N or M? Page 8

  She took from her bag two letters that she had just called for at a small news agent's in the town.

  They had taken some time in coming since they had been readdressed there, the second time to a Mrs Spender. Tuppence liked crossing her tracks. Her children believed her to be in Cornwall with an old aunt.

  She opened the first letter.

  "Dearest Mother,

  "Lots of funny things I could tell you only I mustn't. We're putting up a good show, I think. Five German planes before breakfast is today's market quotation. Bit of a mess at the moment and all that, but we'll get there all right in the end.

  "It's the way they machine gun the poor civilian devils on the roads that gets me. It makes us all see red. Gus and Trundles want to be remembered to you. They're still going strong.

  "Don't worry about me. I'm all right. Wouldn't have missed this show for the world. Love to old Carrot Top - have the W.O. given him a job yet?

  "Yours ever,

  "Derek."

  Tuppence's eyes were very bright and shining as she read and re-read this.

  Then she opened the other letter.

  "Dearest Mum,

  "How's old Aunt Gracie? Going strong? I think you're wonderful to stick it. I couldn't. No news. My job's very interesting, but so hush-hush I can't tell you about it. But I really do feel I'm doing something worth while. Don't fret about not getting any war work to do - it's so silly all these elderly women rushing about wanting to do things. They only really want people who are young and efficient. I wonder how Carrots is getting on at his job up in Scotland? Just filling up forms, I suppose. Still he'll be happy to feel he is doing something.

  "Lots of love,

  "Deborah."

  Tuppence smiled.

  She folded the letters, smoothed them lovingly, and then under the shelter of a breakwater she struck a match and set them on fire. She waited until they were reduced to ashes.

  Taking out her fountain pen and a small writing-pad she wrote rapidly.

  "Langherne, Cornwall.

  "Dearest Deb,

  "It seems so remote from the war here that I can hardly believe there is a war going on. Very glad to get your letter and know that your work is interesting.

  "Aunt Gracie has grown much more feeble and very hazy in her mind. I think she is glad to have me here. She talks a good deal about the old days and sometimes, I think, confuses me with my own mother. They are growing more vegetables than usual - have turned the rose garden into potatoes. I help old Sikes a bit. It makes me feel I am doing something in the war. Your father seems a bit disgruntled, but I think, as you say, he too is glad to be doing something.

  "Love from your

  "Tuppenny Mother."

  She took a fresh sheet.

  "Darling Derek,

  "A great comfort to get your letter. Send field postcards often if you haven't time to write.

  "I've come down to be with Aunt Gracie a bit. She is feeble. She will talk of you as if you're seven and gave me ten shillings yesterday to send you as a tip.

  "I'm still on the shelf and nobody wants my invaluable services! Extraordinary! Your father, as I told you, has got a job in the Ministry of Requirements. He is up north somewhere. Better than nothing, but not what he wanted, poor old Carrot Top. Still I suppose we got to be humble and take a back seat and leave the war to you young idiots.

  "I won't say 'Take care of yourself.' because I gather that the whole point is that you should do just the opposite. But don't go and be stupid.

  "Lots of love,

  "Tuppence."

  She put the letters into envelopes, addressed and stamped them, and posted them on her way back to Sans Souci.

  As she reached the bottom of the cliff her attention was caught by two figures a little way up.

  Tuppence stopped dead. It was the same woman she had seen yesterday and talking to her was Carl von Deinim.

  Regretfully Tuppence noted the fact that there was no cover. She could not get near them unseen and overhear what was being said.

  Moreover, at that moment, the young German turned his head and saw her. Rather abruptly, the two figures parted. The woman came rapidly down the hill, crossing the road and passing Tuppence on the other side.

  Carl von Deinim waited until Tuppence came up to him.

  Then, gravely and politely he wished her good-morning.

  Tuppence said immediately:

  "What a very odd looking woman that was to whom you were talking, Mr von Deinim."

  "Yes. It's a Central European type. She is a Pole."

  "Really? A - a friend of yours?"

  Tuppence's tone was a very good copy of the inquisitive voice of Aunt Gracie in her younger days.

  "Not at all," said Carl stiffly. "I never saw the woman before."

  "Oh, really. I thought -" Tuppence paused artistically.

  "She asks me only a direction. I speak German to her because she does not understand much English."

  "I see. And she was asking the way somewhere?"

  "She asked if I knew a Mrs Gottlieb near here. I do not, and she says she has, perhaps, got the name of the house wrong."

  "I see." said Tuppence thoughtfully.

  Mr Rothenstein. Mrs Gottlieb.

  She stole a swift glance at Carl von Deinim. He was walking beside her with a set stiff face.

  Tuppence felt a definite suspicion of this strange woman. And she felt almost convinced that when she had first caught sight of them, the woman and Carl had been already talking some time together.

  Carl von Deinim?

