N or M tat-3

by Agatha Christie

  "I went muddling on, as Tommy knows, until after he disappeared. Then I was just cooking up a plan with Albert when suddenly, out of the blue, Antony Marsdon turned up. It seemed all right to begin with - the usual sort of young man that Deb often has in tow. But two things made me think a bit. First, I became more and more sure as I talked to him that I hadn't seen him before and that he never had been to the flat. The second was that, though he seemed to know all about my working at Leahampton, he assumed that Tommy was in Scotland. Now that seemed all wrong. If he knew about anyone, it would be Tommy he knew about, since I was more or less unofficial. That struck me as very odd.

  "Mr Grant had told me that Fifth Columnists were everywhere - in the most unlikely places. So why shouldn't one of them be working in Deborah's show? I wasn't convinced, but I was suspicious enough to lay a trap for him. I told him that Tommy and I had fixed up a code for communicating with each other. Our real one, of course, was a Bonzo postcard, but I told Antony a fairy tale about the Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured saying.

  "As I hoped, he rose to it beautifully! I got a letter this morning which gave him away completely.

  "The arrangements had been all worked out beforehand. All I had to do was to ring up a tailor and cancel a fitting. That was an intimation that the fish had risen."

  "Coo-er!" said Albert. "It didn't half give me a turn. I drove up with a baker's van and we dumped a pool of stuff just outside the gate. Aniseed, it was - or smelt like it."

  "And then -" Tuppence took up the tale - "I came out and walked in it. Of course it was easy for the baker's van to follow me to the station and someone came up behind me and heard me book to Yarrow. It was after that that it might have been difficult."

  "The dogs followed the scent well," said Mr Grant. "They picked it up at Yarrow station and again on the track the tire had made after you rubbed your shoe on it. It led us down to the copse and up again to the stone cross and after you where you had walked over the downs. The enemy had no idea we could follow you easily after they themselves had seen you start and driven off themselves."

  "All the same," said Albert, "it gives me a turn. Knowing you were in that house and not knowing what might come to you. Got in a back window, we did, and nabbed the foreign woman as she came down the stairs. Come in just in the nick of time, we did."

  "I knew you'd come," said Tuppence. "The thing was for me to spin things out as long as I could. I'd have pretended to tell if I hadn't seen the door opening. What was really exciting was the way I suddenly saw the whole thing and what a fool I'd been."

  "How did you see it?" asked Tommy.

  "Goosey, goosey gander," said Tuppence promptly. "When I said that to Commander Haydock he went absolutely livid. And not just because it was silly and crude. No, I saw at once that it meant something to him. And then then was the expression on that woman's face - Anna - it was like the Polish woman's, and then of course, I thought of Solomon and I saw the whole thing."

  Tommy gave a sigh of exasperation.

  "Tuppence, if you say that once again, I'll shoot you myself. Saw all what? And what on earth has Solomon got to do with it?"

  "Do you remember that two women came to Solomon with a baby and both said it was hers but Solomon said, 'Very well, cut it in two.' And the false mother said, 'All right.' But the real mother said, 'No, let the other woman have it.' You see, she couldn't face her child being killed Well, that night that Mrs Sprot shot the other woman, you all said what a miracle it was and how easily she might have shot the child. Of course, it ought to have been quite plain then! If it had been her child, she couldn't have risked that shot for a minute. It meant that Betty wasn't her child. And that's why she absolutely had to shoot the other."

  "Why?"

  "Because, of course, the other woman was the child's real mother." Tuppence's voice shook a little.

  "Poor thing - poor hunted thing. She came over a penniless refugee and gratefully agreed to let Mrs Sprot adopt her baby."

  "Why did Mrs Sprot want to adopt the child?"

  "Camouflage! Supreme psychological camouflage. You just can't conceive of a master spy dragging her kid into the business. That's the main reason why I never considered Mrs Sprot seriously. Simply because of the child. But Betty's real mother had a terrible hankering for her baby and she found out Mrs Sprot's address and came down here. She hung about waiting for her chance, and at last she got it and went off with the child.

  "Mrs Sprot, of course, was frantic. At all costs she didn't want the police. So she wrote that message and pretended she found it in her bedroom, and roped in Commander Haydock to help. Then, when we'd tracked down the wretched woman, she was taking no chances and shot her... Far from not knowing anything about firearms, she was a very fine shot! Yes, she killed that wretched woman - and because of that I've no pity for her. She was bad through and through."

  Tuppence paused, then she went on:

  "Another thing that ought to have given me a hint was the likeness between Vanda Polonska and Betty. It was Betty the woman reminded me of all along. And then the child's absurd play with my shoe-laces. How much more likely that she'd seen her so-called mother do that - not Carl von Deinim! But as soon as Mrs Sprot saw what the child was doing, she planted a lot of evidence in Carl's room for us to find and added the master touch of a shoe-lace dipped in secret ink."

  "I'm glad that Carl wasn't in it," said Tommy. "I liked him."

  "He's not been shot, has he?" asked Tuppence anxiously, noting the past tense.

  Mr Grant shook his head.

