Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  The doctor was looking into her eyes. "Sleep," he was saying.

  "Sleep. Your eyelids are closing. Soon you will sleep. You will sleep.

  You will sleep..."

  Mrs Rymer's eyelids closed. She floated with a wonderful great big world...

  When her eyes opened it seemed to her that a long time had passed. She remembered several things vaguely - strange, impossible dreams; then a feeling of waking; then further dreams.

  She remembered something about a car and the dark, beautiful girl in nurse's uniform bending over her.

  Anyway, she was properly awake now, and in her own bed.

  At least, was it her own bed? It felt different. It lacked the delicious softness of her own bed. It was vaguely reminiscent of days almost forgotten. She moved, and it creaked. Mrs Rymer's bed in Park Lane never creaked.

  She looked round. Decidedly, this was not Park Lane. Was it a hospital? No, she decided, not a hospital. Nor was it a hotel. It was a bare room, the walls an uncertain shade of lilac. There was a deal washstand with a jug and basin upon it. There was a deal chest of drawers and a tin trunk. There were unfamiliar clothes hanging on pegs. There was the bed covered with a much-mended quilt and there was herself in it.

  "Where am I?" said Mrs Rymer.

  The door opened and a plump little woman bustled in. She had red cheeks and a good-humored air. Her sleeves were rolled up and she wore an apron.

  "There!" she exclaimed. "She's awake. Come in, doctor."

  Mrs Rymer opened her mouth to say several things - but they remained unsaid, for the man who followed the plump woman into the room was not in the least like the elegant, swarthy Doctor Constantine. He was a bent old man who peered through thick glasses.

  "That's better," he said, advancing to the bed and taking up Mrs Rymer's wrist. "You'll soon be better now, my dear."

  "What's been the matter with me?" demanded Mrs Rymer.

  "You had a kind of seizure," said the doctor. "You've been unconscious for a day or two. Nothing to worry about."

  "Gave us a fright, you did, Hannah," said the plump woman. "You've been raving, too, saying the oddest things."

  "Yes, yes, Mrs Gardner," said the doctor repressively. "But we mustn't excite the patient. You'll soon be up and about again, my dear."

  "But don't you worry about the work, Hannah," said Mrs Gardner.

  "Mrs Roberts has been in to give me a hand and we've got on fine.

  Just lie still and get well, my dear."

  "Why do you call me Hannah?" said Mrs Rymer.

  "Well, it's your name," said Mrs Gardner, bewildered.

  "No, it isn't. My name is Amelia. Amelia Rymer. Mrs Abner Rymer."

  The doctor and Mrs Gardner exchanged glances.

  "Well, just you lie still," said Mrs Gardner.

  "Yes, yes; no worry," said the doctor.

  They withdrew. Mrs Rymer lay puzzling. Why did they call her Hannah, and why had they exchanged that glance of amused incredulity when she had given them her name? Where was she, and what had happened?

  She slipped out of bed. She felt a little uncertain on her legs, but she walked slowly to the small dormer window and looked out - on a farmyard! Completely mystified, she went back to bed. What was she doing in a farmhouse that she had never seen before?

  Mrs Gardner re-entered the room with a bowl of soup on a tray.

  Mrs Rymer began her questions. "What am I doing in this house?" she demanded. "Who brought me here?"

  "Nobody brought you, my dear. It's your home. Leastways, you've lived here for the last five years - and me not suspecting once that you were liable to fits."

  "Lived here? Five years?"

  "That's right. Why, Hannah, you don't mean that you still don't remember?"

  "I've never lived here! I've never seen you before."

  "You see, you've had this illness and you've forgotten."

  "I've never lived here."

  "But you have, my dear." Suddenly Mrs Gardner darted across to the chest of drawers and brought to Mrs Rymer a faded photograph in a frame.

  It represented a group of four persons: a bearded man, a plump woman (Mrs Gardner), a tall, lank maid with a pleasantly sheepish grin, and somebody in a prim dress and apron - herself!

  Stupefied, Mrs Rymer gazed at the photograph. Mrs Gardner put the soup down beside her and quietly left the room.

  Mrs Rymer sipped the soup mechanically. It was good soup, strong and hot. All the time her brain was in a whirl. Who was mad? Mrs Gardner or herself? One of them must be! But there was the doctor, too.

