Postern of Fate tat-5 Read online

'Do I mean arti -? What about urticaria? No that's nettles, isn't it? Oh well,' said Tommy, 'everyone to their own kind of amusement.'

  'I was just doing a little investigation, you know, of our latest problem.'

  'Your problem? My problem? Whose problem?'

  'I don't know,' said Tuppence. 'Both our problems, I hope.'

  'But not one of Beatrice's problems, or anything like that?'

  'Oh no. It's just that I wondered what other things there might be hidden in this house, so I went and looked at a lot of toys that seem to have been shoved away in a sort of queer old greenhouse probably years and years ago and there was this creature and there was Mathilde, which is a rocking-horse with a hole in its stomach.'

  'A hole in its stomach?'

  'Well, yes. People, I suppose, used to shove things in there. Children - for fun - and lots of old leaves and dirty papers and bits of sort of queer dusters and flannel, oily stuff that had been used to clean things with.'

  'Come on, let's go into the house,' said Tommy.

  'Well, Tommy,' said Tuppence, as she stretched out her feet to a pleasant wood fire which she had lit ready for his return in the drawing-room, 'let's have your news. Did you go to the Ritz Hotel Gallery to see the show?'

  'No. As a matter of fact, I didn't. I hadn't time, really.'

  'What do you mean, you hadn't time? I thought that's what you went for.'

  'Well, one doesn't always do the things that one went for.'

  'You must have gone somewhere and done something,' said Tuppence.

  'I found a new possible place to park a car.'

  'That's always useful,' said Tuppence. 'Where was that?'

  'Near Hounslow.'

  'What on earth did you want to go to Hounslow for?'

  'Well, I didn't actually go to Hounslow. There's a sort of car park there, then I took a tube, you know.'

  'What, a tube to London?'

  'Yes. Yes, it seemed the easiest way.'

  'You have rather a guilty look about you,' said Tuppence. 'Don't tell me I have a rival who lives in Hounslow?'

  'No,' said Tommy. 'You ought to be pleased with what I've been doing.'

  'Oh. Have you been buying me a present?'

  'No. No,' said Tommy, 'I'm afraid not. I never know what to give you, as a matter of fact.'

  'Well, your guesses are very good sometimes,' said Tuppence hopefully. 'What have you been really doing, Tommy, and why should I be pleased?'

  'Because I, too,' said Tommy, 'have been doing research.'

  'Everyone's doing research nowadays,' said Tuppence. 'You know, all the teenagers and all one's nephews or cousins or other people's sons and daughters, they're all doing research. I don't know actually what they do research into nowadays, but they never seem to do it, whatever it is, afterwards. They just have the research and a good time doing the research and they're very pleased with themselves and - well, I don't quite know what does come next.'

  'Betty, our adopted daughter, went to East Africa,' said Tommy. 'Have you heard from her?'

  'Yes, she loves it there - loves poking into African families and writing articles about them.'

  'Do you think the families appreciate her interest?' asked Tommy.

  'I shouldn't think so,' said Tuppence. 'In my father's parish I remember, everyone disliked the District Visitors - Nosey Parkers they called them.'

  'You may have something there,' said Tommy. 'You are certainly pointing out to me the difficulties of what I am undertaking, or trying to undertake.'

  'Research into what? Not lawn-mowers, I hope.'

  'I don't know why you mention lawn-mowers.'

  'Because you're eternally looking at catalogues of them,' said Tuppence. 'You're mad about getting a lawn-mower.'

  'In this house of ours it is historic research we are doing into things - crimes and others that seem to have happened at least sixty or seventy years ago.'

  'Anyway, come on, tell me a little more about your research projects, Tommy.'

  'I went to London,' said Tommy, 'and put certain things in motion.'

  'Ah,' said Tuppence. 'Research? Research in motion. In a way I've been doing the same thing that you are, only our methods are different. And my period is very far back.'

  'Do you mean that you're really beginning to take an interest in the problem of Mary Jordan? So that's how you put it on the agenda nowadays,' said Tommy. 'It's definitely taken shape has it? The mystery, or the problem of Mary Jordan.'