  Carl and Sheila that morning. "You must be careful..."

  Tuppence thought:

  "I hope - I hope these young things aren't in it!"

  Soft, she told herself, middle-aged and soft! That's what she was! The Nazi creed was a youth creed. Nazi agents would in all probability be young. Carl and Sheila. Tommy said Sheila wasn't in it. Yes, but Tommy was a man, and Sheila was beautiful with a queer breath-taking beauty.

  Carl and Sheila, and behind them that enigmatic figure: Mrs Perenna. Mrs Perenna, sometimes the voluble, commonplace, guest house hostess, sometimes, for fleeting minutes, a tragic violent personality.

  Tuppence went slowly upstairs to her bedroom.

  That evening, when Tuppence went to bed, she pulled out the long drawer of her bureau. At one a side of it was a small japanned box with a flimsy cheap lock. Tuppence slipped on gloves, unlocked the box, and opened it. A pile of letters lay inside. On the top was the one received that morning from "Raymond." Tuppence unfolded it with due precautions.

  Then her lips set grimly. There had been an eyelash in the fold of the paper this morning. The eyelash was not there now.

  She went to the washstand. There was a little bottle labelled innocently: "Grey powder" with a dose.

  Adroitly Tuppence dusted a little of the powder onto the letter and onto the surface of the glossy japanned enamel of the box.

  There were no fingerprints on either of them.

  Again Tuppence nodded her head with a certain grim satisfaction.

  For there should have been fingerprints - her own.

  A servant might have read letters out of curiosity, though it seemed unlikely - certainly unlikely that she should have gone to the trouble of finding a key to fit the box.

  But a servant would not think of wiping off fingerprints.

  Mrs Perenna? Sheila? Somebody else? Somebody, at least, who was interested in the movements of British armed forces.

  IV

  Tuppence's plan of campaign had been simple in its outlines. First, a general sizing up of probabilities and possibilities. Second, an experiment to determine whether there was or was not an inmate of Sans Souci who was interested in troop movements and anxious to conceal the fact. Third - who that person was?

  It was concerning that third operation that Tuppence pondered as she lay in bed the following morning. Her train of thought was slightly hampered by Betty Sprot, who had pranced in at an early hour
, preceding indeed the cup of somewhat tepid inky liquid known as Morning Tea.

  Betty was both active and voluble. She had taken a great attachment to Tuppence. She climbed up on the bed and thrust an extremely tattered picture book under Tuppence's nose, commanding with brevity:

  "Wead."

  Tuppence read obediently:

  "Goosey, goosey gander, whither will you wander?

  Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber."

  Betty rolled with mirth - repeating in an ecstasy:

  "Upstares - upstares - upstares -" and then with a sudden climax: "Down -" and proceeded to roll off the bed with a thump.

  This proceeding was repeated several times until it palled. Then Betty crawled about the floor, playing with Tuppence's shoes and muttering busily to herself in her own particular idiom:

  "Ag do - bah pit - soo - soo dah - putch -"

  Released to fly back to its own perplexities, Tuppence's mind forgot the child. The words of the nursery rhyme seemed to mock at her.

  "Goosey, goosey gander, whither shall ye wander?"

  "Whither indeed? Goosey, that was her, Gander was Tommy. It was, at any rate, what they appeared to be! Tuppence had the heartiest contempt for Mrs Blenkensop. Mr Meadowes, she thought, was a little better - stolid, British, unimaginative - quite incredibly stupid. Both of them, she hoped, fitting nicely into the background of Sans Souci. Both such possible people to be there.

  All the same, one must not relax - a slip was so easy. She had made one the other day - nothing that mattered, but just a sufficient indication to warn her to be careful. Such an easy approach to intimacy and good relations - an indifferent knitter asking for guidance. But she had forgotten that one evening, her fingers had slipped into their own practised efficiency, the needles clicking busily with the even note of the experienced knitter. And Mrs O'Rourke had noticed it. Since then, she had carefully struck a medium course - not so clumsy as she had been at first - but not so rapid as she could be.

  "Ag boo bate?" demanded Betty. She reiterated the question: "Ag boo bate?"

  "Lovely, darling," said Tuppence absently. "Beautiful."

  Satisfied, Betty relapsed into murmurs again.

  Her next step, Tuppence thought, could be managed easily enough. That is to say with the connivance of Tommy. She saw exactly how to do it -

  Lying there planning, time slipped by. Mrs Sprot came in, breathless, to seek for Betty.

  "Oh, here she is. I couldn't think where she had got to. Oh, Betty, you naughty girl - Oh, dear, Mrs Blenkensop, I am so sorry."

  Tuppence sat up in bed. Betty, with an angelic face, was contemplating her handiwork.

  She had removed all the laces from Tuppence's shoes and had immersed them in a glass of water. She was prodding them now with a gleeful finger.