  "I'm Amelia Rymer," she said firmly to herself. "I know I'm Amelia Rymer and nobody's going to tell me different."

  She had finished the soup. She put the bowl back or the tray. A folded newspaper caught her eye and she picked it up and looked at the date on it, October 19.

  What day had she gone to Mr Parker Pyne's office?

  Either the fifteenth or the sixteenth. Then she must have been ill for three days.

  "That rascally doctor!" said Mrs Rymer wrathfully.

  All the same, she was a shade relieved. She had heard of cases where people had forgotten who they were for years at a time. She had been afraid some such thing had happened to her.

  She began turning the pages of the paper, scanning the columns idly, when suddenly a paragraph caught her eye.

  Mrs Abner Rymer, widow of Abner Rymer, the "button shank" king, was removed yesterday to a private home for mental cases. For the past two days she has persisted in declaring she was not herself, but a servant girl named Hannah Moorhouse.

  "Hannah Moorhouse! So that's it," said Mrs Rymer. "She's me, and I'm her. Kind of double, I suppose. Well, we can soon put that right!

  If that oily hypocrite of a Parker Pyne is up to some game or other -"

  But at this minute her eye was caught by the name Constantine staring at her from the printed page. This time it was a headline.

  DR. CONSTANTINE'S CLAIM

  At a farewell lecture given last night on the eve of his departure for Japan, Dr Claudius Constantine advanced some startling theories.

  He declared that it was possible to prove the existence of the soul by transferring a soul from one body to another. In the course of his experiments in the East he had, he claimed, successfully effected a double transfer - the soul of a hypnotized body A being transferred to a hypnotized body B and the soul of B to the body of A. On recovering from the hypnotic sleep, A declared herself to be B, and B thought herself to be A. For the experiment to succeed, it was necessary to find two people with a great bodily resemblance.

  It was an undoubted fact that two people resembling each other were en rapport. This was very noticeable in the case of twins, but two strangers, varying widely in social position but with a marked similarity of feature, were found to exhibit the same harmony of structure.

  Mrs Rymer cast the paper from her. "The scoundrel! The black scoundrel!"

  She saw the whole thing now! It was a dastardly plot to get hold of her money. This Hannah Moorhouse was Mr Pyne's tool - possibly an innocent one. He and that devil Constantine had brought off this fantastic coup. But she'd expose him! She'd show him up! She'd have the law on him! She'd tell everyone -

  Abruptly Mrs Rymer came to a stop in the tide of her indignation.

  She remembered that first paragraph. Hannah Moorhouse had not been a docile tool. She had protested; had declared her individuality. And what had happened?

  "Clapped into a lunatic asylum, poor girl," said Mrs Rymer.

  A chill ran down her spine.

  A lunatic asylum. They got you in there and they never let you get out. The more you said you were sane, the less they'd believe you.

  There you were and there you stayed. No, Mrs Rymer wasn't going to run the risk of that.

  The door opened and Mrs Gardner came in.

  "Ah, you've drunk your soup, my dear. That's good. You'll soon be better now."

  "When was I taken ill?" demanded Mrs Rymer.
r />   "Let me see. It was three days ago - on Wednesday. That was the fifteenth. You were took bad about four o'clock."

  "Ah!" The ejaculation was fraught with meaning. It had been just about four o'clock when Mrs Rymer had entered the presence of Doctor Constantine.

  "You slipped down in your chair," said Mrs Gardner. "'Oh!' you says. 'Oh!' just like that. And then: 'I'm falling asleep,' you says in a dreamy voice. 'I'm falling asleep.' And fall asleep you did, and we put you to bed and sent for the doctor, and here you've been ever since."

  "I suppose," Mrs Rymer ventured, "there isn't any way you could know who I am - apart from my face, I mean."

  "Well, that's a queer thing to say," said Mrs Gardner. "What is there to go by better than a person's face, I'd like to know? There's your birthmark, though, if that satisfies you better."

  "A birthmark?" said Mrs Rymer, brightening. She had no such thing.

  "Strawberry mark just under the right elbow," said Mrs Gardner.

  "Look for yourself, my dear."

  "This will prove it," said Mrs Rymer to herself. She knew that she had no strawberry mark under the right elbow. She turned back the sleeve of her nightdress. The strawberry mark was there.

