By the Pricking of My Thumbs

by Agatha Christie

  · 'Someone devoted. Dedicated.' 'Perhaps he just added that for good measure,' said Tommy.

  He added, 'I wonder about that Irish nurse.' 'The nice one we gave the fur stole to?' 'Yes, the nice one Aunt Ada liked. The very sympathetic one. She seemed so fond of everyone, so sorry if they died. She was very worded when she spoke to us, wasn't she? You said so - she was leaving, and she didn't really tell us why.'

  'I suppose she might have been a rather neurotic type.

  Nurses aren't supposed to be too sympathetic. It's bad for patients. They are told to be cool and efficient and inspire confidence.' 'Nurse Beresford speaking,' said Tommy, and grinned.

  'But to come back to the picture,' said Tuppence. 'If we just concentrate on the picture. Because I think it's very interesting what you told me about Mrs Boscowan, when you went to see her. She sounds - she sounds interesting.' he was interesting, said Tommy. 'Quite the most interesting person I think we've come across in this unusual business.

  The sort of person who seems to know things, but not by thinking about them. It was as though she knew something about this place that I didn't, and that perhaps you don't. But she knows something.' 'It was odd what she said about the boat,' said Tuppence.

  'That the picture hadn't had a boat originally. Why do you think it's got a boat now?' 'Oh,' said Tommy, 'I don't know.' '.Was there any name painted on the boat? I don't remember seeing one - but then I never looked at it very closely.' 'It's got Waterlily on it.' 'A very appropriate name for a boat - what does that remind me 'I've no idea.' 'And she was quite positive that her husband didn't paint that boat - He could have put it in afterwards.' 'She says not - she was very definite.' 'Of course,' said Tuppence, 'there's another possibility we haven't gone into. About my coshing, I mean - the outsider somebody perhaps who followed me here from Market Basing that day to see what I was up to. Because I'd been there asking all those questions. Going into all those house agents. Blodget & Burgess and all the rest of them. They put me offabout the house. They were evasive. More evasive than would be natural.

  It was the same sort of evasion as we had when we were trying to fred out where Mrs Lancaster had gone. Lawyers and banks, an owner who can't be communicated with because he's sort of pattern. They send someone to follow car, they want to see what Iarn doing, and in due course I am coshed. Which brings us,' said Tuppence, 'to the gravetone in the churchyard. Why didn't anyone want me m look at old gravestones? They were all pulled about anyway - a group of boys, I should say, who'd got bored with wrecking telephone boxes, and went into the churchyard to have some fun and sacrilege behind the church.' 'You say there were painted words - or roughly carved words?' 'Yes - done with a chisel, I should think. Someone who gave it up as a bad job.

  'The name - Lily Waters - and the age - seven years old.

  That was done properly - and then the other bits of words - It looked like "Whosoever..." and then "offend least of these" 'Sounds familiar.' 'It should do. It's de£mitely biblical - but done by someone who wasn't quite sure what the words he wanted to remember were ' 'Very odd - the whole g.' 'And why anyone should object - I was only trying to help the vicar - and the poor man who was trying to fm.d his lost child - There, we are - back to the lost child motif again - Mrs Lancaster talked about a poor child walled up behind a fireplace, and Mrs Copleigh chattered about walled-up nuns and murdered children, and a mother who killed a baby, and a lover, and an illegitimate baby, and a suicide - It's all old tales and gossip and hearsay and legends, mixed up in the most glorious kind of hasty pudding! All the same, Tommy, there was one actual fact - not just hearsay or legend ' 'You mean?' 'I mean that in the chinmey of this Canal House, this old rag doll fell out - A child's doll. It had been there a very, very long time, all covered with soot and rubble ' 'Pity we haven't got it,' said Tommy.

  ': 'I have,' said Tuppence. She spoke triumphantly.

  'You brought it away with you?'

  'Yes. It startled me, you know. I thought I'd like to take it and examine it. Nobody wanted it or anything. I should imagine the Perrys would just have thrown it into the ashcan straight away. I've got it here.' She rose from her sofa, went to her suitcase, rummaged a little and then brought out something wrapped in newspaper.

  'Here you are, Tommy, have a look.' With some curiosity Tommy unwrapped the newspaper. He took out carefully the wreck of a child's doll. It's limp arms and legs hung down, faint festoons of clothing dropped off as he touched them. The body seemed made of a very thin suede leather sewn up over a body that had once been plump with sawdust and now was sagging because here and there the sawdust had escaped. As Tommy handled it, and he was quite gentle in his touch, the body suddenly disintegrated flapping over in a great wound from which there poured out a cupful of sawdust and with it small pebbles that ran to and fro about the floor. Tommy went round picking them up carefully.

  'Good lord,' he said to himself, 'good lord?