  Tuppence laughed and cut short Mrs Sprot's apologies.

  "How frightfully funny. Don't worry, Mrs Sprot, they'll recover all right. It's my fault. I should have noticed what she was doing. She rather quiet."

  "I know." Mrs Sprot sighed. "Whenever they're quiet, it's a bad sign. I'll get you some more laces this morning, Mrs Blenkensop."

  "Don't bother," said Tuppence. "They'll dry none the worse."

  Mrs Sprot bore Betty away and Tuppence got up to put her plan into execution.

  Chapter 6

  Tommy looked rather gingerly at the packet that Tuppence thrust upon him.

  "Is this it?"

  "Yes. Be careful. Don't get it over you."

  Tommy took a delicate sniff at the packet and replied with energy:

  "No, indeed. What is this frightful stuff?"

  "Asafoetida," replied Tuppence. "A pinch of that and you will wonder why your boy friend is no longer attentive, as the advertisements say."

  "Shades of B.O.," murmured Tommy.

  Shortly after that, various incidents occurred.

  The first was the Smell in Mr Meadowes' room.

  Mr Meadowes, not a complaining man by nature, spoke about it mildly at first, then with increasing firmness.

  Mrs Perenna was summoned into conclave. With all the will in the world to resist, she had to admit that there was a smell. A pronounced, unpleasant smell. Perhaps, she suggested, the gas tap of the fire was leaking.

  Bending down and sniffing dubiously, Tommy remarked that he did not think the smell came from there. Nor from under the floor. He himself thought, definitely - a dead rat.

  Mrs Perenna admitted that she had heard of such things - but she was sure there were no rats at Sans Souci. Perhaps a mouse - though she herself had never seen a mouse there.

  Mr Meadowes said with firmness that he thought the smell indicated at least a rat - and he added, still more firmly, that he was not going to sleep another night in the room until the matter had been seen to. He would ask Mrs Perenna to change his room.

  Mrs Perenna said, "Of course, she had just been about to suggest the same thing. She was afraid that the only room vacant was rather a small one and unfortunately it had no sea view, but if Mr Meadowes did not mind that -"

  Mr Meadowes did not. His only wish was to get away from the smell. Mrs Perenna thereupon accompanied him to a small bedroom, the door of which happened to be just opposite the door of Mrs Blenkensop's room, and summoned the adenoidal, semi-idiotic Beatrice to "move Mr Meadowes' things." She would, she explained, send for "a man" to take up the floor and search for the origin of the smell.

  Matters were settled satisfactorily on this basis.

  II

  The second incident was Mr Meadowes' hay fever. That was what he called it at first. Later he admitted doubtfully that he might just possibly have caught cold. He sneezed a good deal, and his eyes ran. If there was a faint elusive suggestion of raw onion floating in the breeze in the vicinity of Mr Meadowes' large silk handkerchief nobody noticed the fact and indeed a pungent amount of eau de cologne masked the more penetrating odour.

  Finally, defeated by incessant sneezing and noseblowing, Mr Meadowes retired to bed for the day.

  It was on the morning of that day that Mrs Blenkensop received a letter from her son Douglas. So excited and thrilled was Mrs Blenkensop that everybody at Sans Souci heard about it. The letter had not been censored at all, she explained, because fortunately one of Douglas's friends coming on leave had brought it, so for once Douglas had been able to write quite fully.

  "And it just shows," declared Mrs Blenkensop, wagging her head sagely, "how little we really know of what is going on."

  After breakfast she went upstairs to her room, opened the japanned box and put the letter away. Between the folded pages were some unnoticeable grains of rice powder. She closed the box again, pressing her fingers firmly on its surface.

  As she left her room she coughed, and from opposite came the sound of a highly histrionic sneeze.

  Tuppence smiled and proceeded downstairs.

  She had already made known her intention of going up to London for the day - to see her lawyer on some business and to do a little shopping.

  Now she was given a good send-off by the assembled boarders and entrusted with various commissions - "only if you have time, of course."

  Major Bletchley held himself aloof from this female chatter. He was reading his paper and uttering appropriate comments aloud. "Damned swines of Germans. Machine gunning civilian refugees on the roads. Damned brutes. If I were our people -"

  Tuppence left him still outlining what he would do if he were in charge of operations.

  She made a detour through the garden to ask Betty Sprot what she would like as a present from London.

  Betty, ecstatically clasping a snail in two hot hands, gurgled appreciatively. In response to Tuppence's suggestions "A pussy? A picture book? Some coloured chalks to draw with?" - Betty decided, "Betty dwar." So the coloured chalks were noted down on Tuppence's list.

  As she passed on, meaning to rejoin the drive by the path at the end of the garden, she came unexpectedly upon Carl von Deinim. He was standing leaning on th
e wall. His hands were clenched, and as Tuppence approached he turned on her, his usually impassive face convulsed with emotion.