Читать книгу Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Mary Westmacott - Страница 12

‘Do you mind if I tell you something, old man?’ said Eric Pugh.

Sir Stafford Nye looked at him. He had known Eric Pugh for a good many years. They had not been close friends. Old Eric, or so Sir Stafford thought, was rather a boring friend. He was, on the other hand, faithful. And he was the type of man who, though not amusing, had a knack of knowing things. People said things to him and he remembered what they said and stored them up. Sometimes he could push out a useful bit of information.

‘Come back from that Malay Conference, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Stafford.

‘Anything particular turn up there?’

‘Just the usual,’ said Sir Stafford.

‘Oh. I wondered if something had—well, you know what I mean. Anything had occurred to put the cat among the pigeons.’

‘What, at the Conference? No, just painfully predictable. Everyone said just what you thought they’d say only they said it unfortunately at rather greater length than you could have imagined possible. I don’t know why I go on these things.’

Eric Pugh made a rather tedious remark or two as to what the Chinese were really up to.

‘I don’t think they’re really up to anything,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘All the usual rumours, you know, about the diseases poor old Mao has got and who’s intriguing against him and why.’

‘And what about the Arab-Israeli business?’

‘That’s proceeding according to plan also. Their plan, that is to say. And anyway, what’s that got to do with Malaya?’

‘Well, I didn’t really mean so much Malaya.’

‘You’re looking rather like the Mock Turtle,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘“Soup of the evening, beautiful soup.” Wherefore this gloom?’

‘Well, I just wondered if you’d—you’ll forgive me, won’t you?—I mean you haven’t done anything to blot your copybook, have you, in any way?’

‘Me?’ said Sir Stafford, looking highly surprised.

‘Well, you know what you’re like, Staff. You like giving people a jolt sometimes, don’t you?’

‘I have behaved impeccably of late,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘What have you been hearing about me?’

‘I hear there was some trouble about something that happened in a plane on your way home.’

‘Oh?’ Who did you hear that from?’

‘Well, you know, I saw old Cartison.’

‘Terrible old bore. Always imagining things that haven’t happened.’

‘Yes, I know. I know he is like that. But he was just saying that somebody or other—Winterton, at least—seemed to think you’d been up to something.’

‘Up to something? I wish I had,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.

‘There’s some espionage racket going on somewhere and he got a bit worried about certain people.’

‘What do they think I am—another Philby, something of that kind?’

‘You know you’re very unwise sometimes in the things you say, the things you make jokes about.’

‘It’s very hard to resist sometimes,’ his friend told him. ‘All these politicians and diplomats and the rest of them. They’re so bloody solemn. You’d like to give them a bit of a stir up now and again.’

‘Your sense of fun is very distorted, my boy. It really is. I worry about you sometimes. They wanted to ask you some questions about something that happened on the flight back and they seem to think that you didn’t, well—that perhaps you didn’t exactly speak the truth about it all.’

‘Ah, that’s what they think, is it? Interesting. I think I must work that up a bit.’

‘Now don’t do anything rash.’

‘I must have my moments of fun sometimes.’

‘Look here, old fellow, you don’t want to go and ruin your career just by indulging your sense of humour.’

‘I am quickly coming to the conclusion that there is nothing so boring as having a career.’

‘I know, I know. You are always inclined to take that point of view, and you haven’t got on as far as you ought to have, you know. You were in the running for Vienna at one time. I don’t like to see you muck up things.’

‘I am behaving with the utmost sobriety and virtue, I assure you,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. He added, ‘Cheer up, Eric. You’re a good friend, but really, I’m not guilty of fun and games.’

Eric shook his head doubtfully.

It was a fine evening. Sir Stafford walked home across Green Park. As he crossed the road in Birdcage Walk, a car leaping down the street missed him by a few inches. Sir Stafford was an athletic man. His leap took him safely on to the pavement. The car disappeared down the street. He wondered. Just for a moment he could have sworn that that car had deliberately tried to run him down. An interesting thought. First his flat had been searched, and now he himself might have been marked down. Probably a mere coincidence. And yet, in the course of his life, some of which had been spent in wild neighbourhoods and places, Sir Stafford Nye had come in contact with danger. He knew, as it were, the touch and feel and smell of danger. He felt it now. Someone, somewhere was gunning for him. But why? For what reason? As far as he knew, he had not stuck his neck out in any way. He wondered.

He let himself into his flat and picked up the mail that lay on the floor inside. Nothing much. A couple of bills and copy of Lifeboat periodical. He threw the bills on to his desk and put a finger through the wrapper of Lifeboat. It was a cause to which he occasionally contributed. He turned the pages without much attention because he was still absorbed in what he was thinking. Then he stopped the action of his fingers abruptly. Something was taped between two of the pages. Taped with adhesive tape. He looked at it closely. It was his passport returned to him unexpectedly in this fashion. He tore it free and looked at it. The last stamp on it was the arrival stamp at Heathrow the day before. She had used his passport, getting back here safely, and had chosen this way to return it to him. Where was she now? He would like to know.