  Mrs Rymer burst into tears.

  Four days later, Mrs Rymer rose from her bed. She had thought out several plans of action and rejected them.

  She might show the paragraph in the paper to Mrs Gardner and the doctor and explain. Would they believe her? Mrs Rymer was sure they would not.

  She might go to the police. Would they believe her? Again she thought not.

  She might go to Mr Pyne's office. That idea undoubtedly pleased her best. For one thing, she would like to tell that oily scoundrel what she thought of him. She was debarred from putting this plan into operation by a vital obstacle. She was at present in Cornwall (as she had learned), and she had no money for the journey to London. Two and four-pence in a worn purse seemed to represent her financial position.

  And so, after four days, Mrs Rymer made a sporting decision. For the present she would accept things! She was Hannah Moorhouse.

  Very well, she would be Hannah Moorhouse. For the present she would accept the role, and later, when she had saved sufficient money she would go to London and beard the swindler in his den.

  And having thus decided, Mrs Rymer accepted her role with perfect good temper, even with a kind of sardonic amusement. History was repeating itself indeed. This life here reminded her of her girlhood.

  How long ago that seemed!

  The work was a bit hard after her years of soft living, but after the first week she found herself slipping into the ways of the farm.

  Mrs Gardner was a good-tempered, kindly woman.

  Her husband, a big, taciturn man, was kindly also. The lank, shambling man of the photograph had gone and another farmhand came in his stead, a good-humored giant of forty-five, slow of speech and thought, but with a shy twinkle in his blue eyes.

  The weeks went by. At last the day came when Rymer had enough money to pay her fare to London. But she did not go. She put it off.

  Time enough, she thought. She wasn't easy in her mind about asylums yet. That scoundrel, Parker Pyne, was clever. He'd get a doctor to say she was mad and she'd be clapped out of sight with no one knowing anything about it.

  "Besides," said Mrs Rymer to herself, "a bit of a change does one good."

  She rose early and worked hard. Joe Welsh, the new farmhand, was ill that winter, and she and Mrs Gardner nursed him. The big man was pathetically dependent on them.

  Spring came - lambing time; there were wild flowers in the hedges, a treacherous softness in the air. Joe Welsh gave Hannah a hand with her work. Hannah did Joe's mending.

  Sometimes, on Sundays, they went for a walk together. Joe was a widower. His wife had died four years before. Since her death he had, he frankly confessed it, taken a drop too much.

  He didn't go much to the Crown nowadays. He bought himself some new clothes. Mr and Mrs Gardner laughed.

  Hannah made fun of Joe. She teased him about his clumsiness. Joe didn't mind. He looked bashful but happy.

  After spring came summer - a good summer that year. Everyone worked hard.

  Harvest was over. The leaves were red and golden on the trees.

  It was October eighth when Hannah looked up one day from a cabbage she was cutting and saw Mr Parker Pyne leaning over the fence.

  "You!" said Hannah, alias Mrs Rymer. "You..."

  It was some time before she got it all out, and when she had said her say, she was out of breath.

  Mr Parker Pyne smiled blandly. "I quite agree with you," he said.

  "A cheat and a liar, that's what you are!" said Mrs Rymer, repeating herself. "You with your Constantines and your hypnotizing and that poor girl Hanna Moorhouse shut up with loonies."

  "No," said Mr Parker Pyne, "there you misjudge me. Hannah Moorhouse is not in a lunatic asylum because Hannah Moorhouse never existed."

  "Indeed?" said Mrs Rymer. "And what about the photograph of her that I saw with my own eyes?"

  "Faked," said Mr Pyne. "Quite a simple thing to manage."

  "And the piece in the paper about her?"

  "The whole paper was faked so as to include items in a natural manner which would carry conviction. As it did."

  "That rogue, Doctor Constantine!"

  "An assumed name - assumed by a friend of mine with a talent for acting."

  Mrs Rymer snorted. "Ho! And I wasn't hypnotized either, I suppose?"

  "As a matter of fact, you were not. You drank your coffee a preparation of Indian hemp. After that other drugs were administered and you were brought down here by car and allowed to recover consciousness."

  "Then Mrs Gardner has been in it all the time?" said Mrs Rymer.

  Mr Parker Pyne nodded.

