Agatha Christie - N or M

And there was Mrs O'Rourke herself, swinging the hammer, and smiling...

IV

"What's the matter, Deb? You're looking worried, my sweet."

Deborah Beresford started and then laughed, looking frankly into Tony Marsdon's sympathetic brown eyes. She liked Tony. He had brains - was one of the most brilliant beginners in the coding department - and was thought likely to go far.

Deborah enjoyed her job, though she found it made somewhat strenuous demands on her powers of concentration. It was tiring, but it was worth while and it gave her a pleasant feeling of importance. This was real work - not hanging about a hospital waiting for a chance to nurse.

She said:

"Oh, nothing. Just family! You know."

"Families are a bit trying. What's yours been up to?"

"It's my mother. To tell the truth I'm just a bit worried about her."

"Why? What's happened?"

"Well, you see, she went down to Cornwall to a frightfully trying old aunt of mine. Seventy-eight and completely ga ga."

"Sounds grim," commented the young man sympathetically.

"Yes, it was really very noble of mother. But she was rather hipped anyway because nobody seemed to want her in this war. Of course, she nursed and did things in the last one - but it's all quite different now, and they don't want these middle-aged people. They want people who are young and on the spot. Well, as I say, mother got a bit hipped over it all, and so she went off down to Cornwall to stay with Aunt Gracie, and she's been doing a bit in the garden, extra vegetable growing and all that."

"Quite sound" commented Tony.

"Yes, much the best thing she could do. She's quite active still, you know," said Deborah kindly.

"Well, that sounds all right."

"Oh, yes, it isn't that. I was quite happy about her - had a letter only two days ago sounding quite cheerful."

"What's the trouble, then?"

"The trouble is that I told Charles, who was going down to see his people in that part of the world, to go and look her up. And he did. And she wasn't there."

"Wasn't there?"

"No. And she hadn't been there! Not at all apparently!"

Tony looked a little embarrassed.

"Rather odd," he murmured. "Where's - I mean - your father?"

"Carrot Top? Oh, he's in Scotland somewhere. In one of those dreadful Ministries where they file papers in triplicate all day long."

"Your mother hasn't gone to join him perhaps?"

"She can't. He's in one of those area things where wives can't go."

"Oh - er - well, I suppose she's just sloped off somewhere."

Tony was decidedly embarrassed now - especially with Deborah's large worried eyes fixed plaintively upon him.

"Yes, but why? It's so queer. All her letters - talking about Aunt Gracie and the garden and everything."

"I know, I know," said Tony hastily. "Of course, she'd want you to think - I mean - nowadays - well, people do slope off now and again, if you know what I mean -"

Deborah's gaze, from being plaintive, became suddenly wrathful.

"If you think mother's just gone off week-ending with someone you're absolutely wrong. Absolutely. Mother and father are devoted to each other - really devoted. It's quite a joke in the family. She'd never -"

Tony said hastily:

"Of course not. Sorry. I really didn't mean -"

Deborah, her wrath appeased, creased her forehead.

"The odd thing is that someone the other day said they'd seen mother in Leahampton, of all places, and of course I said it couldn't be her because she was in Cornwall, but now I wonder -"

Tony, his match held to a cigarette, paused suddenly and the match went out.

"Leahampton?" he said sharply.

"Yes. Just the last place you could imagine mother going off to. Nothing to do and all old Colonels and maiden ladies."

"Doesn't sound a likely spot, certainly," said Tony.

He lit his cigarette and asked casually:

"What did your mother do in the last war?"

Deborah answered mechanically:

"Oh, nursed a bit and drove a General - army, I mean, not a bus. All the usual sort of things."

"Oh, I thought perhaps she'd been like you - in the Intelligence."

"Oh, mother would never have had the head for this sort of work. I believe, though, that after the war she and father did do something in the sleuthing line. Secret papers and master spies - that sort of thing. Of course, the darlings exaggerate it all a good deal and make it all sound as though it had been frightfully important. We don't really encourage them to talk about it much because you know what one's family is - the same old story over and over again."

"Oh, rather," said Tony Marsdon heartily. "I quite agree."

It was on the following day that Deborah, returning to her lodging house, was puzzled by something unfamiliar in the appearance of her room.

It took her a few minutes to fathom what it was. Then she rang the bell and demanded angrily of her landlady what had happened to the big photograph that always stood on the top of the chest of drawers.

|Mrs Rowley was aggrieved and resentful.

She couldn't say, she was sure. She hadn't touched it herself. Maybe Gladys -

But Gladys also denied having removed it. The man had been there about the gas, she said hopefully.

But Deborah declined to believe that an employee of the Gas Company would have taken a fancy to and removed the portrait of a middle-aged lady.

Far more likely, in Deborah's opinion, that Gladys had smashed the photograph frame and had hastily removed all traces of the crime to the dustbin.

Deborah didn't make a fuss about it. Sometime or other she'd get her mother to send her another photo.

She thought to herself with rising vexation:

"What's the old darling up to? She might tell me. Of course, it's absolute nonsense to suggest, as Tony did, that she's gone off with someone, but all the same it's very queer..."

It was Tuppence's turn to talk to the fisherman on the end of the pier.

She had hoped against hope that Mr Grant might have some comfort for her. But her hopes were soon dashed. He stated definitely that no news of any kind had come from Tommy.

Tuppence said, trying her best to make her voice assured and businesslike:

"There's no reason to suppose that anything has - happened to him?"

"None whatever. But let's suppose it has."

"What?"

"I'm saying - supposing it has. What about you?"

"Oh, I see - I - carry on, of course."

"That's the stuff. There is time to weep after the battle. We're in the thick of the battle now. And time is short. One piece of information you brought us has been proved correct. You overhead a reference to the fourth. The fourth referred to is the fourth of next month. It's the date fixed for the big attack on this country."

"You're sure?"

"Fairly sure. They're methodical people, our enemies. All their plans neatly made and worked out. Wish we could say the same of ourselves. Planning isn't our strong point. Yes, the Fourth is the Day. All these raids aren't the real thing - they're mostly reconnaissance - testing our defences and our reflexes to air attack. On the fourth comes the real thing."

"But if you know that -"

"We know the Day is fixed. We know, or think we know, roughly, where... (But we may be wrong there.) We're as ready as we can be. But it's the old story of the siege of Troy. They knew, as we know, all about the forces without. It's the forces within we want to know about. The men in the Wooden Horse! For they are the men who can deliver up the keys of the fortress. A dozen men in high places, in command in vital spots, by issuing conflicting orders, can throw the country into just that state of confusion necessary for the German plan to succeed. We've got to have inside information in time."