  'Such a very ordinary name, too. Couldn't have been her right name if she was German,' said Tuppence, 'and she was said to be a German spy or something like that, but she could have been English, I suppose.'

  'I think the German story is just a kind of legend.'

  'Do go on, Tommy. You're not telling me anything.'

  'Well, I put certain - certain - certain -'

  'Don't go on saying certain,' said Tuppence. 'I really can't understand.'

  'Well, it's very difficult to explain things sometimes,' said Tommy, 'but I mean, there are certain ways of making enquiries.'

  'You mean, things in the past?'

  'Yes. In a sense. I mean, there are things that you can find out. Things that you could obtain information from. Not just by riding old toys and asking old ladies to remember things and cross-questioning an old gardener who probably will tell you everything quite wrong or going round to the post office and upsetting the staff by asking the girls there to tell their memories of what their great-great-aunts once said.'

  'All of them have produced a little something,' said Tuppence.

  'So will mine,' said Tommy.

  'You've been making enquiries? Who do you go to to ask your questions?'

  'Well, it's not quite like that, but you must remember, Tuppence, that occasionally in my life I have been in connection with people who do know how to go about these sort of things. You know, there are people you pay a certain sum to and they do the research for you from the proper quarters so that what you get is quite authentic.'

  'What sort of things? What sort of places?'

  'Well, there are lots of things. To begin with you can get someone to study deaths, births and marriages, that sort of thing.'

  'Oh, I suppose you send them to Somerset House. Do you go there for deaths as well as marriages?'

  'And births - one needn't go oneself, you get someone to go for you. And find out when someone dies or read somebody's will, look up marriages in churches or study birth certificates. All those things can be enquired into.'

  'Have you been spending a lot of money?' asked Tuppence. 'I thought we were going to try and economize once we'd paid the expense of moving in here.'

  'Well, considering the interest you're taking in problems, I consider that this can be regarded in the way of money well spent.'

  'Well, did you find out anything?'

  'Not as quickly as this. You have to wait until the research has been made. Then if they can get answers for you -'

  'You mean somebody comes up and tells you that someone called Mary Jordan was born at Little Sheffield-on-the-Wold or something like that and then you go and make enquiries there later. Is that the sort of thing?'

  'Not exactly. And then there are census returns and death certificates and causes of death and, oh, quite a lot of things that you can find out about.'

  'Well,' said Tuppence, 'it sounds rather interesting anyway, which is always something.'

  'And there are files in newspaper offices that you can read and study.'

  'You mean accounts of something - like murders or court cases?'

  'Not necessarily, but one has had contact with certain people from time to time. People who know things - one can look them up - ask a few questions - renew old friendships. Like the time we were being a private detective firm in London. There are a few people, I expect, who could give us information or tell us where to go. Things do depend a bit on who you know.'

  'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'that's quite true. I know that myself from experie
nce.'

  'Our methods aren't the same,' said Tommy. 'I think yours are just as good as mine. I'll never forget the day I came suddenly into that boarding-house, or whatever it was, Sans Souci. The first thing I saw was you sitting there knitting and calling yourself Mrs Blenkinsop.'

  'All because I hadn't applied research, or getting anyone to do research for me,' said Tuppence.

  'No,' said Tommy, 'you got inside a wardrobe next door to the room where I was being interviewed in a very interesting manner, so you knew exactly where I was being sent and what I was meant to do, and you managed to get there first. Eavesdropping. Neither more nor less. Most dishonourable.'

  'With very satisfactory results,' said Tuppence.

  'Yes,' said Tommy. 'You have a kind of feeling for success. It seems to happen to you.'

  'Well, some day we shall know all about everything here, only it's all such years and years ago. I can't help thinking that the idea of something really important being hidden round here or owned by someone here, or something to do with this house or people who once lived in it being important - I can't just believe it somehow. Oh well, I see what we shall have to do next.'

  'What?' said Tommy.

