The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie [i like reading books txt] 📗
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The train drew in just ten minutes late. Everybody tumbled out on the platform and began walking up and down feverishly. I had no difficulty in espying Pagett. I accosted him eagerly. He gave his usual nervous start at seeing me—somewhat accentuated this time.
“Dear me, Miss Beddingfeld, I understood that you had disappeared.”
“I have reappeared again,” I told him solemnly. “And how are you, Mr. Pagett?”
“Very well, thank you—looking forward to taking up my work again with Sir Eustace.”
“Mr. Pagett,” I said, “there is something I want to ask you. I hope that you won’t be offended, but a lot hangs on it, more than you can possibly guess. I want to know what you were doing at Marlow on the 8th of January last?”
He started violently.
“Really, Miss Beddingfeld—I—indeed——”
“You were there, weren’t you?”
“I—for reasons of my own I was in the neighbourhood, yes.”
“Won’t you tell me what those reasons were?”
“Sir Eustace has not already told you?”
“Sir Eustace? Does he know?”
“I am almost sure that he does. I hoped he had not recognized me, but from the hints he has let drop, and his remarks, I fear it is only too certain. In any case, I meant to make a clean breast of the matter and offer him my resignation. He is a peculiar man, Miss Beddingfeld, with an abnormal sense of humour. It seems to amuse him to keep me on tenter-hooks. All the time, I dare say, he was perfectly well aware of the true facts. Possibly he has known them for years.”
I hoped that sooner or later I should be able to understand what Pagett was talking about. He went on fluently:
“It is difficult for a man of Sir Eustace’s standing to put himself in my position. I know that I was in the wrong, but it seemed a harmless deception. I would have thought it better taste on his part to have tackled me outright—instead of indulging in covert jokes at my expense.”
A whistle blew, and the people began to surge back into the train.
“Yes, Mr. Pagett,” I broke in, “I’m sure I quite agree with all you’re saying about Sir Eustace. But why did you go to Marlow?”
“It was wrong of me, but natural under the circumstances—yes, I still feel natural under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” I cried desperately.
For the first time Pagett seemed to recognize that I was asking him a question. His mind detached itself from the peculiarities of Sir Eustace and his own justification and came to rest on me.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Beddingfeld,” he said stiffly, “but I fail to see your concern in the matter.”
He was back in the train now, leaning down to speak to me. I felt desperate. What could one do with a man like that?
“Of course, if it’s so dreadful that you’d be ashamed to speak of it to me——” I began spitefully.
At last I had found the right stop. Pagett stiffened and flushed.
“Dreadful? Ashamed? I don’t understand you.”
“Then tell me.”
In three short sentences he told me. At last I knew Pagett’s secret! It was not in the least what I expected.
I walked slowly back to the hotel. There a wire was handed to me. I tore it open. It contained full and definite instructions for me to proceed forthwith to Johannesburg, or rather to a station this side of Johannesburg, where I should be met by a car. It was signed, not Andy, but Harry.
I sat down in a chair to do some very serious thinking.
CHAPTER XXXIPagett has arrived. He is in a blue funk of course. Suggested at once that we should go off to Pretoria. Then, when I had told him kindly but firmly that we were going to remain here, he went to the other extreme, wished he had his rifle here, and began bucking about some bridge he guarded during the Great War. A railway bridge at Little Puddecombe junction, or something of that sort.
I soon cut that short by telling him to unpack the big typewriter. I thought that that would keep him employed for some time, because the typewriter was sure to have gone wrong—it always does—and he would have to take it somewhere to be mended. But I had forgotten Pagett’s powers of being in the right.
“I’ve already unpacked all the cases, Sir Eustace. The typewriter is in perfect condition.”
“What do you mean—all the cases?”
“The two small cases as well.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so officious, Pagett. Those small cases were no business of yours. They belong to Mrs. Blair.”
Pagett looked crestfallen. He hates to make a mistake.
“So you can just pack them up again neatly,” I continued. “After that you can go out and look around you. Jo’burg will probably be a heap of smoking ruins by to-morrow, so it may be your last chance.”
I thought that that would get rid of him successfully for the morning, at any rate.
“There is something I want to say to you when you have the leisure, Sir Eustace.”
“I haven’t got it now,” I said hastily. “At this minute I have absolutely no leisure whatsoever.”
Pagett retired.
“By the way,” I called after him, “what was there in those cases of Mrs. Blair’s?”
“Some fur rugs, and a couple of fur—hats, I think.”
“That’s right,” I assented. “She bought them on the train. They are hats—of a kind—though I hardly wonder at your not recognizing them. I dare say she’s going to wear one of them at Ascot. What else was there?”
“Some rolls of films and some baskets—a lot of baskets——”
“There would be,” I assured him. “Mrs. Blair is the kind of woman who never buys less than a dozen or so of anything.”
“I think that’s all, Sir Eustace, except some miscellaneous odds and ends, a motor-veil and some odd gloves—that sort of thing.”
“If you hadn’t been a born idiot, Pagett, you would have seen from the start that those couldn’t possibly be my belongings.”
“I thought some of them might belong to Miss Pettigrew.”
