Agatha Christie - Destination Unknown

"People escaped from the most impossible places during the war," said Hilary stubbornly. She was not going to give in to despair. "They tunnelled, or something."

"How can you tunnel through sheer rock? And where to? It's desert all round."

"Then it will have to be 'or something.'"

He looked at her. She smiled with a confidence that was dogged rather than genuine.

"What an extraordinary girl you are. You sound quite sure of yourself."

"There's always a way. I dare say it will take time, and a lot of planning."

His face clouded over again.

"Time," he said. "Time… That's what I can't afford."

"Why?"

"I don't know whether you'll be able to understand… It's like this. I can't really – do my stuff here."

She frowned.

"How do you mean?"

"How shall I put it? I can't work. I can't think. In my stuff one has to have a high degree of concentration. A lot of it is – well – creative. Since coming here I've just lost the urge. All I can do is good sound hack work. The sort of thing any twopenny-halfpenny scientific chap can do. But that's not what they brought me here for. They want original stuff and I can't do original stuff. And the more nervous and afraid I get, the less I'm fit to turn out anything worth turning out. And it's driving me off my rocker, do you see?"

Yes, she saw now. She recalled Dr. Rubec's remarks about prima donnas and scientists.

"If I can't deliver the goods, what is an outfit like this going to do about it? They'll liquidate me."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes they will. They're not sentimentalists here. What's saved me so far is this plastic surgery business. They do it a little at a time, you know. And naturally a fellow who's having constant minor operations can't be expected to concentrate. But they've finished the business now."

"But why was it done at all? What's the point?"

"Oh, that! For safety. My safety, I mean. It's done if – if you're a 'wanted' man."

"Are you a 'wanted' man, then?"

"Yes, didn't you know? Oh, I suppose they wouldn't advertise the fact in the papers. Perhaps even Olive didn't know. But I'm wanted right enough."

"You mean for – treason is the word, isn't it? You mean you've sold them atom secrets?"

He avoided her eyes.

"I didn't sell anything. I gave them what I knew of our processes – gave it freely. If you can believe me, I wanted to give it to them. It was part of the whole setup – the pooling of scientific knowledge. Oh, can't you understand?"

She could understand. She could understand Andy Peters doing just that. She could see Ericsson with his fanatical dreamer's eyes betraying his country with a high-souled enthusiasm.

Yet it was hard for her to visualise Tom Betterton doing it – and she realised with a shock that all that showed was the difference between Betterton a few months ago, arriving in all the zeal of enthusiasm, and Betterton now, nervous, defeated, down to earth – an ordinary badly frightened man.

Even as she accepted the logic of that, Betterton looked round him nervously and said:

"Everyone's gone down. We'd better -"

She rose.

"Yes. But it's all right, you know. They'll think it quite natural – under the circumstances."

He said awkwardly:

"We'll have to go on with this now, you know. I mean – you'll have to go on being – my wife."

"Of course."

"And we'll have to share a room and all that. But it will be quite all right. I mean, you needn't be afraid that -"

He swallowed in an embarrassed manner.

"How handsome he is," thought Hilary, looking at his profile, "and how little it moves me…"

"I don't think we need worry about that," she said cheerfully. "The important thing is to get out of here alive."

In a room at the Hotel Mamounia, Marrakesh, the man called Jessop was talking to Miss Hetherington. A different Miss Hetherington this, from the one that Hilary had known at Casablanca and at Fez. The same appearance, the same twin set, the same depressing hair-do. But the manner had changed. It was a woman now both brisk, competent, and seeming years younger than her appearance.

The third person in the room was a dark stocky man with intelligent eyes. He was tapping gently on the table with his fingers and humming a little French song under his breath.

"… and as far as you know," Jessop was saying, "those are the only people she talked to at Fez?"

Janet Hetherington nodded.

"There was the Calvin Baker woman, whom we'd already met at Casablanca. I'll say frankly I still can't make up my mind about her. She went out of her way to be friendly with Olive Betterton, and with me for that matter. But Americans are friendly, they do enter into conversation with people in hotels, and they like joining them on trips."

"Yes," said Jessop, "it's all a little too overt for what we're looking for."

"And besides," went on Janet Hetherington, "she was on this plane, too."

"You're assuming," said Jessop, "that the crash was planned." He looked sideways towards the dark, stocky man. "What about it, Leblanc?"

Leblanc stopped humming his tune, and stopped his little tattoo on the table for a moment or two.

"Зala ce peut," he said. "There may have been sabotage to the machine and that is why it crashed. We shall never know. The plane crashed and went up in flames and everyone on board was killed."

"What do you know of the pilot?"

"Alcadi? Young, reasonably competent. No more. Badly paid." He added the two last words with a slight pause in front of them.

Jessop said:

"Open therefore to other employment, but presumably not a candidate for suicide?"

"There were seven bodies," said Leblanc. "Badly charred, unrecognisable, but seven bodies. One cannot get away from that."

Jessop turned back to Janet Hetherington.

"You were saying?" he said.

"There was a French family at Fez that Mrs. Betterton exchanged a few words with. There was a rich Swedish business man with a glamour girl. And the rich oil magnate, Mr. Aristides."

"Ah," said Leblanc, "that fabulous figure himself. What must it feel like, I have often asked myself, to have all the money in the world? For me," he added frankly, "I would keep race horses and women, and all the world has to offer. But old Aristides shuts himself up in his castle in Spain – literally his castle in Spain, mon cher – and collects, so they say, Chinese potteries of the Sung period. But one must remember," he added, "that he is at least seventy. It is possible at that age that Chinese potteries are all that interest one."

"According to the Chinese themselves," said Jessop, "the years between sixty and seventy are the most rich in living and one is then most appreciative of the beauty and delight of life."

"Pas moi!" said Leblanc.

"There were some Germans at Fez, too," continued Janet Hetherington, "but as far as I know they didn't exchange any remarks with Olive Betterton."

"A waiter or a servant, perhaps," said Jessop.

"That's always possible."

"And she went out into the old town alone, you say?"

"She went with one of the regular guides. Someone may have contacted her on that tour."

"At any rate she decided quite suddenly to go to Marrakesh."

"Not suddenly," she corrected him. "She already had her reservations."

"Ah, I'm wrong," said Jessop. "What I mean is that Mrs. Calvin Baker decided rather suddenly to accompany her." He got up and paced up and down. "She flew to Marrakesh," he said, "and the plane crashed and came down in flames. It seems ill-omened, does it not, for anyone called Olive Betterton to travel by air. First the crash near Casablanca, and then this one. Was it an accident or was it contrived? If there were people who wished to get rid of Olive Betterton, there would be easier ways to do it than by wrecking a plane, I should say."