“It’s clear enough now,” he said bitterly. “They’ve got her—got Tuppence. That Russian devil has given us the slip. The hospital nurse and the boy were accomplices. They stayed here for a day or two to get the hotel people accustomed to their presence. The man must have realised at lunch that he was trapped and proceeded to carry out his plan. Probably he counted on the room next door being empty since it was when he fixed the bolts. Anyway he managed to silence both the woman next door and Tuppence, brought her in here, dressed her in boy’s clothes, altered his own appearance, and walked out bold as brass. The clothes must have been hidden ready. But I don’t quite see how he managed Tuppence’s acquiescence.”
“I can see,” said Mr. Carter. He picked up a little shining piece of steel from the carpet. “That’s a fragment of a hypodermic needle. She was doped.”
“My God!” groaned Tommy. “And he’s got clear away.”
“We don’t know that,” said Carter quickly. “Remember every exit is watched.”
“For a man and a girl. Not for a hospital nurse and an invalid boy. They’ll have left the hotel by now.”
Such, on inquiry, proved to be the case. The nurse and her patient had driven away in a taxi some five minutes earlier.
“Look here, Beresford,” said Mr. Carter, “for God’s sake pull yourself together. You know that I won’t leave a stone unturned to find that girl. I’m going back to my office at once and in less than five minutes every resource of the department will be at work. We’ll get them yet.”
“Will you, sir? He’s a clever devil, that Russian. Look at the cunning of this coup of his. But I know you’ll do your best. Only—pray God it’s not too late. They’ve got it in for us badly.”
He left the Blitz Hotel and walked blindly along the street, hardly knowing where he was going. He felt completely paralysed. Where to search? What to do?
He went into the Green Park, and dropped down upon a seat. He hardly noticed when someone else sat down at the opposite end, and was quite startled to hear a well-known voice.
“If you please, sir, if I might make so bold—”
Tommy looked up.
“Hullo, Albert,” he said dully.
“I know all about it, sir—but don’t take on so.”
“Don’t take on—” He gave a short laugh. “Easily said, isn’t it?”
“Ah, but think, sir. Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives! Never beaten. And if you’ll excuse my saying so I happened to overhear what you and the Missus was ragging about this morning. Mr. Poirot, and his little grey cells. Well, sir, why not use your little grey cells, and see what you can do.”
“It’s easier to use your little grey cells in fiction than it is in fact, my boy.”
“Well,” said Albert stoutly, “I don’t believe anybody could put the Missus out, for good and all. You know what she is, sir, just like one of those rubber bones you buy for little dorgs—guaranteed indestructible.”
“Albert,” said Tommy, “you cheer me.”
“Then what about using your little grey cells, sir?”
“You’re a persistent lad, Albert. Playing the fool has served us pretty well up to now. We’ll try it again. Let us arrange our facts neatly, and with method. At ten minutes past two exactly, our quarry enters the lift. Five minutes later we speak to the lift man, and having heard what he says we also go up to the third floor. At say, nineteen minutes past two we enter the suite of Mrs. Van Snyder. And now, what significant fact strikes us?”
There was a pause, no significant fact striking either of them.
“There wasn’t such a thing as a trunk in the room, was there?” asked Albert, his eyes lighting suddenly.
“Mon ami,” said Tommy, “you do not understand the psychology of an American woman who has just returned from Paris. There were, I should say, about nineteen trunks in the room.”
“What I meantersay is, a trunk’s a handy thing if you’ve got a dead body about you want to get rid of—not that she is dead, for a minute.”
“We searched the only two there were big enough to contain a body. What is the next fact in chronological order?”
“You’ve missed one out—when the Missus and the bloke dressed up as a hospital nurse passed the waiter in the passage.”
“It must have been just before we came up in the lift,” said Tommy. “They must have had a narrow escape of meeting us face to face. Pretty quick work, that. I—”
He stopped.
“What is it, sir?”
“Be silent, mon ami. I have the kind of little idea—colossal, stupendous—that always comes sooner or later to Hercule Poirot. But if so—if that’s it—Oh, Lord, I hope I’m in time.”
He raced out of the Park, Albert hard on his heels, inquiring breathlessly as he ran, “What’s up, sir? I don’t understand.”
“That’s all right,” said Tommy. “You’re not supposed to. Hastings never did. If your grey cells weren’t of a very inferior order to mine, what fun do you think I should get out of this game? I’m talking damned rot—but I can’t help it. You’re a good lad, Albert. You know what Tuppence is worth—she’s worth a dozen of you and me.”
Thus talking breathlessly as he ran, Tommy reentered the portals of the Blitz. He caught sight of Evans, and drew him aside with a few hurried words. The two men entered the lift, Albert with them.
“Third floor,” said Tommy.
At the door of No. 318 they paused. Evans had a pass key, and used it forthwith. Without a word of warning, they walked straight into Mrs. Van Snyder’s bedroom. The lady was still lying on the bed, but was now arrayed in a becoming negligee. She stared at them in surprise.
“Pardon my failure to knock,” said Tommy pleasantly. “But I want my wife. Do you mind getting off that bed?”
