The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (best detective novels of all time TXT) 📖

in Cabin 17? It can’t be the stabbing of the secretary. There would be no point in timing that for a special hour on a special day in a special place. No, it must have been some kind of appointment and he was on his way to keep it when they knifed him. But who was the appointment with? Certainly not with you. It might have been with Chichester. Or it might have been with Pagett.”

“That seems unlikely,” I objected, “they can see each other any time.”

We both sat silent for a minute or two, then Suzanne started off on another tack.

“Could there have been anything hidden in the cabin?”

“That seems more probable,” I agreed. “It would explain my things being ransacked the next morning. But there was nothing hidden there, I’m sure of it.”

“The young man couldn’t have slipped something into a drawer the night before?”

I shook my head.

“I should have seen him.”

“Could it have been your precious piece of paper they were looking for?”

“It might have been, but it seems rather senseless. It was only a time and a date—and they were both past by then.”

Suzanne nodded.

“That’s so of course. No, it wasn’t the paper. By the way, have you got it with you? I’d rather like to see it.”

I had brought the paper with me as Exhibit A, and I handed it over to her. She scrutinized it, frowning.

“There’s a dot after the 17. Why isn’t there a dot after the 1 too?”

“There’s a space,” I pointed out.

“Yes, there’s a space, but——”

Suddenly she rose and peered at the paper, holding it as close under the light as possible. There was a repressed excitement in her manner.

“Anne, that isn’t a dot! That’s a flaw in the paper! A flaw in the paper, you see? So you’ve got to ignore it, and just go by the spaces—the spaces!”

I had risen and was standing by her. I read out the figures as I now saw them.

“1 71 22.”

“You see,” said Suzanne, “it’s the same, but not quite. It’s one o’clock still, and the 22nd—but it’s Cabin 71! My cabin, Anne!”

We stood staring at each other, so pleased with our new discovery and so rapt with excitement that you might have thought we had solved the whole mystery. Then I fell to earth with a bump.

“But, Suzanne, nothing happened here at one o’clock on the 22nd?”

Her face fell also. “No—it didn’t.”

Another idea struck me.

“This isn’t your own cabin, is it, Suzanne? I mean not the one you originally booked?”

“No, the purser changed me into it.”

“I wonder if it was booked before sailing for some one—some one who didn’t turn up. I suppose we could find out.”

“We don’t need to find out, Gipsy girl,” cried Suzanne. “I know! The purser was telling me about it. The cabin was booked in the name of Mrs. Grey—but it seems that Mrs. Grey was merely a pseudonym for the famous Madame Nadina. She’s a celebrated Russian dancer, you know. She’s never appeared in London, but Paris has been quite mad about her. She had a terrific success there all through the War. A thoroughly bad lot, I believe, but most attractive. The purser expressed his regrets that she wasn’t on board in a most heart-felt fashion when he gave me her cabin, and then Colonel Race told me a lot about her. It seems there were very queer stories afloat in Paris. She was suspected of espionage, but they couldn’t prove anything. I rather fancy Colonel Race was over there simply on that account. He’s told me some very interesting things. There was a regular organized gang, not German in origin at all. In fact the head of it, a man always referred to as ‘the Colonel’ was thought to be an Englishman, but they never got any clue as to his identity. But there is no doubt that he controlled a considerable organization of international crooks. Robberies, espionages, assaults, he undertook them all—and usually provided an innocent scapegoat to pay the penalty. Diabolically clever, he must have been! This woman was supposed to be one of his agents, but they couldn’t get hold of anything to go upon. Yes, Anne, we’re on the right tack. Nadina is just the woman to be mixed up in this business. The appointment on the morning of the 22nd was with her in this cabin. But where is she? Why didn’t she sail?”

A light flashed upon me.

“She meant to sail,” I said slowly.

“Then why didn’t she?”

“Because she was dead. Suzanne, Nadina was the woman murdered at Marlow!”

My mind went back to the bare room in the empty house, and there swept over me again that indefinable sensation of menace and evil. With it came the memory of the falling pencil and the discovery of the roll of films. A roll of films—that struck a more recent note. Where had I heard of a roll of films? And why did I connect that thought with Mrs. Blair?

Suddenly I flew at her and almost shook her in my excitement.

“Your films! The ones that were passed to you through the ventilator? Wasn’t that on the 22nd?”

“The ones I lost?”

“How do you know they were the same? Why would any one return them to you that way—in the middle of the night? It’s a mad idea. No—they were a message, the films had been taken out of the yellow tin case, and something else put inside. Have you got it still?”

“I may have used it. No, here it is. I remember I tossed it into the rack at the side of the bunk.”

She held it out to me.

It was an ordinary round tin cylinder, such as films are packed in for the tropics. I took it with trembling hand, but even as I did so my heart leapt. It was noticeably heavier than it should have been.

With shaking fingers I peeled off the strip of adhesive plaster that kept it air-tight. I pulled off the lid, and a stream of dull glassy pebbles rolled onto the bed.

“Pebbles,” I said, keenly disappointed.

“Pebbles?” cried Suzanne.

