The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [61]
How she ever got on the staff of the Daily Budget is more than I can imagine. But she is the kind of young woman who does these things. Impossible to withstand her. She is full of coaxing ways that mask an invincible determination. Look how she has got into my private car!
I am beginning to have an inkling why. Race said something about the police suspecting that Rayburn would make for Rhodesia. He might just have got off by Monday’s train. They telegraphed all along the line, I presume, and no one of his description was found, but that says little. He’s an astute young man and he knows Africa. He’s probably exquisitely disguised as an old Kafir woman–and the simple police continue to look for a handsome young man with a scar, dressed in the height of European fashion. I never did quite swallow that scar.
Anyway, Anne Beddingfeld is on his track. She wants the glory of discovering him for herself and the Daily Budget. Young women are very cold-blooded nowadays. I hinted to her that it was an unwomanly action. She laughed at me. She assured me that did she run him to earth her fortune was made. Race doesn’t like it, either, I can see. Perhaps Rayburn is on this train. If so, we may all be murdered in our beds. I said so to Mrs Blair–but she seemed quite to welcome the idea, and remarked that if I were murdered it would be really a terrific scoop for Anne! A scoop for Anne, indeed!
Tomorrow we shall be going through Bechuanaland. The dust will be atrocious. Also at every station little Kafir children come and sell you quaint wooden animals that they carve themselves. Also mealie bowls and baskets. I am rather afraid that Mrs Blair may run amok. There is a primitive charm about these toys that I feel will appeal to her.
Friday evening.
As I feared. Mrs Blair and Anne have bought forty-nine wooden animals!
Chapter 23
(Anne’s Narrative Resumed)
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to Rhodesia. There was something new and exciting to see every day. First the wonderful scenery of the Hex River valley, then the desolate grandeur of the Karoo, and finally that wonderful straight stretch of line in Bechaunaland, and the perfectly adorable toys the natives brought to sell. Suzanne and I were nearly left behind at each station–if you could call them stations. It seemed to me that the train just stopped whenever it felt like it, and no sooner had it done so than a horde of natives materialized out of the empty landscape, holding up mealie bowls and sugar canes and fur karosses and adorable carved wooden animals. Suzanne began at once to make a collection of the latter. I imitated her example–most of them cost a ‘tiki’ (threepence) and each was different. There were giraffes and tigers and snakes and a melancholy-looking eland and absurd little black warriors. We enjoyed ourselves enormously.
Sir Eustace tried to restrain us–but in vain. I still think it was a miracle we were not left behind at some oasis of the line. South African trains don’t hoot or get excited when they are going to start off again. They just glide quietly away, and you look up from your bargaining and run for your life.
Suzanne’s amazement at seeing me climb upon the train at Cape Town can be imagined. We held an exhaustive survey of the situation on the first evening out. We talked half the night.
It had become clear to me that defensive tactics must be adopted as well as aggressive ones. Travelling with Sir Eustace Pedler and his party, I was fairly safe. Both he and Colonel Race were powerful protectors, and I judged that my enemies would not wish to stir up a hornet’s nest about my ears. Also, as long as I was near Sir Eustace, I was more or