Читать книгу Cat Among the Pigeons - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 22

When Andrew Ball of no fixed abode had been sentenced to three months for breaking and entering, Derek O’Connor, who had been occupying a modest position at the back of the Magistrate’s Court, put through a call to a Museum number.

‘Not a thing on the fellow when we picked him up,’ he said. ‘We gave him plenty of time too.’

‘Who was he? Anyone we know?’

‘One of the Gecko lot, I think. Small time. They hire him out for this sort of thing. Not much brain but he’s said to be thorough.’

‘And he took his sentence like a lamb?’ At the other end of the line Colonel Pikeaway grinned as he spoke.

‘Yes. Perfect picture of a stupid fellow lapsed from the straight and narrow path. You’d never connect him with any big time stuff. That’s his value, of course.’

‘And he didn’t find anything,’ mused Colonel Pikeaway. ‘And you didn’t find anything. It rather looks, doesn’t it, as though there isn’t anything to find? Our idea that Rawlinson planted these things on his sister seems to have been wrong.’

‘Other people appear to have the same idea.’

‘It’s a bit obvious really…Maybe we are meant to take the bait.’

‘Could be. Any other possibilities?’

‘Plenty of them. The stuff may still be in Ramat. Hidden somewhere in the Ritz Savoy Hotel, maybe. Or Rawlinson passed it to someone on his way to the airstrip. Or there may be something in that hint of Mr Robinson’s. A woman may have got hold of it. Or it could be that Mrs Sutcliffe had it all the time unbeknownst to herself, and flung it overboard in the Red Sea with something she had no further use for.

‘And that,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘might be all for the best.’

‘Oh, come now, it’s worth a lot of money, sir.’

‘Human life is worth a lot, too,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.