“I guess you’ve gone plumb crazy,” cried Mrs. Van Snyder.
Tommy surveyed her thoughtfully, his head on one side.
“Very artistic,” he pronounced, “but it won’t do. We looked under the bed—but not in it. I remember using that hiding place myself when young. Horizontally across the bed, underneath the bolster. And that nice wardrobe trunk all ready to take away the body in later. But we were a bit too quick for you just now. You’d had time to dope Tuppence, put her under the bolster, and be gagged and bound by your accomplices next door, and I’ll admit we swallowed your story all right for the moment. But when one came to think it out—with order and method—impossible to drug a girl, dress her in boys’ clothes, gag and bind another woman, and change one’s own appearance—all in five minutes. Simply a physical impossibility. The hospital nurse and the boy were to be a decoy. We were to follow that trail, and Mrs. Van Snyder was to be pitied as a victim. Just help the lady off the bed, will you, Evans? You have your automatic? Good.”
Protesting shrilly, Mrs. Van Snyder was hauled from her place of repose. Tommy tore off the coverings and the bolster.
There, lying horizontally across the top of the bed was Tuppence, her eyes closed, and her face waxen. For a moment Tommy felt a sudden dread, then he saw the slight rise and fall of her breast. She was drugged—not dead.
He turned to Albert and Evans.
“And now, Messieurs,” he said dramatically, “the final coup!”
With a swift, unexpected gesture he seized Mrs. Van Snyder by her elaborately dressed hair. It came off in his hand.
“As I thought,” said Tommy. “No. 16!”
II
It was about half an hour later when Tuppence opened her eyes and found a doctor and Tommy bending over her.
Over the events of the next quarter of an hour a decent veil had better be drawn, but after that period the doctor departed with the assurance that all was now well.
“Mon ami, Hastings,” said Tommy fondly. “How I rejoice that you are still alive.”
“Have we got No. 16?”
“Once more I have crushed him like an eggshell—in other words, Carter’s got him. The little grey cells! By the way, I’m raising Albert’
s wages.”
“Tell me all about it.”
Tommy gave her a spirited narrative, with certain omissions.
“Weren’t you half frantic about me?” asked Tuppence faintly.
“Not particularly. One must keep calm, you know.”
“Liar!” said Tuppence. “You look quite haggard still.”
“Well, perhaps, I was just a little worried, darling. I say—we’re going to give it up now, aren’t we?”
“Certainly we are.”
Tommy gave a sigh of relief.
“I hoped you’d be sensible. After a shock like this—”
“It’s not the shock. You know I never mind shocks.”
“A rubber bone—indestructible,” murmured Tommy.
“I’ve got something better to do,” continued Tuppence. “Something ever so much more exciting. Something I’ve never done before.”
Tommy looked at her with lively apprehension.
“I forbid it, Tuppence.”
“You can’t,” said Tuppence. “It’s a law of nature.”
“What are you talking about, Tuppence?”
“I’m talking,” said Tuppence, “of Our Baby. Wives don’t whisper nowadays. They shout. OUR BABY! Tommy, isn’t everything marvellous?”
N or M?
A Tommy and Tuppence Mystery
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
One
Tommy Beresford removed his overcoat in the hall of the flat. He hung it up with some care, taking time over it. His hat went carefully on the next peg.
He squared his shoulders, affixed a resolute smile to his face and walked into the sitting room, where his wife sat knitting a Balaclava helmet in khaki wool.
It was the spring of 1940.
Mrs. Beresford gave him a quick glance and then busied herself by knitting at a furious rate. She said after a minute or two:
“Any news in the evening paper?”
Tommy said:
“The Blitzkrieg is coming, hurray, hurray! Things look bad in France.”
Tuppence said:
“It’s a depressing world at the moment.”
There was a pause and then Tommy said:
“Well, why don’t you ask? No need to be so damned tactful.”
“I know,” admitted Tuppence. “There is something about conscious tact that is very irritating. But then it irritates you if I do ask. And anyway I don’t need to ask. It’s written all over you.”
“I wasn’t conscious of looking a Dismal Desmond.”
“No, darling,” said Tuppence. “You had a kind of nailed to the mast smile which was one of the most heartrending things I have ever seen.”
Tommy said with a grin:
“No, was it really as bad as all that?”
“And more! Well, come on, out with it. Nothing doing?”
“Nothing doing. They don’t want me in any capacity. I tell you, Tuppence, it’s pretty thick when a man of forty-six is made to feel like a doddering grandfather. Army, Navy, Air Force, Foreign Office, one and all say the same thing—I’m too old. I may be required later.”
Tuppence said:
“Well, it’s the same for me. They don’t want people of my age for nursing—no, thank you. Nor for anything else. They’d rather have a fluffy chit who’s never seen a wound or sterilised a dressing than they would have me who worked for three years, 1915 to 1918, in various capacities, nurse in the surgical ward and operating theatre, driver of a trade delivery van and later of a General. This, that and the other—all, I assert firmly, with conspicuous success. And now I’m a poor, pushing, tiresome, middle-aged woman who won’t sit at home quietly and knit as she ought to do.”
