The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie [i like reading books txt] 📗

“How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?”

“Escapes?”

“Of being eaten, I mean?”

“You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.”

“I didn’t know that cannibalism was a sacred subject,” I retorted, stung.

As the words left my lips, another idea struck me. If Mr. Chichester had indeed spent the last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sunburnt? His skin was as pink and white as a baby’s. Surely there was something fishy there? Yet his manner and voice were so absolutely it. Too much so perhaps. Was he—or was he not—just a little like a stage clergyman?

I cast my mind back to the curates I had known at Little Hampsly. Some of them I had liked, some of them I had not, but certainly none of them had been quite like Mr. Chichester. They had been human—he was a glorified type.

I was debating all this when Sir Eustace Pedler passed down the deck. Just as he was abreast of Mr. Chichester, he stooped and picked up a piece of paper which he handed to him, remarking “You’ve dropped something.”

He passed on without stopping, and so probably did not notice Mr. Chichester’s agitation. I did. Whatever it was he had dropped, its recovery agitated him considerably. He turned a sickly green, and crumpled up the sheet of paper into a ball. My suspicions were accentuated a hundred-fold.

He caught my eye, and hurried into explanations.

“A—a—fragment of a sermon I was composing,” he said with a sickly smile.

“Indeed?” I rejoined politely.

A fragment of a sermon, indeed! No, Mr. Chichester—too weak for words!

He soon left me with a muttered excuse. I wished, oh, how I wished, that I had been the one to pick up that paper and not Sir Eustace Pedler! One thing was clear, Mr. Chichester could not be exempted from my list of suspects. I was inclined to put him top of the three.

After lunch, when I came up to the lounge for coffee, I noticed Sir Eustace and Pagett sitting with Mrs. Blair and Colonel Race. Mrs. Blair welcomed me with a smile, so I went over and joined them. They were talking about Italy.

“But it is misleading,” Mrs. Blair insisted. “Aqua calda certainly ought to be cold water—not hot.”

“You’re not a Latin scholar,” said Sir Eustace, smiling.

“Men are so superior about their Latin,” said Mrs. Blair. “But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.”

“Quite right,” said Colonel Race. “I always do.”

“But I love the Italians,” continued Mrs. Blair. “They’re so obliging—though even that has its embarrassing side. You ask them the way somewhere, and instead of saying ‘first to the right, second to the left’ or something that one could follow, they pour out a flood of well-meaning directions, and when you look bewildered they take you kindly by the arm and walk all the way there with you.”

“Is that your experience in Florence, Pagett?” asked Sir Eustace, turning with a smile to his secretary.

For some reason the question seemed to disconcert Mr. Pagett. He stammered and flushed.

“Oh, quite so, yes—er quite so.”

Then with a murmured excuse, he rose and left the table.

“I am beginning to suspect Guy Pagett of having committed some dark deed in Florence,” remarked Sir Eustace, gazing after his secretary’s retreating figure. “Whenever Florence or Italy is mentioned, he changes the subject, or bolts precipitately.”

“Perhaps he murdered some one there,” said Mrs. Blair hopefully. “He looks—I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, Sir Eustace—but he does look as though he might murder some one.”

“Yes, pure Cinquecento! It amuses me sometimes—especially when one knows as well as I do how essentially law-abiding and respectable the poor fellow really is.”

“He’s been with you some time, hasn’t he, Sir Eustace?” asked Colonel Race.

“Six years,” said Sir Eustace, with a deep sigh.

“He must be quite invaluable to you,” said Mrs. Blair.

“Oh, invaluable! Yes, quite invaluable.” The poor man sounded even more depressed, as though the invaluableness of Mr. Pagett was a secret grief to him. Then he added more briskly: “But his face should really inspire you with confidence, my dear lady. No self-respecting murderer would ever consent to look like one. Crippen, now, I believe, was one of the pleasantest fellows imaginable.”

“He was caught on a liner, wasn’t he?” murmured Mrs. Blair.

There was a slight rattle behind us. I turned quickly. Mr. Chichester had dropped his coffee-cup.

Our party soon broke up; Mrs. Blair went below to sleep and I went out on deck. Colonel Race followed me.

“You’re very elusive, Miss Beddingfeld. I looked for you everywhere last night at the dance.”

“I went to bed early,” I explained.

“Are you going to run away to-night too? Or are you going to dance with me?”

“I shall be very pleased to dance with you,” I murmured shyly. “But Mrs. Blair——”

“Our friend, Mrs. Blair, doesn’t care for dancing.”

“And you do?”

“I care for dancing with you.”

“Oh!” I said nervously.

I was a little afraid of Colonel Race. Nevertheless I was enjoying myself. This was better than discussing fossilized skulls with stuffy old professors! Colonel Race was really just my ideal of a stern silent Rhodesian. Possibly I might marry him! I hadn’t been asked, it is true, but, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! And all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or for their best friend.

I danced several times with him that evening. He danced well. When the dancing was over, and I was thinking of going to bed, he suggested a turn round the deck. We walked round three times and finally subsided into two deck-chairs. There was nobody else in sight. We made desultory conversation for some time.

“Do you know, Miss Beddingfeld, I think that I once met your father? A very interesting man—on his own subject, and it’s a subject that has a special fascination for me. In my humble way, I’ve done a bit in that line myself. Why, when I was in the Dordogne region——”

Our talk became technical. Colonel Race’s boast was not an idle one. He knew a great deal. At the same time, he made one or two curious mistakes—slips of the tongue, I might almost have thought them. But he was quick to take his cue from me and to cover them up. Once he spoke of the Mousterian period as succeeding the Aurignacian—an absurd mistake for one who knew anything of the subject.

It was twelve o’clock when I went to my cabin. I was still puzzling over those queer discrepancies. Was it possible that he had “got the whole subject up” for the occasion—that really he knew nothing of archaeology? I shook my head, vaguely dissatisfied with that solution.

Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I sat up with a sudden start as another idea flashed into my head. Had he been pumping me? Were those slight inaccuracies just tests—to see whether I really knew what I was talking about? In other words, he suspected me of not being genuinely Anne Beddingfeld.

Why?