Agatha Christie: Postern of Fate

'Books!' said Tuppence.

She produced the word rather with the effect of a bad-tempered explosion.

'What did you say?' said Tommy.

Tuppence looked across the room at him.

'I said "books",' she said.

'I see what you mean,' said Thomas Beresford.

In front of Tuppence were three large packing cases. From each of them various books had been extracted. The larger part of them were still filled with books.

'It's incredible,' said Tuppence.

'You mean the room they take up?'

'Yes.'

'Are you trying to put them all on the shelves?'

'I don't know what I'm trying to do,' said Tuppence. 'That's the awkward part of it. One doesn't know ever, exactly, what one wants to do. Oh dear,' she sighed.

'Really,' said her husband, 'I should have thought that that was not at all characteristic of you. The trouble with you has always been that you knew much too well what you do want to do.'

'What I mean is,' said Tuppence, 'that here we are, getting older, getting a bit – well, let's face it – definitely rheumatic, especially when one is stretching; you know, stretching putting in books or lifting down things from shelves or kneeling down to look at the bottom shelves for something, then finding it a bit difficult to get up again.'

'Yes, yes,' said Tommy, 'that's an account of our general disabilities. Is that what you started to say?'

'No, it isn't what I started to say. What I started to say was, it was lovely to be able to buy a new home and find just the place we wanted to go and live in, and just the house there we'd always dreamt of having – with a little alteration, of course.'

'Knocking one or two rooms into each other,' said Tommy, 'and adding to it what you call a veranda and your builder calls a lodger, though I prefer to call it a loggia.'

'And it's going to be very nice,' said Tuppence firmly.

'When you've done with it I shan't know it! Is that the answer?' said Tommy.

'Not at all. All I said was that when you see it finished you're going to be delighted and say what an ingenious and clever and artistic wife you have.'

'All right,' said Tommy. 'I'll remember the right thing to say.'

'You won't need to remember,' said Tuppence. 'It will burst upon you.'

'What's that got to do with books?' said Tommy.

'Well, we brought two or three cases of books with us. I mean, we sold off the books we didn't much care about. We brought the ones we really couldn't bear to part with, and then, of course, the what-you-call-'ems – I can't remember their name now, but the people who were selling us this house – they didn't want to take a lot of their own things with them, and they said if we'd like to make an offer they would leave things including books, and we came and looked at things -'

'And we made some offers,' said Tommy.

'Yes. Not as many as they hoped we would make, I expect. Some of their furniture and ornaments were too horrible. Well, fortunately we didn't have to take those, but when I came and saw the various books – there were some nursery ones, you know, some down in the sitting-room – and there were one or two old favourites. I mean, there still are. There are one or two of my own special favourites. And so I thought it'd be such fun to have them. You know, the story of Androcles and the Lion,' she said. 'I remember reading that when I was eight years old. Andrew Lang.'

'Tell me, Tuppence, were you clever enough to read at eight years old?'

'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'I read at five years old. Everybody could, when I was young. I didn't know one even had to sort of learn. I mean, somebody would read stories aloud, and you liked them very much and you remembered where the book went back on the shelf and you were always allowed to take it out and have a look at it yourself, and so you found you were reading it too, without bothering to learn to spell or anything like that. It wasn't so good later,' she said, 'because I've never been able to spell very well. And if somebody had taught me to spell when I was about four years old I can see it would have been very good indeed. My father did teach me to do addition and subtraction and multiplication, of course, because he said the multiplication table was the most useful thing you could learn in life, and I learnt long division too.'

'What a clever man he must have been!'

'I don't think he was specially clever,' said Tuppence, 'but he was just very, very nice.'

'Aren't we getting away from the point?'

'Yes, we are,' said Tuppence. 'Well, as I said, when I thought of reading Androcles and the Lion again – it came in a book of stories about animals, I think, by Andrew Lang – oh, I loved that. And there was a story about "a day in my life at Eton" by an Eton schoolboy. I can't think why I wanted to read that, but I did. It was one of my favourite books. And there were some stories from the classics, and there was Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm -'

'Well, that's all right,' said Tommy. 'No need to give me a whole account of your literary triumphs in early youth.'

'What I mean is,' said Tuppence, 'that you can't get them nowadays. I mean, sometimes you get reprints of them, but they've usually been altered and have different pictures in them. Really, the other day I couldn't recognize Alice in Wonderland when I saw it. Everything looks so peculiar in it. There are the books I really could get still. Mrs Molesworth, one or two of the old fairy books – Pink, Blue and Yellow – and then, of course, lots of later ones which I'd enjoyed. Lots of Stanley Weymans and things like that. There are quite a lot here, left behind.'

'All right,' said Tommy. 'You were tempted. You felt it was a good buy.'

'Yes. At least – what d'you mean "a goodbye"?'

'I mean b-u-y,' said Tommy.

'Oh. I thought you were going to leave the room and were saying goodbye to me.'

'Not at all,' said Tommy. 'I was deeply interested. Anyway, it was a good b-u-y.'

'And I got them very cheap, as I tell you. And – and here they all are among our own books and others. Only, we've got such a terrible lot now of books, and the shelves we had made I don't think are going to be nearly enough. What about your special sanctum? Is there room there for more books?'

'No, there isn't,' said Tommy. 'There's not going to be enough for my own.'

'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Tuppence, 'that's so like us. Do you think we might have to build on an extra room?'

'No,' said Tommy, 'we're going to economize. We said so the day before yesterday. Do you remember?'

'That was the day before yesterday,' said Tuppence. 'Time alters. What I am going to do now is to put in these shelves all the books I really can't bear to part with. And then – and then we can look at the others and – well, there might be a children's hospital somewhere and there might, anyway, be places which would like books.'

'Or we could sell them,' said Tommy.

'I don't suppose they're the sort of books people would want to buy very much. I don't think there are any books of rare value or anything like that.'

'You never know your luck,' said Tommy. 'Let's hope something out of print will fulfil some bookseller's long-felt want.'

'In the meantime,' said Tuppence, 'we have to put them into the shelves, and look inside them, of course, each time, to see whether it's a book I do really want and I can really remember. I'm trying to get them roughly – well, you know what I mean, sort of sorted. I mean, adventure stories, fairy stories, children's stories and those stories about schools where the children were always very rich – L.T. Meade, I think. And some of the books we used to read to Deborah when she was small, too. How we all used to love Winnie the Pooh. And there was The Little Grey Hen too, but I didn't care very much for that.'