  "Bribed by you, I suppose! Or filled up with a lot of lies!"

  "Mrs Gardner trusts me," said Mr Pyne. "I saved her only son from penal servitude."

  Something in his manner silenced Mrs Rymer on the tack. "What about the birthmark?" she demanded.

  Mr Pyne smiled. "It is already fading. In another six months it will have disappeared altogether."

  "And what's the meaning of all this tomfoolery? Making a fool of me, sticking me down here as a servant - me with all that good money in the bank. But I suppose I needn't ask. You've been helping yourself to it, my fine fellow. That's the meaning of all this."

  "It is true," said Mr Parker Pyne, "that I did obtain from you, while you were under the influence of drugs, a power of attorney and that during your - er - absence, I have assumed control of your financial affairs, but I can assure you, my dear madam, that apart from that original thousand pounds, no money of yours has found its way into my pocket. As a matter of fact, by judicious investments your financial position is actually improved."

  He beamed at her.

  "Then why -" began Mrs Rymer.

  "I am going to ask you a question, Mrs Rymer," said Mr Pyne. "You are an honest woman. You will answer me honestly, I know. I am going to ask you if you are happy."

  "Happy! That's a pretty question! Steal a woman's money and ask her if she's happy. I like your impudence!"

  "You are still angry," he said. "Most natural. But leave my misdeeds out of it for the moment. Mrs Rymer, when you came to my office a year ago today, you were an unhappy woman. Will you tell me that you are unhappy now? If so, I apologize, and you are at liberty to take what steps you please against me. Moreover, I will refund you the thousand pounds you paid me. Come, Mrs Rymer, are you an unhappy woman now?"

  Mrs Rymer looked at Mr Parker Pyne, but she dropped her eyes when she spoke at last.

  "No," she said. "I'm not unhappy." A tone of wonder crept into her voice. "You've got me there. I admit it. I've not been as happy as I am now since Abner died. I - I'm going to marry a man who works here - Joe Welsh. Our banns are going up next Sunday; that is, they were going up next Sunday."

  "But now, of course,"
said Mr Pyne, "everything is different."

  Mrs Rymer's face flamed. She took a step forward.

  "What do you mean - different? Do you think if I had all the money in the world it would make me a lady? I don't want to be a lady, thank you; a helpless, good-for-nothing lot they are. Joe's good enough for me and I'm good enough for him. We suit each other and we're going to be happy. As for you, Mr Nosey Parker, you take yourself off and don't interfere with what doesn't concern you!"

  Mr Parker Pyne took a paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

  "The power of attorney," he said. "Shall I tear it up? You will assume control of your own fortune now, I take it."

  A strange expression came over Mrs Rymer's face. She thrust back the paper.

  "Take it. I've said hard things to you - and some of them you deserved. You're a downy fellow, but all the same I trust you. Seven hundred pounds I'll have in the bank here - that'll buy us a farm we've got our eye on. The rest of it - well, let the hospitals have it."

  "You cannot mean to hand over your entire fortune to hospitals?"

  "That's just what I do mean. Joe's a dear, good fellow, but he's weak. Give him money and you'd ruin him. I've got him off the drink now, and I'll keep him off it. Thank God, I know my own mind. I'm not going to let money come between me and happiness."

  "You are a remarkable woman," said Mr Pyne slowly. "Only one woman in a thousand would act as you are doing."

  "Then only one woman in a thousand's got sense," said Mrs Rymer.

  "I take off my hat to you," said Mr Parker Pyne, and there was an unusual note in his voice. He raised his hat with solemnity and moved away.

  "And Joe's never to know, mind!" Mrs Rymer called after him.

  She stood there with the dying sun behind her, a great blue-green cabbage in her hands, her head thrown back and her shoulders squared. A grand figure of a peasant woman, outlined against the setting sun...

  HAVE YOU GOT EVERYTHING YOU WANT?

  "Par ici, Madame."

  A tall woman in a mink coat followed her heavily encumbered porter along the platform of the Gare de Lyon.

  She wore a dark brown knitted hat pulled down over one eye and ear. The other side revealed a charming tip-tilted profile and little golden curls clustering over a shell-like ear. Typically an American, she was altogether a very charming-looking creature and more than one man turned to look at her as she walked past the high carriages of the waiting train.