The Man in the Brown Suit

by Agatha Christie

  I refolded the telegram and got rid of my Governmental friend. I don’t like the prospect of being hungry, but I’m not alarmed for my personal safety. Smuts is perfectly capable of dealing with the revolution. But I would give a considerable sum of money for a drink! I wonder if Pagett will have the sense to bring a bottle of whisky with him when he arrives tomorrow?

  I put on my hat and went out, intending to buy a few souvenirs. The curio shops in Jo’burg are rather pleasant. I was just studying a window full of imposing karosses, when a man coming out of the shop cannoned into me. To my surprise it turned out to be Race.

  I can’t flatter myself that he looked pleased to see me. As a matter of fact, he looked distinctly annoyed, but I insisted on his accompanying me back to the hotel. I get tired of having no one but Miss Pettigrew to talk to.

  “I had no idea you were in Jo’burg,” I said chattily. “When did you arrive?”

  “Last night.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “With friends.”

  He was disposed to be extraordinarily taciturn, and seemed to be embarrassed by my questions.

  “I hope they keep poultry,” I remarked. “A diet of new-laid eggs, and the occasional slaughtering of an old cock, will be decidedly agreeable soon, from all I hear.”

  “By the way,” I said, when we were back in the hotel, “have you heard that Miss Beddingfeld is alive and kicking?”

  He nodded.

  “She gave us quite a fright,” I said airily. “Where the devil did she go to that night, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  “She was on the island all the time.”

  “Which island? Not the one with the young man on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How very improper,” I said. “Pagett will be quite shocked. He always did disapprove of Anne Beddingfeld. I suppose that was the young man she originally intended to meet in Durban?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t tell me anything if you don’t want to,” I said, by way of encouraging him.

  “I fancy that this is a young man we should all be very glad to lay our hands on.”

  “Not—?” I cried, in rising excitement.

  He nodded.

  “Harry Rayburn, alias Harry Lucas—that’s his real name, you know. He’s given us all the slip once more, but we’re bound to rope him in soon.”

  “Dear me, dear me,” I murmured.

  “We don’t suspect the girl of complicity in any case. On her side it’s—just a love affair.”

  I always did think Race was in love with Anne. The way he said those last words made me feel sure of it.

  “She’s gone to Beira,” he continued rather hastily.

  “Indeed,” I said, staring. “How do you know?”

  “She wrote to me from Bulawayo, telling me she was going home that way. The best thing she can do, poor child.”

  “Somehow, I don’t fancy she is in Beira,” I said meditatively.

  “She was just starting when she wrote.”

  I was puzzled. Somebody was clearly lying. Without stopping to reflect that Anne might have excellent reasons for her misleading statements, I gave myself up to the pleasure of scoring off Race. He is always so cocksure. I took the telegram from my pocket and handed it to him.

  “Then how do you explain this?” I asked nonchalantly.

  He seemed dumbfounded. “She said she was just starting for Beira,” he said, in a dazed voice.

  I know that Race is supposed to be clever. He is, in my opinion, rather a stupid man. It never seemed to occur to him that girls do not always tell the truth.

  “Kimberley too. What are they doing there?” he muttered.

  “Yes, that surprised me. I should have thought Miss Anne would have been in the thick of it here, gathering copy for the Daily Budget.”

  “Kimberley,” he said again. The place seemed to upset him. “There’s nothing to see there—the pits aren’t being worked.”

  “You know what women are,” I said vaguely.

  He shook his head and went off. I have evidently given him something to think about.

  No sooner had he departed than my Government official reappeared.

  “I hope you will forgive me for troubling you again, Sir Eustace,” he apologized. “But there are one or two questions I should like to ask you.”

  “Certainly, my dear fellow,” I said cheerfully. “Ask away.”

  “It concerns your secretary—”

  “I know nothing about him,” I said hastily. “He foisted himself upon me in London, robbed me of valuable papers—for which I shall be hauled over the coals—and disappeared like a conjuring trick at Cape Town. It’s true that I was at the Falls at the same time as he was, but I was at the hotel, and he was on an island. I can assure you that I never set eyes upon him the whole time that I was there.”

  I paused for breath.

  “You misunderstand me. It was of your other secretary that I spoke.”

  “What? Pagett?” I cried, in lively astonishment. “He’s been with me eight years—a most trustworthy fellow.”

  My interlocutor smiled.

  “We are still at cross-purposes. I refer to the lady.”

  “Miss Pettigrew?” I exclaimed.

  “Yes. She has been seen coming out of Agrasato’s Native Curio shop.”

  “God bless my soul!” I interrupted. “I was going into that place myself this afternoon. You might have caught me coming out!”

  There doesn’t seem to be any innocent thing that one can do in Jo’burg without being suspected for it.

  “Ah! but she has been seen there more than once—and in rather doubtful circumstances. I may as well tell you—in confidence, Sir Eustace—that the place is suspected of being a well-known rendezvous used by the secret organization behind this revolution. That is why I should be glad to hear all that you can tell me about this lady. Where and how did you come to engage her?”

  “She was lent to me,” I replied coldly, “by your own Government.”

