The Complete Tommy & Tuppence Collection (112 page)

“Pretty,” said Tommy, “rather fanciful for Aunt Ada. How to cook a beef steak pie, I expect.”

Tommy ripped open the envelope. He raised his eyebrows. Ten carefully folded five-pound notes fell out.

“Nice thin ones,” said Tommy. “They're the old ones. You know, the kind we used to have in the war. Decent paper. Probably aren't legal tender nowadays.”

“Money!” said Albert. “What she want all that money for?”

“Oh, that's an old lady's nest egg,” said Tommy. “Aunt Ada always had a nest egg. Years ago she told me that every woman should always have fifty pounds in five-pound notes with her in case of what she called emergencies.”

“Well, I suppose it'll still come in handy,” said Albert.

“I don't suppose they're absolutely obsolete. I think you can make some arrangement to change them at a bank.”

“There's another one still,” said Albert. “The one from the other drawer—”

The next was bulkier. There seemed to be more inside it and it had three large important-looking red seals. On the outside was written in the same spiky hand “In the event of my death, this envelope should be sent unopened to my solicitor, Mr. Rockbury of Rockbury & Tomkins, or to my nephew Thomas Beresford. Not to be opened by any unauthorized person.”

There were several sheets of closely written paper. The handwriting was bad, very spiky and here and there somewhat illegible. Tommy read it aloud with some difficulty.

“I, Ada Maria Fanshawe, am writing down here certain matters which have come to my knowledge and which have been told me by people who are residing in this nursing home called Sunny Ridge. I cannot vouch for any of this information being correct but there seems to be some reason to believe that suspicious—possibly criminal—activities are taking place here or have taken place here. Elizabeth Moody, a foolish woman, but not I think untruthful, declares that she has recognized here a well-known criminal. There may be a poisoner at work among us. I myself prefer to keep an open mind, but I shall remain watchful. I propose to write down here any facts that come to my knowledge. The whole thing may be a mare's nest. Either my solicitor or my nephew Thomas Beresford, is asked to make full investigation.”

“There,” said Albert triumphantly—“Told you so! It's a
CLUE
!”

B
OOK
4
H
ERE
IS
A
C
HURCH
AND
HERE
IS
THE
S
TEEPLE
O
PEN
THE
D
OORS
AND
THERE
ARE
THE
P
EOPLE

Fourteen

E
XERCISE
IN
T
HINKING

“I
suppose what we ought to do is think,” said Tuppence.

After a glad reunion in the hospital, Tuppence had eventually been honourably discharged. The faithful pair were now comparing notes together in the sitting room of the best suite in The Lamb and Flag at Market Basing.

“You leave thinking alone,” said Tommy. “You know what that doctor told you before he let you go. No worries, no mental exertion, very little physical activity—take everything easy.”

“What else am I doing now?” demanded Tuppence. “I've got my feet up, haven't I, and my head on two cushions? And as for thinking, thinking isn't necessarily mental exertion. I'm not doing mathematics, or studying economics, or adding up the household accounts. Thinking is just resting comfortably, and leaving one's mind open in case something interesting or important should just come floating in. Anyway, wouldn't you rather I did a little thinking with my feet up and my head on cushions, rather than go in for action again?”

“I certainly don't want you going in for action again,” said Tommy. “That's
out.
You understand? Physically, Tuppence, you will remain quiescent. If possible, I shan't let you out of my sight because I don't trust you.”

“All right,” said Tuppence. “Lecture ends. Now let's think. Think together. Pay no attention to what doctors have said to you. If you knew as much as I do about doctors—”

“Never mind about the doctors,” said Tommy, “you do as
I
tell you.”

“All right. I've no wish at present for physical activity, I assure you. The point is that we've got to compare notes. We've got hold of a lot of things. It's as bad as a village jumble sale.”

“What do you mean by things?”

“Well, facts. All sorts of facts. Far too many facts. And not only facts—Hearsay, suggestions, legends, gossip. The whole thing is like a bran tub with different kinds of parcels wrapped up and shoved down in the sawdust.”

“Sawdust is right,” said Tommy.

“I don't quite know whether you're being insulting or modest,” said Tuppence. “Anyway, you do agree with me, don't you? We've got far too
much
of everything. There are wrong things and right things, and important things and unimportant things and they're all mixed up together. We don't know where to start.”

“I do,” said Tommy.

“All right,” said Tuppence. “Where are you starting?”

“I'm starting with your being coshed on the head,” said Tommy.

Tuppence considered a moment. “I don't see really that that's a starting point. I mean, it's the last thing that happened, not the first.”

“It's the first in my mind,” said Tommy. “I won't have people coshing my wife. And it's a
real
point to start from. It's not imagination. It's a
real
thing that
really
happened.”

“I couldn't agree with you more,” said Tuppence. “It really happened and it happened to me, and I'm not forgetting it. I've been thinking about it—Since I regained the power of thought, that is.”

“Have you any idea as to who did it?”

“Unfortunately, no. I was bending down over a gravestone and whoosh!”

“Who could it have been?”

“I suppose it must have been somebody in Sutton Chancellor. And yet that seems so unlikely. I've hardly spoken to anyone.”

“The vicar?”

“It couldn't have been the vicar,” said Tuppence. “First because he's a nice old boy. And secondly because he wouldn't have been nearly strong enough. And thirdly because he's got very asthmatic breathing. He couldn't possibly have crept up behind me without my hearing him.”

“Then if you count the vicar out—”

“Don't you?”

“Well,” said Tommy, “yes, I do. As you know, I've been to see him and talked to him. He's been a vicar here for years and everyone knows him. I suppose a fiend incarnate
could
put on a show of being a kindly vicar, but not for more than about a week or so at the outside, I'd say. Not for about ten or twelve years.”

