‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Miss Mullins. ‘I–oh dear, oh dear, I must go. I’ve got an appointment. It’s very important.’
She shot out of the room and down the stairs. Hannibal gave one glance and went after her. Mr Crispin showed no sign of animosity, but he too left hurriedly in pursuit.
‘I hope she’s a good runner,’ said Tuppence, ‘because if she isn’t Hannibal will catch up with her. My word, he’s a good guard dog, isn’t he?’
‘Tuppence, that was Mr Crispin, sent us by Mr Solomon. Came at a very good moment, didn’t he? I think he’s been waiting his time to see what might be going to happen. Don’t break that cup and don’t pour any of that coffee away until we’ve got a bottle or something to put it in. It’s going to be analysed and we’re going to find out what’s in it. Put your best dressing-gown on, Tuppence, and come down to the sitting-room and we’ll have some drinks there before lunch.’
II
‘And now, I suppose,’ said Tuppence, ‘we shall never know what any of it means or what it is all about.’
She shook her head in deep despondency. Rising from her chair, she went towards the fireplace.
‘Are you trying to put a log on?’ said Tommy. ‘Let me. You’ve been told not to move about much.’
‘My arm’s quite all right now,’ said Tuppence. ‘Anyone would think I’d broken it or something. It was only a nasty scrape or graze.’
‘You have more to boast about than that,’ said Tommy. ‘It was definitely a bullet wound. You have been wounded in war.’
‘War it seems to have been all right,’ said Tuppence. ‘Really!’
‘Never mind,’ said Tommy, ‘we dealt with the Mullins very well, I think.’
‘Hannibal,’ said Tuppence, ‘was a very good dog there, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘he told us. Told us very definitely. He just leapt for that pampas grass. His nose told him, I suppose. He’s got a wonderful nose.’
‘I can’t say my nose warned me,’ said Tuppence. ‘I just thought she was rather an answer to prayer, turning up. And I quite forgot we were only supposed to take someone who had worked for Mr Solomon. Did Mr Crispin tell you anything more? I suppose his name isn’t really Crispin.’
‘Possibly not,’ said Tommy.
‘Did he come to do some sleuthing too? Too many of us here, I should say.’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘not exactly a sleuth. I think he was sent for security purposes. To look after you.’
‘To look after me,’ said Tuppence, ‘and you, I should say. Where is he now?’
‘Dealing with Miss Mullins, I expect.’
‘Yes, well, it’s extraordinary how hungry these excitements make one. Quite peckish, as one might say. Do you know, there’s nothing I can imagine I’d like to eat more than a nice hot crab with a sauce made of cream with just a touch of curry powder.’
‘You’re well again,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m delighted to hear you feeling like that about food.’
‘I’ve never been ill,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’ve been wounded. That’s quite different.’
‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘anyway you must have realized as I did that when Hannibal let go all out and told you an enemy was close at hand in the pampas grass, you must have realized that Miss Mullins was the person who, dressed as a man, hid there and shot at you–’
‘But then,’ said Tuppence, ‘we thought that she’d have another go. I was immured with my wound in bed and we made our arrangements. Isn’t that right, Tommy?’
‘Quite right,’ said Tommy, ‘quite right. I thought probably she wouldn’t leave it too long to come to the conclusion that one of her bullets had taken effect and that you’d be laid up in bed.’
‘So she came along full of feminine solicitude,’ said Tuppence.
‘And our arrangement was very good, I thought,’ said Tommy. ‘There was Albert on permanent guard, watching every step she took, every single thing she did–’
‘And also,’ said Tuppence, ‘bringing me up on a tray a cup of coffee and adding another cup for the visitor.’
‘Did you see Mullins–or Dodo, as Crispin called her–put anything in your cup of coffee?’
‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘I must admit that I didn’t. You see, she seemed to catch her foot in something and she knocked over that little table with our nice vase on it, made a great deal of apology, and my eye of course was on the broken vase and whether it was too bad to mend. So I didn’t see her.’
