Destination Unknown

by Agatha Christie

  You slip on a lump and over you go.

  Hilary repeated it falteringly now.

  "Exactly - why did you not respond with that immediately as ordered?"

  "You don't understand. I have been ill. I was in a plane crash and afterwards in hospital with concussion. It's affected my memory in all sorts of ways. Everything long ago is clear enough, but there are terrible blanks - great gaps." She let her hands rise to her head. She found it easy enough to go on with a real tremor in her voice. "You can't understand how frightening that is. I keep feeling that I've forgotten important things - really important things. The more I try to get them back, the less they will come."

  "Yes," said Laurier, "the airplane crash was unfortunate." He spoke in a cold businesslike way. "It is going to be a question of whether you have the necessary stamina and courage to continue your journey."

  "Of course I'm going to continue my journey," cried Hilary. "My husband -" her voice broke.

  He smiled, but not a very pleasant smile. Faintly catlike.

  "Your husband," he said, "is, I understand, awaiting you with eagerness."

  Hilary's voice broke.

  "You have no idea," she said. "no idea what it's been like these months since he went away."

  "Do you think the British authorities came to a definite conclusion as to what you did or did not know?"

  Hilary stretched out her hands with a wide gesture.

  "How do I know - how can I tell? They seemed satisfied."

  "All the same..." he stopped.

  "I think it quite possible," said Hilary slowly, "that I have been followed here. I can't pick out any one particular person but I have had the feeling ever since I left England that I am under observation."

  "Naturally," said Laurier, coldly. "We expected no less."

  "I thought I ought to warn you."

  "My dear Mrs. Betterton, we are not children. We understand what we are doing."

  "I'm sorry," said Hilary, humbly. "I'm afraid I'm very ignorant."

  "It does not matter if you are ignorant so long as you are obedient."

  "I shall be obedient," said Hilary in a low voice.

  "You were closely watched in England, I have no doubt, ever since the day of your husband's departure. Nevertheless, the message came to you, did it not?"

  "Yes," said Hilary.

  "Now," said Laurier in a businesslike manner, "I will give you your instructions, Madame."

  "Please do."

  "From here you will proceed to Marrakesh the day after tomorrow. That is as you planned and in accordance with your reservations."

  "Yes."

  "The day after you arrive there you will receive a telegram from England. What it will say I do not know, but it will be sufficient for you to make plans immediately to return to England."

  "I am to return to England?"

  "Please listen. I have not finished. You will book a seat on a plane leaving Casablanca the following day."

  "Supposing I cannot get reservations - supposing the seats are all booked?"

  "They will not be all booked. Everything is arranged for. Now, you understand your instructions?"

  "I understand."

  "Then please return to where your guide is waiting. You have been long enough in this ladies,' toilet. By the way, you have become friendly with an American woman and an English woman who are now staying at the Palais Jamail?"

  "Yes. Has that been a mistake? It has been difficult to avoid."

  "Not at all. It suits our plans admirably. If you can persuade one or other of them to accompany you to Marrakesh, so much the better. Goodbye, Madame."

  "Au revoir, Monsieur."

  "It is unlikely," Monsieur Laurier told her with a complete lack of interest, "that I shall meet you again."

  Hilary retraced her steps to the ladies' toilet. This time she found the other door unfastened. A few minutes later she had rejoined the guide in the tea room.

  "I got very nice car waiting," said the guide. "I take you now for very pleasant instructive drive."

  The expedition proceeded according to plan.

  III

  "So you're leaving for Marrakesh tomorrow," said Miss Hetherington. "You haven't made a very long stay in Fez, have you? Wouldn't it have been much easier to go to Marrakesh first and then to Fez, returning to Casablanca afterwards?"

  "I suppose it would really," said Hilary, "but reservations are rather difficult to obtain. It's pretty crowded here."

  "Not with English people," said Miss Hetherington, rather disconsolately. "It really seems dreadful nowadays the way one meets hardly any of one's fellow countrymen." She looked round her disparagingly and said, "It's all the French."

  Hilary smiled faintly. The fact that Morocco was a French colonial possession did not seem to count much with Miss Hetherington. Hotels anywhere abroad she regarded as the prerogative of the English travelling public.

  "The French and the Germans and the Greeks," said Mrs. Calvin Baker, with a little cackle of laughter. "That scruffy little old man is a Greek, I believe."

  "I was told he was Greek," said Hilary.

  "Looks like a person of importance," said Mrs. Baker. "You see how the waiters fly about for him."

  "They give the English hardly any attention nowadays," said Miss Hetherington, gloomily. "They always give them the most terrible back bedrooms - the ones maids and valets used to have in the old days."

  "Well, I can't say I've found any fault with the accommodation I've had since I came to Morocco," said Mrs. Calvin Baker. "I've managed to get a most comfortable room and bath every time."

  "You're an American," said Miss Hetherington, sharply, and with some venom in her voice. She clicked her knitting needles furiously.

