The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [84]
‘Certainly, my dear fellow,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Ask away.’
‘It concerns your secretary–’
‘I know nothing about him,’ I said hastily. ‘He foisted himself upon me in London, robbed me of valuable papers–for which I shall be hauled over the coals–and disappeared like a conjuring trick at Cape Town. It’s true that I was at the Falls at the same time as he was, but I was at the hotel, and he was on an island. I can assure you that I never set eyes upon him the whole time that I was there.’
I paused for breath.
‘You misunderstand me. It was of your other secretary that I spoke.’
‘What? Pagett?’ I cried, in lively astonishment. ‘He’s been with me eight years–a most trustworthy fellow.’
My interlocutor smiled.
‘We are still at cross-purposes. I refer to the lady.’
‘Miss Pettigrew?’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes. She has been seen coming out of Agrasato’s Native Curio-shop.’
‘God bless my soul!’ I interrupted. ‘I was going into that place myself this afternoon. You might have caught me coming out!’
There doesn’t seem to be any innocent thing that one can do in Jo’burg without being suspected for it.
‘Ah! but she has been seen there more than once–and in rather doubtful circumstances. I may as well tell you–in confidence, Sir Eustace–that the place is suspected of being a well-known rendezvous used by the secret organization behind this revolution. That is why I should be glad to hear all that you can tell me about this lady. Where and how did you come to engage her?’
‘She was lent to me,’ I replied coldly, ‘by your own Government.’
He collapsed utterly.
Chapter 30
(Anne’s Narrative Resumed)
I
As soon as I got to Kimberlely I wired to Suzanne. She joined me there with the utmost dispatch, heralding her arrival with telegrams sent off en route. I was awfully surprised to find that she really was fond of me–I thought I had been just a new sensation, but she positively fell on my neck and wept when we met.
When we had recovered from our emotion a little, I sat down on the bed and told her the whole story from A to Z.
‘You always did suspect Colonel Race,’ she said thoughtfully, when I had finished. ‘I didn’t until the night you disappeared. I liked him so much all along and thought he would make such a nice husband for you. Oh, Anne, dear, don’t be cross, but how do you know that this young man of yours is telling the truth? You believe every word he says.’
‘Of course I do,’ I cried indignantly.
‘But what is there in him that attracts you so? I don’t see that there’s anything in him at all except his rather reckless good looks and his modern Sheik-cum-Stone-Age love-making.’
I poured out the vials of my wrath upon Suzanne for some minutes.
‘Just because you’re comfortably married and getting fat, you’ve forgotten that there’s any such thing as romance,’ I ended.
‘Oh, I’m not getting fat, Anne. All the worry I’ve had about you lately must have worn me to a shred.’
‘You look particularly well nourished,’ I said coldly. ‘I should say you must have put on about half a stone.’
‘And I don’t know that I’m so comfortably married either,’ continued Suzanne in a melancholy voice. ‘I’ve been having the most dreadful cables from Clarence ordering me to come home at once. At last I didn’t answer them, and now I haven’t heard for over a fortnight.’
I’m afraid I didn’t take Suzanne’s matrimonial troubles very seriously. She will be able to get round Clarence all right when the time comes. I turned the conversation to the subject of the diamonds.
Suzanne looked at me with a dropped jaw.
‘I must explain, Anne. You see, as soon as I began to suspect Colonel Race, I was terribly upset about the diamonds. I wanted to stay on at the Falls in case he might have kidnapped you somewhere close by, but didn’t know what to do about the diamonds. I was afraid to keep them in my possession–’
Suzanne looked round her uneasily, as though she feared the walls might have ears, and then whispered vehemently in my ear.
‘A distinctly good