Читать книгу Murder Mysteries to Solve on Christmas Eve - Various Authors - Страница 24

Table of Contents

There were no further excitements that night. I had breakfast in bed and got up late the next morning. Mrs. Blair hailed me as I came on deck.

“Good morning, gipsy girl. Sit down here by me. You look as though you hadn’t slept well.”

“Why do you call me that?” I asked, as I sat down obediently.

“Do you mind? It suits you somehow. I’ve called you that in my own mind from the beginning. It’s the gipsy element in you that makes you so different from anyone else. I decided in my own mind that you and Colonel Race were the only two people on board who wouldn’t bore me to death to talk to.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “I thought the same about you—only it’s more understandable in your case. You’re—you’re such an exquisitely finished product.”

“Not badly put,” said Mrs. Blair, nodding her head. “Tell me about yourself, gipsy girl. Why are you going to South Africa?”

I told her something about Papa’s life work.

“So you’re Charles Beddingfeld’s daughter? I thought you weren’t a mere provincial miss! Are you going to Broken Hill to grub up more skulls?”

“I may,” I said cautiously. “I’ve got other plans as well.”

“What a mysterious minx you are. But you do look tired this morning. Didn’t you sleep well? I can’t keep awake on board a boat. Ten hours” sleep for a fool, they say! I could do with twenty!”

She yawned, looking like a sleepy kitten. “An idiot of a steward woke me up in the middle of the night to return me that roll of films I dropped yesterday. He did it in the most melodramatic manner, stuck his arm through the ventilator and dropped them neatly in the middle of my tummy. I thought it was a bomb for a moment!”

“Here’s your Colonel,” I said, as the tall soldierly figure of Colonel Race appeared on the deck.

“He’s not my Colonel particularly. In fact he admires you very much, gipsy girl. So don’t run away.”

“I want to tie something round my head. It will be more comfortable than a hat.”

I slipped quickly away. For some reason or other I was uncomfortable with Colonel Race. He was one of the few people who were capable of making me feel shy.

I went down to my cabin and began looking for something with which I could restrain my rebellious locks. Now I am a tidy person, I like my things always arranged in a certain way and I keep them so. I had no sooner opened my drawer than I realized that somebody had been disarranging my things. Everything had been turned over and scattered. I looked in the other drawers and the small hanging cupboard. They told the same tale. It was as though someone had been making a hurried and ineffectual search for something.

I sat down on the edge of the bunk with a grave face. Who had been searching my cabin and what had they been looking for? Was it the half sheet of paper with scribbled figures and words? I shook my head, dissatisfied. Surely that was past history now. But what else could there be?

I wanted to think. The events of last night, though exciting, had not really done anything to elucidate matters. Who was the young man who had burst into my cabin so abruptly? I had not seen him on board previously, either on deck or in the saloon. Was he one of the ship’s company or was he a passenger? Who had stabbed him? Why had they stabbed him? And why, in the name of goodness, should Cabin No 17 figure so prominently? It was all a mystery, but there was no doubt that some very peculiar occurrences were taking place on the Kilmorden Castle.

I counted off on my fingers the people on whom it behoved me to keep watch.

Setting aside my visitor of the night before, but promising myself that I would discover him on board before another day had passed, I selected the following persons as worthy of my notice:

(1) Sir Eustace Pedler. He was the owner of the Mill House, and his presence on the Kilmorden Castle seemed something of a coincidence.

(2) Mr. Pagett, the sinister-looking secretary, whose eagerness to obtain Cabin 17 had been so very marked. N.B.—Find out whether he had accompanied Sir Eustace to Cannes.

(3) The Rev. Edward Chichester. All I had against him was his obstinacy over Cabin 17, and that might be entirely due to his own peculiar temperament. Obstinacy can be an amazing thing.

But a little conversation with Mr. Chichester would not come amiss, I decided. Hastily tying a handkerchief round my hair, I went up on deck again, full of purpose. I was in luck. My quarry was leaning against the rail, drinking beef tea. I went up to him.

“I hope you’ve forgiven me over Cabin 17,” I said, with my best smile.

“I consider it unchristian to bear a grudge,” said Mr. Chichester coldly. “But the purser had distinctly promised me that cabin.”

“Pursers are such busy men, aren’t they?” I said vaguely. “I suppose they’re bound to forget sometimes.”

Mr. Chichester did not reply.

“Is this your first visit to South Africa?” I inquired conversationally.

“To South Africa, yes. But I have worked for the last two years amongst the cannibal tribes in the interior of East Africa.”

“How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?”

“Escapes?”

“Of being eaten, I mean?”

“You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.”

“I didn’t know that cannibalism was a sacred subject,” I retorted, stung.

As the words left my lips, another idea struck me. If Mr. Chichester had indeed spent the last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sunburnt? His skin was as pink and white as a baby’s. Surely there was something fishy there? Yet his manner and voice were so absolutely it. Too much so, perhaps. Was he—or was he not—just a little like a stage clergyman?

I cast my mind back to the curates I had known at Little Hampsley. Some of them I had liked, some of them I had not, but certainly none of them had been quite like Mr. Chichester. They had been human—he was a glorified type.

I was debating all this when Sir Eustace Pedler passed down the deck. Just as he was abreast of Mr. Chichester, he stooped and picked up a piece of paper which he handed to him, remarking, “You’ve dropped something.”

