Agatha Christie - Parker Pyne Investigates

Mr Parker Pyne had just finished dressing for lunch, when a figure appeared at the door of his tent.

"Mr Pyne, may I come in?"

"Certainly, my dear young lady, certainly."

Carol came in and sat down on the bed. Her face had the same grim look upon it that he had noticed earlier in the day.

"You pretend to straighten out things for people when they are unhappy, don't you?" she demanded.

"I am on holiday, Miss Blundell. I am not taking any cases."

"Well, you're going to take this one," said the girl calmly. "Look here, Mr Pyne, I'm just as wretched as anyone could well be."

"What is troubling you?" he asked. "Is it this business of the earring?"

"That's just it. You've said it. Jim Hurst didn't take it, Mr Pyne. I know he didn't."

"I don't quite follow you, Miss Blundell. Why should anyone assume he had?"

"Because of his record. Jim Hurst was once a thief, Mr Pyne. He was caught in our house. I - I was sorry for him. He looked so young and desperate -"

"And so good-looking!" thought Mr Parker Pyne.

"I persuaded Pop to give him a chance to make good. My father will do anything for me. Well, he gave Jim his chance and Jim has made good. Father's come to rely on him and to trust him with all his business secrets. And in the end he'll come around altogether, or would have if this hadn't happened."

"When you say 'come around'-?"

"I mean that I want to marry Jim and he wants to marry me."

"And Sir Donald?"

"Sir Donald is Father's idea. He's not mine. Do you think I want to marry a stuffed fish like Sir Donald?"

Without expressing any views as to this description of the young Englishman, Mr Parker Pyne asked: "And Sir Donald himself?"

"I dare say he thinks I'd be good for his impoverished acres," said Carol scornfully.

Mr Parker Pyne considered the situation. "I should like to ask you about two things," he said. "Last night the remark was made, 'once a thief, always a thief.'"

The girl nodded.

"I see now the reason for the embarrassment the remark seemed to cause."

"Yes, it was awkward for Jim - and for me and Pop too. I was so afraid Jim's face would show something that I just trotted out the first remarks I could think of."

Mr Parker Pyne nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked: "Just why did your father insist on being searched today?"

"You didn't get that? I did. Pop had it in his mind that I might think the whole business was a frame-up against Jim. You see, he's crazy for me to marry the Englishman. Well, he wanted to show me that he had not done the dirty on Jim."

"Dear me," said Mr Parker Pyne, "this is all very illuminating. In a general sense, I mean. It hardly helps us in our particular inquiry."

"You're not going to hand in your checks?"

"No, no." He was silent a moment, then he said, "What is it exactly you want me to do, Miss Carol?"

"Prove it wasn't Jim who took that pearl."

"And suppose - excuse me - that it was?"

"If you think so, you're wrong - dead wrong."

"Yes, but have you really considered the case carefully? Don't you think that the pearl might prove a sudden temptation to Mr Hurst? The sale of it would bring in a large sum of money - a foundation on which to speculate, shall we say? - which will make him independent, so that he can marry you with or without your father's consent."

"Jim didn't do it," said the girl simply.

This time Mr Parker Pyne accepted her statement.

"Well, I'll do my best."

She nodded abruptly and left the tent. Mr Parker Pyne in his turn sat down on the bed. He gave himself up to thought. Suddenly he chuckled.

"I'm growing slow-witted," he said, aloud. At lunch he was very cheerful.

The afternoon passed peacefully. Most people slept. When Mr Parker Pyne came into the big tent at a quarter past four only Doctor Carver was there. He was examining some fragments of pottery.

"Ah!" said Mr Parker Pyne, drawing up a chair to the table. "Just the man I want to see. Can you let me have that bit of plasticine you carry about?"

The doctor felt in his pockets and produced a stick of plasticine, which he offered to Mr Parker Pyne.

"No," said Mr Parker Pyne, waving it away, "that's not the one I want. I want that lump you had last night. To be frank, it's not the plasticine I want. It's the contents of it."

There was a pause, and then Doctor Carver said quietly. "I don't think I quite understand you."

"I think you do," said Mr Parker Pyne. "I want Miss Blundell's pearl earring."

There was a minute's dead silence. Then Carver slipped his hand into his pocket and took out a shapeless lump of plasticine.

"Clever of you," he said. His face was expressionless.

"I wish you'd tell me about it," said Mr Parker Pyne. His fingers were busy. With a grunt, he extracted a somewhat smeared pearl earring. "Just curiosity, I know," he added apologetically. "But I should like to hear about it."

"I'll tell you," said Carver, "if you'll tell me just how you happened to pitch upon me. You didn't see anything, did you?"

Mr Parker Pyne shook his head. "I just thought about it," he said.

"It was really sheer accident, to start with," said Carver. "I was behind you all this morning and I came across it lying in front of me - it must have fallen from the girl's ear a moment before. She hadn't noticed it. Nobody had. I picked it up and put it into my pocket, meaning to return it to her as soon as I caught her up. But I forgot.

"And then, halfway up that climb, I began to think. The jewel meant nothing to that fool of a girl - her father would buy her another without noticing the cost. And it would mean a lot to me. The sale of that pearl would equip an expedition." His impassive face suddenly twitched and came to life. "Do you know the difficulty there is nowadays in raising subscriptions for digging? No, you don't. The sale of that pearl would make everything easy. There's a site I want to dig up in Baluchistan. There's a whole chapter of the past there waiting to be discovered...

"What you said last night came into my mind - about a suggestible witness. I thought the girl was that type. As we reached the summit I told her her earring was loose. I pretended to tighten it. What I really did was to press the point of a small pencil into her ear. A few minutes later I dropped a little pebble. She was quite ready to swear then that the earring had been in her ear and had just dropped off. In the meantime I pressed the pearl into a lump of plasticine in my pocket. That's my story. Not a very edifying one. Now for your turn."

"There isn't much of my story," said Mr Parker Pyne. "You were the only man who'd picked up things from the ground - that's what made me think of you. And finding that little pebble was significant. It suggested the trick you'd played. And then -"

"Go on," said Carver.

"Well, you see, you'd talked about honesty a little too vehemently last night. Protesting overmuch - well, you know what Shakespeare says. It looked, somehow, as though you were trying to convince yourself. And you were a little too scornful about money."

The face of the man in front of him looked lined and weary. "Well, that's that," he said. "It's all up with me now. You'll give the girl back her gewgaw, I suppose? Odd thing, the barbaric instinct for ornamentation. You find it going back as far as paleolithic times. One of the first instincts of the female sex."

"I think you misjudge Miss Carol," said Mr Parker Pyne. "She has brains - and what is more, a heart. I think she will keep this business to herself."

"Father won't, though," said the archaeologist.

"I think he will. You see, 'Pop' has his own reasons for keeping quiet. There's no forty-thousand-dollar touch about this earring. A mere fiver would cover its value."

"You mean -?"