Postern of Fate

  'A look round at what?' said Tommy.

  'Well, this house of yours, The Laurels, did you say? There used to be some silly jokes about The Laurels sometimes. Mind you, they'd had a good look round, the security people and the rest of them. They thought that somewhere in that house was valuable evidence of some kind. There was an idea it had been sent overseas - Italy was mentioned - just before people got alerted. But other people thought it might be still hidden there in that part of the world somewhere. You know, it's the sort of place that has cellars and flagstones and various things. Come now, Tommy, my boy, I feel you're on the hunt again.'

  'I assure you I don't do anything of that kind nowadays.'

  'Well, that's what one thought before about you when you were at that other place. Beginning of the last war. You know, where you ran down that German chap. That and the woman with the nursery rhyme books. Yes. Sharp bit of work, all that. And now, perhaps, they've set you on another trail!'

  'Nonsense,' said Tommy. 'You mustn't get all these ideas in your head. I'm an old gaffer now.'

  'You're a cunning old dog. I bet you're better than some of these young ones. Yes. You sit there looking innocent, and really I expect, well, one mustn't ask you questions. Mustn't ask you to betray State secrets, must I? Anyway, be careful of your missus. You know she's always one to stick herself forward too much. She had a narrow escape last time in the N or M days.'

  'Ah well,' said Tommy, 'I think Tuppence is just interested in the general antiquity of this place, you know. Who lived there and where. And pictures of the old people who used to live in the house, and all the rest of it. That and planning the garden. That's all we're really interested in nowadays. Gardens. Gardens and bulb catalogues and all the rest of it.'

  'Well, maybe I'll believe that if a year passes and nothing exciting has happened. But I know you, Beresford, and I know our Mrs Beresford, too. The two of you together, you're a wonderful couple and I bet you'll come up with something. I tell you, if those papers ever come to light, it'll have a very, very great effect on the political front and there are several people who won't be pleased. No indeed. And those people who won't be pleased are looked on as pillars of rectitude at the moment! But by some they are thought to be dangerous. Remember that. They're dangerous, and the ones that aren't dangerous are in contact with those who are dangerous. So you be careful and make your missus be careful too.'

  'Really,' said Tommy, 'your ideas, you make me feel quite excited.'

  'Well, go on feeling excited but look after Mrs Tuppence. I'm very fond of Tuppence. She's a nice girl, always was and still is.'

  'Hardly a girl,' said Tommy.

  'Now don't say that of your wife. Don't get in that habit. One in a thousand, she is. But I'm sorry for someone who has her in the picture sleuthing him down. She's probably out on the hunt today.'

  'I don't think she is. More likely gone to tea with an elderly lady.'

  'Ah well. Elderly ladies can sometimes give you useful information. Elderly ladies and children of five years old. All the unlikely people come out sometimes with a truth nobody had ever dreamed of. I could tell you things -'

  'I'm sure you could, Colonel.'

  'Ah well, one mustn't give away secrets.'

  Colonel Atkinson shook his head.

  On his way home Tommy stared out of the railway carriage window and watched the rapidly retreating countryside. 'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'I really wonder. That old boy, he's usually in the know. Knows things. But what can there be that could matter now. It's all in the past - I mean there's nothing, can't be anything left from that war. Not nowadays.' Then he wondered. New ideas had taken over - Common Market ideas. Somewhere, as it were behind his mind rather than in it, because there were grandsons and nephews, new generations - younger members of families that had always meant something, that had pull, had got positions of influence, of power because they were born who they were and if by any chance they were not loyal, they could be approached, could believe in new creeds or in old creeds revived, whichever way you liked to think of it. England was in a funny state, a different state from what it had been. Or was it really always in the same state? Always underneath the smooth surface there was some black mud. There wasn't clear water down to the pebbles, down to the shells, lying on the bottom of the sea. There was something moving, something sluggish somewhere, something that had to be found, suppressed. But surely not - surely not in a place like Hollowquay. Hollowquay was a has-been if there ever was. Developed first as a fishing village and then further developed as an English Riviera - and now a mere summer resort, crowded in August. Most people now preferred package trips abroad.

  'Well,' said Tuppence, as she left the dinner table that night and went into the other room to drink coffee, 'was it fun or not fun? How were all the old boys?'

  'Oh, very much the old boys,' said Tommy. 'How was your old lady?'

  'Oh the piano tuner came,' said Tuppence, 'and it rained in the afternoon so I didn't see her. Rather a pity, the old lady might have said some things that were interesting.'

  'My old boy did,' said Tommy. 'I was quite surprised. What do you think of this place really, Tuppence?'

  'Do you mean the house?'

  'No, I don't mean the house. I think I mean Hollowquay.'

  'Well, I think it's a nice place.'

  'What do you mean by nice?'