Tommy said gloomily:
“This war is hell.”
“It’s bad enough having a war,” said Tuppence, “but not being allowed to do anything in it just puts the lid on.”
Tommy said consolingly:
“Well, at any rate Deborah has got a job.”
Deborah’s mother said:
“Oh, she’s all right. I expect she’s good at it, too. But I still think, Tommy, that I could hold my own with Deborah.”
Tommy grinned.
“She wouldn’t think so.”
Tuppence said:
“Daughters can be very trying. Especially when they will be so kind to you.”
Tommy murmured:
“The way young Derek makes allowances for me is sometimes rather hard to bear. That ‘poor old Dad’ look in his eye.”
“In fact,” said Tuppence, “our children, although quite adorable, are also quite maddening.”
But at the mention of the twins, Derek and Deborah, her eyes were very tender.
“I suppose,” said Tommy thoughtfully, “that it’s always hard for people themselves to realise that they’re getting middle-aged and past doing things.”
Tuppence gave a snort of rage, tossed her glossy dark head, and sent her ball of khaki wool spinning from her lap.
“Are we past doing things? Are we? Or is it only that everyone keeps insinuating that we are. Sometimes I feel that we never were any use.”
“Quite likely,” said Tommy.
“Perhaps so. But at any rate we did once feel important. And now I’m beginning to feel that all that never really happened. Did it happen, Tommy? Is it true that you were once crashed on the head and kidnapped by German agents? Is it true that we once tracked down a dangerous criminal—and got him! Is it true that we rescued a girl and got hold of important secret papers, and were practically thanked by a grateful country? Us! You and me! Despised, unwanted Mr. and Mrs. Beresford.”
“Now dry up, darling. All this does no good.”
“All the same,” said Tuppence, blinking back a tear, “I’m disappointed in our Mr. Carter.”
“He wrote us a very nice letter.”
“He didn’t do anything—he didn’t even hold out any hope.”
“Well, he’s out of it all nowadays. Like us. He’s quite old. Lives in Scotland and fishes.”
Tuppence said wistfully:
“They might have let us do something in the Intelligence.”
“Perhaps we couldn’t,” said Tommy. “Perhaps, nowadays, we wouldn’t have the nerve.”
“I wonder,” said Tuppence. “One feels just the same. But perhaps, as you say, when it came to the point—”
She sighed. She said:
“I wish we could find a job of some kind. It’s so rotten when one has so much time to think.”
Her eyes rested just for a minute on the photograph of the very young man in the Air Force uniform, with the wide grinning smile so like Tommy’s.
Tommy said:
“It’s worse for a man. Women can knit, after all—and do up parcels and help at canteens.”
Tuppence said:
“I can do all that twenty years from now. I’m not old enough to be content with that. I’m neither one thing nor the other.”
The front door bell rang. Tuppence got up. The flat was a small service one.
She opened the door to find a broad-shouldered man with a big fair moustache and a cheerful red face, standing on the mat.
His glance, a quick one, took her in as he asked in a pleasant voice:
“Are you Mrs. Beresford?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Grant. I’m a friend of Lord Easthampton’s. He suggested I should look you and your husband up.”
“Oh, how nice, do come in.”
She preceded him into the sitting room.
“My husband, er—Captain—”
“Mr.”
“Mr. Grant. He’s a friend of Mr. Car—of Lord Easthampt
on’s.”
The old nom de guerre of the former Chief of the Intelligence, “Mr. Carter,” always came more easily to her lips than their old friend’s proper title.
For a few minutes the three talked happily together. Grant was an attractive person with an easy manner.
Presently Tuppence left the room. She returned a few minutes later with the sherry and some glasses.
After a few minutes, when a pause came, Mr. Grant said to Tommy:
“I hear you’re looking for a job, Beresford?”
An eager light came into Tommy’s eye.
“Yes, indeed. You don’t mean—”
Grant laughed, and shook his head.
“Oh, nothing of that kind. No, I’m afraid that has to be left to the young active men—or to those who’ve been at it for years. The only things I can suggest are rather stodgy, I’m afraid. Office work. Filing papers. Tying them up in red tape and pigeonholing them. That sort of thing.”
Tommy’s face fell.
“Oh, I see!”
Grant said encouragingly:
“Oh well, it’s better than nothing. Anyway, come and see me at my office one day. Ministry of Requirements. Room 22. We’ll fix you up with something.”
The telephone rang. Tuppence picked up the receiver.
“Hallo—yes—what?” A squeaky voice spoke agitatedly from the other end. Tuppence’s face changed. “When?—Oh, my dear—of course—I’ll come over right away. . . .”
She put back the receiver.
She said to Tommy:
“That was Maureen.”
“I thought so—I recognised her voice from here.”
Tuppence explained breathlessly:
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Grant. But I must go round to this friend of mine. She’s fallen and twisted her ankle and there’s no one with her but her little girl, so I must go round and fix up things for her and get hold of someone to come in and look after her. Do forgive me.”
“Of course, Mrs. Beresford. I quite understand.”
Tuppence smiled at him, picked up a coat which had been lying over the sofa, slipped her arms into it and hurried out. The flat door banged.