Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors

'How could you have been out? The College is locked up after roll call at seven.'

'Roll call… I can get out whenever I likes, Miss. Locks don't mean nothing to me. Get out and walk around the grounds just for the fun of it, I do.'

Gina said:

'I wish you'd stop telling lies, Ernie.'

'Who's telling lies?'

'You are. You tell lies and you boast about things that you've never done at all.'

'That's what you say, Miss. You wait till the coppers come round and arsk me all about what I saw last night.'

'Well, what did you see?'

'Ah,' said Ernie, 'wouldn't you like to know?'

Gina made a rush at him and he beat a strategic retreat.

Stephen came over from the other side of the theatre and joined Gina. They discussed various tehnical matters and then, side by side, they walked back towards the house.

'Is this about the place where you stopped your car last night?' he asked.

Alex Restarick stood back a little as though considering.

'Near enough,' he said. 'It's difficult to tell exactly because of the fog. Yes, I should say this was the place.'

Inspector Curry stood looking round with an apprais ing eye.

The gravelled sweep of drive swept round in a slow curve, and at this point, emerging from a screen of rhododendrons, the west facade of the house came suddenly into view with its terrace and yew hedges and steps leading down to the lawns. Thereafter the drive continued in its curving progress, sweeping through a belt of trees and round between the lake and the house until it ended in the big gravel sweep at the east side of the house.

'Dodgett,' said Inspector Curry.

Police Constable Dodgett, who had been holding himself at the ready, started spasmodically into motion.

He hurled himself across the intervening space of lawn in a diagonal line towards the house, reached the terrace, went in by the side door. A few moments later the curtains of one of the windows were violently agitated.

Then Constable Dodgett reappeared out of the garden door, and ran back to rejoin them, breathing like a steam engine.

'Two minutes and forty-two seconds,' said Inspector Curry, clicking the stop watch with which he had been timing him. 'They don't take long, these things, do they?' His tone was pleasantly conversational.

'I don't run as fast as your constable,' said Alex. 'I presume it is my supposed movements you have been timing?'

'I'm just pointing out that you hact the opportunity to do murder. That's all, Mr Restarick. I'm not making any accusations - as yet.' Alex Restarick said kindly to Constable Dodgett, who was still panting: 'I can't run as fast as you can, but I believe I'm in better training.'

'It's since 'having the bronchitis last winter,' said Dodgett.

Alex turned back to the Inspector.

'Seriously, though, in spite of crying to make me uncomfortable and observing my reactions - and you must remember that we artistic folk are oh! so sensitive, such tender plants? - his voice took on a mocking note 'you can't really believe I had anythirg to do with all this?

I'd hardly send a box of poisoned chocolates to Mrs Serrocold and put my card inside, would I?'

'That might be what we are meant to think. There's such a thing as a double bluff, Mr lestarick.'

'Oh, I see. How ingenious you are. By the way, those chocolates were poisoned?'

'The six chocolates containing Kirsch flavouring in the top layer were poisoned, yes. They contained aconitine.'

'Not one of my favourite poisons, Inspector. Personally, I have a weakness for curare.'

'Curare has to be introduced into the bloodstream, Mr Restarick,not into the stomach.'

'How wonderfully knowledgeable the police force are,' said Alex admiringly.

Inspector Curry cast a quiet sideways glance at the young man. He noted the slightly pointed ears, the un English Mongolian type of face. The eyes that danced with mischievous mockery. It would have been hard at any time to know what Alex Restarick was thinking. A satyr - or did he mean a faun? An overfed faun, Inspector Curry thought suddenly, and somehow there was an unpleasantness about that idea.

A twister with brains - that's how he would sum up Alex Restarick. Cleverer than his brother. Mother had been a Russian or so he had heard. 'Russians' to Inspector Curry were what 'Bony' had been in the early days of the nineteenth century, and what 'the Huns' had been in the early twentieth century. Anything to do with Russia was bad in Inspector Curry's opinion, and if Alex Restarick had murdered Gulbrandsen he would be a very satisfactory criminal. But unfortunately Curry was by no means convinced that he had.

Constable Dodgett, having recovered his breath, now spoke.

'I moved the curtains as you told me, sir,' he said. 'And counted thirty. I noticed that the curtains have a hook torn off at the top. Means that there's a gap. You'd see the light in the room from outside.'

Inspector Curry said to Alex:

'Did you notice light streaming out from that window last night?'

'I couldn't see the house at all because of the fog. I told you so.'

'Fog's patchy, though. Sometimes it clears for a minute here and there.'

'It never cleared so that I could see the house - the main part, that is. The gymnasium building close at hand loomed up out of the mist in a deliciously unsubstantial way. It gave a perfect illusion of dock warehouses. As I told you, I am putting on a Limehouse Ballet and-'

'You told me,' agreed Inspector Curry.

'One gets in the habit, you know, of looking at things from the point of view of a stage set, rather than from the point of view of reality.'

'I daresay. And yet a stage set's real enough, isn't it, Mr Restarick?'

'I don't see exactly what you mean, Inspector.'

'Well, it's made of real materials - canvas and wood and paint and cardboard. The illusion is in the eye of the beholder, not in the set itself. That, as I say, is real enough, as real behind the scenes as it is in front.' Alex stared at him.

'Now that, you know, is a very penetrating remark, Inspector. It's given me an idea.'

'For another ballet?'

'No, not for another ballet… Dear me, I wonder if we've all been rather stupid?'

The Inspector and Dodgett went back to the house across the lawn. (Looking for footprints, Alex said to himself. But here he was wrong. They had looked for footprints very early that morning and had been unsuccessful because it had rained heavily at 2 a.m.) Alex walked slowly up the drive, turning over in his mind the possibilities of his new idea.

He was diverted from this, however, by the sight of Gina walking on the path by the lake. The house was on a slight eminence, and the ground sloped gently down from the from sweeps of gravel to the lake, which was bordered by rhododendrons and other shrubs. Alex ran down the gravel and found Gina.

'If you could black out that absurd Victorian monstrosity,' he said, screwing up his eyes, 'this would make a very good Swan Lake, with you, Gina, as the Swan Maiden. You are more like the Snow Queen though, when I come to think of it. Ruthless, determined to have your own way, quite without pity or kindliness or the rudiments of compassion. You are very, very feminine, Gina dear.'

'How malicious you are, Alex dear!'

'Because I refuse to be taken in by you? You're very pleased with yourself, aren't you, Gina? You've got us all where you want us. Myself, Stephen, and that large simple husband of yours.'

'You're talking nonsense.'

'Oh no, I'm not. Stephen's in love with you. I'm in love with you, and Wally's desperately miserable. What more could a woman want?' Gina looked at him and laughed.

Alex nodded his head vigorously.

'You have the rudiments of honesty, I'm glad to see.

That's the Latin in you. You don't go to the trouble of pretending that you're not attractive to men - and that you're terribly sorry about it if they are attracted to you.