The ring in her voice excited me.

“Pebbles? No, Anne, not pebbles! Diamonds!”

CHAPTER XV

Diamonds!

I stared, fascinated, at the glassy heap on the bunk. I picked up one which, but for the weight, might have been a fragment of broken bottle.

“Are you sure, Suzanne?”

“Oh, yes, my dear. I’ve seen rough diamonds too often to have any doubts. They’re beauties too, Anne—and some of them are unique, I should say. There’s a history behind these.”

“The history we heard to-night,” I cried.

“You mean——?”

“Colonel Race’s story. It can’t be a coincidence. He told it for a purpose.”

“To see its effect, you mean?”

I nodded.

“Its effect on Sir Eustace?”

“Yes.”

But, even as I said it, a doubt assailed me. Was it Sir Eustace who had been subjected to a test, or had the story been told for my benefit? I remembered the impression I had received on that former night of having been deliberately “pumped.” For some reason or other, Colonel Race was suspicious. But where did he come in? What possible connection could he have with the affair?

“Who is Colonel Race?” I asked.

“That’s rather a question,” said Suzanne. “He’s pretty well known as a big-game hunter, and, as you heard him say to-night, he was a distant cousin of Sir Laurence Eardsley. I’ve never actually met him until this trip. He journeys to and from Africa a good deal. There’s a general idea that he does Secret Service work. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. He’s certainly rather a mysterious creature.”

“I suppose he came into a lot of money as Sir Laurence Eardsley’s heir?”

“My dear Anne, he must be rolling. You know, he’d be a splendid match for you.”

“I can’t have a good go at him with you aboard the ship,” I said, laughing. “Oh, these married women!”

“We do have a pull,” murmured Suzanne complacently. “And everybody knows that I am absolutely devoted to Clarence—my husband, you know. It’s so safe and pleasant to make love to a devoted wife.”

“It must be very nice for Clarence to be married to some one like you.”

“Well, I’m wearing to live with! Still, he can always escape to the Foreign Office, where he fixes his eyeglass in his eye, and goes to sleep in a big arm-chair. We might cable him to tell us all he knows about Race. I love sending cables. And they annoy Clarence so. He always says a letter would have done as well. I don’t suppose he’d tell us anything, though. He is so frightfully discreet. That’s what makes him so hard to live with for long on end. But let us go on with our matchmaking. I’m sure Colonel Race is very attracted to you, Anne. Give him a couple of glances from those wicked eyes of yours, and the deed is done. Every one gets engaged on board ship. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I don’t want to get married.”

“Don’t you?” said Suzanne. “Why not? I love being married—even to Clarence!”

I disdained her flippancy.

“What I want to know is,” I said with determination, “what has Colonel Race got to do with this? He’s in it somewhere.”

“You don’t think it was mere chance, his telling that story?”

“No, I don’t,” I said decidedly. “He was watching us all narrowly. You remember, some of the diamonds were recovered, not all. Perhaps these are the missing ones—or perhaps——”

“Perhaps what?”

I did not answer directly.

“I should like to know,” I said, “what became of the other young man. Not Eardsley but—what was his name?—Lucas!”

“We’re getting some light on the thing, anyway. It’s the diamonds all these people are after. It must have been to obtain possession of the diamonds that ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’ killed Nadina.”

“He didn’t kill her,” I said sharply.

“Of course he killed her. Who else could have done so?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure he didn’t kill her.”

“He went into that house three minutes after her and came out as white as a sheet.”

“Because he found her dead.”

“But nobody else went in.”

“Then the murderer was in the house already, or else he got in some other way. There’s no need for him to pass the lodge, he could have climbed over the wall.”

Suzanne glanced at me sharply.

“‘The Man in the Brown Suit,’” she mused. “Who was he, I wonder? Anyway, he was identical with the ‘doctor’ in the Tube. He would have had time to remove his make-up and follow the woman to Marlow. She and Carton were to have met there, they both had an order to view the same house, and if they took such elaborate precautions to make their meeting appear accidental they must have suspected they were being followed. All the same, Carton did not know that his shadower was the ‘Man in the Brown Suit.’ When he recognized him, the shock was so great that he lost his head completely and stepped back onto the line. That all seems pretty clear, don’t you think so, Anne?”

I did not reply.

“Yes, that’s how it was. He took the paper from the dead man, and in his hurry to get away he dropped it. Then he followed the woman to Marlow. What did he do when he left there, when he had killed her—or, according to you, found her dead. Where did he go?”

Still I said nothing.

“I wonder, now,” said Suzanne musingly. “Is it possible that he induced Sir Eustace Pedler to bring him on board as his secretary? It would be a unique chance of getting safely out of England, and dodging the hue and cry. But how did he square Sir Eustace? It looks as though he had some hold over him.”

“Or over Pagett,” I suggested in spite of myself.

“You don’t seem to like Pagett, Anne. Sir Eustace says he’s a most capable and hard-working young man. And, really, he may be for all we know against him. Well, to continue my surmises. Rayburn is the ‘Man in the Brown Suit.’ He had read the paper he dropped.