Agatha Christie - The Clocks

‘How do you mean, get into trouble?’

‘Well,’ Inspector Hardcastle spoke almost apologetically, ‘perjury.’

‘Perjury. Me!’

‘Yes. It’s quite a serious offence in law, you know. You could get into trouble, even go to prison. Of course, you’ve not been on oath in a coroner’s court, but you may have to swear to this evidence of yours in a proper court sometime. Then-well, I’d like you to think it over very carefully, Mrs Rival. It may be that somebody-suggested to you that you should tell us this story about the scar?’

Mrs Rival got up. She drew herself to her full height, her eyes flashed. She was at that moment almost magnificent.

‘I never heard such nonsense in my life,’ she said. ‘Absolute nonsense. I try and do my duty. I come and help you, I tell you all I can remember. If I’ve made a mistake I’m sure it’s natural enough. After all I meet a good many-well, gentlemen friends, and one may get things a little wrong sometimes. But I don’t think Idid make a mistake. That man was Harry and Harry had a scar behind his left ear, I’m quite sure of it. And now, perhaps, Inspector Hardcastle, you’ll go away instead of coming here and insinuating that I’ve been telling lies.’

Inspector Hardcastle got up promptly.

‘Good night, Mrs Rival,’ he said. ‘Just think it over. That’s all.’

Mrs Rival tossed her head. Hardcastle went out of the door. With his departure, Mrs Rival’s attitude altered immediately. The fine defiance of her attitude collapsed. She looked frightened and worried.

‘Getting me into this,’ she murmured, ‘getting me into this. I’ll-I’ll not go on with it. I’ll-I’ll-I’m not going to get into trouble for anybody. Telling me things, lying to me, deceiving me. It’s monstrous. Quite monstrous. I shall say so.’

She walked up and down unsteadily, then finally making up her mind, she took an umbrella from the corner and went out again. She walked along to the end of the street, hesitated at a call-box, then went on to a post office. She went in there, asked for change and went into one of the call-boxes. She dialled Directory and asked for a number. She stood there waiting till the call came through.

‘Go ahead please. Your party is on the line.’

She spoke.

‘Hallo…oh, it’s you. Flo here. No, I know you told me not to but I’ve had to. You’ve not been straight with me. You never told me what I was getting into. You just said it would be awkward for you if this man was identified. I didn’t dream for a moment that I would get mixed up in a murder…Well, of course you’d say that, but at any rate it wasn’t what you told me…Yes, I do. I think you are mixed up in it in some way…Well, I’m not going to stand for it, I tell you…There’s something about being an-ac-well, you know the word I mean-accessory, something like that. Though I always thought that was costume jewellery. Anyway, it’s something like being a something after the fact, and I’m frightened, I tell you…telling me to write and tell them that bit about a scar. Now it seems he’d only got that scar a year or two ago and here’s me swearing he had it when he left me years ago…And that’s perjury and I might go to prison for it. Well, it’s no good your trying to talk me round…No…Obliging someone is one thing…Well I know…I know you paid me for it. And not very much either…Well, all right, I’ll listen to you, but I’m not going to…All right, all right, I’ll keep quiet…What did you say?…How much?…That’s a lot of money. How do I know that you’ve got it even…Well, yes, of course it would make a difference. You swear you didn’t have anything to do with it?-I mean with killing anyone…No, well I’m sure you wouldn’t. Of course, I see that…Sometimes you get mixed up with a crowd of people-and they go further than you would and it’s not your fault…You always make things sound so plausible…You always did…Well, all right, I’ll think it over but it’s got to be soon…Tomorrow? What time?…Yes…yes, I’ll come but no cheque. It might bounce…I don’t know really that I ought to go on getting myself mixed up in things even…all right. Well, if you say so…Well, I didn’t mean to be nasty about it…All right then.’

She came out of the post office weaving from side to side of the pavement and smiling to herself.

It was worth risking a little trouble with the police for that amount of money. It would set her up nicely. And it wasn’t very much risk really. She’d only got to say she’d forgotten or couldn’t remember. Lots of women couldn’t remember things that had only happened a year ago. She’d say she got mixed up between Harry and another man. Oh, she could think up lots of things to say.

Mrs Rival was a naturally mercurial type. Her spirits rose as much now as they had been depressed before. She began to think seriously and intently of the first things she would spend the money on…

Colin Lamb’s Narrative

‘You don’t seem to have got much out of that Ramsay woman?’ complained Colonel Beck.

‘There wasn’t much to get.’

‘Sure of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s not an active party?’

‘No.’

Beck gave me a searching glance.

‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’

‘You hoped for more?’

‘It doesn’t fill the gap.’

‘Well-we’ll have to look elsewhere…give up crescents-eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re very monosyllabic. Got a hangover?’

‘I’m no good at this job,’ I said slowly.

‘Want me to pat you on the head and say “There, there”?’

In spite of myself I laughed.

‘That’s better,’ said Beck. ‘Now then, what’s it all about? Girl trouble, I suppose.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s been coming on for some time.’

‘As a matter of fact I’ve noticed it,’ said Beck unexpectedly. ‘The world’s in a confusing state nowadays. The issues aren’t clear as they used to be. When discouragement sets in, it’s like dry rot. Whacking great mushrooms bursting through the walls! If that’s so, your usefulness to us is over. You’ve done some first-class work, boy. Be content with that. Go back to those damned seaweeds of yours.’

He paused and said: ‘You really like the beastly things, don’t you?’

‘I find the whole subject passionately interesting.’

‘I should find it repulsive. Splendid variation in nature, isn’t there? Tastes, I mean. How’s that patent murder of yours? I bet you the girl did it.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said.

Beck shook his finger at me in an admonitory and avuncular manner.

‘What I say to you is: “Be prepared.” And I don’t mean it in the Boy Scout sense.’

I walked down Charing Cross Road deep in thought.

At the tube station I bought a paper.

I read that a woman, supposed to have collapsed in the rush hour at Victoria Station yesterday, had been taken to hospital. On arrival there she was found to have been stabbed. She had died without recovering consciousness.

Her name was Mrs Merlina Rival.

I rang Hardcastle.

‘Yes,’ he said in answer to my questions. ‘It’s just as they say.’

His voice sounded hard and bitter.

‘I went to see her night before last. I told her her story about the scar just wouldn’t jell. That the scar tissue was comparatively recent. Funny how people slip up. Just by trying to overdo things. Somebody paid that woman to identify the corpse as being that of her husband, who ran out on her years ago.

‘Very well she did it, too! I believed her all right. And then whoever it was tried to be a little too clever. If she remembered that unimportant little scar as an afterthought, it would carry conviction and clinch the identification. If she had plumped out with it straight away, it might have sounded a bit too glib.’