or thinks he does. He looked mysterious again.
‘They say he’s a Secret Service chap, Sir Eustace. Rather a great gun too. But of course I don’t know for certain.’
‘Isn’t that like the Government?’ I exclaimed. ‘Here’s a man on board whose business it is to carry about secret documents, and they go giving them to a peaceful outsider, who only asks to be let alone.’
Pagett looked even more mysterious. He came a pace nearer and dropped his voice.
‘If you ask me, the whole thing is very queer, Sir Eustace. Look at the illness of mine before we started–’
‘My dear fellow,’ I interrupted brutally, ‘that was a bilious attack. You’re always having bilious attacks.’
Pagett winced slightly.
‘It wasn’t the usual sort of bilious attack. This time–’
‘For God’s sake, don’t go into details of your condition, Pagett. I don’t want to hear them.’
‘Very well, Sir Eustace. But my belief is that I was deliberately poisoned!’
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘You’ve been talking to Rayburn.’
He did not deny it.
‘At any rate, Sir Eustace, he thinks so–and he should be in a position to know.’
‘By the way, where is the chap?’ I asked. ‘I’ve not set eyes on him since we came on board.’
‘He gives out that he’s ill, and stays in his cabin, Sir Eustace.’ Pagett’s voice dropped again. ‘But that’s camouflage, I’m sure. So that he can watch better.’
‘Watch?’
‘Over your safety, Sir Eustace. In case an attack should be made upon you.’
‘You’re such a cheerful fellow, Pagett,’ I said. ‘I trust that your imagination runs away with you. If I were you I should go to the dance as a death’s head or an executioner. It will suit your mournful style of beauty.’
That shut him up for the time being. I went on deck. The Beddingfeld girl was deep in conversation with the missionary parson, Chichester. Women always flutter round parsons.
A man of my figure hates stooping, but I had the courtesy to pick up a bit of paper that was fluttering round the parson’s feet.
I got no word of thanks for my pains. As a matter of fact I couldn’t help seeing what was written on the sheet of paper. There was just one sentence.
‘Don’t try to play a lone hand or it will be the worse for you.’
That’s a nice thing for a parson to have. Who is this fellow Chichester, I wonder? He looks mild as milk. But looks are deceptive. I shall ask Pagett about him. Pagett always knows everything.
I sank gracefully into my deck-chair by the side of Mrs Blair, thereby interrupting her tête-à-tête with Race, and remarked that I didn’t know what the clergy were coming to nowadays.
Then I asked her to dine with me on the night of the Fancy Dress dance. Somehow or other Race managed to get included in the invitation.
After lunch the Beddingfeld girl came and sat with us for coffee. I was