  "He's all right," he said. "As a matter of fact I've got a little surprise for you there."

  Tuppence's face lit up as she said:

  "I'm terribly glad - for Sheila's sake! Of course we were idiots to go on barking up the wrong tree after Mrs Perenna."

  "She was mixed up in some I.R.A. activities, nothing more," said Mr Grant.

  "I suspected Mrs O'Rourke a little - and sometimes the Cayleys -"

  "And I suspected Bletchley," put in Tommy.

  "And all the time," said Tuppence, "it was that milk and water creature we just thought of as Betty's mother."

  "Hardly milk and water," said Mr Grant. "A very dangerous woman and a very clever actress. And, I'm sorry to say, English by birth."

  Tuppence said:

  "Then I've no pity or admiration for her - it wasn't even her country she was working for." She looked with fresh curiosity at Mr Grant. "You found what you wanted?"

  Mr Grant nodded.

  "It was all in that battered set of duplicate children's books."

  "The ones that Betty said were nasty," Tuppence exclaimed.

  "They were nasty," said Mr Grant drily. "Little Jack Horner contained very full details of our naval dispositions. Johnny Head in Air did the same for the Air Force. Military matters were appropriately embodied in 'There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun.'"

  "And Goosey, Goosey Gander?" asked Tuppence.

  Mr Grant said:

  "Treated with the appropriate reagent, that book contains, written in invisible ink, a full list of all prominent personages who are pledged to assist an invasion of this country. Amongst them were two Chief Constables, an Air Vice-Marshal, two Generals, the Head of an Armaments Works, a Cabinet Minister, many Police Superintendents, Commanders of Local Volunteer Defense Organizations, and various military and naval lesser fry, as well as members of our own Intelligence Force."

  Tommy and Tuppence stared.

  "Incredible!" said the former.

  Grant shook his head.

  "You do not know the force of the German propaganda. It appeals to something in man, some desire or lust for power. These people were ready to betray their country not for money, but in a kind of megalomaniacal pride in what they, they themselves, were going to achieve for that country. In every land it has been the same. It is the Cult of Lucifer - Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Pride and a desire for personal glory!"

  He added:

  "You can r
ealize that, with such persons to issue contradictory orders and confuse operations, how the threatened invasion would have had every chance to succeed."

  "And now?" said Tuppence.

  Mr Grant smiled.

  "And now," he said, "let them come! We'll be ready for them!"

  Chapter 16

  "Darling," said Deborah. "Do you know I almost thought the most terrible things about you?"

  "Did you?" said Tuppence. "When?"

  Her eyes rested affectionately on her daughter's dark head.

  "That time when you sloped off to Scotland to join father and I thought you were with Aunt Gracie. I almost thought you were having an affair with someone."

  "Oh, Deb, did you?"

  "Not really, of course. Not at your age. And, of course, I know you and Carrot Top are devoted to each other. It was really an idiot called Tony Marsdon who put it into my head. Do you know, mother - I think I might tell you - he was found afterwards to be a Fifth Columnist. He always did talk rather oddly - how things would be just the same, perhaps better, if Hitler did win."

  "Did you - er - like him at all?"

  "Tony? Oh, no - he was always rather a bore. I must dance this."

  She floated away in the arms of a fair-haired young man, smiling up at him sweetly. Tuppence followed their revolutions for a few minutes, then her eyes shifted to where a tall young man in Air Force uniform was dancing with a fair-haired slender girl.

  "I do think. Tommy," said Tuppence, "that our children are rather nice."

  "Here's Sheila," said Tommy.

  He got up as Sheila Perenna came towards their table.

  She was dressed in an emerald evening dress which showed up her dark beauty. It was a sullen beauty tonight and she greeted her host and hostess somewhat ungraciously.

  "I've come, you see," she said, "as I promised. But I can't think why you wanted to ask me."

  "Because we like you," said Tommy, smiling.

  "Do you really?" said Sheila. "I can't think why. I've been perfectly foul to you both."

  She paused and murmured:

  "But I am grateful."

  Tuppence said:

  "We must find a nice partner to dance with you."

  "I don't want to dance. I loathe dancing. I came just to see you two."

  "You will like the partner we've asked to meet you," said Tuppence, smiling.

  "I -" Sheila began. Then stopped - for Carl von Deinim was walking across the floor.

  Sheila looked at him like one dazed. She muttered.

  "You -"

  "I, myself," said Carl.

  There was something a little different about Carl von Deinim this evening. Sheila stared at him, a trifle perplexed. The colour had come up in her cheeks, turning them a deep glowing red.

  She said a little breathlessly:

  "I knew that you would be all right now - but I thought they would still keep you interned?"

  Carl shook his head.

  "There is no reason to intern me."

  He went on.

  "You have got to forgive me, Sheila, for deceiving you. I am not, you see, Carl von Deinim at all. I took his name for reasons of my own."

  He looked questioningly at Tuppence, who said:

  "Go ahead. Tell her."

  "Carl von Deinim was my friend. I knew him in England some years ago. I renewed acquaintanceship with him in Germany just before the war. I was there then on special business for this country."

