Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans

'Perhaps your chauffeur drove you this time?' 'My chauffeur,' said Frankie, 'has disappeared.' She looked straight at Nicholson.

Indeed?' 'He was last seen heading for the Grange,' went on Frankie.

Nicholson raised his eyebrows.

'Really? Have I - some attraction in the kitchen?' His voice sounded amused. 'I can hardly believe it.' 'At any rate that is where he was last seen,' said Frankie.

'You sound quite dramatic,' said Nicholson. 'Possibly you are paying too much attention to local gossip. Local gossip is very unreliable. I have heard the wildest stories.' He paused.

His voice altered slightly in tone. 'I have even had a story brought to my ears that my wife and your chauffeur had been seen talking together down by the river.' Another pause. 'He was, I believe, a very superior young man. Lady Frances.' 'Is that it?' thought Frankie. 'Is he going to pretend that his wife has run off with my chauffeur? Is that his little game?' Aloud she said: 'Hawkins is quite above the average chauffeur.' 'So it seems,' said Nicholson.

He turned to Roger.

'I must be going. Believe me, all my sympathies are with you and Mrs Bassingtonffrench.' Roger went out into the hall with him. Frankie followed. On the hall table were a couple of letters addressed to her. One was a bill. The other Her heart gave a leap.

The other was in Bobby's handwriting.

Nicholson and Roger were on the doorstep.

She tore it open.

Dear Frankie (wrote Bobby), I'm on the trail at last. Follow me as soon as possible to Chipping Somerton. You'd better come by train and not by car. The Bentley is too noticeable. The trains aren't too good but you can get there all right. You're to come to a house called Tudor Cottage. I'll explain to you just exactly how to find it. Don't ask the way. (Here followed some minute directions.) Have you got that clear? Don't tell anyone. (This was heavily underlined.) No one at all. Yours ever, Bobby.

Frankie crushed the letter excitedly in the palm of her hand.

So it was all right.

Nothing dreadful had overtaken Bobby.

He was on the trail - and by a coincidence on the same trail as herself. She had been to Somerset House to look up the will of John Savage. Rose Emily Templeton was given as the wife of Edgar Templeton of Tudor Cottage, Chipping Somerton.

And that again had fitted in with the open ABC in the St Leonard's Gardens house. Chipping Somerton had been one of the stations on the open page. The Caymans had gone to Chipping Somerton.

Everything was falling into place. They were nearing the end of the chase.

Roger Bassington-ffrench turned and came towards her.

'Anything interesting in your letter?' he inquired casually.

For a moment Frankie hesitated. Surely Bobby had not meant Roger when he adjured her to tell nobody?

Then she remembered the heavy underlining - remembered, too, her own recent monstrous idea. If that were true, Roger might betray them both in all innocence. She dared not hint to him her own suspicions.

So she made up her mind and spoke.

'No,' she said. 'Nothing at all.' She was to repent her decision bitterly before twenty-four hours had passed.

More than once in the course of the next few hours did she bitterly regret Bobby's dictum that the car was not to be used.

Chipping Somerton was no very great distance as the crow flies but it involved changing three times, with a long dreary wait at a country station each time, and to one of Frankie's impatient temperament, this slow method of procedure was extremely hard to endure with fortitude.

Still, she felt bound to admit that there was something in what Bobby had said. The Bentley was a noticeable car.

Her excuses for leaving it at Merroway had been of the flimsiest order, but she had been unable to think of anything brilliant on the spur of the moment.

It was getting dark when Frankie's train, an extremely deliberate and thoughtful train, drew into the little station of Chipping Somerton. To Frankie it seemed more like midnight.

The train seemed to her to have been ambling on for hours and hours.

It was just beginning to rain, too, which was additionally trying.

Frankie buttoned up her coat to her neck, took a last look at Bobby's letter by the light of the station lamp, got the directions clearly in her head and set off.

The instructions were quite easy to follow. Frankie saw the lights of the village ahead and turned off to the left up a lane which led steeply uphill. At the top of the lane she took the right-hand fork and presently saw the little cluster of houses that formed the village lying below her and a belt of pine trees ahead. Finally, she came to a neat wooden gate and, striking a match, saw Tudor Cottage written on it.

There was no one about. Frankie slipped up the latch and passed inside. She could make out the outlines of the house behind a belt of pine trees. She took up her post within the trees where she could get a clear view of the house. Then, heart beating a little faster, she gave the best imitation she could of the hoot of an owl. A few minutes passed and nothing happened. She repeated the call.

The door of the cottage opened and she saw a figure in chauffeur's dress peer cautiously out. Bobby! He made a beckoning gesture then withdrew inside, leaving the door ajar.

Frankie came out from the trees and up to the door. There was no light in any window. Everything was perfectly dark and silent.

Frankie stepped gingerly over the threshold into a dark hall.

She stopped, peering about her.

'Bobby?' she whispered.

It was her nose that gave her warning. Where had she known that smell before - that heavy, sweet odour?

Just as her brain gave the answer 'Chloroform', strong arms seized her from behind. She opened her mouth to scream and a wet pad was clapped over it. The sweet, cloying smell filled her nostrils.

She fought desperately, twisting and turning, kicking. But it was of no avail. Despite the fight she put up, she felt herself succumbing. There was a drumming in her ears, she felt herself choking. And then she knew no more...

When Frankie came to herself, the immediate reactions were depressing. There is nothing romantic about the after effects of chloroform. She was lying on an extremely hard wooden floor and her hands and feet were tied. She managed to roll herself over and her head nearly collided violently with a battered coalbox.

Various distressing events then occurred.

A few minutes later, Frankie was able, if not to sit up, at least to take notice.

Close at hand she heard a faint groan. She peered about her.

As far as she could make out, she seemed to be in a kind of attic.

The only light came from a skylight in the roof, and at this moment there was very little of that. In a few minutes it would be quite dark. There were a few broken pictures lying against the wall, a dilapidated iron bed and some broken chairs, and the coal-scuttle before mentioned.

The groan seemed to have come from the corner.

Frankie's bonds were not very tight. They permitted motion of a somewhat crablike type. She wormed her way across the dusty floor.

'Bobby!' she ejaculated.

Bobby it was, also tied hand and foot. In addition, he had a piece of cloth bound round his mouth.

This he had almost succeeded in working loose. Frankie came to his assistance. In spite of being bound together, her hands were still of some use and a final vigorous pull with her teeth finally did the job.

Rather stiffly, Bobby managed to ejaculate: 'Frankie!' 'I'm glad we're together,' said Frankie. 'But it does look as though we'd been had for mugs.' 'I suppose,' said Bobby gloomily, 'it's what they call a "fair cop".' 'How did they get you?' demanded Frankie. 'Was it after you wrote that letter to me?' 'What letter? I never wrote any letter.' 'Oh! I see,' said Frankie, her eyes opening. 'What an idiot I have been! And all that stuff in it about not telling a soul.' 'Look here, Frankie, I'll tell you what happened to me and then you carry on the good work and tell me what happened to you.' He described his adventures at the Grange and their sinister sequel.