“Ah, that reminds me—what do you mean by picking me out such a doubtful character as a secretary?”
And I told him about the searching cross-examination I had been put through. Immediately I was sorry, I saw a glint in his eye that I knew only too well. I changed the conversation hurriedly. But it was too late. Pagett was on the war-path.
He next proceeded to bore me with a long pointless story about the Kilmorden. It was about a roll of films and a wager. The roll of films being thrown through a porthole in the middle of the night by some steward who ought to have known better. I hate horse-play. I told Pagett so, and he began to tell me the story all over again. He tells a story extremely badly, anyway. It was a long time before I could make head or tail of this one.
I did not see him again until lunch-time. Then he came in brimming over with excitement, like a bloodhound on the scent. I never have cared for bloodhounds. The upshot of it all was that he had seen Rayburn.
“What?” I cried, startled.
Yes, he had caught sight of some one whom he was sure was Rayburn crossing the street. Pagett had followed him.
“And who do you think I saw him stop and speak to? Miss Pettigrew!”
“What?”
“Yes, Sir Eustace. And that’s not all. I’ve been making inquiries about her——”
“Wait a bit. What happened to Rayburn?”
“He and Miss Pettigrew went into that corner curio-shop——”
I uttered an involuntary exclamation. Pagett stopped inquiringly.
“Nothing,” I said. “Go on.”
“I waited outside for ages—but they didn’t come out. At last I went in. Sir Eustace, there was no one in the shop! There must be another way out.”
I stared at him.
“As I was saying, I came back to the hotel and made some inquiries about Miss Pettigrew.” Pagett lowered his voice and breathed hard as he always does when he wants to be confidential. “Sir Eustace, a man was seen coming out of her room last night.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“And I always regarded her as a lady of such eminent respectability,” I murmured.
Pagett went on without heeding.
“I went straight up and searched her room. What do you think I found?”
I shook my head.
“This!”
Pagett held up a safety razor and a stick of shaving soap.
“What should a woman want with these?”
I don’t suppose Pagett ever reads the advertisements in the high-class ladies’ papers. I do. Whilst not proposing to argue with him on the subject, I refused to accept the presence of the razor as proof positive of Miss Pettigrew’s sex. Pagett is so hopelessly behind the times. I should not have been at all surprised if he had produced a cigarette-case to support his theory. However, even Pagett has his limits.
“You’re not convinced, Sir Eustace. What do you say to this?”
I inspected the article which he dangled aloft triumphantly.
“It looks like hair,” I remarked distastefully.
“It is hair. I think it’s what they call a toupee.”
“Indeed,” I commented.
“Now are you convinced that that Pettigrew woman is a man in disguise?”
“Really, my dear Pagett, I think I am. I might have known it by her feet.”
“Then that’s that. And now, Sir Eustace, I want to speak to you about my private affairs. I cannot doubt, from your hints and your continual allusions to the time I was in Florence, that you have found me out.”
At last the mystery of what Pagett did in Florence is going to be revealed!
“Make a clean breast of it, my dear fellow,” I said kindly. “Much the best way.”
“Thank you, Sir Eustace.”
“Is it her husband? Annoying fellows, husbands. Always turning up when they’re least expected.”
“I fail to follow you, Sir Eustace. Whose husband?”
“The lady’s husband.”
“What lady?”
“God bless my soul, Pagett, the lady you met in Florence. There must have been a lady. Don’t tell me that you merely robbed a church or stabbed an Italian in the back because you didn’t like his face.”
“I am quite at a loss to understand you, Sir Eustace. I suppose you are joking.”
“I am an amusing fellow sometimes, when I take the trouble, but I can assure you that I am not trying to be funny this minute.”
“I hoped that as I was a good way off you had not recognized me, Sir Eustace.”
“Recognized you where?”
“At Marlow, Sir Eustace?”
“At Marlow? What the devil were you doing at Marlow?”
“I thought you understood that——”
“I’m beginning to understand less and less. Go back to the beginning of the story and start again. You went to Florence——”
“Then you don’t know after all—and you didn’t recognize me!”
“As far as I can judge, you seem to have given yourself away needlessly—made a coward of by your conscience. But I shall be able to tell better when I’ve heard the whole story. Now, then, take a deep breath and start again. You went to Florence——”
“But I didn’t go to Florence. That is just it.”
“Well, where did you go, then?”
“I went home—to Marlow.”
“What the devil did you want to go to Marlow for?”
“I wanted to see my wife. She was in delicate health and expecting——”
“Your wife? But I didn’t know you were married?”
“No, Sir Eustace, that is just what I am telling you. I deceived you in this matter.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Just over eight years. I had been married just six months when I became your secretary. I did not want to lose the post. A resident secretary is not supposed to have a wife, so I suppressed the fact.”
“You take my breath away,” I remarked. “Where has she been all these years?”
“We have had a small bungalow on the river at Marlow, quite close to the Mill House, for over five years.”
“God bless my soul,” I muttered. “Any children?”
“Four children, Sir Eustace.”
I gazed at him in a kind of stupor. I might have known, all along, that a man like Pagett couldn’t have a guilty secret. The respectability of Pagett has always been my bane. That’s just the kind of secret he would have—a wife and
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