Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans Read online

  'Your hole,' said Bobby, picking up the ball.

  'I think it is,' said Frankie. 'And that gives me the match.' 'Shall we play the bye?' 'No, I don't think so. I've got a lot to do.' 'Of course. I suppose you have.' They walked together in silence to the clubhouse.

  'Well,' said Frankie, holding out her hand. 'Goodbye, my dear. It's been too marvellous to have you to make use of while I've been down here. See something of you again, perhaps, when I've nothing better to do.' 'Look here, Frankie ' 'Perhaps you'll condescend to come to my coster party. I believe you can get pearl buttons quite cheaply at Woolworth's.' 'Frankie ' His words were drowned in the noise of the Bentley's engine which Frankie had just started. She drove away with an airy wave of her hand.

  'Damn!' said Bobby in a heartfelt tone.

  Frankie, he considered, had behpved outrageously. Perhaps he hadn't put things very tactfully, but, dash it all, what he had said was true enough.

  Perhaps, though, he shouldn't have put it into words.

  The next three days seemed interminably long.

  The Vicar had a sore throat which necessitated his speaking in a whisper when he spoke at all. He spoke very little and was obviously bearing his fourth son's presence as a Christian should. Once or twice he quoted Shakespeare to the effect that a serpent's tooth, etc.

  On Saturday Bobby felt that he could bear the strain of home life no longer. He got Mrs Roberts, who, with her husband, 'ran' the Vicarage, to give him a packet of sandwiches, and, supplementing this with a bottle of beer which he bought in Marchbolt, he set off for a solitary picnic.

  He had missed Frankie abominably these last few days.

  These older people were the limit... They harped on things so.

  Bobby stretched himself out on a brackeny bank and debated with himself whether he should eat his lunch first and go to sleep afterwards, or sleep first and eat afterwards.

  While he was cogitating, the matter was settled for him by his falling asleep without noticing it.

  When he awoke it was half-past three! Bobby grinned as he thought how his father would disapprove of this way of spending a day. A good walk across country ~ twelve miles or so - that was the kind of thing that a healthy young man should do. It led inevitably to that famous remark: 'And now, I think, I've earned my lunch.' 'Idiotic,' thought Bobby. 'Why earn lunch by doing a lot of walking you don't particularly want to do? What's the merit in it? If you enjoy it, then it's pure self-indulgence, and if you don't enjoy it you're a fool to do it.' Whereupon he fell upon his unearned lunch and ate it with gusto. With a sigh of satisfaction he unscrewed the bottle of beer. Unusually bitter beer, but decidedly refreshing.

  He lay back again, having tossed the empty beer bottle into a clump of heather.

  He felt rather god-like lounging there. The world was at his feet. A phrase, but a good phrase. He could do anything anything if he tried! Plans of great splendour and daring initiative flashed through his mind.

  Then he grew sleepy again. Lethargy stole over him.

  He slept.

  Heavy, numbing sleep.

  CHAPTER 7 An Escape from Death

  Driving her large green Bentley, Frankie drew up to the kerb outside a large old-fashioned house over the doorway of which was inscribed 'St Asaph's'.

  Frankie jumped out and, turning, extracted a large bunch of lilies. Then she rang the bell. A woman in nurse's dress answered the door.

  'Can I see Mr Jones?' inquired Frankie.

  The nurse's eyes took in the Bentley, the lilies and Frankie with intense interest.

  'What name shall I say?' 'Lady Frances Derwent.' The nurse was thrilled and her patient went up in her estimation.

  She guided Frankie upstairs into a room on the first floor.

  'You've a visitor to see you, Mr Jones. Now, who do you think it is? Such a nice surprise for you.' All this is the 'bright' manner usual to nursing homes.

  'Gosh!' said Bobby, very much surprised. 'If it isn't Frankie!' 'Hullo, Bobby, I've brought the usual flowers. Rather a graveyard suggestion about them, but the choice was limited.' 'Oh, Lady Frances,' said the nurse, 'they're lovely. I'll put them into water.' She left the room.

  Frankie sat down in an obvious visitor's chair.