He wondered if he would ever see her again. Who was she? Where had she gone, and why? It was like waiting for the second act of a play. Indeed, he felt the first act had hardly been played yet. What had he seen? An old-fashioned curtain-raiser, perhaps. A girl who had ridiculously wanted to dress herself up and pass herself off as of the male sex, who had passed the passport control of Heathrow without attracting suspicion of any kind to herself and who had now disappeared through that gateway into London. No, he would probably never see her again. It annoyed him. But why, he thought, why do I want to? She wasn’t particularly attractive, she wasn’t anything. No, that wasn’t quite true. She was something, or someone, or she could not have induced him, with no particular persuasion, with no overt sex stimulation, nothing except a plain demand for help, to do what she wanted. A demand from one human being to another human being because, or so she had intimated, not precisely in words, but nevertheless it was what she had intimated, she knew people and she recognized in him a man who was willing to take a risk to help another human being. And he had taken a risk, too, thought Sir Stafford Nye. She could have put anything in that beer glass of his. He could have been found, if she had so willed it, found as a dead body in a seat tucked away in the corner of a departure lounge in an airport. And if she had, as no doubt she must have had, a knowledgeable recourse to drugs, his death might have been passed off as an attack of heart trouble due to altitude or difficult pressurizing—something or other like that. Oh well, why think about it? He wasn’t likely to see her again and he was annoyed.

Yes, he was annoyed, and he didn’t like being annoyed. He considered the matter for some minutes. Then he wrote out an advertisement, to be repeated three times. ‘Passenger to Frankfurt. November 3rd. Please communicate with fellow traveller to London.’ No more than that. Either she would or she wouldn’t. If it ever came to her eyes she would know by whom that advertisement had been inserted. She had had his passport, she knew his name. She could look him up. He might hear from her. He might not. Probably not. If not, the curtain-raiser would remain a curtain-raiser, a silly little play that received late-comers to the theatre and diverted them until the real business of the evening began. Very useful in pre-war times. In all probability, though, he would not hear from her again and one of the reasons might be that she might have accomplished whatever it was she had come to do in London, and have now left the country once more, flying abroad to Geneva, or the Middle East, or to Russia or to China or to South America, or to the United States. And why, thought Sir Stafford, do I include South America? There must be a reason. She had not mentioned South America. Nobody had mentioned South America. Except Horsham, that was true. And even Horsham had only mentioned South America among a lot of other mentions.

On the following morning as he walked slowly homeward, after handing in his advertisement, along the pathway across St James’s Park his eye picked out, half unseeing, the autumn flowers. The chrysanthemums looking by now stiff and leggy with their button tops of gold and bronze. Their smell came to him faintly, a rather goatlike smell, he had always thought, a smell that reminded him of hillsides in Greece. He must remember to keep his eye on the Personal Column. Not yet. Two or three days at least would have to pass before his own advertisement was put in and before there had been time for anyone to put in one in answer. He must not miss it if there was an answer because, after all, it was irritating not to know—not to have any idea what all this was about.

He tried to recall not the girl at the airport but his sister Pamela’s face. A long time since her death. He remembered her. Of course he remembered her, but he could not somehow picture her face. It irritated him not to be able to do so. He had paused just when he was about to cross one of the roads. There was no traffic except for a car jigging slowly along with the solemn demeanour of a bored dowager. An elderly car, he thought. An old-fashioned Daimler limousine. He shook his shoulders. Why stand here in this idiotic way, lost in thought?

He took an abrupt step to cross the road and suddenly with surprising vigour the dowager limousine, as he had thought of it in his mind, accelerated. Accelerated with a sudden astonishing speed. It bore down on him with such swiftness that he only just had time to leap across on to the opposite pavement. It disappeared with a flash, turning round the curve of the road further on.

‘I wonder,’ said Sir Stafford to himself. ‘Now I wonder. Could it be that there is someone that doesn’t like me? Someone following me, perhaps, watching me take my way home, waiting for an opportunity?’

Colonel Pikeaway, his bulk sprawled out in his chair in the small room in Bloomsbury where he sat from ten to five with a short interval for lunch, was surrounded as usual by an atmosphere of thick cigar smoke; with his eyes closed, only an occasional blink showed that he was awake and not asleep. He seldom raised his head. Somebody had said that he looked like a cross between an ancient Buddha and a large blue frog, with perhaps, as some impudent youngster had added, just a touch of a bar sinister from a hippopotamus in his ancestry.

