Читать книгу Cat Among the Pigeons - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 7

In a small room on the first floor, Ann Shapland, Miss Bulstrode’s secretary, was typing with speed and efficiency. Ann was a nice-looking young woman of thirty-five, with hair that fitted her like a black satin cap. She could be attractive when she wanted to be but life had taught her that efficiency and competence often paid better results and avoided painful complications. At the moment she was concentrating on being everything that a secretary to the headmistress of a famous girls’ school should be.

From time to time, as she inserted a fresh sheet in her machine, she looked out of the window and registered interest in the arrivals.

‘Goodness!’ said Ann to herself, awed, ‘I didn’t know there were so many chauffeurs left in England!’

Then she smiled in spite of herself, as a majestic Rolls moved away and a very small Austin of battered age drove up. A harassed-looking father emerged from it with a daughter who looked far calmer than he did.

As he paused uncertainly, Miss Vansittart emerged from the house and took charge.

‘Major Hargreaves? And this is Alison? Do come into the house. I’d like you to see Alison’s room for yourself. I—’

Ann grinned and began to type again.

‘Good old Vansittart, the glorified understudy,’ she said to herself. ‘She can copy all the Bulstrode’s tricks. In fact she’s word perfect!’

An enormous and almost incredibly opulent Cadillac, painted in two tones, raspberry fool and azure blue, swept (with difficulty owing to its length) into the drive and drew up behind Major the Hon. Alistair Hargreaves’ ancient Austin.

The chauffeur sprang to open the door, an immense bearded, dark-skinned man, wearing a flowing aba, stepped out, a Parisian fashion plate followed and then a slim dark girl.

That’s probably Princess Whatshername herself, thought Ann. Can’t imagine her in school uniform, but I suppose the miracle will be apparent tomorrow…

Both Miss Vansittart and Miss Chadwick appeared on this occasion.

‘They’ll be taken to the Presence,’ decided Ann.

Then she thought that, strangely enough, one didn’t quite like making jokes about Miss Bulstrode. Miss Bulstrode was Someone.

‘So you’d better mind your P.s and Q.s, my girl,’ she said to herself, ‘and finish these letters without making any mistakes.’

Not that Ann was in the habit of making mistakes. She could take her pick of secretarial posts. She had been P.A. to the chief executive of an oil company, private secretary to Sir Mervyn Todhunter, renowned alike for his erudition, his irritability and the illegibility of his handwriting. She numbered two Cabinet Ministers and an important Civil Servant among her employers. But on the whole, her work had always lain amongst men. She wondered how she was going to like being, as she put it herself, completely submerged in women. Well—it was all experience! And there was always Dennis! Faithful Dennis returning from Malaya, from Burma, from various parts of the world, always the same, devoted, asking her once again to marry him. Dear Dennis! But it would be very dull to be married to Dennis.

She would miss the company of men in the near future. All these schoolmistressy characters—not a man about the place, except a gardener of about eighty.

But here Ann got a surprise. Looking out of the window, she saw there was a man clipping the hedge just beyond the drive—clearly a gardener but a long way from eighty. Young, dark, good-looking. Ann wondered about him—there had been some talk of getting extra labour—but this was no yokel. Oh well, nowadays people did every kind of job. Some young man trying to get together some money for some project or other, or indeed just to keep body and soul together. But he was cutting the hedge in a very expert manner. Presumably he was a real gardener after all!

‘He looks,’ said Ann to herself, ‘he looks as though he might be amusing…’

Only one more letter to do, she was pleased to note, and then she might stroll round the garden…