Agatha Christie - Postern of Fate

'I think you're tiring yourself,' said Tommy. 'I think I should leave off what you're doing now.'

'Well, perhaps I will,' said Tuppence, 'but I think if I could just finish this side of the room, just get the books in here…'

'Well, I'll help you,' said Tommy.

He came over, tilted the case more so that the books fell out, gathered up armfuls of them and went to the shelves and shoved them in.

'I'm putting the same sized ones together, it looks neater,' he said.

'Oh, I don't call that sorting,' said Tuppence.

'Sorting enough to get on with. We can do more of that later. You know, make everything really nice. We'll sort it on some wet day when we can't think of anything else to do.'

'The trouble is we always can think of something else to do.'

'Well now, there's another seven in there. Now then, there's only this top corner. Just bring me that wooden chair over there, will you? Are its legs strong enough for me to stand on it? Then I can put some on the top shelf.'

With some care he climbed on the chair. Tuppence lifted up to him an armful of books. He insinuated them with some care on to the top shelf. Disaster only happened with the last three which cascaded to the floor, narrowly missing Tuppence.

'Oh,' said Tuppence, 'that was painful.'

'Well, I can't help it. You handed me up too many at once.'

'Oh well, that does look wonderful,' said Tuppence, standing back a little. 'Now then, if you'll just put these in the second shelf from the bottom, there's a gap there, that will finish up this particular caseful anyway. It s a good thing too. These ones I'm doing this morning aren't really ours, they're the ones we bought. We may find treasures.'

'We may,' said Tommy.

'I think we shall find treasures, I think I really shall find something. Something that's worth a lot of money, perhaps.'

'What do we do then? Sell it?'

'I expect we'll have to sell it, yes,' said Tuppence. 'Of course we might just keep it and show it to people. You know, not exactly boasting, but just say, you know: "oh yes, we've got really one or two interesting finds." I think we shall make an interesting find, too.'

'What – one old favourite you've forgotten about?"

'Not exactly that. I meant something startling, surprising. Something that'll make all the difference to our lives.'

'Oh Tuppence,' said Tommy, 'what a wonderful mind you've got. Much more likely to find something that's an absolute disaster.'

'Nonsense,' said Tuppence. 'One must have hope. It's the great thing you have to have in life. Hope. Remember? I'm always full of hope.'

'I know you are,' said Tommy. He sighed. 'I've often regretted it.'

Mrs Thomas Beresford replaced The Cuckoo Clock, by Mrs Molesworth, choosing a vacant place on the third shelf from the bottom. The Mrs Molesworths were congregated here together. Tuppence drew out The Tapestry Room and held it thoughtfully in her fingers. Or she might read Four Winds Farm. She couldn't remember Four Winds Farm as well as she could remember The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room. Her fingers wandered… Tommy would be back soon.

She was getting on. Yes, surely she was getting on. If only she didn't stop and pull out old favourites and read them. Very agreeable, but it took a lot of time. And when Tommy asked her in the evening when he came home how things were going and she said, 'Oh very well now,' she had to employ a great deal of tact and finesse to prevent him from going upstairs and having a real look at how the bookshelves were progressing. It all took a long time. Getting into a house always took a long time, much longer than one thought. And so many irritating people. Electricians, for instance, who came and appeared to be displeased with what they had done the last time they came and took up more large areas in the floor and, with cheerful faces, produced more pitfalls for the unwary housewife to walk along and put a foot wrong and be rescued just in time by the unseen electrician who was groping beneath the floor.

'Sometimes,' said Tuppence, 'I really wish we hadn't left Bartons Acre.'

'Remember the dining-room roof,' Tommy had said, 'and remember those attics, and remember what happened to the garage. Nearly wrecked the car, you know it did.'

'I suppose we could have had it patched up,' said Tuppence.

'No,' said Tommy, 'we'd have had to practically replace the damaged building, or else we had to move. This is going to be a very nice house some day. I'm quite sure of that. Anyway, there's going to be room in it for all the things we want to do.'

'When you say the things we want to do,' Tuppence had said, 'you mean the things we want to find places for and to keep.'

'I know,' said Tommy. 'One keeps far too much. I couldn't agree with you more.'

At that moment Tuppence considered something – whether they ever were going to do anything with this house, that is to say beyond getting into it. It had sounded simple but had turned out complex. Partly, of course, all these books.

'If I'd been a nice ordinary child of nowadays,' said Tuppence, 'I wouldn't have learned to read so easily when I was young. Children nowadays who are four, or five, or six, don't seem to be able to read and quite a lot of them don't seem to be able to read when they get to ten or eleven. I can't think why it was so easy for all of us. We could all read. Me and Martin next door and Jennifer down the road and Cyril and Winifred. All of us. I don't mean we could all spell very well but we could read anything we wanted to. I don't know how we learnt. Asking people, I suppose. Things about posters and Carter's Little Liver Pills. We used to read all about them in the fields when trains got near London. It was very exciting. I always wondered what they were. Oh dear, I must think of what I'm doing.'

She removed some more books. Three-quarters of an hour passed with her absorbed first in Alice Through the Looking-Glass then with Charlotte Yonge's Unknown to History. Her hands lingered over the fat shabbiness of The Daisy Chain.

'Oh I must read that again,' said Tuppence. To think of the years and years and years it is since I did read it. Oh dear, how exciting it was, wondering, you know, whether Norman was going to be allowed to be confirmed or not. And Ethel and – what was the name of the place? Coxwell or something like that – and Flora who was worldly. I wonder why everyone was "worldly" in those days, and how poorly it was thought of, being worldly. I wonder what we are now. Do you think we're all worldly or not?'

'I beg yer pardon, ma'am?'

'Oh nothing,' said Tuppence, looking round at her devoted henchman, Albert, who had just appeared in the doorway.

'I thought you called for something, madam. And you rang the bell, didn't you?'

'Not really,' said Tuppence. 'I just leant on it getting up on a chair to take a book out.'

'Is there anything I can take down for you?'

'Well, I wish you would,' said Tuppence. 'I'm falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.'

'Any book in particular?'

'Well, I haven't got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don't know what books are there.'

Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.

'Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here's The Amulet and here's The Psamayad. Here's The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don't put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I'll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what's this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. That was very exciting. And there's Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn't be surprised if I don't come across The Prisoner of Zenda.' She sighed with enormous pleasure at the remembrance. 'The Prisoner of Zenda. One's first introduction, really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King of Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.'