The gentle buzz of the intercom on his desk roused him. He blinked three times and opened his eyes. He stretched forth a rather weary-looking hand and picked up the receiver.

‘Well?’ he said.

His secretary’s voice spoke.

‘The Minister is here waiting to see you.’

‘Is he now?’ said Colonel Pikeaway. ‘And what Minister is that? The Baptist minister from the church round the corner?’

‘Oh no, Colonel Pikeaway, it’s Sir George Packham.’

‘Pity,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, breathing asthmatically. ‘Great pity. The Reverend McGill is far more amusing. There’s a splendid touch of hell fire about him.’

‘Shall I bring him in, Colonel Pikeaway?’

‘I suppose he will expect to be brought in at once. Under Secretaries are far more touchy than Secretaries of State,’ said Colonel Pikeaway gloomily. ‘All these Ministers insist on coming in and having kittens all over the place.’

Sir George Packham was shown in. He coughed and wheezed. Most people did. The windows of the small room were tightly closed. Colonel Pikeaway reclined in his chair, completely smothered in cigar ash. The atmosphere was almost unbearable and the room was known in official circles as the ‘small cat-house’.

‘Ah, my dear fellow,’ said Sir George, speaking briskly and cheerfully in a way that did not match his ascetic and sad appearance. ‘Quite a long time since we’ve met, I think.’

‘Sit down, sit down do,’ said Pikeaway. ‘Have a cigar?’

Sir George shuddered slightly.

‘No, thank you,’ he said, ‘no, thanks very much.’

He looked hard at the windows. Colonel Pikeaway did not take the hint. Sir George cleared his throat and coughed again before saying:

‘Er—I believe Horsham has been to see you.’

‘Yes, Horsham’s been and said his piece,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, slowly allowing his eyes to close again.

‘I thought it was the best way. I mean, that he should call upon you here. It’s most important that things shouldn’t get round anywhere.’

‘Ah,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, ‘but they will, won’t they?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They will,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.

‘I don’t know how much you—er—well, know about this last business.’

‘We know everything here,’ said Colonel Pikeaway. ‘That’s what we’re for.’

‘Oh—oh yes, yes certainly. About Sir S.N.—you know who I mean?’

‘Recently a passenger from Frankfurt,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.

‘Most extraordinary business. Most extraordinary. One wonders—one really does not know, one can’t begin to imagine …’

Colonel Pikeaway listened kindly.

‘What is one to think?’ pursued Sir George. ‘Do you know him personally?’

‘I’ve come across him once or twice,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.

‘One really cannot help wondering—’

Colonel Pikeaway subdued a yawn with some difficulty. He was rather tired of Sir George’s thinking, wondering, and imagining. He had a poor opinion anyway of Sir George’s process of thought. A cautious man, a man who could be relied upon to run his department in a cautious manner. Not a man of scintillating intellect. Perhaps, thought Colonel Pikeaway, all the better for that. At any rate, those who think and wonder and are not quite sure are reasonably safe in the place where God and the electors have put them.

‘One cannot quite forget,’ continued Sir George, ‘the disillusionment we have suffered in the past.’

Colonel Pikeaway smiled kindly.

‘Charleston, Conway and Courtfold,’ he said. ‘Fully trusted, vetted and approved of. All beginning with C, all crooked as sin.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if we can trust anyone,’ said Sir George unhappily.

‘That’s easy,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, ‘you can’t.’

‘Now take Stafford Nye,’ said Sir George. ‘Good family, excellent family, knew his father, his grandfather.’

‘Often a slip-up in the third generation,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.

The remark did not help Sir George.

‘I cannot help doubting—I mean, sometimes he doesn’t really seem serious.’

‘Took my two nieces to see the châteaux of the Loire when I was a young man,’ said Colonel Pikeaway unexpectedly. ‘Man fishing on the bank. I had my fishing-rod with me, too. He said to me, “Vous n’êtes pas un pêcheur sérieux. Vous avez des femmes avec vous.”’

‘You mean you think Sir Stafford—?’

‘No, no, never been mixed up with women much. Irony’s his trouble. Likes surprising people. He can’t help liking to score off people.’

‘Well, that’s not very satisfactory, is it?’

‘Why not?’ said Colonel Pikeaway. ‘Liking a private joke is much better than having some deal with a defector.’

‘If one could feel that he was really sound. What would you say—your personal opinion?’

‘Sound as a bell,’ said Colonel Pikeaway. ‘If a bell is sound. It makes a sound, but that’s different, isn’t it?’ He smiled kindly. ‘Shouldn’t worry, if I were you,’ he said.