  'How odd,' Tuppence said, 'it's full of pebbles. Is that a bit of the chimney disintegrating do you think? The plaster or something crumbling away?' 'No,' said Tommy. 'These pebbles were inside the body.' He had gathered them up now carefully, he poked his finger into the carcase of the doll and a few more pebbles fell out. He took them over to the window and turned them over in his hand. Tuppence watched him with uncomprehending eyes.

  'It's a funny idea, stuffing a doll with pebbles,' she said.

  'Well, they're not exactly the usual kind of pebbles,' said Tommy. 'There was a very good reason for it, I should imagine.' 'What do you mean?' 'Have a look at them. Handle a few.' She took some wonderingly from his hand.

  'They're nothing but pebbles,' she said. 'Some are rather large and some small. Why are you so excited?' 'Because, Tuppence, I'm beginning to understand things.

  Those aren't pebbles, my dear girl, they're d/amonds.'

  CHAPTER 15 Evening at the Vicarage

  'Diamonds? Tuppence gasped.

  Looking from him to the pebbles she still held in her hand, she said: 'These dusty looking things, diamonds?' Tommy nodded.

  'It's beginning to make sense now, you see, Tuppence. It ties up. The Canal House. The picture. You wait until Ivor Smith hears about that doll. He's got a bouquet waiting for you already, Tuppence-' 'What for?' 'For helping to round up a big criminal gang!' 'You and your Ivor Smith! I suppose that's where you've been all this last week, abandoning me in my last days of convalescence in that dreary hospital - just when I wanted brilliant conversation and a lot of cheering up.' 'I came in visiting hours practically every evening.' 'You didn't tell me much.' 'I was warned by that dragon of a sister not to excite you. But Ivor himself is coming here the day after tomorrow, and we've got a little social evening laid on at the vicarage.' 'Who's coming?' 'Mrs Boscowan, one of the big local landowners, your friend Miss Nellie Bligh, the vicar, of course, you and I ' 'And Mr Ivor Smith - what's his real name?' 'As far as I know, it's Ivor Smith.' 'You are always so cautious -' Tuppence laughed suddenly.

  'What's amusing you?' 'I was just thinking that I'd like to have seen you and Albert discovering secret drawers in Aunt Ada's desk.' 'All the credit goes to Albert. He positively delivered a lecture on the subject. He learnt all about it in his youth from an antique dealer.' 'Fancy your Aunt Ada really leaving a secret document like that, all done up with seals all over. She didn't actually know anything, but she was ready to believe there was somebody in Sunny Ridge who was dangerous. I wonder if she knew it was Miss Packard.' 'That's only your idea.' 'It's a very good idea flits a criminal gang we're looking for.

  They'd need a place like Sunny Ridge, respectable and well run , with a competent criminal to run it. Someone properly qualified to have access to drugs whenever she needed them.

  And by accepting any deaths that occurred as quite natural, it would influence a doctor to think they were quite all right.' 'You've got it all taped out, but actually the real reason you started to suspect Miss Packard was because you didn't like her teeth ' 'The better to eat you with,' said Tuppence me
ditatively.

  'FII tell you something else, Tommy - Supposing this picture - the picture of the Canal House - never belonged to Mrs Lancaster at all ' 'But we know it did.' Tommy stared at her.

  'No, we don't. We only know that Miss Packard said so - It was Miss Packard who said that Mrs Lancaster gave it to Aunt Ada.' 'But why should -' Tommy stopped 'Perhaps that's why Mrs Lancaster was taken away - so that she shouldn't tell us that the picture didn't belong to her, and that she didn't give it to Aunt Ada.' 'I think that's a very far-fetched idea.

  'Perhaps - But the picture was painted in Sutton Chancellor - The house in the picture is a house in Sutton Chancellor -We've reason to believe that that house is - or was - used as one of their hidey-holes by a criminal association - Mr Eccles is believed to be the man behind this gang. Mr Eccles was the man responsible for sending Mrs Johnson to remove Mrs Lancaster. I don't believe Mrs Lancaster was ever in Sutton Chancellor, or was ever in the Canal House, or had a picture of it - though I think she heard someone at Sunny Ridge talk about it - Mrs ocoa perhaps? So she started chattering, and that was dangerous, so she had m be removed. And one day I shall fred her! Mark my words, Tommy.' 'You look remarkably well, if I may say so, Mrs Tommy,' said Mr Ivor Smith.

  'I'm feeling perfectly well again,' said Tuppence. 'Silly of me to let myself get knocked out, I suppose.'

  'You deserve a medal - Especially for this doll business.

  How you get on to these things, I don't know?

  'She's the perfect terrier,' said Tommy. 'Puts her nose down on the trail and off she goes.'

  'You're not keeping me out of this party tonight,' said Tuppence suspiciously.

