“It’s the way they machine-gun the poor civilian devils on the roads that gets me. It makes us all see red. Gus and Trundles want to be remembered to you. They’re still going strong.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m all right. Wouldn’t have missed this show for the world. Love to old Carrot Top—have the W.O. given him a job yet?
“Yours ever,
“Derek.”
Tuppence’s eyes were very bright and shining as she read and reread this.
Then she opened the other letter.
“Dearest Mum,
“How’s old Aunt Gracie? Going strong? I think you’re wonderful to stick it. I couldn’t.
“No news. My job is very interesting, but so hush-hush I can’t tell you about it. But I really do feel I’m doing something worthwhile. Don’t fret about not getting any war work to do—it’s so silly all these elderly women rushing about wanting to do things. They only really want people who are young and efficient. I wonder how Carrots is getting on at his job up in Scotland? Just filling up forms, I suppose. Still he’ll be happy to feel he is doing something.
“Lots of love,
“Deborah.”
Tuppence smiled.
She folded the letters, smoothed them lovingly, and then under the shelter of a breakwater she struck a match and set them on fire. She waited until they were reduced to ashes.
Taking out her fountain pen and a small writing pad, she wrote rapidly.
“Langherne,
Cornwall.
“Dearest Deb,
“It seems so remote from the war here that I can hardly believe there is a war going on. Very glad to get your letter and know that your work is interesting.
“Aunt Gracie has grown much more feeble and very hazy in her mind. I think she is glad to have me here. She talks a good deal about the old days and sometimes, I think, confuses me with my own mother. They are growing more vegetables than usual—have turned the rose garden into potatoes. I help old Sikes a bit. It makes me feel I am doing something in the war. Your father seems a bit disgruntled, but I think, as you say, he too is glad to be doing something.
“Love from your
“TUPPENNY MOTHER.”
She took a fresh sheet.
“Darling Derek,
“A great comfort to get your letter. Send field postcards often if you haven’t time to write.
“I’ve come down to be with Aunt Gracie a bit. She is very feeble. She will talk of you as though you were seven and gave me ten shillings yesterday to send you as a tip.
“I’m still on the shelf and nobody wants my invaluable services! Extraordinary! Your father, as I told you, has got a job in the Ministry of Requirements. He is up north somewhere. Better than nothing, but not what he wanted, poor old Carrot Top. Still I suppose we’ve got to be humble and take a back seat and leave the war to you young idiots.
“I won’t say ‘Take care of yourself,’ because I gather that the whole point is that you should do just the opposite. But don’t go and be stupid.
“Lots of love,
“TUPPENCE.”
She put the letters into envelopes, addressed and stamped them, and posted them on her way back to Sans Souci.
As she reached the bottom of the cliff her attention was caught by two figures standing talking a little way up.
Tuppence stopped dead. It was the same woman she had seen yesterday and talking to her was Carl von Deinim.
Regretfully Tuppence noted the fact that there was no cover. She could not get near them unseen and overhear what was being said.
Moreover, at that moment, the young German turned his head and saw her. Rather abruptly, the two figures parted. The woman came rapidly down the hill, crossing the road and passing Tuppence on the other side.
Carl von Deinim waited until Tuppence came up to him.
Then, gravely and politely, he wished her good morning.
Tuppence said immediately:
“What a very odd-looking woman that was to whom you were talking, Mr. Deinim.”
“Yes. It is a Central European type. She is a Pole.”
“Really? A—a friend of yours?”
Tuppence’s tone was a very good copy of the inquisitive voice of Aunt Gracie in her younger days.
“Not at all,” said Carl stiffly. “I never saw the woman before.”
“Oh really. I thought—” Tuppence paused artistically.
“She asked me only for a direction. I speak German to her because she does not understand much English.”
“I see. And she was asking the way somewhere?”
“She asked me if I knew a Mrs. Gottlieb near here. I do not, and she says she has, perhaps, got the name of the house wrong.”
“I see,” said Tuppence thoughtfully.
Mr. Rosenstein. Mrs. Gottlieb.