“Well, then,” said Tuppence, “the next suspect would be Miss Bligh. Nellie Bligh. Though heaven knows why. She can't have thought I was trying to steal a tombstone.”

“Do you feel it might have been her?”

“Well, I don't really. Of course, she's
competent.
If she wanted to follow me and see what I was doing, and conk me, she'd make a success of it. And like the vicar, she was there—on the spot—She was in Sutton Chancellor, popping in and out of her house to do this and that, and she could have caught sight of me in the churchyard, come up behind me on tiptoe out of curiosity, seen me examining a grave, objected to my doing so for some particular reason, and hit me with one of the church metal flower vases or anything else handy. But don't ask me
why.
There seems no possible reason.”

“Who next, Tuppence? Mrs. Cockerell, if that's her name?”

“Mrs. Copleigh,” said Tuppence. “No, it wouldn't be Mrs. Copleigh.”

“Now why are you so sure of that? She lives in Sutton Chancellor, she could have seen you go out of the house and she could have followed you.”

“Oh yes, yes, but she talks too much,” said Tuppence.

“I don't see where talking too much comes into it.”

“If you'd listened to her a whole evening as I did,” said Tuppence, “you'd realize that anyone who talks as much as she does, nonstop in a constant flow, could not possibly be a woman of action as well! She couldn't have come up anywhere near me without talking at the top of her voice as she came.”

Tommy considered this.

“All right,” he said. “You have good judgement in that kind of thing, Tuppence. Wash out Mrs. Copleigh. Who else is there?”

“Amos Perry,” said Tuppence. “That's the man who lives at the Canal House. (I have to call it the Canal House because it's got so many other odd names. And it was called that originally.) The husband of the friendly witch. There's something a bit queer about him. He's a bit simpleminded and he's a big powerful man, and he could cosh anyone on the head if he wanted to, and I even think it's possible in certain circumstances he might want to—though I don't exactly know why he should want to cosh
me.
He's a better possibility really than Miss Bligh who seems to me just one of those tiresome, efficient women who go about running parishes and poking their noses into things. Not at all the type who would get up to the point of physical attack, except for some wildly emotional reason.” She added, with a slight shiver, “You know, I felt frightened of Amos Perry the first time I saw him. He was showing me his garden. I felt suddenly that I—well, that I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of him—or meet him in a dark road at night. I felt he was a man that wouldn't often want to be violent but who could be violent if something took him that way.”

“All right,” said Tommy. “Amos Perry. Number one.”

“And there's his wife,” said Tuppence slowly. “The friendly witch. She was nice and I liked her—I don't want it to be her—I don't think it
was
her, but she's mixed up in things, I think . . . Things that have to do with that house. That's another point, you see, Tommy—We don't know what the important thing is in all this—I've begun to wonder whether everything doesn't circulate round that
house
—whether the
house
isn't the central point. The picture—That picture does mean something, doesn't it, Tommy? It must, I think.”

“Yes,” said Tommy, “I think it must.”

“I came here trying to find Mrs. Lancaster—but nobody here seems to have heard of her. I've been wondering whether I got things the wrong way round—that Mrs. Lancaster was in danger (because I'm still sure of that)
because she owned that picture.
I don't think
she
was ever in Sutton Chancellor—but she was either given, or she bought, a picture of a house here. And that picture
means
something—is in some way a menace to someone.”

“Mrs. Cocoa—Mrs. Moody—told Aunt Ada that she recognized someone at Sunny Ridge—someone connected with ‘criminal activities.' I think the criminal activities are connected with the picture and with the house by the canal, and a child who perhaps was killed there.”

“Aunt Ada admired Mrs. Lancaster's picture—and Mrs. Lancaster gave it to her—and perhaps she talked about it—where she got it, or who had given it to her, and where the house was—”

“Mrs. Moody was bumped off because she definitely recognized someone who had been ‘connected with criminal activities.' ”

“Tell me again about your conversation with Dr. Murray,” said Tuppence. “After telling you about Mrs. Cocoa, he went on to talk about certain types of killers, giving examples of real life cases. One was a woman who ran a nursing home for elderly patients—I remember reading about it vaguely, though I can't remember the woman's name. But the idea was that they made over what money they had to her, and then they lived there until they died, well fed and looked after, and without any money worries. And they
were
very happy—only they usually died well within a year—quite peacefully in their sleep. And at last people began to notice. She was tried and convicted of murder—But had no conscience pangs and protested that what she had done was really a kindness to the old dears.”

“Yes. That's right,” said Tommy. “I can't remember the name of the woman now.”

“Well, never mind about that,” said Tuppence. “And then he cited another case. A case of a woman, a domestic worker or a cook or a housekeeper. She used to go into service into different families. Sometimes nothing happened, I believe, and sometimes it was a kind of mass poisoning. Food poisoning, it was supposed to be. All with quite reasonable symptoms. Some people recovering.”

“She used to prepare sandwiches,” said Tommy, “and make them up into packets and send them out for picnics with them. She was very nice and very devoted and she used to get, if it was a mass poisoning, some of the symptoms and signs herself. Probably exaggerating their effect. Then she'd go away after that and she'd take another place, in quite a different part of England. It went on for some years.”

“That's right, yes. Nobody, I believe, has ever been able to understand
why
she did it. Did she get a sort of addiction for it—a sort of habit of it? Was it fun for her? Nobody really ever knew. She never seems to have had any personal malice for any of the people whose deaths she seems to have caused. Bit wrong in the top storey?”

“Yes. I think she must have been, though I suppose one of the trick cyclists would probably do a great deal of analysis and find out it had all something to do with a canary of a family she'd known years and years ago as a child who had given her a shock or upset her or something. But anyway, that's the sort of thing it was.”