  'Well, it's a good word really. It's a word one usually despises, but I don't know why one should. I suppose a place that's nice is a place where things don't happen and you don't want them to happen. You're glad they don't.'

  'Ah. That's because of our age, I suppose.'

  'No, I don't think it's because of that. It's because it's nice to know there are places where things don't happen. Though I must say something nearly happened today.'

  'What do you mean by nearly happened? Have you been doing anything silly, Tuppence?'

  'No, of course I haven't.'

  'Then what do you mean?'

  'I mean that pane of glass at the top of the greenhouse, you know, it was trembling the other day a bit, had the twitches. Well it practically came down on my head. Might have cut me to bits.'

  'It doesn't seem to have cut you to bits,' said Tommy looking at her. '

  'No. I was lucky. But still, it made me jump rather.'

  'Oh, we'll have to get our old boy who comes and does things, what's-his-name? Isaac, isn't it? Have to get him to look at some of the other panes - I mean, we don't want you being done in, Tuppence.'

  'Well, I suppose when you buy an old house there's always something wrong with it.'

  'Do you think there's something wrong with this house Tuppence?'

  'What on earth do you mean by wrong with this house?'

  'Well, because I heard something rather queer about it today.'

  'What - queer about this house?'

  'Yes.'

  'Really, Tommy, that seems impossible,' said Tuppence.

  'Why does it seem impossible? Because it looks so nice and innocent? Well painted and done up?'

  'No. Well painted and done up and looking innocent, that's all due to us. It looked rather shabby and decayed when we bought it.'

  'Well, of course, that's why it was cheap.'

  'You look peculiar, Tommy,' said Tuppence. 'What is it?'

  'Well, it was old Moustachio-Monty, you know.'

  'Oh, dear old boy, yes. Did he send his love to me?'

  'Yes, he certainly did. He told me to make you take care of yourself, and me to take care of you.'

  'He always says that. Though why I should take care of myself here I don't know.'

  'Well, it seems it's the sort of place you might have to take care of yourself.'

  'Now what on earth do you mean by that, Tommy?'

  'Tuppence, what would you think if I said that he suggested or hinted, whatever way you like, that we were here not as old retired has-beens but as people on active service? That we were once more, as in the N or M days, on duty he
re. Sent here by the forces of security and order to discover something. To find out what was wrong with this place.'

  'Well, I don't know if you're dreaming, Tommy, or if it was old Moustachio-Monty who was, if it was he who suggested it.'

  'Well, he did. He seemed to think that we were definitely here on some kind of mission, to find something.'

  'To find something? What sort of thing?'

  'Something that might be hidden in this house.'

  'Something that might be hidden in this house! Tommy, are you mad, or was he mad?'

  'Well, I rather thought he might be mad, but I'm not so sure.'

  'What could there be to find in this house?'

  'Something that I suppose was once hidden here.'

  'Buried treasure, are you talking about? Russian crown jewels hidden in the basement, that sort of thing?'

  'No. Not treasure. Something that would be dangerous to someone.'

  'Well, that's very odd,' said Tuppence.

  'Why, have you found something?'

  'No, of course, I haven't found anything. But it seems there was a scandal about this place donkey's years ago. I don't mean anyone actually remembers, but it's the sort of thing that your grandmother told you, or the servants gossiped about. Actually, Beatrice has a friend who seemed to know something about it. And Mary Jordan was mixed up in it. It was all very hush-hush.'

  'Are you imagining things, Tuppence? Have you gone back to the glorious days of our youth, to the time when someone gave a girl on the Lusitania something secret, the days when we had adventure, when we tracked down the enigmatic Mr Brown?'

  'Goodness, that was a long time ago, Tommy. The Young Adventurers we called ourselves. Doesn't seem real now, does it?'

  'No, it doesn't. Not a bit. But it was real, yes, it was real all right. Such a lot of things are real though you can't really bring yourself to believe it. Must be at least sixty or seventy years ago. More than that, even.'

  'What did Monty actually say?'

  'Letters or papers of some kind,' said Tommy. 'Something that would have created or did create some great political upheaval of some kind. Someone in a position of power and who oughtn't to have been in a position of power, and there were letters, or papers, or something that would definitely cook his goose if they ever came to light. All sorts of intrigues and all happening years ago.'

  'In the time of Mary Jordan? It sounds very unlikely,' said Tuppence. 'Tommy, you must have gone to sleep in the train coming back, and dreamt all this.'

  'Well, perhaps I did,' said Tommy. 'It certainly doesn't seem likely.'

  'Well, I suppose we might as well have a look around,' said Tuppence, 'as we are living here.'

  Her eyes passed round the room.

  'I shouldn't think there would be anything hidden here, do you, Tommy?'