  "I wish I could persuade you two to come to Marrakesh with me," said Hilary. "It's been so pleasant meeting you and talking to you here. Really, it's very lonely travelling all by oneself."

  "I've been to Marrakesh," said Miss Hetherington in a shocked voice.

  Mrs. Calvin Baker, however, appeared to be somewhat sold on the idea.

  "Well, it certainly is an idea," she said. "It's over a month since I was in Marrakesh. I'd be glad to go there again for a spell, and I could show you around, too, Mrs. Betterton and prevent you being imposed upon. It's not until you've been to a place and looked around it that you learn the ropes. I wonder now. I'll go to the office and see what I can fix up."

  Miss Hetherington said acidly, when she had departed,

  "That's exactly like these American women. Rushing from place to place, never settling down anywhere. Egypt one day, Palestine the next. Sometimes I really don't think they know what country they're in."

  She shut her lips with a snap and rising and gathering up her knitting carefully, she left the Turkish room with a little nod to Hilary as she went. Hilary glanced down at her watch. She felt inclined not to change this evening for dinner, as she usually did. She sat on there alone in the low, rather dark room with its Oriental hangings. A waiter looked in, then went away after turning on two lamps. They did not give out very much light and the room seemed pleasantly dim. It had an Eastern sort of serenity. Hilary sat back on the low divan, thinking of the future.

  Only yesterday she had been wondering if the whole business upon which she had been engaged was a mare's nest. And now - now she was on the point of starting on her real journey. She must be careful, very careful. She must make no slip. She must be Olive Betterton, moderately well educated, inartistic, conventional but with definite Left Wing sympathies, and a woman who was devoted to her husband.

  "I must make no mistake," said Hilary to herself, under her breath.

  How strange it felt to be sitting here alone in Morocco. She felt as though she had got into a land of mystery and enchantment. That dim lamp beside her! If she were to take the carved brass between her hands and rub, would a Djin of the Lamp appear? As the thought came to her, she started. Materialising quite suddenly from beyond the lamp, she saw the small wr
inkled face and pointed beard of M. Aristides. He bowed politely before sitting down beside her, saying;

  "You permit, Madame?"

  Hilary responded politely.

  Taking out his cigarette case he offered her a cigarette. She accepted and he lit one himself also.

  "It pleases you, this country, Madame?" he asked after a moment or two.

  "I have been here only a very short time," said Hilary. "I find it so far quite enchanting."

  "Ah. And you have been into the old city? You liked it?"

  "I think it is wonderful."

  "Yes, it is wonderful. It is the past there - the past of commerce, of intrigue, of whispering voices, shuttered activities, all the mystery and passion of a city enclosed in its narrow streets and walls. Do you know what I think of, Madame, when I walk through the streets of Fez?"

  "No?"

  "I think of your Great West Road in London. I think of your great factory buildings on each side of the road. I think of those buildings lit throughout with their neon lighting and the people inside, that you see so clearly from the road as you drive along in your car. There is nothing hidden, there is nothing mysterious. There are not even curtains to the windows. No, they do their work there with the whole world observing them if it wants to do so. It is like slicing off the top of an anthill."

  "You mean," said Hilary, interested, "that it is the contrast that interests you?"

  M. Aristides nodded his elderly, tortoise like head.

  "Yes," he said. "There everything is in the open and in the old streets of Fez nothing is a jour. Everything is hidden, dark... But -" he leant forward and tapped a finger on the little brass coffee table "- but the same things go on. The same cruelties, the same oppressions, the same wish for power, the same bargaining and haggling."

  "You think that human nature is the same everywhere?" Hilary asked.

  "In every country. In the past as in the present there are always the two things that rule. Cruelty and benevolence! One or the other. Sometimes both." He continued with hardly a change of manner, "They have told me, Madame, that you were in a very bad airplane accident the other day at Casablanca?"

  "Yes, that is true."

  "I envy you," M. Aristides said unexpectedly.

  Hilary looked at him in an astonished manner. Again he waggled his head in vehement assertion.

  "Yes," he added, "you are to be envied. You have had an experience. I should like the experience of having come so near to death. To have that, yet survive - do you not feel yourself different since then, Madame?"

  "In a rather unfortunate way," said Hilary. "I had concussion and that gives me very bad headaches, and it also affects my memory."

  "Those are mere inconveniences," said M. Aristides with a wave of the hand, "but it is an adventure of the spirit you have passed through, is it not?"

  "It is true," said Hilary slowly, "that I have passed through an adventure of the spirit."

  She was thinking of a bottle of Vichy water and a little heap of sleeping pills.

  "I have never had that experience," said M. Aristides in his dissatisfied voice. "So many other things, but not that."

  He rose, bowed, said, "Mes homages, Madame," and left her.

