Agatha Christie: The Rajah’s Emerald: An Agatha Christie Short Story

‘If I had an emerald like that,’ said James, scowling at the horizon again, ‘I’d show Grace.’

The sentiment was vague, but the enunciation of it made James feel better. Laughing voices hailed him from behind, and he turned abruptly to confront Grace. With her was Clara Sopworth, Alice Sopworth, Dorothy Sopworth and – alas! Claud Sopworth. The girls were arm-in-arm and giggling.

‘Why, you are quite a stranger,’ cried Grace archly.

‘Yes,’ said James.

He could, he felt, have found a more telling retort. You cannot convey the impression of a dynamic personality by the use of the one word ‘yes’. He looked with intense loathing at Claud Sopworth. Claud Sopworth was almost as beautifully dressed as the hero of a musical comedy. James longed passionately for the moment when an enthusiastic beach dog should plant wet, sandy forefeet on the unsullied whiteness of Claud’s flannel trousers. He himself wore a serviceable pair of dark-grey flannel trousers which had seen better days.

‘Isn’t the air beau-tiful?’ said Clara, sniffing it appreciatively. ‘Quite sets you up, doesn’t it?’

She giggled.

‘It’s ozone,’ said Alice Sopworth. ‘It’s as good as a tonic, you know.’ And she giggled also.

James thought:

‘I should like to knock their silly heads together. What is the sense of laughing all the time? They are not saying anything funny.’

The immaculate Claud murmured languidly:

‘Shall we have a bathe, or is it too much of a fag?’

The idea of bathing was accepted shrilly. James fell into line with them. He even managed, with a certain amount of cunning, to draw Grace a little behind the others.

‘Look here!’ he complained, ‘I am hardly seeing anything of you.’

‘Well, I am sure we are all together now,’ said Grace, ‘and you can come and lunch with us at the hotel, at least –’

She looked dubiously at James’s legs.

‘What is the matter?’ demanded James ferociously. ‘Not smart enough for you, I suppose?’

‘I do think, dear, you might take a little more pains,’ said Grace. ‘Everyone is so fearfully smart here. Look at Claud Sopworth!’

‘I have looked at him,’ said James grimly. ‘I have never seen a man who looked a more complete ass than he does.’

Grace drew herself up.

‘There is no need to criticize my friends, James, it’s not manners. He’s dressed just like any other gentleman at the hotel is dressed.’

‘Bah!’ said James. ‘Do you know what I read the other day in “Society Snippets”? Why, that the Duke of – the Duke of, I can’t remember, but one duke, anyway, was the worst dressed man in England, there!’

‘I dare say,’ said Grace, ‘but then, you see, he is a duke.’

‘Well?’ demanded James. ‘What is wrong with my being a duke some day? At least, well, not perhaps a duke, but a peer.’

He slapped the yellow book in his pocket, and recited to her a long list of peers of the realm who had started life much more obscurely than James Bond. Grace merely giggled.

‘Don’t be so soft, James,’ she said. ‘Fancy you Earl of Kimpton-on-Sea!’

James gazed at her in mingled rage and despair. The air of Kimpton-on-Sea had certainly gone to Grace’s head.

The beach at Kimpton is a long, straight stretch of sand. A row of bathing-huts and boxes stretched evenly along it for about a mile and a half. The party had just stopped before a row of six huts all labelled imposingly, ‘For visitors to the Esplanade Hotel only.’

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