  'It doesn't seem the sort of house where anything would have been likely to be hidden. Lots of other people have lived in the house since those days.'

  'Yes. Family after family, as far as I can make out. Well, I suppose it might be hidden up in an attic or down in the cellar. Or perhaps buried under the summerhouse floor. Anywhere.'

  'Anyway, it'll be quite fun,' said Tuppence. 'Perhaps, you know, when we haven't got anything else to do and our backs are aching because of planting tulip bulbs, we might have a little sort of look round. You know, just to think. Starting from the point: "If I wanted to hide something, where would I choose to put it, and where would it be likely to remain undiscovered?"'

  'I don't think anything could remain undiscovered here,' said Tommy. 'Not with gardeners and people, you know, tearing up the place, and different families living here, and house agents and everything else.'

  'Well, you never know. It might be in a teapot somewhere.'

  Tuppence rose to her feet, went towards the mantelpiece, stood up on a stool and took down a Chinese teapot. She took off the lid and peered inside.

  'Nothing there,' she said.

  'A most unlikely place,' said Tommy.

  'Do you think,' said Tuppence, with a voice that was more hopeful than despondent, 'that somebody was trying to put an end to me and loosened that glass skylight in the conservatory so that it would fall on me?'

  'Most unlikely,' said Tommy. 'It was probably meant to fall on old Isaac.'

  'That's a disappointing thought,' said Tuppence. 'I would like to feel that I had had a great escape.'

  'Well, you'd better be careful of yourself. I shall be careful of you too.'

  'You always fuss over me,' said Tuppence.

  'It's very nice of me to do so,' said Tommy. 'You should be very pleased to have a husband who fusses about you.'

  'Nobody tried to shoot you in the train or derail it or anything, did they?' said Tuppence.

  'No,' said Tommy. 'But we'd better look at the car brakes before we go out driving in it next time. Of course this is all completely ridiculous,' he added.

  'Of course it is,' said Tuppence. 'Absolutely ridiculous. All the same -'

  'All the same what?'

  'Well, it's sort of fun just to think of things like that.'

  'You mean Alexander was killed because he knew something?' asked Tommy.

  'He knew something about who killed Mary Jordan. It was one of us...' Tuppence's face lit up. 'US,' she said with emphasis, 'we'll have to know just all about US. An "US" here in this house in the past. It's a crime we've got to solve. Go back to the past to solve it - to where it happened and why it happened. That's a thing we've never tried to do before.'

  Chapter 5

  METHODS OF RESEARCH

  'Where on earth have you been, Tuppence?' demanded her husband when he returned to the family mansion the following day.

  'Well, last of all I've been in the cellar,' said Tuppence.

  'I can see that,' said Tommy. 'Yes, I do see. Do you know that your hair is absolutely full of cobwebs?'

  'Well, it would be of course. The cellar is full of cobwebs. There wasn't anything there, anyway,' said Tuppence. 'At least there were some bottles of bay rum.'

  'Bay rum?' said Tommy. 'That's interesting.'

  'Is it?' said Tuppence. 'Does one drink it? It seems to me most unlikely.'

  'No,' said Tommy, 'I think people used to put it on their hair. I mean men, not women.'

  'I believe you're right,' said Tuppence. 'I remember my uncle - yes, I had an uncle who used bay rum. A friend of his used lo bring it him from America.'

  'Oh really? That seems very interesting,' said Tommy.

  'I don't think it is particularly interesting,' said Tuppence. 'It's no help to us, anyway. I mean, you couldn't hide anything in a bottle of bay rum.'

  'Oh, so that's what you've been doing.'

  'Well, one has to start somewhere,' said Tuppence. 'It's just possible if what your pal said to you was true, something could be hidden in this house, though it's rather difficult to imagine where it could be or what it could be, because, you see, when you sell a house or die and go out of it, the house is then of course emptied, isn't it? I mean, anyone who inherits it takes the furniture out and sells it, or if it's left, the next person comes in and they sell it, and so anything that's left in it now would have belonged to the last tenant but one and certainly not much further back than that.'

  'Then why should somebody want to injure you or injure me or try to get us to leave this house - unless, I mean, there was something here that they didn't want us to find?'

  'Well, that's all your idea,' said Tuppence. 'It mightn't be true at all. Anyway, it's not been an entirely wasted day. I have found some things.'

  'Anything to do with Mary Jordan?'

  'Not particularly. The cellar, as I say, is not much good. It had a few old things to do with photography, I think. You know, a developing lamp or something like they used to use in old days, with red glass in it, and the bay rum. But there were no sort of flagstones that looked as though you could pull them up and find anything underneath. There were a few decayed trunks, some tin trunks and a c
ouple of old suitcases, but things that just couldn't be used to put anything in any more. They'd fall to bits if you kicked them. No. It was a wash-out.'