‘Albert did,’ said Tommy. ‘Saw it through the hinge where he’d enlarged it a crack so that he could look through.’
‘And then it was a very good idea to put Hannibal in confinement in the bathroom but leaving the door only half latched because, as we know, Hannibal is very good at opening doors. Not of course if they’re completely latched, but if they only look latched or feel latched he takes one great spring and comes in like a–oh, like a Bengal tiger.’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘that is quite a good description.’
‘And now I suppose Mr Crispin or whatever his name is has finished making his enquiries, although how he thinks Miss Mullins can be connected with Mary Jordan, or with a dangerous figure like Jonathan Kane who only exists in the past–’
‘I don’t think he only exists in the past. I think there may be a new edition of him, a re-birth, as you might say. There are a lot of young members, lovers of violence, violence at any price, the merry muggers society if there’s anything called that, and the super-fascists regretting the splendid days of Hitler and his merry group.’
‘I’ve just been reading Count Hannibal,’ said Tuppence. ‘Stanley Weyman. One of his best. It was among the Alexander books upstairs.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, I was thinking that nowadays it’s really still like that. And probably always has been. All the poor children who went off to the Children’s Crusade so full of joy and pleasure and vanity, poor little souls. Thinking they’d been appointed by the Lord to deliver Jerusalem, that the seas would part in front of them so that they could walk across, as Moses did in the Bible. And now all these pretty girls and young men who appear in courts the whole time, because they’ve smashed down some wretched old age pensioner or elderly person who had just got a little money or something in the bank. And there was St Bartholomew’s Massacre. You see, all these things do happen again. Even the new fascists were mentioned the other day in connection with a perfectly respectable university. Ah well, I suppose nobody will ever really tell us anything. Do you really think that Mr Crispin will find out something more about a hiding-place that nobody’s yet discovered? Cisterns. You know, bank robberies. They often hid things in cisterns. Very damp place, I should have thought, to hide something. Do you think when he’s finished making his enquiries or whatever it is, he’ll come back here and continue looking after me–and you, Tommy?’
‘I don’t need him to look after me,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh, that’s just arrogance,’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he’ll come to say goodbye,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh yes, because he’s got very nice manners, hasn’t he?’
‘He’ll want to make sure that you’re quite all right again.’
‘I’m only wounded and the doctor’s seen to that.’
‘He’s really very keen on gardening,’ said Tommy. ‘I realize that. He really did work for a friend of his who happened to be Mr Solomon, who has been dead for some years, but I suppose it makes a good cover, that, because he can say he worked for him and people will know he worked for him. So he’ll appear to be quite bona fide.’
‘Yes, I suppose one has to think of all those things,’ said Tuppence.
The front door bell rang and Hannibal dashed from the room, tiger-style, to kill any intruder who might be wishing to enter the sacred precincts which he guarded. Tommy came back with an envelope.
‘Addressed to us both,’ he said. ‘Shall I open it?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Tuppence.
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He opened it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this raises possibilities for the future.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an invitation from Mr Robinson. To you and to me. To dine with him on a date the week after next when he hopes you’ll be fully recovered and yourself again. In his country house. Somewhere in Sussex, I think.’
‘Do you think he’ll tell us anything then?’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he might,’ said Tommy.
‘Shall I take my list with me?’ said Tuppence. ‘I know it by heart now.’
She read rapidly.
‘Black Arrow, Alexander Parkinson, Oxford and Cambridge porcelain Victorian seats, Grin-hen-lo, KK, Mathilde’s stomach, Cain and Abel, Truelove…’
‘Enough,’ said Tommy. ‘It sounds mad.’
‘Well, it is mad, all of it. Think there’ll be anyone else at Mr Robinson’s?’
‘Possibly Colonel Pikeaway.’
‘In that case,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’d better take a cough lozenge with me, hadn’t I? Anyway, I do want to see Mr Robinson. I can’t believe he’s as fat and yellow as you say he is–Oh!–but, Tommy, isn’t it the week after next that Deborah is bringing the children to stay with us?’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s this next weekend as ever is.’
