Page 15 of N or M? (Tommy & Tuppence 3)

But a servant would not think of wiping off fingerprints.

Mrs Perenna? Sheila? Somebody else? Somebody, at least, who was interested in the movements of British armed forces.

IV

Tuppence's plan of campaign had been simple in its outlines. First, a general sizing up of probabilities and possibilities. Second, an experiment to determine whether there was or was not an inmate of Sans Souci who was interested in troop movements and anxious to conceal the fact. Third - who that person was?

It was concerning that third operation that Tuppence pondered as she lay in bed the following morning. Her train of thought was slightly hampered by Betty Sprot, who had pranced in at an early hour

, preceding indeed the cup of somewhat tepid inky liquid known as Morning Tea.

Betty was both active and voluble. She had taken a great attachment to Tuppence. She climbed up on the bed and thrust an extremely tattered picture book under Tuppence's nose, commanding with brevity:

"Wead."

Tuppence read obediently:

"Goosey, goosey gander, whither will you wander?

Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber."

Betty rolled with mirth - repeating in an ecstasy:

"Upstares - upstares - upstares -" and then with a sudden climax: "Down -" and proceeded to roll off the bed with a thump.

This proceeding was repeated several times until it palled. Then Betty crawled about the floor, playing with Tuppence's shoes and muttering busily to herself in her own particular idiom:

"Ag do - bah pit - soo - soo dah - putch -"

Released to fly back to its own perplexities, Tuppence's mind forgot the child. The words of the nursery rhyme seemed to mock at her.

"Goosey, goosey gander, whither shall ye wander?"

"Whither indeed? Goosey, that was her, Gander was Tommy. It was, at any rate, what they appeared to be! Tuppence had the heartiest contempt for Mrs Blenkensop. Mr Meadowes, she thought, was a little better - stolid, British, unimaginative - quite incredibly stupid. Both of them, she hoped, fitting nicely into the background of Sans Souci. Both such possible people to be there.

All the same, one must not relax - a slip was so easy. She had made one the other day - nothing that mattered, but just a sufficient indication to warn her to be careful. Such an easy approach to intimacy and good relations - an indifferent knitter asking for guidance. But she had forgotten that one evening, her fingers had slipped into their own practised efficiency, the needles clicking busily with the even note of the experienced knitter. And Mrs O'Rourke had noticed it. Since then, she had carefully struck a medium course - not so clumsy as she had been at first - but not so rapid as she could be.

"Ag boo bate?" demanded Betty. She reiterated the question: "Ag boo bate?"

"Lovely, darling," said Tuppence absently. "Beautiful."

Satisfied, Betty relapsed into murmurs again.

Her next step, Tuppence thought, could be managed easily enough. That is to say with the connivance of Tommy. She saw exactly how to do it -

Lying there planning, time slipped by. Mrs Sprot came in, breathless, to seek for Betty.

"Oh, here she is. I couldn't think where she had got to. Oh, Betty, you naughty girl - Oh, dear, Mrs Blenkensop, I am so sorry."

Tuppence sat up in bed. Betty, with an angelic face, was contemplating her handiwork.

She had removed all the laces from Tuppence's shoes and had immersed them in a glass of water. She was prodding them now with a gleeful finger.

Tuppence laughed and cut short Mrs Sprot's apologies.

"How frightfully funny. Don't worry, Mrs Sprot, they'll recover all right. It's my fault. I should have noticed what she was doing. She rather quiet."

"I know." Mrs Sprot sighed. "Whenever they're quiet, it's a bad sign. I'll get you some more laces this morning, Mrs Blenkensop."

"Don't bother," said Tuppence. "They'll dry none the worse."

Mrs Sprot bore Betty away and Tuppence got up to put her plan into execution.

Chapter 6

Tommy looked rather gingerly at the packet that Tuppence thrust upon him.

"Is this it?"

"Yes. Be careful. Don't get it over you."

Tommy took a delicate sniff at the packet and replied with energy:

"No, indeed. What is this frightful stuff?"