  'Certainly not. A certain amount of things, you know, have been cleared up. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you two.

  We were getting somewhere, mind you, with this remarkably clever assodation of criminals who have been responsible for a stupendous amount of robberies over the last five or six years.

  As I told Tommy when he came to ask me if I knew anything about our clever legal gentleman, Mr Ecdes, we've had our suspicions of him for a long time but he's not the man you'll easily get evidence against. Too careful by far. He practises as a solicitor - an ordinary genuine business with perfectly genuine clients.

  'As I told Tommy, one of the important points has been this chain of houses. Genuine respectable houses with quite genuine respectable people living in them, living there for a short time - then leaving.

  'Now, thanks to you, Mrs Tommy, and your investigation of chimneys and dead birds, we've found quite certainly one of those houses. The house where a particular amount of the spoil was concealed. It's been quite a clever system, you know, getting jewels or various things of that kind changed into packets of rough diamonds, hiding them, and then when the time comes they are flown abroad, or taken abroad in fishing boats, when all the hue and cry about one particular robbery has died down.' 'What about the Perrys? Are they - I hope they're not mixed up in it?' 'One can't be sure,' said Mr Smith. 'No, one can't be sure.

  It seems likely to me that Mrs Perry, at least, knows something, or certainly knew something once.' 'Do you mean she really is one of the criminals?' 'It mightn't be that. It might be, you know, that they had a hold on her.' 'What sort of hold?' 'Well, you'll keep this confidential., I know you can hold your tongue in these things, but the local police have always had the idea that the husband, Amos Perry, might just possibly have been the man who was responsible for a wave of child murders a good many years ago. He is not fully competent mentally. The medical opinion was that he might quite easily have had a compulsion to do away with children. There was never any direct evidence, but his wife was perhaps over° anxious to provide him always with adequate alibis. If so, you see, that might give a gang of unscrupulous people a hold on her and tliey may have put her in as tenant of part of a house where they knew she'd keep her mouth shut. They may really have had some form of damaging evidence against her husband. You met them - what do you feel about them both, Mrs Tommy?' 'I liked her,' said Tuppence. 'I think she was - well, as I say I summed her up as a friendly witch, given to white magic but not black.' 'What about him?' 'I was frightened of him,' said Tuppence. 'Not all the time.

  Just once or twice. He seemed suddenly to go big and terrifying. Just for a minute or two. I couldn't think what I was frightened of, but I was frightened. I suppose, as you say, I felt that he wasn't quite right in his head.'

  'A lot of people are like that,' said Mr Smith.'And very often they're not dangerous at all. But you can't tell, and you can't be 'What are we going to do at the vicarage tonight?' 'Ask some questions. See a few people. Find out things that may give us a little more of the information we need.' 'Will Major Waters be there? The man who wrote to the vicar about his child?' 'There doesn't seem to be any such person! There was a coffin buried where the old gravestone had been removed - a child's coWm, lead lined - And it was full of loot. Jewels and gold objects from a burglary near St Albans. The letter to the vicar was with the object of £mding out what had happened to the grave. The local lads' sabotage had messed things up.'

  III

  'I am so deeply sorry, my dear,' said the vicar, coming to meet Tuppence with both hands outstretched. 'Yes, indeed, my dear, I have been so terribly upset that this should happen to you when you have been so kind. When you were doing this to help me. I really felt - yes, indeed I have, that it was all my fault. I shouldn't have let you go poking among gravestones, though really we had no reason to believe - no reason at all that some band of young hooligans ' 'Now don't disturb yourself, Vicar,' said Miss Bligh, suddenly appearing at his elbow. 'Mrs Beresford knows, I'm sure, that it was nothing to do with you. It was indeed extremely kind of her to offer to help, but it's all over now, and she's quite well again. Aren't you, Mrs Beresford?' 'Certainly,' said Tuppence, faintly annoyed, however, that Miss Bllgh should answer for her health so confidently.

  'Come and sit down here and have a cushion behind your back,' said Miss Bligh.

  'I don't need a cushion,' said Tuppence, refusing to accept the chair that Miss Bligh was officiously pulling forward. Instead, she sat down in an upright and exceedingly uncomfortable chair on the other side of the fireplace.

  There was a sharp rap on tlae front door and everyone in the room jumped. Miss Bligh hurried out.

  'Don't worry, Vicar,' she said. 'I'll go.' 'Please, ffyou will be so kiod.' There were low voices outside in the hall, then Miss Bligh came back shepherding a big woman in a brocade shift, and behind her a very tall thitt man, a man of cadaverous appearance. Tuppence stared at him. A black cloak was round his shoulders, and his thin gaunt face was like the face from another century. He might gave come, Tuppence thought, straight out of an El Greco canvas.

  '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 s
ummoned 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?'