‘Thank goodness, so that’s all right,’ said Tuppence.
Chapter 16
The Birds Fly South
‘Was that the car?’
Tuppence came out of the front door peering curiously along the curve of the drive, eagerly awaiting the arrival of her daughter Deborah and the three children.
Albert emerged from the side door.
‘They won’t be here yet. No, that was the grocer, madam. You wouldn’t believe it–eggs have gone up, again. Never vote for this Government again, I won’t. I’ll give the Liberals a go.’
‘Shall I come and see to the rhubarb and strawberry fool for tonight?’
‘I’ve seen to that, madam. I’ve watched you often and I know just how you do it.’
‘You’ll be a cordon bleu chef by the time you’ve finished, Albert,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s Janet’s favourite sweet.’
‘Yes, and I made a treacle tart–Master Andrew loves treacle tart.’
‘The rooms are all ready?’
‘Yes. Mrs Shacklebury came in good time this morning. I put the Guerlain Sandalwood Soap in Miss Deborah’s bathroom. It’s her favourite, I know.’
Tuppence breathed a sigh of relief at the knowledge that all was in order for the arrival of her family.
There was the sound of a motor horn and a few minutes later the car came up the drive with Tommy at the wheel and a moment later the guests were decanted on the doorstep–daughter Deborah still a very handsome woman, nearly forty, and Andrew, fifteen, Janet, eleven, and Rosalie, seven.
‘Hullo, Grandma,’ shouted Andrew.
‘Where’s Hannibal?’ called Janet.
‘I want my tea,’ said Rosalie, showing a disposition to burst into tears.
Greetings were exchanged. Albert dealt with the disembarkation of all the family treasures including a budgerigar, a bowl of goldfish and a hamster in a hutch.
‘So this is the new home,’ said Deborah, embracing her mother. ‘I like it–I like it very much.’
‘Can we go round the garden?’ asked Janet.
‘After tea,’ said Tommy.
‘I want my tea,’ reiterated Rosalie with an expression on her face of: First things first.
They went into the dining-room where tea was set out and met with general satisfaction.
‘What’s all this I’ve been hearing about you, Mum?’ demanded Deborah, when they had finished tea and repaired to the open air–the children racing round to explore the possible pleasures of the garden in the joint company of Thomas and Hannibal who had rushed out to take part in the rejoicings.
Deborah, who always took a stern line with her mother, whom she considered in need of careful guardianship, demanded, ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Oh. We’ve settled in quite comfortably by now,’ said Tuppence.
Deborah looked unconvinced.
‘You’ve been doing things. She has, hasn’t she, Dad?’
Tommy was returning with Rosalie riding him piggyback, Janet surveying the new territory and Andrew looking around with an air of taking a full grownup view.
‘You have been doing things.’ Deborah returned to the attack. ‘You’ve been playing at being Mrs Blenkinsop all over again. The trouble with you is, there’s no holding you–N or M–all over again. Derek heard something and wrote and told me.’ She nodded as she mentioned her brother’s name.
‘Derek–what could he know?’ demanded Tuppence.
‘Derek always gets to know things.’
‘You too, Dad.’ Deborah turned on her father. ‘You’ve been mixing yourself up in things, too. I thought you’d come here, both of you, to retire, and take life quietly–and enjoy yourselves.’
‘That was the idea,’ said Tommy, ‘but Fate thought otherwise.’
‘Postern of Fate,’ said Tuppence. ‘Disaster’s Cavern, Fort of Fear–’
‘Flecker,’ said Andrew, with conscious erudition. He was addicted to poetry and hoped one day to be a poet himself. He carried on with a full quotation:
‘Four great gates has the City of Damascus…
Postern of Fate–the Desert Gate…
Pass not beneath, O Caravan–or pass not singing.
Have you heard that silence where the birds are dead, yet something pipeth like a bird?’
With singularly apposite cooperation birds flew suddenly from the roof of the house over their heads.
‘What are all those birds, Grannie?’ asked Janet.