"Asafoetida," replied Tuppence. "A pinch of that and you will wonder why your boy friend is no longer attentive, as the advertisements say."

"Shades of B.O.," murmured Tommy.

Shortly after that, various incidents occurred.

The first was the Smell in Mr Meadowes' room.

Mr Meadowes, not a complaining man by nature, spoke about it mildly at first, then with increasing firmness.

Mrs Perenna was summoned into conclave. With all the will in the world to resist, she had to admit that there was a smell. A pronounced, unpleasant smell. Perhaps, she suggested, the gas tap of the fire was leaking.

Bending down and sniffing dubiously, Tommy remarked that he did not think the smell came from there. Nor from under the floor. He himself thought, definitely - a dead rat.

Mrs Perenna admitted that she had heard of such things - but she was sure there were no rats at Sans Souci. Perhaps a mouse - though she herself had never seen a mouse there.

Mr Meadowes said with firmness that he thought the smell indicated at least a rat - and he added, still more firmly, that he was not going to sleep another night in the room until the matter had been seen to. He would ask Mrs Perenna to change his room.

Mrs Perenna said, "Of course, she had just been about to suggest the same thing. She was afraid that the only room vacant was rather a small one and unfortunately it had no sea view, but if Mr Meadowes did not mind that -"

Mr Meadowes did not. His only wish was to get away from the smell. Mrs Perenna thereupon accompanied him to a small bedroom, the door of which happened to be just opposite the door of Mrs Blenkensop's room, and summoned the adenoidal, semi-idiotic Beatrice to "move Mr Meadowes' things." She would, she explained, send for "a man" to take up the floor and search for the origin of the smell.

Matters were settled satisfactorily on this basis.

II

The second incident was Mr Meadowes' hay fever. That was what he called it at first. Later he admitted doubtfully that he might just possibly have caught cold. He sneezed a good deal, and his eyes ran. If there was a faint elusive suggestion of raw onion floating in the breeze in the vicinity of Mr Meadowes' large silk handkerchief nobody noticed the fact and indeed a pungent amount of eau de cologne masked the more penetrating odour.

Finally, defeated by incessant sneezing and noseblowing, Mr Meadowes retired to bed for the day.

It was on the morning of that day that Mrs Blenkensop received a letter from her son Douglas. So excited and thrilled was Mrs Blenkensop that everybody at Sans Souci heard about it. The letter had not been censored at all, she explained, because fortunately one of Douglas's friends coming on leave had brought it, so for once Douglas had been able to write quite fully.

"And it just shows," declared Mrs Blenkensop, wagging her head sagely, "how little we really know of what is going on."

After breakfast she went upstairs to her room, opened the japanned box and put the letter away. Between the folded pages were some unnoticeable grains of rice powder. She closed the box again, pressing her fingers firmly on its surface.

As she left her room she coughed, and from opposite came the sound of a highly histrionic sneeze.

Tuppence smiled and proceeded downstairs.

She had already made known her intention of going up to London for the day - to see her lawyer on some business and to do a little shopping.

Now she was given a good send-off by the assembled boarders and entrusted with various commissions - "only if you have time, of course."

Major Bletchley held himself aloof from this female chatter. He was reading his paper and uttering appropriate comments aloud. "Damned swines of Germans. Machine gunning civilian refugees on the roads. Damned brutes. If I were our people -"

Tuppence left him still outlining what he would do if he were in charge of operations.

She made a detour through the garden to ask Betty Sprot what she would like as a present from London.

Betty, ecstatically clasping a snail in two hot hands, gurgled appreciatively. In response to Tuppence's suggestions "A pussy? A picture book? Some coloured chalks to draw with?" - Betty decided, "Betty dwar." So the coloured chalks were noted down on Tuppence's list.

As she passed on, meaning to rejoin the drive by the path at the end of the garden, she came unexpectedly upon Carl von Deinim. He was standing leaning on th

e wall. His hands were clenched, and as Tuppence approached he turned on her, his usually impassive face convulsed with emotion.

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