At Bertram's Hotel - Christie Agatha - Страница 33

"He mayn't be as bad as he looks," said Father soothingly.

"If anything he is worse than he looks," said Miss Marple. "I am convinced of it. He drives a large racing car."

Father looked up quickly. "Racing car?"

"Yes. Once or twice I've seen it standing near this hotel."

"You don't remember the number, do you?"

"Yes, indeed I do. FAN 2266. I had a cousin who stuttered," Miss Marple explained. "That's how I remember it."

Father looked puzzled.

"Do you know who he is?" demanded Miss Marple. "As a matter of fact I do," said Father slowly. "Half French, half Polish. Very well-known racing driver, he was world champion three years ago. His name is Ladislaus Malinowski. You're quite right in some of your views about him. He has a bad reputation where women are concerned. That is to say, he is not a suitable friend for a young girl. But it's not easy to do anything about that sort of thing. I suppose she is meeting him on the sly, is that it?"

"Almost certainly," said Miss Marple.

"Did you approach her guardian?"

"I don't know him," said Miss Marple. "I've only just been introduced to him once by a mutual friend. I don't like the idea of going to him in a tale-bearing way. I wondered if perhaps in some way you could do something about it."

"I can try," said Father. "By the way, I thought you might like to know that your friend Canon Pennyfather has turned up all right."

"Indeed!" Miss Marple looked animated. "Where?"

"A place called Milton St. John."

"How very odd. What was he doing there? Did he know?"

"Apparently "-Chief Inspector Davy stressed the word-"he had had an accident."

"What kind of an accident?"

"Knocked down by a car-concussed-or else, of course, he might have been conked on the head."

"Oh, I see." Miss Marple considered the point. "Doesn't he know himself?"

"He says"-again the Chief Inspector stressed the word-"that he does not know anything."

"Very remarkable."

"Isn't it? The last thing he remembers is driving in a taxi to Kensington Air Station."

Miss Marple shook her head perplexedly.

"I know it does happen that way in concussion," she murmured. "Didn't he say anything-useful?"

"He murmured something about the walls of Jericho."

"Joshua?" hazarded Miss Marple, "or archaeology-excavations?--or I remember, long ago, a play- by Mr. Sutro, I think."

"And all this week north of the Thames, Gaumont Cinemas-The Walls of Jericho, featuring Olga Radbourne and Bart Levinne," said Father.

Miss Marple looked at him suspiciously.

"He could have gone to that film in the Cromwell Road. He could have come out about eleven and come back here-though if so, someone ought to have seen him-it would be well before midnight-"

"Took the wrong bus," Miss Marple suggested. "Something like that-"

"Say he got back here after midnight," Father said. "He could have walked up to his room without anyone seeing him. But if so, what happened then-and why did he go out again three hours later?"

Miss Marpie groped for a word. "The only idea that occurs to me is-oh!"

She jumped as a report sounded from the street outside.

"Car backfiring," said Father soothingly.

"I'm sorry to be so jumpy. I am nervous tonight- that feeling one has-"

"That something's going to happen? I don't think you need worry."

"I have never liked fog."

"I wanted to tell you," said Chief inspector Davy, "that you've given me a lot of help. The things you've noticed here-just little things-they've added up."

"So there was something wrong with this place?"

"There was and is everything wrong with it." Miss Marple sighed. "It seemed wonderful at first- unchanged you know-like stepping back into the past-to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed."

She paused. "But of course, it wasn't really like that, I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back-that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one way street, isn't it?"

"Something of the sort," agreed Father.

"I remember," said Miss Marple, diverging from her main topic in a characteristic way, "I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysee Hotel. And my grandmother looked round, and she said suddenly, 'Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!' And she was, too! When she got home she packed up all her bonnets and her beaded mantles, too, and sent them off-"

"To the jumble sale?" inquired Father sympathetically.

"Oh no. Nobody would have wanted them at a jumble sale. She sent them to a theatrical repertory company. They appreciated them very much. But let me see-" Miss Marple recovered her direction. "Where was I?"

"Summing up this place."

"Yes. It seemed all right, but it wasn't. It was mixed up-real people and people who weren't real. One couldn't always tell them apart."

"What do you mean by not real?"

"There were retired military men, but there were also what seemed to be military men but who had never been in the Army. And clergymen who weren't clergymen. And admirals and sea captains who've never been in the Navy. My friend Selina Hazy-it amused me at first how she was always so anxious to recognize people she knew (quite natural, of course) and how often she was mistaken and they weren't the people she thought they were. But it happened too often. And so-I began to wonder. Even Rose, the chambermaid-so nice-but I began to think that perhaps she wasn't real, either."

"If it interests you to know, she's an ex-actress. A good one. Gets a better salary here than she ever drew on the stage."

"But-why?"

"Mainly, as part of the decor. Perhaps there's more than that to it."

"I'm glad to be leaving here," said Miss Marple. She gave a little shiver. "Before anything happens."

Chief Inspector Davy looked at her curiously.

"What do you expect to happen?" he asked.

"Evil of some kind," said Miss Marple.

"Evil is rather a big word-"

"You think it is too melodramatic? But I have some experience. I seem to have been-so often-in contact with murder."

"Murder?" Chief Inspector Davy shook his head. "I'm not suspecting murder. Just a nice cozy roundup of some remarkably clever criminals-"

"That's not the same thing. Murder-the wish to do murder-is something quite different. It-how shall I say?-it defies God."

He looked at her and shook his head gently and reassuringly.

"There won't be any murders," he said.

A sharp report, louder than the former one, came from outside. It was followed by a scream and another report.

Chief Inspector Davy was on his feet, moving with a speed surprising in such a bulky man. In a few sec onds he was through the swing doors and out in the street.

The screaming-a woman's-was piercing the mist with a note of terror. Chief Inspector Davy raced down Pond Street in the direction of the screams. He could dimly visualize a woman's figure backed against a railing. In a dozen strides he had reached her. She wore a long pale fur coat, and her shining blonde hair hung down each side of her face. He thought for a moment that he knew who she was, then he realized that this was only a slip of a girl. Sprawled on the pavement at her feet was the body of a man in uniform. Chief Inspector Davy recognized him. It was Michael Gorman.

As Davy came up to the girl, she clutched at him, shivering all over, stammering out broken phrases.

"Someone tried to kill me… Someone… they shot at me… If it hadn't been for him-" She pointed down at the motionless figure at her feet. "He pushed me back and got in front of me-and then the second shot came… and he fell… He saved my life. I think he's hurt-badly hurt…"