Agatha Christie - N or M

("What a pestilential woman I sound," thought Tuppence to herself.)

She went on aloud.

"And really I didn't know quite what to do or where to go. The lease of my house in London was up and it seemed so foolish to renew it and I thought if I came somewhere quiet, and yet with a good train service -" She broke off.

Again the Buddha nodded.

"I agree with you entirely. London is no place at the present. Ah! the gloom of it! I've lived there myself for many a year now. I'm by way of being an antique dealer, you know. You may know my shop in Cornaby Street, Chelsea? Kate Kelly's the name over the door. Lovely stuff I had there, too - oh, lovely stuff - mostly glass - Waterford, Cork - beautiful. Chandeliers and lustres and punchbowls and all the rest of it. Foreign glass, too. And small furniture - nothing large - just small period pieces - mostly walnut and oak. Oh, lovely stuff - and I had some good customers. But there, when there's a war on, all that goes west. I'm lucky to be out of it with as little loss as I've had."

A faint memory flickered through Tuppence's mind. A shop filled with glass, through which it was difficult to move, a rich persuasive voice, a compelling massive woman. Yes, surely, she had been into that shop.

Mrs O'Rourke went on.

"I'm not one of those that like to be always complaining - not like some that's in this house. Mr Cayley for one, with his muffler and his shawls and his moans about his business going to pieces. Of course it's to pieces, there's a war on - and his wife with never Boo to say to a goose. Then there's that little Mrs Sprot, always fussing about her husband."

"Is he out at the front?"

"Not he. He's a tuppenny-halfpenny clerk in an Insurance office, that's all, and so terrified of air raids he's had his wife down here since the beginning of the war. Mind you, I think that's right where the child's concerned - and a nice wee mite she is - but Mrs Sprot, she frets, for all that her husband comes down when he can... Keeps saying Arthur must miss her so. But if you ask me Arthur's not missing her overmuch - maybe he's got other fish to fry."

Tuppence murmured:

"I'm terribly sorry for all these mothers. If you let your children go away without you, you never stop worrying. And if you go with them it's hard on the husbands being left."

"Ah! yes, and it comes expensive running two establishments."

"This place seems quite reasonable," said Tuppence.

"Yes, I'd say you get your money's worth. Mrs Perenna's a good manager. There's a queer woman for you now."

"In what way?" asked Tuppence.

Mrs O'Rourke said with a twinkle:

"You'll be thinking I'm a terrible talker. It's true. I'm interested in all my fellow creatures, that's why I sit in this chair as often as I can. You see who goes in and who goes out and who's on the verandah and what goes on in the garden. What were we talking of now - ah, yes, Mrs Perenna, and the queerness of her. There's been a grand drama in that woman's life or I'm much mistaken."

"Do you really think so?"

"I do now. And the mystery she makes of herself! 'And where might you come from in Ireland?' I asked her. And would you believe it, she held out on me, declaring she was not from Ireland at all."

"You think she is Irish?"

"Of course she's Irish. I know my own countrywomen. I could name you the county she comes from. But there! 'I'm English,' she says, 'and my husband was a Spaniard' -"

Mrs O'Rourke broke off abruptly as Mrs Sprot came in, closely followed by Tommy.

Tuppence immediately assumed a sprightly manner.

"Good evening, Mr Meadowes. You look very brisk this evening."

Tommy said:

"Plenty of exercise, that's the secret. A round of golf this morning and a walk along the front this afternoon."

Millicent Sprot said:

"I took Baby down to the beach this afternoon. She wanted to paddle but I really thought it was rather cold. I was helping her build a castle and a dog ran off with my knitting and pulled out yards of it. So annoying, and so difficult picking up all the stitches again. I'm such a bad knitter."

"You're getting along fine with that helmet, Mrs Blenkensop," said Mrs O'Rourke, suddenly turning her attention to Tuppence. "You've been just racing along. I thought Miss Minton said that you were an inexperienced knitter."

Tuppence flushed faintly. Mrs O'Rourke's eyes were sharp. With a slightly vexed air, Tuppence said:

"I have really done quite a lot of knitting. I told Miss Minton so. But I think she likes teaching people."

Everybody laughed in agreement, and a few minutes later the rest of the party came in and the gong was sounded.

The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies. Well-known hoary chestnuts were retold. The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a bump, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present. That led easily to Fifth Column activities. To denunciations of the British Fascists, of the Communists, of the Peace Party, of conscientious objectors. It was a very normal conversation, of the kind that may be heard almost every day, nevertheless Tuppence watched keenly the faces and demeanour of the people as they talked, striving to catch some tell-tale expression or word. But there was nothing. Sheila Perenna alone took no part in the conversation, but that might be put down to her habitual taciturnity. She sat there, her dark rebellious face sullen and brooding.

Carl von Deinim was out tonight, so tongues could be quite unrestrained.

Sheila only spoke once towards the end of diner.

Mrs Sprot had just said in her thin fluting voice:

"Where I do think the Germans made such a mistake in the last war was to shoot Nurse Cavell. It turned everybody against them."

It was then that Sheila, flinging back her head, demanded in her fierce young voice: "Why shouldn't they shoot her? She was a spy, wasn't she?"

"Oh, no, not a spy."

"She helped English people to escape - in an enemy country. That's the same thing. Why shouldn't she be shot?"

"Oh, but shooting a woman - and a nurse."

Sheila got up.

"I think the Germans were quite right," she said.

She went out of the window into the garden.

Dessert, consisting of some under-ripe bananas and some tired oranges, had been on the table some time. Everyone rose and adjourned to the lounge for coffee.

Only Tommy unobtrusively betook himself to the garden. He found Sheila Perenna leaning over the terrace wall staring out at the sea. He came and stood beside her.

By her hurried, quick breathing he knew that something had upset her badly. He offered her a cigarette, which she accepted.

He said: "Lovely night."

In a low intense voice the girl answered:

"It could be..."

Tommy looked at her doubtfully. He felt, suddenly, the attraction and the vitality of this girl. There was a tumultuous life in her, a kind of compelling power. She was the kind of girl, he thought, that a man might easily lose his head over.

"If it weren't for the war, you mean?" he said.

"I don't mean that at all, I hate the war."

"So do we all."

"Not in the way I mean. I hate the cant about it, the smugness - the horrible, horrible patriotism."

"Patriotism?" Tommy was startled.

"Yes, I hate patriotism, do you understand? All this country, country, country! Betraying your country - dying for your country - serving your country. Why should one's country mean anything at all?"

Tommy said simply: "I don't know. It just does."

"Not to me! Oh, it would to you - you go abroad and buy and sell in the British Empire and come back bronzed and full of clichés, talking about the natives and calling for Chota Pegs and all that sort of thing."