  He collapsed utterly.

  Thirty

  (Anne’s Narrative Resumed)

  I

  As soon as I got to Kimberlely I wired to Suzanne. She joined me there with the utmost dispatch, heralding her arrival with telegrams sent off en route. I was awfully surprised to find that she really was fond of me—I thought I had been just a new sensation, but she positively fell on my neck and wept when we met.

  When we had recovered from our emotion a little, I sat down on the bed and told her the whole story from A to Z.

  “You always did suspect Colonel Race,” she said thoughtfully, when I had finished. “I didn’t until the night you disappeared. I liked him so much all along and thought he would make such a nice husband for you. Oh, Anne, dear, don’t be cross, but how do you know that this young man of yours is telling the truth? You believe every word he says.”

  “Of course I do,” I cried indignantly.

  “But what is there in him that attracts you so? I don’t see that there’s anything in him at all except his rather reckless good looks and his modern Sheik-cum-Stone-Age lovemaking.”

  I poured out the vials of my wrath upon Suzanne for some minutes.

  “Just because you’re comfortably married and getting fat, you’ve forgotten that there’s any such thing as romance,” I ended.

  “Oh, I’m not getting fat, Anne. All the worry I’ve had about you lately must have worn me to a shred.”

  “You look particularly well-nourished,” I said coldly. “I should say you must have put on about half a stone.”

  “And I don’t know that I’m so comfortably married either,” continued Suzanne in a melancholy voice. “I’ve been having the most dreadful cables from Clarence ordering me to come home at once. At last I didn’t answer them, and now I haven’t heard for over a fortnight.”

  I’m afraid I didn’t take Suzanne’s matrimonial troubles very seriously. She will be able to get round Clarenc
e all right when the time comes. I turned the conversation to the subject of the diamonds.

  Suzanne looked at me with a dropped jaw.

  “I must explain, Anne. You see, as soon as I began to suspect Colonel Race, I was terribly upset about the diamonds. I wanted to stay on at the Falls in case he might have kidnapped you somewhere close by, but didn’t know what to do about the diamonds. I was afraid to keep them in my possession—”

  Suzanne looked round her uneasily, as though she feared the walls might have ears, and then whispered vehemently in my ear.

  “A distinctly good idea,” I approved. “At the time, that is. It’s a bit awkward now. What did Sir Eustace do with the cases?”

  “The big ones were sent down to Cape Town. I heard from Pagett before I left the Falls, and he enclosed the receipt for their storage. He’s leaving Cape Town today by the by, to join Sir Eustace in Johannesburg.”

  “I see,” I said thoughtfully. “And the small ones, where are they?”

  “I suppose Sir Eustace has got them with him.”

  I turned the matter over in my mind.

  “Well,” I said at last, “it’s awkward—but it’s safe enough. We’d better do nothing for the present.”

  Suzanne looked at me with a little smile.

  “You don’t like doing nothing, do you, Anne?”

  “Not very much,” I replied honestly.

  The one thing I could do was to get hold of a timetable and see what time Guy Pagett’s train would pass through Kimberley. I found that it would arrive at 5:40 on the following afternoon and depart again at 6. I wanted to see Pagett as soon as possible, and that seemed to me a good opportunity. The situation on the Rand was getting very serious, and it might be a long time before I got another chance.

  The only thing that livened up the day was a wire dispatched from Johannesburg. A most innocent-sounding telegram:

  “Arrived safely. All going well. Eric here, also Eustace, but not Guy. Remain where you are for the present. Andy.”

  II

  Eric was our pseudonym for Race. I chose it because it is a name I dislike exceedingly. There was clearly nothing to be done until I could see Pagett. Suzanne employed herself in sending off a long soothing cable to the far-off Clarence. She became quite sentimental over him. In her way—which of course is quite different from me and Harry—she is really fond of Clarence.

  “I do wish he was here, Anne,” she gulped. “It’s such a long time since I’ve seen him.”

  “Have some face cream,” I said soothingly.

  Suzanne rubbed a little on the tip of her charming nose.

  “I shall want some more face cream soon too,” she remarked, “and you can only get this kind in Paris.” She sighed. “Paris!”

  “Suzanne,” I said, “very soon you’ll have had enough of South Africa and adventure.”

  “I should like a really nice hat,” admitted Suzanne wistfully. “Shall I come with you to meet Guy Pagett tomorrow?”

  “I prefer to go alone. He’d be shyer speaking before two of us.”

  So it came about that I was standing in the doorway of the hotel on the following afternoon, struggling with a recalcitrant parasol that refused to go up, whilst Suzanne lay peacefully on her bed with a book and a basket of fruit.

  According to the hotel porter, the train was on its good behaviour today and would be almost on time, though he was extremely doubtful whether it would ever get through to Johannesburg. The line had been blown up, so he solemnly assured me. It sounded cheerful!

  The train drew in just ten minutes late. Everybody tumbled out on the platform and began walking up and down feverishly. I had no difficulty in espying Pagett. I accosted him eagerly. He gave his usual nervous start at seeing me—somewhat accentuated this time.

