AGATHA CHRISTIE. By the Pricking of My Thumbs

‘I’m very pleased to see you,’ said the vicar, and turned.

‘May I introduce Sir Philip Stsrke, Mr and Mrs Beresford. Mr Ivor Smith. Ah! Mrs Boscowm. I’ve not seen you for many, many years – Mr and Mrs Beresford.’ ‘I’ve met Mr Beresford,’ said Mrs Boscowan. She looked at Tuppence. ‘How do you do,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to meet you. I heard you’d had an accident.’ ‘Yes, I’m all right again nov.’ The introductions completed, Tuppence sat back in her chair. Tiredness swept over her as it seemed to do rather more frequently than formerly, which she said to herself was possibly a result of concussion. Sitting quietly, her eyes half closed, she was nevertheless scrutinizing everyone in the room with dose attention. She was not listening to the conversation, she was only looking. She had a feeling that a few of the characters in the drama – Oe drama in which she had unwittingly involved herself- were assembled here as they might be in a dramatic scene. Things were drawing together, forming themselves into a compact nucleus. With the coming of Sir Philip Starke and Mrs B0scowan it was as though two hitherto unrevealed characters were suddenly presenting themselves. They had been the all along, as it were, outside the circle, but now they had coe inside. They were somehow concerned, implicated. They lad come here this evening why, she wondered? Had someone summoned them? Ivor

Smith? Had he commanded their presence, or only gently demanded it? Or were they perhaps as strange m him as they were to her? She thought to herself: ‘It all began in Sunny Ridge, but Sunny Ridge isn’t the real heart of the matter. That was, had always been, here, in Sutton Chancellor. Things had happened here. Not very lately, almost certainly not lately.

Long ago. Things which had nothing to do with Mrs Lancaster – but Mrs Lancaster had become unknowingly involved. So where was Mxs Lancaster now?’

A little cold shiver passed over Tuppence.

‘I think,’ thought Tuppence, ‘I think perhaps she’s dead…’ If so, Tuppence felt, she herself had failed. She had set out on her quest worried about Mrs Lancaster, feeling that Mrs Lancaster was threatened with some danger and she had resolved to fred Mrs Lancaster, protect her.

‘And if she isn’t dead,’ thought Tuppence, ‘I’ll still do it!’ Sutton Chancellor… That was where the beginning of something meaningful and dangerous had happened. The house with the canal was part of it. Perhaps it was the centre of it all, or was it Sutton Chancellor itself7. A place where people had lived, had come to, had left, had run away, had vanished, had disappeared and reappeared. Like Sir Philip Starke.

Without turning her head Tuppence’s eyes went to Sir Philip Starke. She knew nothing about him except what Mrs Copleigh had poured out in the course of her monologue on the general inhabitants. A quiet man, a learned man, a botanist, an industrialist, or at least one who owned a big stake in industry.

Therefore a rich man – and a man who loved children. There she was, back at it. Children again. The house by the canal and the bird in the chimney, and out of the chimney had fallen a child’s doll, shoved up there by someone. A child’s doll that held within its skin a handful of diamonds – the proceeds of crime. This was one of the headquarters of a big criminal undertaking. But there had been crimes more sinister than robberies. Mrs Copleigh had said ‘I always fancied myself as he might have done it.’

Sir Philip Starke. A murderer? Behind her half-closed eyelids, Tuppence studied him with the knowledge clearly in her mind that she was studying him to fred out if he fitted in any way with her conception of a murderer – and a child murderer at that.

How old was he, she wondered. Seventy at least, perhaps older., A worn ascetic face. Yes, definitely ascetic. Very definitely a tortured face. Those large dark eyes. E1Greco eyes.

The emaciated body.

He had come here this evening, why, she wondered? Her eyes went on to Miss Bligh. Sitting a little restlessly in her chair, occasionally moving to push a table nearer someone, to offer a cushion, to move the position of the cigarette box or matches. Restless, ill at ease. She was looking at Philip Starke.

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