  •Well, Bobby,' she said. 'What's all this?' 'You may well ask,' said Bobby. 'I'm the complete sensation of this place. Eight grains of morphia, no less. They're going to write about me in the Lancet and the BMJ.' 'What's the BMf>' interrupted Frankie.

  'The British Medical Journal.' 'All right. Go ahead. Rattle off some more initials.' 'Do you know, my girl, that half a grain is a fatal dose? I ought to be dead about sixteen times over. It's true that recovery has been known after sixteen grains - still, eight is pretty good, don't you think? I'm the hero of this place.

  They've never had a case like me before.' 'How nice for them.' 'Isn't it? Gives them something to talk about to all the other patients.' The nurse re-entered, bearing lilies in vases.

  'It's true, isn't it, nurse?' demanded Bobby. 'You've never had a case like mine?' 'Oh! you oughtn't to be here at all,' said the nurse. 'In the churchyard you ought to be. But it's only the good die young, they say.' She giggled at her own wit and went out.

  'There you are,' said Bobby. 'You'll see, I shall be famous all over England.' He continued to talk. Any signs of inferiority complex that he had displayed at his last meeting with Frankie had now quite disappeared. He took a firm and egotistical pleasure in recounting every detail of his case.

  'That's enough,' said Frankie, quelling him. 'I don't really care terribly for stomach pumps. To listen to you one would think nobody had ever been poisoned before.' 'Jolly few have been poisoned with eight grains of morphia and got over it,' Bobby pointed out. 'Dash it all, you're not sufficiently impressed.' 'Pretty sickening for the people who poisoned you,' said Frankie.

  'I know. Waste of perfectly good morphia.' 'It was in the beer, wasn't it?' 'Yes. You see, someone found me sleeping like the dead, tried to wake me and couldn't. Then they got alarmed, carried me to a farmhouse and sent for a doctor ' 'I know all the next part,' said Frankie hastily.

  'At first they had the idea that I'd taken the stuff deliberately.

  Then when they heard my story, they went off and looked for the beer bottle and found it where I'd thrown it and had it analysed - the dregs of it were quite enough for that, apparently.' 'No clue as to how the morphia got in the bottle?' 'None whatever. They've interviewed the pub where I bought it and opened other bottles and everything's been quite all right.' 'Someone must have put the stuff in the beer while you were asleep?' 'That's it. I remember that the paper across the top wasn't still sticking properly.' Frankie nodded thoughtfully.

  'Well,' she said. 'It shows that what I said in the train that day was quite right.' 'What did you say?' 'That that man - Pritchard - had been pushed over the cliff 'That wasn't in the train. You said that at the station,' said Bobby feebly.

  'Same thing.' 'But why-' 'Darling - it's obvious. Why should anyone want to putyou out of the way? You're not the heir to a fortune or anything.' 'I may be. Some great aunt I've never heard of in New Zealand or somewhere may have left me all her money.' 'Nonsense. Not without knowing you. And if she didn't know you, why leave money to a fourth son? Why, in these hard times even a clergyman mightn't have a fourth son! No, it's all quite clear. No one benefits by your death, so that's ruled out. Then there's revenge. You haven't seduced a chemist's daughter, by any chance?' 'Not that I can remember,' said Bobby with dignity.

  'I know. One seduces so much that one can't keep count. But I should say offhand that you've never seduced anyone at all.' 'You're making me blush, Frankie. And why must it be a chemist's daughter, anyway?' 'Free access to morphia. It's not so easy to get hold of morphia.' 'Well, I haven't seduced a chemist's daughter.' 'And you haven't got any enemies that you know of?' Bobby shook his head.

  'Well, there you are,' said Frankie triumphantly. 'It must be the man who was pushed over the cliff. What do the police think?' 'T
hey think it must have been a lunatic.' 'Nonsense. Lunatics don't wander about with unlimited supplies of morphia looking for odd bottles of beer to put it into. No, somebody pushed Pritchard over the cliff. A minute or two later you come along and he thinks you saw him do it and so determines to put you out of the way.' 'I don't think that will hold water, Frankie.' 'Why not?' 'Well, to begin with, I didn't see anything.' 'Yes, but he didn't know that.' 'And if I had seen anything, I should have said so at the inquest.' 'I suppose that's so,' said Frankie unwillingly.

