The Secret of Chimneys. Агата Кристи
There was a knock at the door, and the waiter entered with a small table and the accessories of the meal. Anthony had strolled over to the mantelpiece. Standing there with his back to the room, he was directly facing the mirror, and idly glancing in it he noticed a curious thing.
The waiter’s eyes were glued on the parcel of manuscript. Shooting little glances sideways at Anthony’s immovable back, he moved softly round the table. His hands were twitching and he kept passing his tongue over his dry lips. Anthony observed him more closely. He was a tall man, supple like all waiters, with a clean-shaven, mobile face. An Italian, Anthony thought, not a Frenchman.
At the critical moment Anthony wheeled round abruptly. The waiter started slightly, but pretended to be doing something with the salt-cellar.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Anthony abruptly.
‘Giuseppe, monsieur.’
‘Italian, eh?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
Anthony spoke to him in that language, and the man answered fluently enough. Finally Anthony dismissed him with a nod, but all the while he was eating the excellent meal which Giuseppe served to him, he was thinking rapidly.
Had he been mistaken? Was Giuseppe’s interest in the parcel just ordinary curiosity? It might be so, but remembering the feverish intensity of the man’s excitement, Anthony decided against that theory. All the same, he was puzzled.
‘Dash it all,’ said Anthony to himself, ‘everyone can’t be after the blasted manuscript. Perhaps I’m fancying things.’
Dinner concluded and cleared away, he applied himself to the perusal of the memoirs. Owing to the illegibility of the late Count’s handwriting, the business was a slow one. Anthony’s yawns succeeded one another with suspicious rapidity. At the end of the fourth chapter, he gave it up.
So far, he had found the memoirs insufferably dull, with no hint of scandal of any kind.
He gathered up the letters and the wrapping of the manuscript which were lying in a heap together on the table and locked them up in the suitcase. Then he locked the door, and as an additional precaution put a chair against it. On the chair he placed the water-bottle from the bathroom.
Surveying these preparations with some pride, he undressed and got into bed. He had one more shot at the Count’s memoirs, but felt his eyelids drooping, and stuffing the manuscript under his pillow, he switched out the light and fell asleep almost immediately.
It must have been some four hours later that he awoke with a start. What had awakened him he did not know–perhaps a sound, perhaps only the consciousness of danger which in men who have led an adventurous life is very fully developed.
For a moment he lay quite still, trying to focus his impressions. He could hear a very stealthy rustle, and then he became aware of a denser blackness somewhere between him and the window–on the floor by the suitcase.
With a sudden spring, Anthony jumped out of bed, switching the light on as he did so. A figure sprang up from where it had been kneeling by the suitcase.
It was the waiter, Giuseppe. In his right hand gleamed a long thin knife. He hurled himself straight upon Anthony, who was by now fully conscious of his own danger. He was unarmed and Giuseppe was evidently thoroughly at home with his own weapon.
Anthony sprang to one side, and Giuseppe missed him with the knife. The next minute the two men were rolling on the floor together, locked in a close embrace. The whole of Anthony’s faculties were centred on keeping a close grip of Giuseppe’s right arm so that he would be unable to use the knife. He bent it slowly back. At the same time he felt the Italian’s other hand clutching at his windpipe, stifling him, choking. And still, desperately, he bent the right arm back.
There was a sharp tinkle as the knife fell on the floor. At the same time, the Italian extricated himself with a swift twist from Anthony’s grasp. Anthony sprang up too, but made the mistake of moving towards the door to cut off the other’s retreat. He saw, too late, that the chair and the water-bottle were just as he had arranged them.
Giuseppe had entered by the window, and it was the window he made for now. In the instant’s respite given him by Anthony’s move towards the door, he had sprung out on the balcony, leaped over to the adjoining balcony and had disappeared through the adjoining window.
Anthony knew well enough that it was of no use to pursue him. His way of retreat was doubtless fully assured. Anthony would merely get himself into trouble.
He walked over to the bed, thrusting his hand beneath the pillow and drawing out the memoirs. Lucky that they had been there and not in the suitcase. He crossed over to the suitcase and looked inside, meaning to take out the letters.
Then he swore softly under his breath.
The letters were gone.
Chapter 6
The Gentle Art of Blackmail
It was exactly five minutes to four when Virginia Revel, rendered punctual by a healthy curiosity, returned to the house in Pont Street. She opened the door with her latchkey, and stepped into the hall to be immediately confronted by the impassive Chilvers.
‘I beg pardon, ma’am, but a–a person has called to see you–’
For the moment, Virginia did not pay attention to the subtle phraseology whereby Chilvers cloaked his meaning.
‘Mr Lomax? Where is he? In the drawing-room?’
‘Oh, no, ma’am, not Mr Lomax.’ Chilvers’ tone was faintly reproachful. ‘A person–I was reluctant to let him in, but he said his business was most important–connected with the late Captain, I understood him to say. Thinking therefore that you might wish to see him, I put him–er–in the study.’
Virginia stood thinking for a minute. She had been a widow now for some years, and the fact that she rarely spoke of her husband was taken by some to indicate that below her careless demeanour was a still-aching wound. By others it was taken to mean the exact opposite, that Virginia had never really cared for Tim Revel, and that she found it insincere to profess a grief she did not feel.
‘I should have mentioned, ma’am,’ continued Chilvers, ‘that the man appears to be some kind of foreigner.’
Virginia’s interest heightened a little. Her husband had been in the Diplomatic Service, and they had been together in Herzoslovakia just before the sensational murder of the King and Queen. This man might probably be a Herzoslovakian, some old servant who had fallen on evil days.
‘You did quite right, Chilvers,’ she said with a quick, approving nod. ‘Where did you say you put him? In the study?’
She crossed the hall with her light buoyant step, and opened the door of the small room that flanked the dining-room.
The visitor was sitting in a chair by the fireplace. He rose on her entrance and stood looking at her. Virginia had an excellent memory for faces, and she was at once quite sure that she had never seen the man before. He was tall and dark, supple in figure, and quite unmistakably a foreigner; but she did not think he was of Slavonic origin. She put him down as Italian or possibly Spanish.
‘You wish to see me?’ she asked. ‘I am Mrs Revel.’
The man did not answer for a minute or two. He was looking her slowly over, as though appraising her narrowly. There was a veiled insolence in his manner which she was quick to feel.
‘Will you please state your business?’ she said, with a touch of impatience.
‘You are Mrs Revel? Mrs Timothy Revel?’
‘Yes. I told you so just now.’
‘Quite so. It is a good thing that you consented to see me, Mrs Revel. Otherwise, as I told your butler, I should have been compelled to do business with your husband.’
Virginia