The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [54]
“I know,” I said, “I know… We’ve been over it a hundred times. I don’t like her playing the part she’s going to play. But she’s determined—absolutely determined. Damn it all, she wants to!”
Lejeune said unexpectedly:
“She’s a redhead, didn’t you say?”
“Yes,” I said, startled.
“You can never argue with a redhead,” said Lejeune. “Don’t I know it!”
I wondered if his wife was one.
Sixteen
Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
I felt absolutely no nervousness on my second visit to Bradley. In fact, I enjoyed it.
“Think yourself into the part,” Ginger urged me, before I set off, and that was exactly what I tried to do.
Mr. Bradley greeted me with a welcoming smile.
“Very pleased to see you,” he said, advancing a podgy hand. “So you’ve been thinking your little problem over, have you? Well, as I said, no hurry. Take your time.”
I said, “That’s just what I can’t do. It’s—well—it’s rather urgent….”
Bradley looked me over. He noted my nervous manner, the way I avoided his eyes, the clumsiness of my hands as I dropped my hat.
“Well, well,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do about things. You want to have a little bet on something, is that it? Nothing like a sporting flutter to take one’s mind off one’s—er—troubles.”
“It’s like this—” I said, and came to a dead stop.
I left it to Bradley to do his stuff. He did it.
“I see you’re a bit nervous,” he said. “Cautious. I approve of caution. Never say anything your mother shouldn’t hear about! Now, perhaps you have some idea that this office of mine might have a bug in it?”
I didn’t understand and my face showed it.
“Slang term for a microphone,” he explained. “Tape recorders. All that sort of thing. No, I give you my personal word of honour that there’s nothing of that sort here. Our conversation will not be recorded in any way. And if you don’t believe me,” his candour was quite engaging—“and why should you?—you’ve a perfect right to name a place of your own, a restaurant, the waiting room in one of our dear English railway stations; and we’ll discuss the matter there instead.”
I said that I was sure it was quite all right here.
“Sensible! That sort of thing wouldn’t pay us, I assure you. Neither you nor I is going to say a word that, in legal parlance, could be ‘used against us.’ Now let’s start this way. There’s something worrying you. You find me sympathetic and you feel you’d like to tell me about it. I’m a man of experience and I might be able to advise you. A trouble shared is a trouble halved, as they say. Suppose we put it like that?”
We put it like that, and I stumbled into my story.
Mr. Bradley was very adroit. He prompted; eased over difficult words and phrases. So good was he, that I felt no difficulty at all in telling him about my youthful infatuation for Doreen and our secretive marriage.
“Happens so often,” he said, shaking his head. “So often. Understandable! Young man with ideals. Genuinely pretty girl. And there you are. Man and wife before you can say Jack Robinson. And what comes of it?”
I went on to tell him what came of it.
Here I was purposefully vague over details. The man I was trying to present would not have gone into sordid details. I presented only a picture of disillusionment—a young fool realising that he had been a young fool.
I let it be assumed that there had been a final quarrel. If Bradley took it that my young wife had gone off with another man, or that there had been another man in the offing all along—that was good enough.
“But you know,” I said anxiously, “although she wasn’t—well, wasn’t quite what I thought her, she was really a very sweet girl. I’d never have thought that she’d be like this—that she’d behave like this, I mean.”
“What exactly has she been doing to you?”
What my “wife” had done to me, I explained, was to come back.
“What did you think happened to her?”
“I suppose it seems extraordinary—but I really didn’t think. Actually, I suppose, I assumed she must be dead.”
Bradley shook his head at me.
“Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking. Why should she be dead?”