Partners in Crime
Page 23
He stopped.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘Be silent, mon ami. I have the kind of little idea–colossal, stupendous–that always comes sooner or later to Hercule Poirot. But if so–if that’s it–Oh, Lord, I hope I’m in time.’
He raced out of the Park, Albert hard on his heels, inquiring breathlessly as he ran, ‘What’s up, sir? I don’t understand.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Tommy. ‘You’re not supposed to. Hastings never did. If your grey cells weren’t of a very inferior order to mine, what fun do you think I should get out of this game? I’m talking damned rot–but I can’t help it. You’re a good lad, Albert. You know what Tuppence is worth–she’s worth a dozen of you and me.’
Thus talking breathlessly as he ran, Tommy reentered the portals of the Blitz. He caught sight of Evans, and drew him aside with a few hurried words. The two men entered the lift, Albert with them.
‘Third floor,’ said Tommy.
At the door of No. 318 they paused. Evans had a pass key, and used it forthwith. Without a word of warning, they walked straight into Mrs Van Snyder’s bedroom. The lady was still lying on the bed, but was now arrayed in a becoming negligee. She stared at them in surprise.
‘Pardon my failure to knock,’ said Tommy pleasantly. ‘But I want my wife. Do you mind getting off that bed?’
‘I guess you’ve gone plumb crazy,’ cried Mrs Van Snyder.
Tommy surveyed her thoughtfully, his head on one side.
‘Very artistic,’ he pronounced, ‘but it won’t do. We looked under the bed–but not in it. I remember using that hiding-place myself when young. Horizontally across the bed, underneath the bolster. And that nice wardrobe trunk all ready to take away the body in later. But we were a bit too quick for you just now. You’d had time to dope Tuppence, put her under the bolster, and be gagged and bound by your accomplices next door, and I’ll admit we swallowed your story all right for the moment. But when one came to think it out–with order and method–impossible to drug a girl, dress her in boys’ clothes, gag and bind another woman, and change one’s own appearance–all in five minutes. Simply a physical impossibility. The hospital nurse and the boy were to be a decoy. We were to follow that trail, and Mrs Van Snyder was to be pitied as a victim. Just help the lady off the bed, will you, Evans? You have your automatic? Good.’
Protesting shrilly, Mrs Van Snyder was hauled from her place of repose. Tommy tore off the coverings and the bolster.
There, lying horizontally across the top of the bed was Tuppence, her eyes closed, and her face waxen. For a moment Tommy felt a sudden dread, then he saw the slight rise and fall of her breast. She was drugged–not dead.
He turned to Albert and Evans.
‘And now, Messieurs,’ he said dramatically, ‘the final coup!’
With a swift, unexpected gesture he seized Mrs Van Snyder by her elaborately dressed hair. It came off in his hand.
‘As I thought,’ said Tommy. ‘No. 16!’
II
It was about half an hour later when Tuppence opened her eyes and found a doctor and Tommy bending over her.
Over the events of the next quarter of an hour a decent veil had better be drawn, but after that period the doctor departed with the assurance that all was now well.
‘Mon ami, Hastings,’ said Tommy fondly. ‘How I rejoice that you are still alive.’
‘Have we got No. 16?’
‘Once more I have crushed him like an egg-shell–in other words, Carter’s got him. The little grey cells! By the way, I’m raising Albert’s wages.’
‘Tell me all about it.’
Tommy gave her a spirited narrative, with certain omissions.
‘Weren’t you half frantic about me?’ asked Tuppence faintly.
‘Not particularly. One must keep calm, you know.’
‘Liar!’ said Tuppence. ‘You look quite haggard still.’
‘Well, perhaps, I was just a little worried, darling. I say–we’re going to give it up now, aren’t we?’
‘Certainly we are.’
Tommy gave a sigh of relief.
‘I hoped you’d be sensible. After a shock like this –’
‘It’s not the shock. You know I never mind shocks.’
‘A rubber bone–indestructible,’ murmured Tommy.
‘I’ve got something better to do,’ continued Tuppence. ‘Something ever so much more exciting. Something I’ve never done before.’
Tommy looked at her with lively apprehension.
‘I forbid it, Tuppence.’
‘You can’t,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s a law of nature.’
‘What are you talking about, Tuppence?’
‘I’m talking,’ said Tuppence, ‘of Our Baby. Wives don’t whisper nowadays. They shout. OUR BABY! Tommy, isn’t everything marvellous?’
About Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared in 1976, followed by An Autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases; Problem at Pollensa Bay; and While the Light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by Charles Osborne, Mrs Christie’s biographer.
Credits
Cover by www.juliejenkinsdesign.com © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2007
The Agatha Christie Collection
Christie Crime Classics
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Spider’s Web *
The Unexpected Guest *
Ordeal by Innocence
The Pale Horse
Endless Night
Passenger To Frankfurt
Problem at Pollensa Bay
While the Light Lasts
Hercule Poirot Investigates
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Tr
ain
Black Coffee *
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three-Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The ABC Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labours of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Poirot’s Early Cases
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Thirteen Problems
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4.50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple’s Final Cases
Tommy & Tuppence
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Published as Mary Westmacott
Giant’s Bread
Unfinished Portrait
Absent in the Spring
The Rose and the Yew Tree
A Daughter’s a Daughter
The Burden
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Play Collections
The Mousetrap and Selected Plays
Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays
* novelised by Charles Osborne
www.agathachristie.com
For more information about Agatha Christie, please visit the official website.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PARTNERS IN CRIME. Copyright © 1929 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition March 2008 ISBN 9780061749056
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