She stole a swift glance at Carl von Deinim. He was walking beside her with a set stiff face.
Tuppence felt a definite suspicion of this strange woman. And she felt almost convinced that when she had first caught sight of them, the woman and Carl had been already talking some time together.
Carl von Deinim?
Carl and Sheila that morning. “You must be careful.”
Tuppence thought:
“I hope—I hope these young things aren’t in it!”
Soft, she told herself, middle-aged and soft! That’s what she was! The Nazi creed was a youth creed. Nazi agents would in all probability be young. Carl and Sheila. Tommy said Sheila wasn’t in it. Yes, but Tommy was a man, and Sheila was beautiful with a queer breathtaking beauty.
Carl and Sheila, and behind them that enigmatic figure: Mrs. Perenna. Mrs. Perenna, sometimes the voluble commonplace guesthouse hostess, sometimes, for fleeting minutes, a tragic, violent personality.
Tuppence went slowly upstairs to her bedroom.
That evening, when she went to bed, she pulled out the long drawer of her bureau. At one side of it was a small japanned box with a flimsy cheap lock. Tuppence slipped on gloves, unlocked the box, and opened it. A pile of letters lay inside. On the top was the one received that morning from “Raymond.” Tuppence unfolded it with due precautions.
Then her lips set grimly. There had been an eyelash in the fold of the paper this morning. The eyelash was not there now.
She went to the washstand. There was a little bottle labelled innocently: “Grey powder” with a dose.
Adroitly Tuppence dusted a little of the powder on to the letter and on to the surface of the glossy japanned enamel of the box.
There were no fingerprints on either of them.
Again Tuppence nodded her head with a certain grim satisfaction.
For there should have been fingerprints—her own.
A servant might have read the letters out of curiosity, though it seemed unlikely—certainly unlikely that she should have gone to the trouble of finding a key to fit the box.
But a servant would not think of wiping off fingerprints.
Mrs. Perenna? Sheila? Somebody else? Somebody, at least, who was interested in the movements of British armed forces.
IV
Tuppence’s plan of campaign had been simple in its outlines. First, a general sizing up of probabilities and possibilities. Second, an experiment to determine whether there was or was not an inmate of Sans Souci who was interested in troop movements and anxious to conceal the fact. Third—who that person was?
It was concerning that third operation that Tuppence pondered as she lay in bed the following morning. Her train of thought was slightly hampered by Betty Sprot, who had pranced in at an early hour, preceding indeed the cup of somewhat tepid inky liquid known as Morning Tea.
Betty was both active and voluble. She had taken a great fancy to Tuppence. She climbed up on the bed and thrust an extremely tattered picture book under Tuppence’s nose, commanding with brevity:
“Wead.”
Tuppence read obediently.
“Goosey goosey gander, whither will you wander?
“Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.”
Betty rolled with mirth—repeating in an ecstasy:
“Upstares—upstares—upstares—” and then with a sudden climax, “Down—” and proceeded to roll off the bed with a thump.
This proceeding was repeated several times until it palled. Then Betty crawled about the floor, playing with Tuppence’s shoes and muttering busily to herself in her own particular idiom:
“Ag do—bah pit—soo—soodah—putch—”
Released to fly back to its own perplexities, Tuppence’s mind forgot the child. The words of the nursery rhyme seemed to mock at her.
“Goosey—goosey, gander, whither shall ye wander?”
Whither indeed? Goosey, that was her, Gander was Tommy. It was, at any rate, what they appeared to be! Tuppence had the heartiest contempt for Mrs. Blenkensop. Mr. Meadowes, the thought, was a little better—stolid, British, unimaginative—quite incredibly stupid. Both of them, she hoped, fitting nicely into the background of Sans Souci. Both such possible people to be there.
All the same, one must not relax—a slip was so easy. She had made one the other day—nothing that mattered, but just a sufficient indication to warn her to be careful. Such an easy approach to intimacy and good relations—an indifferent knitter asking for guidance. But she had forgotten that one evening, her fingers had slipped into their own practised efficiency, the needles clicking busily with the even note of the experienced knitter. Mrs. O’Rourke had noticed it. Since then, she had carefully struck a medium course—not so clumsy as she had been at first—but not so rapid as she could be.