  She thought for a minute or two.

  'Perhaps he thought you'd seen something that you didn't think was anything but which really was something. That sounds pure gibberish, but you get the idea?' Bobby nodded.

  'Yes, I see what you mean, but it doesn't seem very probable, somehow.' 'I'm sure that cliff business had something to do with this.

  You were on the spot - the first person to be there -' 'Thomas was there, too,' Bobby reminded her. 'And nobody's tried to poison him.' 'Perhaps they're going to,' said Frankie cheerfully. 'Or perhaps they've tried and failed.' 'It all seems very farfetched.' 'I think it's logical. If you get two out of the way things happening in a stagnant pond like Marchbolt - wait - there's a third thing.' 'What?' 'That job you were offered. That, of course, is quite a small thing, but it was odd, you must admit. I've never heard of a foreign firm that specialized in seeking out undistinguished exNaval officers.' 'Did you say undistinguished?' 'You hadn't got into the BMJ, then. But you see my point.

  You've seen something you weren't meant to see - or so they (whoever they are) think. Very well. They first try to get rid of you by offering you a job abroad. Then, when that fails, they try to put you out of the way altogether.' 'Isn't that rather drastic? And anyway a great risk to take?' 'Oh! but murderers are always frightfully rash. The more murders they do, the more murders they want to do.' 'Like The Third Bloodstain,' said Bobby, remembering one of his favourite works of fiction.

  'Yes, and in real life, too - Smith and his wives and Armstrong and people.' 'Well, but, Frankie, what on earth is it I'm supposed to have seen?' 'That, of course, is the difficulty,' admitted Frankie. 'I agree that it can't have been the actual pushing, because you would have told about that. It must be something about the man himself. Perhaps he had a birthmark or double-jointed fingers or some strange physical peculiarity.' 'Your mind is running on Dr Thomdyke, I see. It couldn't be anything like that because whatever I saw the police would see as well.' 'So they would. That was an idiotic suggestion. It's very difficult, isn't it?' 'It's a pleasing theory,' said Bobby. 'And it makes me feel important, but all the same, I don't believe it's much more than a theory.' 'I'm sure I'm right.' Frankie rose. 'I must be off now. Shall I come and see you again tomorrow?' 'Oh! Do. The arch chatter of the nurses gets very monotonous.

  By the way, you're back from London very soon?' 'My dear, as soon as I heard about you, I tore back. It's most exciting to have a romantically poisoned friend.' 'I don't know whether morphia is so very romantic,' said Bobby reminiscently.

  'Well, I'll come tomorrow. Do I kiss you or don't I?' 'It's not catching,' said Bobby encouragingly.

  'Then I'll do my duty to the sick thoroughly.' She kissed him lightly.

  'See you tomorrow.' The nurse came in with Bobby's tea as she went out.

  'I've seen her pictures in the papers often. She's not so very like them, though. And, of course, I've seen her driving about in her car, but I've never seen her before close to, so to speak.

  Not a bit haughty, is she?' 'Oh, no!' said Bobby. 'I should never call Frankie haughty.' 'I said to Sister, I said, she's as natural as anything. Not a bit stuck up. I said to Sister, she's just like you or me, I said.' Silently dissenting violently from this view, Bobby returned no reply. The nurse, disappointed by his lack of response, left the room.

  Bobby was left to his own thoughts.

  He finished his tea. Then he went over in his mind the possibilities of Frankie's amazing theory, and ended by deciding reluctantly against it. He then cast about for other distractions.

  His eye was caught by the vases of lilies. Frightfully sweet of Frankie to bring him all these flowers, and of course they were lovely, but he wished it had occurred to her to bring him a few detective stories instead. He cast his eye over the table beside him. There was a novel of Ouida's and a copy of John Halifax, Gentleman and last week's Marchbolt Weekly Times. He picked up John Halifax, Gentleman.