Sir Stafford Nye pushed aside his cup of coffee. He picked up the newspaper, glancing over the headlines, then he turned it carefully to the page which gave Personal advertisements. He’d looked down that particular column for seven days now. It was disappointing but not surprising. Why on earth should he expect to find an answer? His eye went slowly down miscellaneous peculiarities which had always made that particular page rather fascinating in his eyes. They were not so strictly personal. Half of them or even more than half were disguised advertisements or offers of things for sale or wanted for sale. They should perhaps have been put under a different heading but they had found their way here considering that they were more likely to catch the eye that way. They included one or two of the hopeful variety.

‘Young man who objects to hard work and who would like an easy life would be glad to undertake a job that would suit him.’

‘Girl wants to travel to Cambodia. Refuses to look after children.’

‘Firearm used at Waterloo. What offers.’

‘Glorious fun-fur coat. Must be sold immediately. Owner going abroad.’

‘Do you know Jenny Capstan? Her cakes are superb.

Come to 14 Lizzard Street, S.W.3.’

For a moment Stafford Nye’s finger came to a stop. Jenny Capstan. He liked the name. Was there any Lizzard Street? He supposed so. He had never heard of it. With a sigh, the finger went down the column and almost at once was arrested once more.

‘Passenger from Frankfurt, Thursday Nov. 11, Hungerford Bridge 7.20.’

Thursday, November 11th. That was—yes, that was today. Sir Stafford Nye leaned back in his chair and drank more coffee. He was excited, stimulated. Hungerford. Hungerford Bridge. He got up and went into the kitchenette. Mrs Worrit was cutting potatoes into strips and throwing them into a large bowl of water. She looked up with some slight surprise.

‘Anything you want, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘If anyone said Hungerford Bridge to you, where would you go?’

‘Where should I go?’ Mrs Worrit considered. ‘You mean if I wanted to go, do you?’

‘We can proceed on that assumption.’

‘Well, then, I suppose I’d go to Hungerford Bridge, wouldn’t I?’

‘You mean you would go to Hungerford in Berkshire?’

‘Where is that?’ said Mrs Worrit.

‘Eight miles beyond Newbury.’

‘I’ve heard of Newbury. My old man backed a horse there last year. Did well, too.’

‘So you’d go to Hungerford near Newbury?’

‘No, of course I wouldn’t,’ said Mrs Worrit. ‘Go all that way—what for? I’d go to Hungerford Bridge, of course.’

‘You mean—?’

‘Well, it’s near Charing Cross. You know where it is. Over the Thames.’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘Yes, I do know where it is quite well. Thank you, Mrs Worrit.’

It had been, he felt, rather like tossing a penny heads or tails. An advertisement in a morning paper in London meant Hungerford Railway Bridge in London. Presumably therefore that is what the advertiser meant, although about this particular advertiser Sir Stafford Nye was not at all sure. Her ideas, from the brief experience he had had of her, were original ideas. They were not the normal responses to be expected. But still, what else could one do. Besides, there were probably other Hungerfords, and possibly they would also have bridges, in various parts of England. But today, well, today he would see.

It was a cold windy evening with occasional bursts of thin misty rain. Sir Stafford Nye turned up the collar of his mackintosh and plodded on. It was not the first time he had gone across Hungerford Bridge, but it had never seemed to him a walk to take for pleasure. Beneath him was the river and crossing the bridge were large quantities of hurrying figures like himself. Their mackintoshes pulled round them, their hats pulled down and on the part of one and all of them an earnest desire to get home and out of the wind and rain as soon as possible. It would be, thought Sir Stafford Nye, very difficult to recognize anybody in this scurrying crowd. 7.20. Not a good moment to choose for a rendezvous of any kind. Perhaps it was Hungerford Bridge in Berkshire. Anyway, it seemed very odd.

He plodded on. He kept an even pace, not overtaking those ahead of him, pushing past those coming the opposite way. He went fast enough not to be overtaken by the others behind him, though it would be possible for them to do so if they wanted to. A joke, perhaps, thought Stafford Nye. Not quite his kind of joke, but someone else’s.

And yet—not her brand of humour either, he would have thought. Hurrying figures passed him again, pushing him slightly aside. A woman in a mackintosh was coming along, walking heavily. She collided with him, slipped, dropped to her knees. He assisted her up.

‘All right?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

She hurried on, but as she passed him, her wet hand, by which he had held her as he pulled her to her feet, slipped something into the palm of his hand, closing the fingers over it. Then she was gone, vanishing behind him, mingling with the crowd. Stafford Nye went on. He couldn’t overtake her. She did not wish to be overtaken, either. He hurried on and his hand held something firmly. And so, at long last it seemed, he came to the end of the bridge on the Surrey side.

A few minutes later he had turned into a small café and sat there behind a table, ordering coffee. Then he looked at what was in his hand. It was a very thin oilskin envelope. Inside it was a cheap quality white envelope. That too he opened. What was inside surprised him. It was a ticket.

A ticket for the Festival Hall for the following evening.