  “Dear me, Miss Beddingfeld, I understood that you had disappeared.”

  “I have reappeared again,” I told him solemnly. “And how are you, Mr. Pagett?”

  “Very well, thank you—looking forward to taking up my work again with Sir Eustace.”

  “Mr. Pagett,” I said, “there is something I want to ask you. I hope that you won’t be offended, but a lot hangs on it, more than you can possibly guess. I want to know what you were doing at Marlow on the 8th of January last?”

  He started violently.

  “Really, Miss Beddingfeld—I—indeed—”

  “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I—for reasons of my own I was in the neighbourhood, yes.”

  “Won’t you tell me what those reasons were?”

  “Sir Eustace has not already told you?”

  “Sir Eustace? Does he know?”

  “I am almost sure that he does. I hoped he had not recognized me, but from the hints he has let drop, and his remarks, I fear it is only too certain. In any case, I meant to make a clean breast of the matter and offer my resignation. He is a peculiar man, Miss Beddingfeld, with an abnormal sense of humour. It seems to amuse him to keep me on tenterhooks. All the time, I dare say, he was perfectly well aware of the true facts. Possibly he has known them for years.”

  I hoped that sooner or later I should be able to understand what Pagett was talking about. He went on fluently:

  “It is difficult for a man of Sir Eustace’s standing to put himself in my position. I know that I was in the wrong, but it seemed a harmless deception. I would have thought it better taste on his part to have tackled me outright—instead of indulging in covert jokes at my expense.”

  A whistle blew, and the people began to surge back into the train.

  “Yes, Mr. Pagett,” I broke in, “I’m sure I quite agree with all you’re saying about Sir Eustace. But why did you go to Marlow?”

  “It was wrong of me, but natural under the circumstances—yes, I still feel natural under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” I cried desperately.

  For the first time, Pagett seemed to recognize that I was asking him a question. His mind detached itself from the peculiarities of Sir Eustace, and his own justification, and came to rest on me.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Beddingfeld,” he said stiffly, “but I fail to see your concern in the matter.”

  He was back in the train now, leaning down to speak to me. I felt desperate. What could one do with a man like that?

  “Of course, if it’s so dreadful that you’d be ashamed to speak of it to me—” I began spitefully.

  At last I had found the right stop. Pagett stiffened and flushed.

  “Dreadful? Ashamed? I don’t understand you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  In three short sentences he told me. At last I knew Pagett’s secret! It was not in the least what I expected.

  I walked slowly back to the hotel. There a wire was handed to me. I tore it open. It contained full and definite instructions for me to proceed forthwith to Johannesburg, or rather to a station this side of Johannesburg, where I should be met by a car. It was signed, not Andy, but Harry.

  I sat down in a chair to do some very serious thinking.

  Thirty-one

  (From the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)

  Johannesburg, March 7th.

  Pagett has arrived. He is in a blue funk, of course. Suggested at once that we should go off to Pretoria. Then, when I had told him kindly but firmly that we were going to remain here, he went to the other extreme, wished he had his rifle here, and began bucking about some bridge he guarded during the Great War. A railway bridge at Little Puddecombe junction, or something of that sort.

  I soon cut that short by telling him to unpack the big typewriter. I thought that that would keep him employed for some time, because the typewriter was sure to have gone wrong—it always does—and he would have to take it somewhere to be mended. But I had forgotten Pagett’s powers of being in the right.

  “I’ve already unpacked all the cases, Sir Eustace. The typewriter is in perfect condition.”

  “What do you mean—all the cases?”

&n
bsp; “The two small cases as well.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so officious, Pagett. Those small cases were no business of yours. They belong to Mrs. Blair.”

  Pagett looked crestfallen. He hates to make a mistake.

  “So you can just pack them up again neatly,” I continued. “After that you can go out and look around you. Jo’burg will probably be a heap of smoking ruins by tomorrow, so it may be your last chance.”

  I thought that that would get rid of him successfully for the morning, at any rate.

  “There is something I want to say to you when you have the leisure, Sir Eustace.”

  “I haven’t got it now,” I said hastily. “At this minute I have absolutely no leisure whatsoever.”

  Pagett retired.

  “By the way,” I called after him, “what was there in those cases of Mrs. Blair’s?”

  “Some fur rugs, and a couple of fur—hats, I think.”

  “That’s right,” I assented. “She bought them on the train. They are hats—of a kind—though I hardly wonder at your not recognizing them. I dare say she’s going to wear one of them at Ascot. What else was there?”

  “Some rolls of films, and some baskets—a lot of baskets—”

  “There would be,” I assured him. “Mrs. Blair is the kind of woman who never buys less than a dozen or so of anything.”

  “I think that’s all, Sir Eustace, except some miscellaneous odds and ends, a motor veil and some odd gloves—that sort of thing.”

  “If you hadn’t been a born idiot, Pagett, you would have seen from the start that those couldn’t possibly be my belongings.”

  “I thought some of them might belong to Miss Pettigrew.”

  “Ah, that reminds me—what do you mean by picking me out such a doubtful character as a secretary?”