Agatha Christie - N or M

"All the same," said Albert, "it gives me a turn. Knowing you were in that house and not knowing what might come to you. Got in a back window, we did, and nabbed the foreign woman as she came down the stairs. Come in just in the nick of time, we did."

"I knew you'd come," said Tuppence. "The thing was for me to spin things out as long as I could. I'd have pretended to tell if I hadn't seen the door opening. What was really exciting was the way I suddenly saw the whole thing and what a fool I'd been."

"How did you see it?" asked Tommy.

"Goosey, goosey gander," said Tuppence promptly. "When I said that to Commander Haydock he went absolutely livid. And not just because it was silly and crude. No, I saw at once that it meant something to him. And then then was the expression on that woman's face - Anna - it was like the Polish woman's, and then of course, I thought of Solomon and I saw the whole thing."

Tommy gave a sigh of exasperation.

"Tuppence, if you say that once again, I'll shoot you myself. Saw all what? And what on earth has Solomon got to do with it?"

"Do you remember that two women came to Solomon with a baby and both said it was hers but Solomon said, 'Very well, cut it in two.' And the false mother said, 'All right.' But the real mother said, 'No, let the other woman have it.' You see, she couldn't face her child being killed Well, that night that Mrs Sprot shot the other woman, you all said what a miracle it was and how easily she might have shot the child. Of course, it ought to have been quite plain then! If it had been her child, she couldn't have risked that shot for a minute. It meant that Betty wasn't her child. And that's why she absolutely had to shoot the other."

"Why?"

"Because, of course, the other woman was the child's real mother." Tuppence's voice shook a little.

"Poor thing - poor hunted thing. She came over a penniless refugee and gratefully agreed to let Mrs Sprot adopt her baby."

"Why did Mrs Sprot want to adopt the child?"

"Camouflage! Supreme psychological camouflage. You just can't conceive of a master spy dragging her kid into the business. That's the main reason why I never considered Mrs Sprot seriously. Simply because of the child. But Betty's real mother had a terrible hankering for her baby and she found out Mrs Sprot's address and came down here. She hung about waiting for her chance, and at last she got it and went off with the child.

"Mrs Sprot, of course, was frantic. At all costs she didn't want the police. So she wrote that message and pretended she found it in her bedroom, and roped in Commander Haydock to help. Then, when we'd tracked down the wretched woman, she was taking no chances and shot her... Far from not knowing anything about firearms, she was a very fine shot! Yes, she killed that wretched woman - and because of that I've no pity for her. She was bad through and through."

Tuppence paused, then she went on:

"Another thing that ought to have given me a hint was the likeness between Vanda Polonska and Betty. It was Betty the woman reminded me of all along. And then the child's absurd play with my shoe-laces. How much more likely that she'd seen her so-called mother do that - not Carl von Deinim! But as soon as Mrs Sprot saw what the child was doing, she planted a lot of evidence in Carl's room for us to find and added the master touch of a shoe-lace dipped in secret ink."

"I'm glad that Carl wasn't in it," said Tommy. "I liked him."

"He's not been shot, has he?" asked Tuppence anxiously, noting the past tense.

Mr Grant shook his head.

"He's all right," he said. "As a matter of fact I've got a little surprise for you there."

Tuppence's face lit up as she said:

"I'm terribly glad - for Sheila's sake! Of course we were idiots to go on barking up the wrong tree after Mrs Perenna."

"She was mixed up in some I.R.A. activities, nothing more," said Mr Grant.

"I suspected Mrs O'Rourke a little - and sometimes the Cayleys -"

"And I suspected Bletchley," put in Tommy.

"And all the time," said Tuppence, "it was that milk and water creature we just thought of as Betty's mother."

"Hardly milk and water," said Mr Grant. "A very dangerous woman and a very clever actress. And, I'm sorry to say, English by birth."

Tuppence said:

"Then I've no pity or admiration for her - it wasn't even her country she was working for." She looked with fresh curiosity at Mr Grant. "You found what you wanted?"

Mr Grant nodded.

"It was all in that battered set of duplicate children's books."

"The ones that Betty said were nasty," Tuppence exclaimed.

"They were nasty," said Mr Grant drily. "Little Jack Horner contained very full details of our naval dispositions. Johnny Head in Air did the same for the Air Force. Military matters were appropriately embodied in 'There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun.'"

"And Goosey, Goosey Gander?" asked Tuppence.

Mr Grant said:

"Treated with the appropriate reagent, that book contains, written in invisible ink, a full list of all prominent personages who are pledged to assist an invasion of this country. Amongst them were two Chief Constables, an Air Vice-Marshal, two Generals, the Head of an Armaments Works, a Cabinet Minister, many Police Superintendents, Commanders of Local Volunteer Defense Organizations, and various military and naval lesser fry, as well as members of our own Intelligence Force."

Tommy and Tuppence stared.

"Incredible!" said the former.

Grant shook his head.

"You do not know the force of the German propaganda. It appeals to something in man, some desire or lust for power. These people were ready to betray their country not for money, but in a kind of megalomaniacal pride in what they, they themselves, were going to achieve for that country. In every land it has been the same. It is the Cult of Lucifer - Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Pride and a desire for personal glory!"

He added:

"You can realize that, with such persons to issue contradictory orders and confuse operations, how the threatened invasion would have had every chance to succeed."

"And now?" said Tuppence.

Mr Grant smiled.

"And now," he said, "let them come! We'll be ready for them!"

"Darling," said Deborah. "Do you know I almost thought the most terrible things about you?"

"Did you?" said Tuppence. "When?"

Her eyes rested affectionately on her daughter's dark head.

"That time when you sloped off to Scotland to join father and I thought you were with Aunt Gracie. I almost thought you were having an affair with someone."

"Oh, Deb, did you?"

"Not really, of course. Not at your age. And, of course, I know you and Carrot Top are devoted to each other. It was really an idiot called Tony Marsdon who put it into my head. Do you know, mother - I think I might tell you - he was found afterwards to be a Fifth Columnist. He always did talk rather oddly - how things would be just the same, perhaps better, if Hitler did win."

"Did you - er - like him at all?"

"Tony? Oh, no - he was always rather a bore. I must dance this."

She floated away in the arms of a fair-haired young man, smiling up at him sweetly. Tuppence followed their revolutions for a few minutes, then her eyes shifted to where a tall young man in Air Force uniform was dancing with a fair-haired slender girl.

"I do think. Tommy," said Tuppence, "that our children are rather nice."

"Here's Sheila," said Tommy.

He got up as Sheila Perenna came towards their table.

She was dressed in an emerald evening dress which showed up her dark beauty. It was a sullen beauty tonight and she greeted her host and hostess somewhat ungraciously.

"I've come, you see," she said, "as I promised. But I can't think why you wanted to ask me."