  Chapter 8

  How alike, Hilary thought to herself, all airports were! They had a strange anonymity about them. They were all at some distance from the town or city they served, and in consequence you had a queer, stateless feeling of existing nowhere. You could fly from London to Madrid, to Rome, to Istanbul, to Cairo, to anywhere you liked and if your journey was a through one by air, you would never have the faintest idea of what any of these cities looked like! If you caught a glimpse of them from the air, they were only a kind of glorified map, something built with a child's box of bricks.

  And why, she thought vexedly, looking round her, does one always have to be at these places so much too early?

  They had spent nearly half an hour in the waiting room. Mrs. Calvin Baker, who had decided to accompany Hilary to Marrakesh had been talking non-stop ever since their arrival. Hilary had answered almost mechanically. But now she realised that the flow had been diverted. Mrs. Baker had now switched her attention to two other travellers who were sitting near her. They were both tall, fair young men. One an American with a broad, friendly grin, the other a rather solemn looking Dane or Norwegian. The Dane talked heavily, slowly, and rather pedantically in careful English. The American was clearly delighted to find another American traveller. Presently, in conscientious fashion, Mrs. Calvin Baker turned to Hilary.

  "Mr -? I'd like to have you know my friend, Mrs. Betterton."

  "Andrew Peters - Andy to my friends."

  The other young man rose to his feet, bowed rather stiffly and said, "Torquil Ericsson."

  "So now we're all acquainted," said Mrs. Baker happily. "Are we all going to Marrakesh? It's my friend's first visit there -"

  "I, too," said Ericsson. "I, too, for the first time go."

  "That goes for me too," said Peters.

  The loud speaker was suddenly switched on and a hoarse announcement in French was made. The words were barely distinguishable but it appeared to be their summons to the plane.

  There were four passengers besides Mrs. Baker and Hilary. Besides Peters and Ericsson, there was a thin, tall Frenchman, and a severe-looking nun.

  It was a clear, sunny day and flying conditions were good. Leaning back in her seat with half closed eyes, Hilary studied her fellow passengers, seeking to distract herself that way from the anxious questionings which were going on in her mind.

  One seat ahead of her, on the other side of the aisle, Mrs. Calvin Baker in her grey travelling costume looked like a plump and contented duck. A small hat with wings was perched on her blue hair and she was turning the pages of a glossy magazine. Occasionally she leaned forward to tap the shoulder of the man sitting in front of her, who was the cheerful-looking fair young American, Peters. When she did so he turned round, displaying his good-humoured grin, and responding energetically to her remarks. How very good natured and friendly Americans were, Hilary thought to herself. So different from the stiff travelling English. She could not imagine Miss Hetherington, for instance, falling into easy conversation with a young man even of her own nation, on a plane, and she doubted if the latter would have responded as good-naturedly as this young American was doing.

  Across the aisle from her was the Norwegian, Ericsson.

  As she caught his eye, he made her a stiff little bow and leaning across offered her his magazine, which he was just closing. She thanked him and took it. In the seat behind him was the thin, dark Frenchman. His legs were stretched out and he seemed to be asleep.

  Hilary turned her head over her shoulder. The severe-faced nun was sitting behind her, and the nun's eyes, impersonal, incurious, met Hilary's with no expression in them. She sat immovable, her hands clasped. It seemed to Hilary an odd trick of time that a woman in traditional medieval costume should be travelling by air in the twentieth century.

  Six people, thought Hilary, travelling together for a few hours, travelling to different places with different aims, scattering perhaps at the end of that few hours and never meeting again. She had read a novel which had hinged on a similar theme and where the lives of those six people were followed up. The Frenchman, she thought, must be on a holiday. He seemed so tired. The young American was perhaps a student of some kind. Ericsson was perhaps going to take up a job. The nun was doubtless bound for her convent.

  Hilary closed her eyes and forgot her fellow travellers. She puzzled, as she had done all last night, over the instructions that had been given her. She was to return to England! It seemed crazy! Or could it be that in some way she had been found wanting, was not trusted: had failed to supply certain words or credentials that the real Olive would have supplied. She sighed and moved restlessly. "Well," she thought, "I can do no more than I am doing. If I've failed - I've failed. At any rate, I've done my best."

  Then another th
ought struck her. Henri Laurier had accepted it as natural and inevitable that a close watch was being kept upon her in Morocco - was this a means of disarming suspicion? With the abrupt return of Mrs. Betterton to England it would surely be assumed that she had not come to Morocco in order to "disappear" like her husband. Suspicion would relax - she would be regarded as a bona fide traveller.

  She would leave for England, going by Air France via Paris - and perhaps in Paris -

  Yes, of course - in Paris. In Paris where Tom Betterton had disappeared. How much easier to stage a disappearance there. Perhaps Tom Betterton had never left Paris. Perhaps - tired of profitless speculation Hilary went to sleep. She woke - dozed again, occasionally glancing without interest, at the magazine she held. Awakening suddenly from a deeper sleep, she noticed that the plane was rapidly losing height and circling round. She glanced at her watch, but it was still some time earlier than the estimated time of arrival. Moreover, looking down through the window, she could not see any signs of an aerodrome beneath.