  'Believe six impossible things before breakfast, of course,' said Tuppence. 'It's quarter to eleven now, and I want to go to bed. I'm tired. I'm sleepy and extremely dirty because of playing around with all those dusty, ancient toys and things. I expect there are even more things in that place that's called - by the way, why is it called Kay Kay?'

  'I don't know. Do you spell it at all?'

  'I don't know - I think it's spelt k-a-i. Not just KK.'

  'Because it sounds more mysterious?'

  'It sounds Japanese,' said Tuppence doubtfully.

  'I can't see why it should sound to you like Japanese. It doesn't to me. It sounds more like something you eat. A kind of rice, perhaps.'

  'I'm going to bed and to wash thoroughly and to get all the cobwebs off me somehow,' said Tuppence.

  'Remember,' said Tommy, 'six impossible things before breakfast.'

  'I expect I shall be better at that than you would be,' said Tuppence.

  'You're very unexpected sometimes,' said Tommy.

  'You're more often right than I am,' said Tuppence. 'That's very annoying sometimes. Well, these things are sent to try us. Who used to say that to us? Quite often, too.'

  'Never mind,' said Tommy. 'Go and clean the dust of bygone years off you. Is Isaac any good at gardening?'

  'He considers he is,' said Tuppence. 'We might experiment with him -'

  'Unfortunately we don't know much about gardening ourselves. Yet another problem.'

  Chapter 4

  EXPEDITION ON TRUELOVE; OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

  'Six impossible things before breakfast indeed,' said Tuppence as she drained a cup of coffee and considered a fried egg remaining in the dish on the sideboard, flanked by two appetizing-looking kidneys. 'Breakfast is more worthwhile than thinking of impossible things. Tommy is the one who has gone after impossible things. Research indeed. I wonder if he'll get anything out of it all.'

  She applied herself to a fried egg and kidneys.

  'How nice,' said Tuppence, 'to have a different kind of breakfast.'

  For a long time she had managed to regale herself in the morning with a cup of coffee and either orange juice or grapefruit. Although satisfactory so long as any weight problems were thereby solved, the pleasures of this kind of breakfast were not much appreciated. From the force of contrasts, hot dishes on the sideboard animated the digestive juices.

  'I expect,' said Tuppence, 'it's what the Parkinsons used to have for breakfast here. Fried eggs or poached eggs and bacon and perhaps -' she threw her mind a good long way back to remembrances of old novels - 'perhaps yes, perhaps cold grouse on the sideboard, delicious! Oh yes, I remember, delicious it sounded. Of course, I suppose children were so unimportant that they only let them have the legs. Legs of game are very good because you can nibble at them.' She paused with the last piece of kidney in her mouth.

  Very strange noises seemed to be coming through the doorway.

  'I wonder,' said Tuppence. 'It sounds like a concert gone wrong somewhere.'

  She paused again, a piece of toast in her hand, and looked up as Albert entered the room.

  'What is going on, Albert?' demanded Tuppence. 'Don't tell me that's our workmen playing something? A harmonium or something like that?'

  'It's the gentleman what's come to do the piano,' said Albert.

  'Come to do what to the piano?'

  'To tune it. You said I'd have to get a piano tuner.'

  'Good gracious,' said Tuppence, 'you've done it already? How wonderful you are, Albert.'

  Albert looked pleased, though at the same time conscious of the fact that he was very wonderful in the speed with which he could usually supply the extraordinary demands made upon him sometimes by Tuppence and sometimes by Tommy.

  'He says it needs it very bad,' he said.

  'I expect it does,' said Tuppence.

  She drank half a cup of coffee, went out of the room and into the drawing-room. A young man was at work at the grand piano, which was revealing to the world large quantities of its inside.

  'Good morning, madam,' said the young man.

  'Good morning,' said Tuppence. 'I'm so glad you've managed to come.'

  'Ah, it needs tuning, it does.'

  'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'I know. You see, we've only just moved in and it's not very good for pianos, being moved into houses and things. And it hasn't been tuned for a long time.'

  'No, I can soon tell that,' said the young man.

  He pressed three different chords in turn, two cheerful ones in a major key, two very melancholy ones in A Minor.

  'A beautiful instrument, madam, if I may say so.'

  'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'It's an Erard.'

  'And a piano you wouldn't get so easily nowadays.'

  'It's been through a few troubles,' said Tuppence. 'It's been through bombing in London. Our house there was hit. Luckily we were away, but it was mostly outside that was damaged.'

  'Yes. Yes, the works are good. They don't need so very much doing to them.'

  Conversation continued pleasantly. The young man played the opening bars of a Chopin Prelude and passed from that to a rendering of 'The Blue Danube'. Presently he announced that his ministrations had finished.

  'I shouldn't leave it too long,' he warned her. 'I'd like the chance to come and try it again before too much time has gone by because you don't know quite when it might not - well, I don't know how I should put it - relapse a bit. You know, some little thing that you haven't noticed or haven't been able to get at.'

  They parted with mutually appreciative remarks on music in general and on piano music in particular, and with the polite salutations of two people who agreed very largely in their ideas as to the joys that music generally played in life.

  'Needs a lot doing to it, I expect, this house,' he said, looking round him.

  'Well, I think it had been empty some time when we came into it.'

  'Oh yes. It's changed hands a lot, you know.'

  'Got quite a history, hasn't it,' said Tuppence. 'I mean, the people who lived in it in the past and the sort of queer things that happened.'

  'Ah well, I expect you're talking of that time long ago. I don't know if it was the last war or the one before.'

  'Something to do with naval secrets or something,' said Tuppence hopefully.

  'Could be, I expect. There was a lot of talk, so they tell me, but of course I don't know anything about it myself.'

  'Well before your time,' said Tuppence, looking appreciatively at his youthful countenance.

  When he had gone, she sat down at the piano.

  'I'll play "The Rain on the Roof",' said Tuppence, who had had this Chopin memory revived in her by the piano tuner's execution of one of the other preludes. Then she dropped into some chords and began playing the accompaniment to a song, hu
mming it first and then murmuring the words as well.

  Where has my true love gone a-roaming?

  Where has my true love gone from me?

  High in the woods the birds are calling.

  When will my true love come back to me?

  'I'm playing it in the wrong key, I believe,' said Tuppence. 'but at any rate, the piano's all right again now. Oh, it is great fun to be able to play the piano again. "Where has my true love gone a-roaming?'" she murmured. '"When will my true love" - Truelove,' said Tuppence thoughtfully. 'True love? Yes, I'm thinking of that perhaps as a sign. Perhaps I'd better go out and do something with Truelove.'

  She put on her thick shoes and a pullover, and went out into the garden. Truelove had been pushed, not back into his former home in KK, but into the empty stable. Tuppence took him out, pulled him to the top of the grass slope, gave him a sharp flick with the duster she had brought out with her to remove the worst of the cobwebs which still adhered in many places, got into Truelove, placed her feet on the pedals and induced Truelove to display his paces as well as he could in his condition of general age and wear.

  'Now, my true love,' she said, 'down the hill with you and not too fast.'

  She removed her feet from the pedals and placed them in a position where she could brake with them when necessary.

  Truelove was not inclined to go very fast in spite of the advantage to him of having only to go by weight down the hill. However, the slope increased in steepness suddenly. Truelove increased his pace, Tuppence applied her feet as brakes rather more sharply and she and Truelove arrived together at a rather more uncomfortable portion than usual of the monkey puzzle at the bottom of the hill.

  'Most painful,' said Tuppence, excavating herself.

  Having extricated herself from the pricking of various portions of the monkey puzzle, Tuppence brushed herself down and looked around her. She had come to a thick bit of shrubbery leading up the hill in the opposite direction. There were rhododendron bushes here and hydrangeas. It would look, Tuppence thought, very lovely later in the year. At the moment, there was no particular beauty about it, it was a mere thicket. However, she did seem to notice that there had once been a pathway leading up between the various flower bushes and shrubs. Everything was much grown together now but you could trace the direction of the path. Tuppence broke off a branch or two, pressed her way through the first bushes and managed to follow the hill. The path went winding up. It was clear that nobody had ever cleared it or walked down it for years.