“Ag boo bate?” demanded Betty. She reiterated the question: “Ag boo bate?”
“Lovely, darling,” said Tuppence absently. “Beautiful.”
Satisfied, Betty relapsed into murmurs again.
Her next step, Tuppence thought, could be managed easily enough. That is to say with the connivance of Tommy. She saw exactly how to do it—
Lying there planning, time slipped by. Mrs. Sprot came in, breathless, to seek for Betty.
“Oh, here she is. I couldn’t think where she had got to. Oh, Betty, you naughty girl—oh, dear, Mrs. Blenkensop, I am so sorry.”
Tuppence sat up in bed. Betty, with an angelic face, was contemplating her handiwork.
She had removed all the laces from Tuppence’s shoes and had immersed them in a toothglass of water. She was prodding them now with a gleeful finger.
Tuppence laughed and cut short Mrs. Sprot’s apologies.
“How frightfully funny. Don’t worry, Mrs. Sprot, they’ll recover all right. It’s my fault. I should have noticed what she was doing. She was rather quiet.”
“I know,” Mrs. Sprot sighed. “Whenever they’re quiet, it’s a bad sign. I’ll get you some more laces this morning, Mrs. Blenkensop.”
“Don’t bother,” said Tuppence. “They’ll dry none the worse.”
Mrs. Sprot bore Betty away and Tuppence got up to put her plan into execution.
Six
Tommy looked rather gingerly at the packet that Tuppence thrust upon him.
“Is this it?”
“Yes. Be careful. Don’t get it over you.”
Tommy took a delicate sniff at the packet and replied with energy.
“No, indeed. What is this frightful stuff?”
“Asafoetida,” replied Tuppence. “A pinch of that and you will wonder why your boyfriend is no longer attentive, as the advertisements say.”
“Shades of BO,” murmured Tommy.
Shortly after that, various incidents occurred.
The first was the smell in Mr. Meadowes’ room.
Mr. Meadowes, not a complaining man by nature, spoke about it mildly at first, then with increasing firmness.
Mrs. Perenna was summoned into conclave. With all the will to resist in the world, she had to admit that there was a smell. A pronounced unpleasant smell. Perhaps, she suggested, the gas tap of the fire was leaking.
Bending down and sniffing dubiously, Tommy remarked that he did not think the smell came from there. Nor from under the floor. He himself thought, definitely—a dead rat.
Mrs. Perenna admitted that she had heard of such things—but she was sure there were no rats at Sans Souci. Perhaps a mouse—though she herself had never seen a mouse.
Mr. Meadowes said with firmness that he thought the smell indicated at least a rat—and he added, still more firmly, that he was not going to sleep another night in the room until the matter had been seen to. He would ask Mrs. Perenna to change his room.
Mrs. Perenna said, “Of course, she had just been about to suggest the same thing. She was afraid that the only room vacant was rather a small one and unfortunately it had no sea view, but if Mr. Meadowes did not mind that—”
Mr. Meadowes did not. His only wish was to get away from the smell. Mrs. Perenna thereupon accompanied him to a small bedroom, the door of which happened to be just opposite the door of Mrs. Blenkensop’s room, and summoned the adenoidal semi-idiotic Beatrice to “move Mr. Meadowes’ things.” She would, she explained, send for “a man” to take up the floor and search for the origin of the smell.
Matters were settled satisfactorily on this basis.
II
The second incident was Mr. Meadowes’ hay fever. That was what he called it at first. Later he admitted doubtfully that he might just possibly have caught cold. He sneezed a good deal, and his eyes ran. If there was a faint elusive suggestion of raw onion floating in the breeze in the vicinity of Mr. Meadowes’ large silk handkerchief nobody noticed the fact, and indeed a pungent amount of eau de cologne masked the more penetrating odour.
Finally, defeated by incessant sneezing and noseblowing, Mr. Meadowes retired to bed for the day.
