Agatha Christie - The Clocks

‘A child here-a little girl.’

‘Yes, yes.’ She nodded.

‘Dropped something-out of the window.’

Here I did a little gesticulation.

‘I picked it up and brought it here.’

I held out an open hand. In it was a silver fruit knife. She looked at it without recognition.

‘I do not think-I have not seen…’

‘You’re busy cooking,’ I said sympathetically.

‘Yes, yes, I cook. That is so.’ She nodded vigorously.

‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ I said. ‘If you let me just take it to her.’

‘Excuse?’

My meaning seemed to come to her. She led the way across the hall and opened a door. It led into a pleasant sitting-room. By the window a couch had been drawn up and on it there was a child of about nine or ten years old, with a leg done up in plaster.

‘This gentleman, he say you-you drop…’

At this moment, rather fortunately, a strong smell of burning came from the kitchen. My guide uttered an exclamation of dismay.

‘Excuse, please excuse.’

‘You go along,’ I said heartily. ‘I can manage this.’

She fled with alacrity. I entered the room, shut the door behind me and came across to the couch.

‘How d’you do?’ I said.

The child said, ‘How d’you do?’ and proceeded to sum me up with a long, penetrating glance that almost unnerved me. She was rather a plain child with straight mousy hair arranged in two plaits. She had a bulging forehead, a sharp chin and a pair of very intelligent grey eyes.

‘I’m Colin Lamb,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

She gave me the information promptly.

‘Geraldine Mary Alexandra Brown.’

‘Dear me,’ I said, ‘that’s quite a bit of a name. What do they call you?’

‘Geraldine. Sometimes Gerry, but I don’t like that. And Daddy doesn’t approve of abbreviations.’

One of the great advantages of dealing with children is that they have their own logic. Anyone of adult years would at once have asked me what I wanted. Geraldine was quite ready to enter into conversation without resorting to foolish questions. She was alone and bored and the onset of any kind of visitor was an agreeable novelty. Until I proved myself a dull and unamusing fellow, she would be quite ready to converse.

‘Your daddy’s out, I suppose,’ I said.

She replied with the same promptness and fullness of detail which she had already shown.

‘Cartinghaven Engineering Works, Beaverbridge,’ she said. ‘It’s fourteen and three-quarter miles from here exactly.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Mummy’s dead,’ said Geraldine, with no diminution of cheerfulness. ‘She died when I was a baby two months old. She was in a plane coming from France. It crashed. Everyone was killed.’

She spoke with a certain satisfaction and I perceived that to a child, if her motheris dead, it reflects a certain kudos if she has been killed in a complete and devastating accident.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you have-’ I looked towards the door.

‘That’s Ingrid. She comes from Norway. She’s only been here a fortnight. She doesn’t know any English to speak of yet. I’m teaching her English.’

‘And she is teaching you Norwegian?’

‘Not very much,’ said Geraldine.

‘Do you like her?’

‘Yes. She’s all right. The things she cooks are rather odd sometimes. Do you know, she likes eating raw fish.’

‘I’ve eaten raw fish in Norway,’ I said. ‘It’s very good sometimes.’

Geraldine looked extremely doubtful about that.

‘She is trying to make a treacle tart today,’ she said.

‘That sounds good.’

‘Umm-yes, I like treacle tart.’ She added politely, ‘Have you come to lunch?’

‘Not exactly. As a matter of fact I was passing down below out there, and I think you dropped something out of the window.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’ I advanced the silver fruit knife.

Geraldine looked at it, at first suspiciously and then with signs of approval.

‘It’s rather nice,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a fruit knife.’

I opened it.

‘Oh, I see. You mean you can peel apples with it and things like that.’

‘Yes.’

Geraldine sighed.

‘It’s not mine. I didn’t drop it. What made you think I did?’

‘Well, you were looking out of the window, and…’

‘I look out of the window most of the time,’ said Geraldine. ‘I fell down and broke my leg, you see.’

‘Hard luck.’

‘Yes, wasn’t it. I didn’t break it in a very interesting way, though. I was getting out of a bus and it went on suddenly. It hurt rather at first and it ached a bit, but it doesn’t now.’

‘Must be rather dull for you,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is. But Daddy brings me things. Plasticine, you know, and books and crayons and jigsaw puzzles and things like that, but you get tired of doing things, so I spend a lot of time looking out of the window with these.’

She produced with enormous pride a small pair of opera glasses.

‘May I look?’ I said.

I took them from her, adjusted them to my eyes and looked out of the window.

‘They’re jolly good,’ I said appreciatively.

They were indeed, excellent. Geraldine’s daddy, if it had been he who supplied them, had not spared expense. It was astonishing how clearly you could see No. 19, Wilbraham Crescent and its neighbouring houses. I handed them back to her.

‘They’re excellent,’ I said. ‘First-class.’

‘They’re proper ones,’ said Geraldine, with pride. ‘Not just for babies and pretending.’

‘No…I can see that.’

‘I keep a little book,’ said Geraldine.

She showed me.

‘I write down things in it and the times. It’s like train spotting,’ she added. ‘I’ve got a cousin called Dick and he does train spotting. We do motor-car numbers too. You know, you start at one and see how far you can get.’

‘It’s rather a good sport,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is. Unfortunately there aren’t many cars come down this road so I’ve rather given that up for the time being.’

‘I suppose you must know all about those houses down there, who lives in them and all that sort of thing.’

I threw it out casually enough but Geraldine was quick to respond.

‘Oh, yes. Of course I don’t know their real names, so I have to give them names of my own.’

‘That must be rather fun,’ I said.

‘That’s the Marchioness of Carrabas down there,’ said Geraldine, pointing. ‘That one with all the untidy trees. You know, like Puss In Boots. She has masses and masses of cats.’

‘I was talking to one just now,’ I said, ‘an orange one.’

‘Yes, I saw you,’ said Geraldine.

‘You must be very sharp,’ I said. ‘I don’t expect you miss much, do you?’

Geraldine smiled in a pleased way. Ingrid opened the door and came in breathless.

‘You are all right, yes?’

‘We’re quite all right,’ said Geraldine firmly. ‘You needn’t worry, Ingrid.’

She nodded violently and pantomimed with her hands.

‘You go back, you cook.’

‘Very well, I go. It is nice that you have a visitor.’

‘She gets nervous when she cooks,’ explained Geraldine, ‘when she’s trying anything new, I mean. And sometimes we have meals very late because of that. I’m glad you’ve come. It’s nice to have someone to distract you, then you don’t think about being hungry.’

‘Tell me more about the people in the houses there,’ I said, ‘and what you see. Who lives in the next house-the neat one?’

‘Oh, there’s a blind woman there. She’s quite blind and yet she walks just as well as though she could see. The porter told me that. Harry. He’s very nice, Harry is. He tells me a lot of things. He told me about the murder.’