AGATHA CHRISTIE. By the Pricking of My Thumbs

‘People are so very bossy,’ said Mrs Lancaster. ‘They hurry you so. They don’t give you time to arrange things or pack properly or anything. Kindly meant, I’m sure. Of course, I’m very fond of dear Nellie Bligh, but she’s a very masterful kind of woman. I sometimes think,’ Mrs Lancaster added, bending forward to Tuppence, ‘I sometimes think, you know, that she is not quite -‘ she tapped her forehead significantly. ‘Of course it does happen. Especially to spinsters. Unmarried women, you know. Very given to good works and all that but they take very odd fancies sometimes. Curates suffer a great deal. They seem to think sometimes, these women, that the curate has made · them an offer of marriage but really he never thought of doing anything of the kind. Oh yes, poor Nellie. So sensible in some ways. She’s been wonderful in the parish here. And she was always a first-class secretary, I believe. But all the same’she has some very curious ideas at times. Like taking me away at a moment’s notice from dear Sunny Ridge, and then up to Cumberland – a very bleak house, and, again quite suddenly, bringing me here ‘ ‘Are you living here?’ said Tuppence.

‘Well, if you can call it that. It’s a very peculiar arrangement altogether. I’ve only been here two days.’ ‘Before that, you were at Rosetrellis Court, in Cumberland ‘ ‘Yes, I believe that was the name of it. Not such a pretty name as Sunny Ridge, do you think? In fact I never really settled down, if you know what I mean. And it wasn’t nearly as well run. The service wasn’t as good and they had a very inferior brand of coffee. Still, I was getting used to things and I had found one or two interesting acquaintances there. One of them who knew an aunt of mine quite well years ago in India.

It’s so nice, you know, when you fred connections.’

‘It must be,’ said Tuppence.

Mrs Lancaster continued cheerfully.

‘Now let me see, you came to Sunny Ridge, but not to stay, I think. I think you came to see one of the guests there.’

‘My husband’s aunt,’ said Tuppence, ‘Miss Fanshawe.’

‘Oh yes. Yes of course. I remember now. And wasn’t there something about a child of yours behind the chimney piece?’ ‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘no, it wasn’t my child.’

‘But that’s why you’ve come here, isn’t it? They’ve had trouble with a chimney here. A bird got into it, I understand.

This place wants repairing. I don’t like being here at a/1. No, not at all and I shall tell Nellie so as soon as I see her.’ ‘You’re lodgifng with Mrs Perry?’

‘Well, in a way I am, and in a way I’m not. I think I could trust you with a secret, couldn’t I?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘you can umst me.’

‘Well, I’m not really here at all. I mean not in this pan of the house. This is the Perrys’ pan of the house.’ She leaned forward. ‘There’s another one, you know, if you go upstairs.

Come with me. I’ll take you.’

Tuppence rose. She felt that she was in rather a crazy kind of dream.

‘I’ll just lock the door first, it’s safer,’ i’d Mrs Lancaster.

She led Tuppence up a rather narrow staircase to the first floor. She took her through a double bedroom with signs of occupation – presumably the Perrys’ room – and through a door leading out of that into another room next door. It contained a washstand and a tall wardrobe of maple wood.

Nothing else. Mrs Lancaster went to the maple wardrobe, fumbled at the back of it, then with sudden ease pushed it aside. There seemed to be castors on the wardrobe and it rolled out from the wall easily enough. Behind the wardrobe there was, rather strangely, Tuppence thought, a grate. Over the mantelpiece there was a mirror with a small shelf under the mirror on which were china figures of birds.

To Tuppence’s astonishment Mrs Lancaster seized the bird in the middle of the mantelshelf and gave it a sharp pull.

Apparently the bird was stuck to the mantelpiece. In fact, by a swift touch Tuppence perceived that all the birds were fn’mly fastened down. But as a result of Mrs Lancaster’s action there was a click and the whole mantelpiece came away from the wall and swung forward.

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