It was on the morning of that day that Mrs. Blenkensop received a letter from her son Douglas. So excited and thrilled was Mrs. Blenkensop that everybody at Sans Souci heard about it. The letter had not been censored at all, she explained, because fortunately one of Douglas’s friends coming on leave had brought it, so for once Douglas had been able to write quite fully.
“And it just shows,” declared Mrs. Blenkensop, wagging her head sagely, “how little we know really of what is going on.”
After breakfast she went upstairs to her room, opened the japanned box and put the letter away. Between the folded pages were some unnoticeable grains of rice powder. She closed the box again, pressing her fingers firmly on its surface.
As she left her room she coughed, and from opposite came the sound of a highly histrionic sneeze.
Tuppence smiled and proceeded downstairs.
She had already made known her intention of going up to London for the day—to see her lawyer on some business and to do a little shopping.
Now she was given a good send-off by the assembled boarders and entrusted with various commissions—“only if you have time, of course.”
Major Bletchley held himself aloof from this female chatter. He was reading his paper and uttering appropriate comments aloud. “Damned swines of Germans. Machine-gunning civilian refugees on the roads. Damned brutes. If I were our people—”
Tuppence left him still outlining what he would do if he were in charge of operations.
She made a detour through the garden to ask Betty Sprot what she would like as a present from London.
Betty ecstatically clasping a snail in two hot hands gurgled appreciatively. In response to Tuppence’s suggestions—“A pussy. A picture book? Some coloured chalks to draw with?”—Betty decided, “Betty dwar.” So the coloured chalks were noted down on Tuppence’s list.
As she passed on meaning to rejoin the drive by the path at the end of the garden she came unexpectedly upon Carl von Deinim. He was standing leaning on the wall. His hands were clenched, and as Tuppence approached he turned on her, his usually impassive face convulsed with emotion.
Tuppence paused involuntarily and asked:
“Is anything the matter?”
“
Ach, yes, everything is the matter.” His voice was hoarse and unnatural. “You have a saying here that a thing is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, have you not?”
Tuppence nodded.
Carl went on bitterly:
“That is what I am. It cannot go on, that is what I say. It cannot go on. It would be best, I think, to end everything.”
“What do you mean?”
The young man said:
“You have spoken kindly to me. You would, I think, understand. I fled from my own country because of injustice and cruelty. I came here to find freedom. I hated Nazi Germany. But, alas, I am still a German. Nothing can alter that.”
Tuppence murmured:
“You may have difficulties, I know—”
“It is not that. I am a German, I tell you. In my heart—in my feeling. Germany is still my country. When I read of German cities bombed, of German soldiers dying, of German aeroplanes brought down—they are my people who die. When that old fire-eating Major reads out from his paper, when he say ‘those swine’—I am moved to fury—I cannot bear it.”
He added quietly:
“And so I think it would be best, perhaps, to end it all. Yes, to end it.”
Tuppence took hold of him firmly by the arm.
“Nonsense,” she said robustly. “Of course you feel as you do. Anyone would. But you’ve got to stick it.”
“I wish they would intern me. It would be easier so.”
“Yes, probably it would. But in the meantime you’re doing useful work—or so I’ve heard. Useful not only to England but to humanity. You’re working on decontamination problems, aren’t you?”
His face lit up slightly.
“Ah yes, and I begin to have much success. A process very simple, easily made and not complicated to apply.”
“Well,” said Tuppence, “that’s worth doing. Anything that mitigates suffering is worthwhile—and anything that’s constructive and not destructive. Naturally we’ve got to call the other side names. They’re doing just the same in Germany. Hundreds of Major Bletchleys—foaming at the mouth. I hate the Germans myself. ‘The Germans,’ I say, and feel waves of loathing. But when I think of individual Germans, mothers sitting anxiously waiting for news of their sons, and boys leaving home to fight, and peasants getting in the harvests, and little shopkeepers and some of the nice kindly German people I know, I feel quite different. I know then that they are just human beings and that we’re all feeling alike. That’s the real thing. The other is just the war mask that you put on. It’s a part of war—probably a necessary part—but it’s ephemeral.”
The Complete Tommy and Tuppence Page 56