  After five minutes he put it down. To a mind nourished on The Third Bloodstain, The Case of the Murdered Archduke and The Strange Adventure of the Florentine Dagger, John Halifax, Gentleman, lacked pep.

  With a sigh he picked up last week's Marchbolt Weekly Times. ;.

  A moment or two later he was pressing the bell beneath his pillow with a vigour which brought a nurse into the room at a run.

  'Whatever's the matter, Mr Jones? Are you taken bad?' 'Ring up the Castle,' cried Bobby. Tell Lady Frances she must come back here at once.' 'Oh, Mr Jones. You can't send a message like that.' 'Can't I?' said Bobby. 'If I were allowed to get up from this blasted bed you'd soon see whether I could or couldn't. As it is, you've got to do it for me.' 'But she'll hardly be back.' 'You don't know that Bentley.' 'She won't have had her tea.' 'Now look here, my dear girl,' said Bobby, 'don't stand there arguing with me. Ring up as I tell you. Tell her she's got to come here at once because I've got something very important to say to her.' Overborne, but unwilling, the nurse went. She took some liberties with Bobby's message.

  If it was no inconvenience to Lady Frances, Mr Jones wondered if she would mind coming as he had something he would like to say to her, but, of course. Lady Frances was not to put herself out in any way.

  Lady Frances replied curtly that she would come at once.

  'Depend upon it,' said the nurse to her colleagues, 'she's sweet on him! That's what it is.' Frankie arrived all agog.

  'What's this desperate summons?' she demanded.

  Bobby was sitting up in bed, a bright red spot in each cheek.

  In his hand he waved the copy of the Marchbolt Weekly Times.

  'Look at this, Frankie.' Frankie looked.

  'Well,' she demanded.

  'This is the picture you meant when you said it was touched up but quite like the Cayman woman.' Bobby's finger pointed to a somewhat blurred reproduction of a photograph. Underneath it were the words: 'portrait FOUND ON THE DEAD MAN AND BY WHICH HE WAS IDENTIFIED. mrs amelia cayman, THE DEAD MAN'S SISTER.' 'That's what I said, and it's true, too. I can't see anything to rave over in it.' 'No more than I.' 'But you said ' 'I know I said. But you see, Frankie' - Bobby's voice became very impressive - 'this isn't the photograph that I put back in the dead man's pocket...' They looked at each other.

  'Then in that case,' began Frankie slowly.

  'Either there must have been two photographs ' '- Which isn't likely ' 'Or else ' They paused.

  'That man - what's his name?' said Frankie.

  'Bassington-ffrench!' said Bobby.

  'I'm quite sure!'

  CHAPTER 8 Riddle of a Photograph

  They stared at each other as they tried to adjust themselves to the altered situation.

  'It couldn't be anyone else,' said Bobby. 'He was the only person who had the chance.' 'Unless, as we said, there were two photographs.' 'We agreed that that wasn't likely. If there had been two photographs they'd have tried to identify him by means of both of them - not only one.' 'Anyway, that's easily found out,' said Frankie. 'We can ask the police. We'll assume for the moment that there was just the one photograph, the one you saw that you put back again in his pocket. It was there when you left him, and it wasn't there when the police came, therefore the only person who could have taken it away and put the other one in its place was this man Bassington-ffrench. What was he like, Bobby?' Bobby frowned in the effort of remembrance.

  'A sort of nondescript fellow. Pleasant voice. A gentleman and all that. I really didn't notice him particularly. He said that he was a stranger down her
e - and something about looking for a house.' 'We can verify that, anyway,' said Frankie. 'Wheeler & Owen are the only house agents.' Suddenly she gave a shiver.

  'Bobby, have you thought? If Pritchard was pushed over - Bassington-ffrench must be the man who did it...' 'That's pretty grim,' said Bobby. 'He seemed such a nice pleasant sort of fellow. But you know, Frankie, we can't be sure he really was pushed over.' 'You have been all along.' 'No, I just wanted it to be that way because it made things more exciting. But now it's more or less proved. If it was murder everything fits in. Your unexpected appearance which upsets the murderer's plans. Your discovery of the photograph and, in consequence, the need to put you out of the way.' 'There's a flaw there,' said Bobby.