Читать книгу And Then There Were None (Ten Little Niggers) / Десять негритят. Книга для чтения на английском языке - Агата Кристи - Страница 10

Mr Blore was in the slow train from Plymouth. There was only one other person in his carriage, an elderly seafaring gentleman with a bleary eye. At the present moment he had dropped off to sleep.

Mr Blore was writing carefully in a little notebook.

‘That’s the lot,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Emily Brent, Vera Claythorne, Dr Armstrong, Anthony Marston, old Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, CMG, DSO, Manservant and wife: Mr and Mrs Rogers.’

He closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket. He glanced over at the corner and the slumbering man.

‘Had one over the eight,’ diagnosed Mr Blore accurately.

He went over things carefully and conscientiously in his mind.

‘Job ought to be easy enough,’ he ruminated. ‘Don’t see how I can slip up on it. Hope I look all right.’

He stood up and scrutinised himself anxiously in the glass. The face reflected there was of a slightly military cast with a moustache. There was very little expression in it. The eyes were grey and set rather close together.

‘Might be a Major,’ said Mr Blore. ‘No, I forgot. There’s that old military gent. He’d spot me at once.’

‘South Africa,’ said Mr Blore, ‘that’s my line! None of these people have anything to do with South Africa, and I’ve just been reading that travel folder so I can talk about it all right.’

Fortunately there were all sorts and types of colonials. As a man of means from South Africa, Mr Blore felt that he could enter into any society unchallenged.

Soldier Island. He remembered Soldier Island as a boy… Smelly sort of rock covered with gulls—stood about a mile from the coast. It had got its name from its resemblance to a man’s head.

Funny idea to go and build a house on it! Awful in bad weather! But millionaires were full of whims!

The old man in the corner woke up and said:

‘You can’t never tell at sea—never!’

Mr Blore said soothingly, ‘That’s right. You can’t.’

The old man hiccupped twice and said plaintively:

‘There’s a squall coming.’

Mr Blore said:

‘No, no, mate, it’s a lovely day.’

The old man said angrily:

‘There’s a squall ahead. I can smell it.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Mr Blore pacifically.

The train stopped at a station and the old fellow rose unsteadily.

‘Thish where I get out.’ He fumbled with the window. Mr Blore helped him.

The old man stood in the doorway. He raised a solemn hand and blinked his bleary eyes.

‘Watch and pray,’ he said. ‘Watch and pray. The day of judgment is at hand.’

He collapsed through the doorway on to the platform. From a recumbent position he looked up at Mr Blore and said with immense dignity:

‘I’m talking to you, young man. The day of judgment is very close at hand.’

Subsiding on to his seat Mr Blore thought to himself: He’s nearer the day of judgment than I am!

But there, as it happens, he was wrong…