  "You were in the Intelligence?" asked Sheila.

  "Yes. When I was there, queer things began to happen. Once or twice I had some very near escapes. My plans were known when they should not have been known. I realized that there was something very wrong and that 'the rot,' to express it in their terms, had penetrated actually into the service in which I was. I had been let down by my own people. Carl and I had a certain superficial likeness (my Grandmother was a German), hence my suitability for work in Germany. Carl was not a Nazi. He was interested solely in his job - a job I myself had also practised - research chemistry. He decided, shortly before war broke out, to escape to England. His brothers had been sent to concentration camps. There would, he thought, be great difficulties in the way of his own escape, but in an almost miraculous fashion all these difficulties smoothed themselves out. The fact, when he mentioned it to me, made me somewhat suspicious. Why were the authorities making it so easy for von Deinim to leave Germany when his brothers and other relations were in concentration camps and he himself was suspected because of his anti-Nazi sympathies? It seemed as though they wanted him in England for some reason. My own position was becoming increasingly precarious. Carl's lodgings were in the same house as mine and one day I found him, to my sorrow, lying dead on his bed. He had succumbed to depression and taken his own life, leaving a letter behind which I read and pocketed.

  "I decided then to effect a substitution. I wanted to get out of Germany - and I wanted to know why Carl was being encouraged to do so. I dressed his body in my clothes and laid it on my bed. It was disfigured by the shot he had fired into his head. My landlady, I knew, was semi-blind.

  "With Carl von Deinim's papers I travelled to England and went to the address to which he had been recommended to go. That address was Sans Souci.

  "Whilst I was there I played the part of Carl von Deinim and never relaxed. I found arrangements had been made for me to work in the chemical factory there. At first I thought that the idea was I should be compelled to do work for the Nazis. I realized later that the part for which my poor friend had been cast was that of scapegoat.

  "When I was arrested and faked evidence. I said nothing. I wanted to leave the revelation of my own identity as late as possible. I wanted to see what would happen.

  "It was only a few days ago that I was recognized by one of our people and the truth came out."

  Sheila said reproachfully:

  "You should have told me."

  He said gently:

  "If you feel like that - I am sorry."

  His eyes looked into hers. She looked at him angrily and proudly - then the anger melted. She said:

  "I suppose you had to do what you did..."

  "Darling -"

  He caught himself up.

  "Come and dance..."

  They moved off together.

  Tuppence sighed.

  "What's the matter?" said Tommy.

  "I do hope Sheila will go on caring for him now that he isn't a German outcast with everyone against him."

  "She looks as though she cared all right."

  "Yes, but the Irish are terribly perverse. And Sheila is a born rebel."

  "Why did he search your room that day? That's what led us up the garden path so terribly."

  Tommy gave a laugh.

  "I gather he thought Mrs Blenkensop wasn't a very convincing person. In fact - while we were suspecting him he was suspecting us."

  "Hallo, you two," said Derek Beresford as he and his partner danced past his parents' table. "Why don't you come and dance?"

  He smiled encouragingly at them.

  "They are so kind to us, bless 'em," said Tuppence.

  Presently the twins and their partners returned and sat down.

  Derek said to his father:

  "Glad you got a job all right. Not very interesting, I suppose?"

  "Mainly routine," said Tommy.

  "Never mind, you're doing something. That's the great thing."

  "And I'm glad mother was allowed to go and work, too," said Deborah. "She looks ever so much happier. It wasn't too dull, was it, mother?"

  "I didn't find it at all dull," said Tuppence.

  "Good," said Deborah. She added, "When the war's over, I'll be able to tell you something about my job. It's really frightfully interesting, but very confidential."

  "How thrilling," said Tuppence.

  "Oh, it is! Of course, it's not so thrilling as flying -"

  She looked enviously at Derek.

  She said, "He's going to be recommended for
-"

  Derek said quickly:

  "Shut up, Deb."

  Tommy said:

  "Hallo, Derek, what have you been up to?"

  "Oh, nothing much - sort of show all of us are doing. Don't know why they pitched on me," murmured the young airman, his face scarlet. He looked as embarrassed as though he had been accused of the most deadly of sins.

  He got up and the fair-haired girl got up too.

  Derek said:

  "Mustn't miss any of this - last night of my leave."

  "Come on, Charles," said Deborah.

  The two of them floated away with their partners.

  Tuppence prayed inwardly:

  "Oh, let them be safe - don't let anything happen to them..."

  She looked up to meet Tommy's eyes. He said, "About that child - shall we?"

  "Betty? Oh. Tommy, I'm so glad you've thought of it, too! I thought it was just me being maternal. You really mean it?"

  "That we should adopt her? Why not? She's had a raw deal, and it will be fun for us to have something young growing up."

  "Oh, Tommy!"

  She stretched out her hand and squeezed his. They looked at each other.

  "We always do want the same things," said Tuppence happily.

  Deborah, passing Derek on the floor, murmured to him:

  "Just look at those two - actually holding hands! They're rather sweet, aren't they. We must do all we can to make up to them for having such a dull time in this war..."

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