The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [2]
“Attagirl! Sock her, Lou!”
The proprietor behind the bar, a slim Italian-looking fellow with sideburns, whom I had taken to be Luigi, came to intervene in a voice that was pure cockney London.
“Nah then—break it up—break it up—You’ll ’ave the whole street in in a minute. You’ll ’ave the coppers here. Stop it, I say.”
But the lank blonde had the redhead by the hair and was tugging furiously as she screamed:
“You’re nothing but a man-stealing bitch!”
“Bitch yourself.”
Luigi and the two embarrassed escorts forced the girls apart. In the blonde’s fingers were large tufts of red hair. She held them aloft gleefully, then dropped them on the floor.
The door from the street was pushed open and Authority, dressed in blue, stood on the threshold and uttered the regulation words majestically.
“What’s going on here?”
Immediately a common front was presented to the enemy.
“Just a bit of fun,” said one of the young men.
“That’s all,” said Luigi. “Just a bit of fun among friends.”
With his foot he kicked the tufts of hair adroitly under the nearest table. The contestants smiled at each other in false amnesty.
The policeman looked at everybody suspiciously.
“We’re just going now,” said the blonde sweetly. “Come on, Doug.”
By a coincidence several other people were just going. Authority watched them go grimly. His eye said that he was overlooking it this time, but he’d got his eye on them. He withdrew slowly.
The redhead’s escort paid the check.
“You all right?” said Luigi to the girl who was adjusting a headscarf. “Lou served you pretty bad, tearing out your hair by the roots like that.”
“It didn’t hurt,” said the girl nonchalantly. She smiled at him. “Sorry for the row, Luigi.”
The party went out. The bar was now practically empty. I felt in my pocket for change.
“She’s a sport all right,” said Luigi approvingly watching the door close. He seized a floor brush and swept the tufts of red hair behind the counter.
“It must have been agony,” I said.
“I’d have hollered if it had been me,” admitted Luigi. “But she’s a real sport, Tommy is.”
“You know her well?”
“Oh, she’s in here most evenings. Tuckerton, that’s her name, Thomasina Tuckerton, if you want the whole set out. But Tommy Tucker’s what she’s called round here. Stinking rich, too. Her old man left her a fortune, and what does she go and do? Comes to Chelsea, lives in a slummy room halfway to Wandsworth Bridge, and mooches around with a gang all doing the same thing. Beats me, half of that crowd’s got money. Could have any mortal thing they want; stay at the Ritz if they liked. But they seem to get a kick out of living the way they do. Yes—it beats me.”
“It wouldn’t be your choice?”
“Ar, I’ve got sense!” said Luigi. “As it is, I just cash in.”
I rose to go and asked what the quarrel was about.
“Oh, Tommy’s got hold of the other girl’s boyfriend. He’s not worth fighting about, believe me!”
“The other girl seemed to think he was,” I observed.
“Oh, Lou’s very romantic,” said Luigi tolerantly.
It was not my idea of romance, but I did not say so.
II
It must have been about a week later that my eye was caught by a name in the Deaths column of The Times.
TUCKERTON. On October 2nd at Fallowfield Nursing Home, Amberley, Thomasina Ann, aged twenty, only daughter of the late Thomas Tuckerton, Esq., of Carrington Park, Amberley, Surrey. Funeral private. No flowers.
III
No flowers for poor Tommy Tucker; and no more “kicks” out of life in Chelsea. I felt a sudden fleeting compassion for the Tommy Tuckers of today. Yet after all, I reminded myself, how did I know that my view was the right one? Who was I to pronounce it a wasted life? Perhaps it was my life, my quiet scholarly life, immersed in books, shut off from the world, that was the wasted one. Life at secondhand. Be honest now, was I getting kicks out of life? A very unfamiliar idea! The truth was, of course, that I didn’t want kicks. But there again, perhaps I ought to? An unfamiliar and not very welcome thought.
I dismissed Tommy Tucker from my thoughts, and turned to my correspondence.