The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie [90]
A footstep crunched on the lane, and Mr Duke appeared.
‘Oh! There you are, Mr Duke,’ said Emily. ‘Charles, Iwant to tell you. This is Ex-Chief-Inspector Duke of Scotland Yard.’
‘What?’ cried Charles recognizing the famous name. ‘Not the Inspector Duke?’
‘Yes,’ said Emily. ‘When he retired, he came here to live, and being nice and modest he didn’t want his renown to get about. I see now why Inspector Narracott twinkled so when I wanted him to tell me what kind of crimes Mr Duke had committed.’
Mr Duke laughed.
Charles wavered. There was a short tussle between the lover and the journalist. The journalist won.
‘I’m delighted to meet you, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Now, I wonder if we could persuade you to do us a short article, say eight hundred words, on the Trevelyan case.’
Emily stepped quickly up the lane and into Mrs Curtis’s cottage. She ran up to her bedroom and pulled out her suitcase. Mrs Curtis had followed her up.
‘You’re not going, Miss?’
‘I am. I’ve got a lot to do—London, and my young man.’
Mrs Curtis drew nearer.
‘Just tell me, Miss, which of ’em is it?’
Emily was throwing clothes haphazard into the suitcase.
‘The one in prison, of course. There’s never been any other.’
‘Ah! You don’t think, Miss, that maybe you’re making a mistake. You’re sure the other young gentleman is worth as much as this one?’
‘Oh! no,’ said Emily. ‘He isn’t. This one will get on.’ She glanced out of the window where Charles was still holding Ex-Chief-Inspector Duke in earnest parley. ‘He’s the kind of young man who’s simply born to get on—but I don’t know what would happen to the other one if I weren’t there to look after him. Look where he would be now if it weren’t for me!’
‘And you can’t say more than that, Miss,’ said Mrs Curtis.
She retreated downstairs to where her lawful spouse was sitting and staring into vacancy.
‘The living image of my Great Aunt Sarah’s Belinda she is,’ said Mrs Curtis. ‘Threw herself away she did on that miserable George Plunket down at the Three Cows. Mortgaged and all it was. And in two years she had the mortgage paid off and the place a going concern.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Curtis, and shifted his pipe slightly.
‘He was a handsome fellow, George Plunket,’ said Mrs Curtis reminiscently.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Curtis.
‘But after he married Belinda he never so much as looked at another woman.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Curtis.
‘She never gave him the chance,’ said Mrs Curtis.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Curtis.
THE SITTAFORD MYSTERY by Agatha Christie
Copyright © 1931 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company)
“Essay by Charles Osborne” excerpted from The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by Charles Osborne. Reprinted with permission.
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ePub edition edition published December 2003 eISBN 9780061752209
This e-book was set from the Agatha Christie Signature Edition published by HarperCollins Publishers, London.
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1931
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