‘Swallows flying south,’ said Tuppence.
‘Won’t they ever come back again?’
‘Yes, they’ll come back next summer.’
‘And pass through the Postern of Fate!’ said Andrew with intense satisfaction.
‘This house was called Swallow’s Nest once,’ said Tuppence.
‘But you aren’t going on living here, are you?’ said Deborah. ‘Dad wrote and said you’re looking out for another house.’
‘Why?’ asked Janet–the Rosa Dartle of the family. ‘I like this one.’
‘I’ll give you a few reasons,’ said Tommy, plucking a sheet of paper from his pocket and reading aloud:
‘Black Arrow
Alexander Parkinson
Oxford and Cambridge
Victorian china garden stools
Grin-hen-lo
KK
Mathilde’s stomach
Cain and Abel
Gallant Truelove’
‘Shut up, Tommy–that’s my list. It’s nothing to do with you,’ said Tuppence.
‘But what does it mean?’ asked Janet, continuing her quiz.
‘It sounds like a list of clues from a detective story,’ said Andrew, who in his less poetical moments was addicted to that form of literature.
‘It is a list of clues. It’s the reason why we are looking for another house,’ said Tommy.
‘But I like it here,’ said Janet, ‘it’s lovely.’
‘It’s a nice house,’ said Rosalie. ‘Chocolate biscuits,’ she added, with memories of recently eaten tea.
‘I like it,’ said Andrew, speaking as an autocratic Czar of Russia might speak.
‘Why don’t you like it, Grandma?’ asked Janet.
‘I do like it,’ said Tuppence with a sudden unexpected enthusiasm. ‘I want to live here–to go on living here.’
‘Postern of Fate,’ said Andrew. ‘It’s an exciting name.’
‘It used to be called Swallow’s Nest,’ said Tuppence. ‘We could call it that again–’
‘All those clues,’ said Andrew. ‘You could make a story out of them–even a book–’
‘Too many names, too complicated,’ said Deborah. ‘Who’d read a book like that?’
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‘You’d be surprised,’ said Tommy, ‘what people will read–and enjoy!’
Tommy and Tuppence looked at each other.
‘Couldn’t I get some paint tomorrow?’ asked Andrew. ‘Or Albert could get some and he’d help me. We’d paint the new name on the gate.’
‘And then the swallows would know they could come back next summer,’ said Janet.
She looked at her mother.
‘Not at all a bad idea,’ said Deborah.
‘La Reine le veult,’ said Tommy and bowed to his daughter, who always considered that giving the Royal assent in the family was her perquisite.
Chapter 17
Last Words: Dinner with Mr Robinson
‘What a lovely meal,’ said Tuppence. She looked round at the assembled company.
They had passed from the dining table and were now assembled in the library round the coffee table.
Mr Robinson, as yellow and even larger than Tuppence had visualized him, was smiling behind a big and beautiful George II coffee-pot–next to him was Mr Crispin, now, it seemed, answering to the name of Horsham. Colonel Pikeaway sat next to Tommy, who had, rather doubtfully, offered him one of his own cigarettes.
Colonel Pikeaway, with an expression of surprise, said: ‘I never smoke after dinner.’
Miss Collodon, whom Tuppence had found rather alarming, said, ‘Indeed, Colonel Pikeaway? How very, very interesting.’ She turned her head towards Tuppence. ‘What a very well-behaved dog you have got, Mrs Beresford!’
Hannibal, who was lying under the table with his head resting on Tuppence’s foot, looked out with his misleading best angelic expression and moved his tail gently.
‘I understood he was a very fierce dog,’ said Mr Robinson, casting an amused glance at Tuppence.
‘You should see him in action,’ said Mr Crispin–alias Horsham.
‘He has party manners when he is asked out to dinner,’ explained Tuppence. ‘He loves it, feels he’s really a prestige dog going into high society.’ She turned to Mr Robinson. ‘It was really very, very nice of you to send him an invitation and to have a plateful of liver ready for him. He loves liver.’