Agatha Christie - Passenger to Frankfurt

'If you want to, I'll go now,' he smiled at her.

He left the room and went up the stairs. Yes, she was sharp, old Mathilda. This was the face. This was the face remembered and had seen. A pretty girl brought home by his great-great-great-grandfather, if that were enough great's…

She must be about twenty. She came here and was very gay, rode splendorously, danced magnificiently, and men fell in love with her. But she had been faithful, at least that was what everybody said. She went with her husband to many foreign embassies and always came back with him. They had children, three of four, it seemed. Through one of these children her face, her nose, the curve of her neck, went down to him and his sister Pamela.

'Did you find her?' Lady Matilda asked when her nephew came back to her. 'An interesting face, isn't it?'

'Yes, and very pretty too.'

'It's better to be interesting than pretty. But you weren't in Hungary nor in Austria, were you? You wouldn't find someone looking like her in Malaya. She wouldn't be there sitting at a table, taking notes or proofreading speeches, or anything like that. She was a wild creature by conviction. Had adorable manners and was well-bred, but she was wild. Wild as a bird. She didn't know the meaning of the word danger.'

'How do you know so much about her?'

'Oh, I haven't known her in person. I was born a few years after her death. But even so, I always took an interest in her. She was bold, you know? Very bold. There were many strange stories about her, about the things she got involved.'

'And how did her husband react to that?'

'I guess he worried too much,' said Lady Matilda. 'But, they say he adored her. Talking of which, Staffy, did you ever read "The prisoner of Zenda"?'

'"The prisoner of Zenda"? Seems familiar…'

'Of course it's familiar. It's a book.'

'Yes, yes, I know it's a book.'

'You wouldn't know it, I guess. It's not from your time. But when I was a girl… it was the first touch of romance we knew. There weren't pop singers nor The Beatles. Only romantic novels. We weren't allowed to read them in the morning. Only in the afternoon.'

'What extraordinary rules,' said Sir Stafford. 'Why was it wrong to read novels in the morning?'

'Well, in the morning, you know, the girls were supposed to do something useful. You know, arranging the flowers or polishing the silver portrait frames. All these things that young girls were supposed to do. Studying a bit with the governess… all these things. In the afternoon we wee allowed to read stories and novels, and "The prisoner of Zenda" was usually the first that we got hold of.'

'A very pretty story, very respectable, wan't it? I seem to remember something about it. Perhaps I did read it. All very pure, I suppose. Not too sexy?'

'Certainly not. We didn't have sexy books. We had romance. The Prisoner of Zenda was very romantic. One fell in love, usually, with the hero, Rudolf Rassendyll.'

'I seem to remember that name too. Bit florid, isn't it?'

'Well, I still think it was rather a romantic name. Twelve years old, I must have been. It made me think of it, you know, your going up and looking at that portrait. Princess Flavia,' she added.

Stafford Nye was smiling at her.

'You look young and pink and very sentimental,' he said.

'Well, that's just what I'm feeling. Girls can't feel like that nowadays. They're swooning with love, or they're fainting when somebody plays the guitar or sings in a very loud voice, but they're not sentimental. But I wasn't in love with Rudolf Rassendyll. I was in love with the other one — his double.'

'Did he have a double?'

'Oh yes, a king. The King of Ruritania.'

'Ah, of course, now I know. That's where the word Ruritania comes from: one is always throwing it about. Yes, I think I did read it, you know. The King of Ruritania, and Rudolf Rassendyll was stand-in for the King and fell in love with Princess Flavia to whom the King was officially betrothed.'

Lady Matilda gave some more deep sighs.

'Yes. Rudolf Rassendyll had inherited his red hair from an ancestress, and somewhere in the book he bows to the portrait and says something about the — I can't remember the name now — the Countess Amelia or something like that from whom he inherited his looks and all the rest of it. So I looked at you and thought of you as Rudolf Rassendyll and you went out and looked at a picture of someone who ought have been an ancestress of yours and saw whether she reminded you of someone. So you're mixed up in a romance of some kind, are you?'

'What on earth makes you say that?'

'Well, there aren't so many patterns in life, you know. One recognizes patterns as they come up. It's like a book on knitting. About sixty-five different fancy stitches. Well, you know a particular stitch when you see it. Your stitch, at the moment, I should say, is the romantic adventure.' She sighed. 'But you won't tell me about it, I suppose.'

'There's nothing to tell,' said Sir Stafford.

'You always were quite an accomplished liar. Well, never mind. You bring her to see me some time. That's all I'd like, before the doctors succeed in killing me with yet another type of antibiotic that they've just discovered. The different coloured pills I've had to take by this time! You wouldn't believe it.'

'I don't know why you say "she" and "her" –'

'Don't you? Oh, well, I know a she when I come across a she. There's a she somewhere dodging about in your life. What beats me is how you found her. In Malaya, at the conference table? Ambassador's daughter or minister's daughter? Good-looking secretary from the Embassy pool? No, none of it seems to fit. Ship coming home? No, you don't use ships nowadays. Plane, perhaps.'

'You are getting slightly nearer,' Sir Stafford Nye could not help saying.

'Ah!' She pounced. 'Air hostess?'

He shook his head.

'Ah well. Keep your secret. I shall find out, mind you. I've always had a good nose for things going on where you're concerned. Things generally as well. Of course I'm out of everything nowadays, but I meet my old cronies from time to time and it's quite easy, you know, to get a hint or two from them. People are worried. Everywhere — they're worried.'

'You mean there's a general kind of discontent — upset?'

'No, I didn't mean that at all. I mean the high-ups are worried. Our awful governments are worried. The dear old sleepy Foreign Office is worried. There are things going on, things that shouldn't be. Unrest.'

'Student unrest?'

'Oh, student unrest is just one flower on the tree. It's blossoming everywhere and in every country, or so it seems. I've got a nice girl who comes, you know, and reads the papers to me in the mornings. I can't read them properly myself. She's got a nice voice. Takes down my letters and she reads things from the papers and she's a good kind girl. She reads the things I want to know, not the things that she thinks are right for me to know. Yes, everyone's worried, as far as I can make out and this, mind you, came more or less from a very old friend of mine.'

'One of your old military cronies?'

'He's a major-general, if that's what you mean, retired a good many years ago but still in the know. Youth is what you might call the spearhead of it all. But that's not really what's so worrying. They — whoever they are — work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans, slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick.'