The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie [46]
‘What about Mr Duke?’ she asked brightly.
‘What about him?’
‘Well, who is he?’
‘Well,’ said Mr Rycroft slowly, ‘that is what nobody knows.’
‘How extraordinary,’ said Emily.
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Mr Rycroft, ‘it isn’t. You see, Duke is such an entirely unmysterious individual. I should imagine that the only mystery about him was his social origin. Not—not quite, if you understand me. But a very solid good fellow,’ he hastened to add.
Emily was silent.
‘This is my cottage,’ said Mr Rycroft pausing, ‘perhaps you will do me the honour of coming in and inspecting it.’
‘I should like to,’ said Emily.
They went up the small path and entered the cottage. The interior was charming. Bookcases lined the walls.
Emily went from one to the other glancing curiously at the titles of the books. One section dealt with occult phenomena, another with modern detective fiction, but by far the greater part of the bookcase was given up to criminology and to the world’s famous trials. Books on ornithology held a comparatively small portion.
‘I think, it’s all delightful,’ said Emily. ‘I must get back now. I expect Mr Enderby will be up and waiting for me. As a matter of fact I haven’t had breakfast yet. We told Mrs Curtis half past nine, and I see it’s ten o’clock. I shall be dreadfully late—that’s because you’ve been so interesting—and so very helpful.’
‘Anything I can do,’ burbled Mr Rycroft as Emily turned a bewitching glance on him. ‘You can count on me. We are collaborators.’
Emily gave him her hand and squeezed his warmly.
‘It’s so wonderful,’ she said, using the phrase that in the course of her short life she had found so effectual, ‘to feel that there’s someone on whom one can really rely.’
Chapter 17
Miss Percehouse
Emily returned to find eggs and bacon, and Charles, waiting for her.
Mrs Curtis was still agog with excitement over the escape of the convict.
‘Two years it is since last one escaped,’ she said, ‘and three days it was before they found him. Near to Moretonhampstead he was.’
‘Do you think he’ll come this way?’ asked Charles.
Local knowledge vetoed this suggestion.
‘They never comes this way, all bare moorland it is and only small towns when you do come off the moor. He’ll make for Plymouth, that’s the most likely. But they’ll catch him long before that.’
‘You could find a good hiding place among these rocks on the other side of the Tor,’ said Emily.
‘You’re right, Miss, and there is a hiding place there, the Pixie’s Cave they call it. As narrow an opening between two rocks as you could find, but it widens out inside. They say one of King Charles’s men hid there once for a fortnight with a serving maid from a farm bringing him food.’
‘I must take a look at that Pixie’s Cave,’ said Charles.
‘You’ll be surprised how hard it is to find, sir. Many a picnic party in summer looks for it the whole afternoon and doesn’t find it, but if you do find it be sure you leave a pin inside it for luck.’
‘I wonder,’ said Charles when breakfast was over and he and Emily had strolled out into the small bit of garden, ‘if I ought to go off to Princetown? Amazing how things pile up once you have a bit of luck. Here I am—I start with a simple football competition prize, and before I know where I am I run straight into an escaped convict and a murderer. Marvellous!’
‘What about this photographing of Major Burnaby’s cottage?’
Charles looked up at the sky.
‘H’m,’ he said. ‘I think I shall say the weather is wrong. I have got to hang on to my raison d’être of being in Sittaford as long as possible, and it’s coming over misty. Er—I hope you don’t mind, I have just posted off an interview with you?’
‘Oh! that’s all right,’ said Emily mechanically. ‘What have you made me say?’
‘Oh, the usual sort of things people like to hear,’ said Mr Enderby. ‘Our special representative records his interview with Miss Emily Trefusis, the fiancée of Mr James Pearson who has been arrested by the police and charged with the murder of Captain Trevelyan—Then my impression of you as