AgathaChristie-ParkerPineDetective
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Lane. Was it a hospital? No, she decided, not a hos
pital. Nor was it a hotel. It was a bare room, the wall:
an uncertain shade of lilac. There was a deal washstan¢
with a jug and basin upon it. There was a deal chest o
drawers and a tin trunk. There were unfamiliar clothe:
hanging on pegs. There was the bed covered with
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.
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"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 repres-sively.
"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, bewil-dered.
"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 win-dow
and looked out--on a farmyard! Completely mys-tified,
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?"
THE CASE OF THE RICH WOMAN
"Nobody brought you, my dear. It's your horn
Leastways, you've lived here for the last five years--an
me not suspecting once that you were liable to fits." "Lived here? Five years?"
"That's right. Why, Hannah, you don't mean th
.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 forgo
ten."
"I've never lived here."
"But you have, my dear." Suddenly Mrs. Gardn¢
darted across to the chest of drawers and brought t
Mrs. Rymer a faded photograph in a frame.
It represented a group of four persons: a bearde
man, a plump woman (Mrs. Gardner), a tall, lank mai
with a pleasantly sheepish grin, and somebody in a prin
dress and apron--herself!
Stupefied, Mrs. Rymer gazed at the photograph. Mrs
Gardner put the soup down beside her and quietly lef
the room.
Mrs. Rymer sipped the soup mechanically. It wa:
good soup, strong and hot. All the time her brain was ir
a whirl. Who was mad? Mrs. Gardner or herself? On{
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
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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 her-self,
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 sup-pose.
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
THE CASE OF THE RICH WOMAN
93
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 scoundredl!
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.
"Let me see. It was three days ago--on Wednesday.
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Agatha Christie
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. Gard-ner.
"'Oh!' you says. 'Oh!' just like that. And then:
Tm 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. Gard-ner.
"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 ting.
"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.
THE CASE OF THE RICH WOMAN
She might go to Mr. Pyne's office. That idea
doubtedly pleased her best. For one thing, she we
like to tell that oily scoundrel what she thought of hi
She was debarred from putting this plan into operati
by a vital obstacle. She was at present in Cornwall
she had learned), and she had no money for the journ
to London. Two and four-pence in a worn purse seem
to represent her financial position.
And so, after four days, Mrs. Rymer made a sporti
decision. For the present she would accept things! S
was Hannah Moorhouse. Very well, she would be H
nab Moorhouse. For the present she would accept tt
role, and later, when she had saved sufficient mom
she would go to London and beard the swindler in]
den.
And having thus decided, Mrs. Rymer accepted
rOle-with perfect good temper, even with a kind of
donic amusement. History was repeating itself inde
This life here reminded her of her girlhood. How 1o
ago that seemed!
The work was a bit hard after her years of soft livin
but after the first week she found herself slipping in
the ways of the farm.
Mrs. Gardner was a good-tempered, kindly woma
Her husband, a big, taciturn man, was kindly also. T
lank, shambling man of the photograph had gon
another farmhand came in his stead, a good-humor
giant of forty-five, slow of speech and thought, but wi
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 Londo
But she did not go. She put it off. Time enough, si
thought. She wasn't easy in her mind about asylums ye
That scoundrel, Parker Pyne, was clever. He'd get
doctor to say she was mad and she'd be clapped
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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 Wdsh,.th new
farmhand, was ill that winter, and she and Mrs. }ard-nor
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 ual k together.
Joe was a widower. His wife had died four years
before. Since her death he had, he frankly confess ed it,
taken a drop too much.
He didn't go much to the Crown nowadays. He
bought himself some new clothes. Mr. and Mrs. C3ard-nor
laughed.
Hannah made fun of Joe. She teased him abot.at his
clumsiness. Joe didn't mind. He looked baslful but
happy.
After spring came summer--a good sttmer that
year. Everyone worked hard.
Harvest was over. The leaves were red and g01den on
the tres.
It was October eighth when Hannah looked ul one
day from a cabbage she was cutting and saw Mr. Prker
Pyne leaning over the fence.
"You!" said Hannah, alias Mrs. Rymer. "Yo· . ."
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 r,. Mrs.
Rymer, repeating herself. "You with your Constan-.tines
and your hypnotizing and that poor girl Hanna Moor
THE CASE OF THE RICH WOMAN
house shut up withwloonies."
"No," said Mr. Parker Pyne, "there you misju¢
me. Hannah Moorhouse is not in a lunatic asylu
because Hannah Moorhouse never existed."
"Indeed?" said Mrs. Rymer. "And what about t
photograph of her that I saw with my own eyes?"
"Faked," said Mr. Pyne. "Quite a simple thing
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 cony
tion. As it did."
"That rogue, Doctor Constantine!"
"An assumed name--assumed by a friend of mi
with a talent for ac, ting."
Mrs. Rymer snorted. "Ho! And I wasn't hypnotiz,
either, I suppose?"
"As a matter of fact, you were not. You drank
your coffee a preparation of Indian hemp. After th
other drugs were administered and you were broug
down here by car and allowed to recover consciou
ness. '
"Then Mrs. Gardner has been in it all the time?" sa
Mrs. Rymer.
Mr. Parker Pyne nodded.
"Bribed by you, I suppose! Or filled up with a lot
lies I"
"Mrs. Gardner trusts me," said Mr. Pyne. "I
saved her only son from penal servitude."
Something in his manner silenced Mrs. Rymer on th
tack. "What about the birthmark?" she demanded.
Mr. Pyne smiled. "It is already fading. In another
months it will have disappeared altogether."
"And what's the meaning of all this tomfooler3
Making a fool of me, sticking me down here as a se
vant--me with all that good money in the bank. But
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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 im-proved.''
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