Agatha Christie: Postern of Fate

'Why?'

'Oh, because it's always been a thorough nuisance. We bought it somewhere abroad, didn't we?'

'Yes, I think we must have been mad. You never liked it. You said you hated it. Well, I agree. And it's awfully heavy too, very heavy.'

'But Miss Sanderson was terribly pleased when I said that they could have it. She offered to fetch it but I said I'd run it down to them in the car. It's today we take the thing.'

'I'll run down with it if you like.'

'No, I'd rather like to go.'

'All right,' said Tommy. 'Perhaps I'd better come with you and just carry it in for you.'

'Oh, I think I'll find someone who'll carry it in for me,' said Tuppence.

'Well, you might or you might not. Don't go and strain yourself.'

'All right,' said Tuppence.

'You've got some other reason for wanting to go, haven't you?'

'Well, I just thought I'd like to chat a bit with people,' said Tuppence.

'I never know what you're up to, Tuppence, but I know the look in your eye when you are up to something.'

'You take Hannibal for a walk,' said Tuppence. 'I can't take him to the White Elephant Sale. I don't want to get into a dog-fight.'

'All right. Want to go for a walk, Hannibal?'

Hannibal, as was his habit, immediately replied in the affirmative. His affirmatives and his negatives were always quite impossible to miss. He wriggled his body, wagged his tail, raised one paw, put it down again and came and rubbed his head hard against Tommy's leg.

'That's right,' he obviously said, 'that's what you exist for, my dear slave. We're going out for a lovely walk down the street. Lots of smells, I hope.'

'Come on,' said Tommy. 'I'll take the lead with me, and don't run into the road as you did last time. One of those awful great "long vehicles" was nearly the end of you.'

Hannibal looked at him with the expression of 'I'm always a very good dog who'll do exactly what I am told.' False as the statement was, it often succeeded in deceiving even those people who were in closest contact with Hannibal.

Tommy put the brass lamp into the car, murmuring it was rather heavy. Tuppence drove off in the car. Having seen her turn the corner, Tommy attached the lead to Hannibal 's collar and took him down the street. Then he turned up the lane towards the church, and removed Hannibal 's lead since very little traffic came up this particular road. Hannibal acknowledged the privilege by grunting and sniffing in various tufts of grass with which the pavement next to the wall was adorned. If he could have used human language it was clear that what he would have said was: 'Delicious! Very rich. Big dog here. Believe it's that beastly Alsatian.' Low growl. 'I don't like Alsatians. If I see the one again that bit me once I'll bite him. Ah! Delicious, delicious. Very nice little bitch here. Yes – yes – I'd like to meet her. I wonder if she lives far away. Expect she comes out of this house. I wonder now.'

'Come out of that gate, now,' said Tommy. 'Don't go into a house that isn't yours.'

Hannibal pretended not to hear.

' Hannibal!'

Hannibal redoubled his speed and turned a corner which led toward the kitchen.

' Hannibal!' shouted Tommy. 'Do you hear me?'

'Hear you, Master?' said Hannibal. 'Were you calling me? Oh yes, of course.'

A sharp bark from inside the kitchen caught his ear. He scampered out to join Tommy. Hannibal walked a few inches behind Tommy's heel.

'Good boy,' said Tommy.

'I am a good boy, aren't I?' said Hannibal. 'Any moment you need me to defend you, here I am less than a foot away. They had arrived at a side gate which led into the churchyard. Hannibal, who in some way had an extraordinary knack of altering his size when he wanted to, instead of appearing somewhat broad-shouldered, possibly a somewhat too plump dog, he could at any moment make himself like a thin black thread. He now squeezed himself through the bars of the gate with no difficulty at all.

'Come back, Hannibal,' called Tommy. 'You can't go into the churchyard.'

Hannibal 's answer to that, if there had been any, would have been 'I am in the churchyard already, Master.' He was scampering gaily round the churchyard with the air of a dog who has been let out in a singularly pleasant garden.

'You awful dog!' said Tommy.

He unlatched the gate, walked in and chased Hannibal, lead in hand. Hannibal was now at a far corner of the churchyard, and seemed to have every intention of trying to gain access through the door of the church, which was slightly ajar. Tommy, however, reached him in time and attached the lead. Hannibal looked up with the air of one who had intended this to happen all along. 'Putting me on the lead, are you?' he said. 'Yes of course, I know it's a kind of prestige. It shows that I am a very valuable dog.' He wagged his tail. Since there seemed nobody to oppose Hannibal walking in the churchyard with his master, suitably secured as he was by a stalwart lead, Tommy wandered round, checking perhaps Tuppence's researches of a former day.

He looked first at a worn stone monument more or less behind a little side door into the church. It was, he thought, probably one of the oldest. There were several of them there, most of them bearing dates in the eighteen-hundreds. There was one, however, that Tommy looked at longest.

'Odd,' he said, 'damned odd.'

Hannibal looked up at him. He did not understand this piece of Master's conversation. He saw nothing about the gravestone to interest a dog. He sat down, looked up at his master enquiringly.

Tuppence was pleasurably surprised to find the brass lamp which she and Tommy now regarded with such repulsion welcomed with the utmost warmth.

'How very good of you, Mrs Beresford, to bring us something as nice as that. Most interesting, most interesting. I suppose it must have come from abroad on your travels once.'

'Yes. We bought it in Egypt,' said Tuppence.

She was quite doubtful by this time, a period of eight to ten years having passed, as to where she had bought it. It might have been Damascus, she thought, and it might equally well have been Baghdad or possibly Tehran. But Egypt, she thought, since Egypt was doubtless in the news at this moment, would be far more interesting. Besides, it looked rather Egyptian. Clearly, if she had got it from any other country, it dated from some period when they had been copying Egyptian work.

'Really,' she said, 'it's rather big for our house, so I thought -'

'Oh, I think really we ought to raffle it,' said Miss Little. Miss Little was more or less in charge of things. Her local nickname was 'The Parish Pump', mainly because she was so well informed about all things that happened in the parish. Her surname was misleading. She was a large woman of ample proportions. Her Christian name was Dorothy, but she was always called Dotty.

'I hope you're coming to the sale, Mrs Beresford?'

Tuppence assured her that she was coming.

'I can hardly wait to buy,' she said chattily.

'Oh, I'm so glad you feel like that.'

'I think it's a very good thing,' said Tuppence. 'I mean, the White Elephant idea, because it's – well, it is so true, isn't it? I mean, what's one person's white elephant is somebody else's pearl beyond price.'

'Ah, really, we must tell that to the vicar,' said Miss Price-Ridley, an angular lady with a lot of teeth. 'Oh yes, I'm sure he would be very much amused.'

'That papier-mâché basin, for instance,' said Tuppence, raising this particular trophy up.

'Oh really, do you think anyone will buy that?'

'I shall buy it myself if it's for sale when I come here tomorrow,' said Tuppence.

'But surely, nowadays, they have such pretty plastic washing-up bowls.'

'I'm not very fond of plastic,' said Tuppence. 'That's a really good papier-mâché bowl that you've got there. I mean, if you put things down in that, lots of china together, they wouldn't break. And there's an old-fashioned tin-opener too. The kind with a bull's head that one never sees nowadays.'