He passed on without stopping, and so probably did not notice Mr. Chichester’s agitation. I did. Whatever it was he had dropped, its recovery agitated him considerably. He turned a sickly green, and crumpled up the sheet of paper into a ball. My suspicions were accentuated a hundredfold.

He caught my eye, and hurried into explanations.

“A—a—fragment of a sermon I was composing,” he said with a sickly smile.

“Indeed?” I rejoined politely.

A fragment of a sermon, indeed! No, Mr. Chichester—too weak for words!

He soon left me with a muttered excuse. I wished, oh, how I wished, that I had been the one to pick up that paper and not Sir Eustace Pedler! One thing was clear, Mr. Chichester could not be exempted from my list of suspects. I was inclined to put him top of the three.

After lunch, when I came up to the lounge for coffee, I noticed Sir Eustace and Pagett sitting with Mrs. Blair and Colonel Race. Mrs. Blair welcomed me with a smile, so I went over and joined them. They were talking about Italy.

“But it is misleading,” Mrs. Blair insisted. “Aqua calda certainly ought to be cold water—not hot.”

“You’re not a Latin scholar,” said Sir Eustace, smiling.

“Men are so superior about their Latin,” said Mrs. Blair. “But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.”

“Quite right,” said Colonel Race. “I always do.”

“But I love the Italians,” continued Mrs. Blair. “They’re so obliging—though even that has its embarrassing side. You ask them the way somewhere, and instead of saying ‘first to the right, second to the left’ or something that one could follow, they pour out a flood of well-meaning directions, and when you look bewildered they take you kindly by the arm and walk all the way there with you.”

“Is that your experience in Florence, Pagett?” asked Sir Eustace, turning with a smile to his secretary.

For some reason the question seemed to disconcert Mr. Pagett. He stammered and flushed.

“Oh, quite so, yes—er quite so.”

Then with a murmured excuse, he rose and left the table.

“I am beginning to suspect Guy Pagett of having committed some dark deed in Florence,” remarked Sir Eustace, gazing after his secretary’s retreating figure. “Whenever Florence or Italy is mentioned, he changes the subject or bolts precipitately.”

“Perhaps he murdered someone there,” said Mrs. Blair hopefully. “He looks—I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, Sir Eustace—but he does look as though he might murder someone.”

“Yes, pure Cinquecento! It amuses me sometimes—especially when one knows as well as I do how essentially law-abiding and respectable the poor fellow really is.”

“He’s been with you some time, hasn’t he, Sir Eustace?” asked Colonel Race.

“Six years,” said Sir Eustace with a deep sigh.

“He must be quite invaluable to you,” said Mrs. Blair.

“Oh, invaluable! Yes, quite invaluable.” The poor man sounded even more depressed, as though the invaluableness of Mr. Pagett was a secret grief to him. Then he added more briskly: “But his face should really inspire you with confidence, my dear lady. No self-respecting murderer would ever consent to look like one. Crippen, now, I believe, was one of the pleasantest fellows imaginable.”

“He was caught on a liner, wasn’t he?” murmured Mrs. Blair.

There was a slight rattle behind us. I turned quickly. Mr. Chichester had dropped his coffee cup.

Our party soon broke up; Mrs. Blair went below to sleep and I went out on deck. Colonel Race followed me.

“You’re very elusive, Miss Beddingfeld. I looked for you everywhere last night at the dance.”

“I went to bed early,” I explained.

“Are you going to run away tonight too? Or are you going to dance with me?”

“I shall be very pleased to dance with you,” I murmured shyly. “But Mrs. Blair—”

“Our friend, Mrs. Blair, doesn’t care for dancing.”

“And do you?”

“I care for dancing with you.”

“Oh!” I said nervously.

I was a little afraid of Colonel Race. Nevertheless I was enjoying myself. This was better than discussing fossilized skulls with stuffy old professors! Colonel Race was really just my ideal of a stern silent Rhodesian. Possibly I might marry him! I hadn’t been asked, it is true, but, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! And all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or their best friend.

I danced several times with him that evening. He danced well. When the dancing was over, and I was thinking of going to bed, he suggested a turn round the deck. We walked round three times and finally subsided into two deck chairs. There was nobody else in sight. We made desultory conversation for some time.

“Do you know, Miss Beddingfeld, I think I once met your father? A very interesting man—on his own subject, and it’s a subject that has a special fascination for me. In my humble way, I’ve done a bit in that line myself. Why, when I was in the Dordogne region—”

Our talk became technical. Colonel Race’s boast was not an idle one. He knew a great deal. At the same time, he made one or two curious mistakes—slips of the tongue, I might almost have thought them. But he was quick to take his cue from me and to cover them up. Once he spoke of the Mousterian period as succeeding the Aurignacian—an absurd mistake for one who knew anything of the subject.

It was twelve o’clock when I went to my cabin. I was still puzzling over those queer discrepancies. Was it possible that he had “got the whole subject up” for the occasion—that really he knew nothing of archaeology? I shook my head, vaguely dissatisfied with that solution.

Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I sat up with a sudden start as another idea flashed into my head. Had he been pumping me? Were those slight inaccuracies just tests—to see whether I really knew what I was talking about? In other words, he suspected me of not being genuinely Anne Beddingfeld.

Why?