Postern of Fate (Tommy & Tuppence 5)

'Well, I rather thought he might be mad, but I'm not so sure.'

'What could there be to find in this house?'

'Something that I suppose was once hidden here.'

'Buried treasure, are you talking about? Russian crown jewels hidden in the basement, that sort of thing?'

'No. Not treasure. Something that would be dangerous to someone.'

'Well, that's very odd,' said Tuppence.

'Why, have you found something?'

'No, of course, I haven't found anything. But it seems there was a scandal about this place donkey's years ago. I don't mean anyone actually remembers, but it's the sort of thing that your grandmother told you, or the servants gossiped about. Actually, Beatrice has a friend who seemed to know something about it. And Mary Jordan was mixed up in it. It was all very hush-hush.'

'Are you imagining things, Tuppence? Have you gone back to the glorious days of our youth, to the time when someone gave a girl on the Lusitania something secret, the days when we had adventure, when we tracked down the enigmatic Mr Brown?'

'Goodness, that was a long time ago, Tommy. The Young Adventurers we called ourselves. Doesn't seem real now, does it?'

'No, it doesn't. Not a bit. But it was real, yes, it was real all right. Such a lot of things are real though you can't really bring yourself to believe it. Must be at least sixty or seventy years ago. More than that, even.'

'What did Monty actually say?'

'Letters or papers of some kind,' said Tommy. 'Something that would have created or did create some great political upheaval of some kind. Someone in a position of power and who oughtn't to have been in a position of power, and there were letters, or papers, or something that would definitely cook his goose if they ever came to light. All sorts of intrigues and all happening years ago.'

'In the time of Mary Jordan? It sounds very unlikely,' said Tuppence. 'Tommy, you must have gone to sleep in the train coming back, and dreamt all this.'

'Well, perhaps I did,' said Tommy. 'It certainly doesn't seem likely.'

'Well, I suppose we might as well have a look around,' said Tuppence, 'as we are living here.'

Her eyes passed round the room.

'I shouldn't think there would be anything hidden here, do you, Tommy?'

'It doesn't seem the sort of house where anything would have been likely to be hidden. Lots of other people have lived in the house since those days.'

'Yes. Family after family, as far as I can make out. Well, I suppose it might be hidden up in an attic or down in the cellar. Or perhaps buried under the summerhouse floor. Anywhere.'

'Anyway, it'll be quite fun,' said Tuppence. 'Perhaps, you know, when we haven't got anything else to do and our backs are aching because of planting tulip bulbs, we might have a little sort of look round. You know, just to think. Starting from the point: "If I wanted to hide something, where would I choose to put it, and where would it be likely to remain undiscovered?"'

'I don't think anything could remain undiscovered here,' said Tommy. 'Not with gardeners and people, you know, tearing up the place, and different families living here, and house agents and everything else.'

'Well, you never know. It might be in a teapot somewhere.'

Tuppence rose to her feet, went towards the mantelpiece, stood up on a stool and took down a Chinese teapot. She took off the lid and peered inside.

'Nothing there,' she said.

'A most unlikely place,' said Tommy.

'Do you think,' said Tuppence, with a voice that was more hopeful than despondent, 'that somebody was trying to put an end to me and loosened that glass skylight in the conservatory so that it would fall on me?'

'Most unlikely,' said Tommy. 'It was probably meant to fall on old Isaac.'

'That's a disappointing thought,' said Tuppence. 'I would like to feel that I had had a great escape.'

'Well, you'd better be careful of yourself. I shall be careful of you too.'

'You always fuss over me,' said Tuppence.

'It's very nice of me to do so,' said Tommy. 'You should be very pleased to have a husband who fusses about you.'

'Nobody tried to shoot you in the train or derail it or anything, did they?' said Tuppence.

'No,' said Tommy. 'But we'd better look at the car brakes before we go out driving in it next time. Of course this is all completely ridiculous,' he added.

'Of course it is,' said Tuppence. 'Absolutely ridiculous. All the same -'

'All the same what?'

'Well, it's sort of fun just to think of things like that.'

'You mean Alexander was killed because he knew something?' asked Tommy.

'He knew something about who killed Mary Jordan. It was one of us...' Tuppence's face lit up. 'US,' she said with emphasis, 'we'll have to know just all about US. An "US" here in this house in the past. It's a crime we've got to solve. Go back to the past to solve it - to where it happened and why it happened. That's a thing we've never tried to do before.'

Chapter 5

METHODS OF RESEARCH

'Where on earth have you been, Tuppence?' demanded her husband when he returned to the family mansion the following day.

'Well, last of all I've been in the cellar,' said Tuppence.

'I can see that,' said Tommy. 'Yes, I do see. Do you know that your hair is absolutely full of cobwebs?'

'Well, it would be of course. The cellar is full of cobwebs. There wasn't anything there, anyway,' said Tuppence. 'At least there were some bottles of bay rum.'

'Bay rum?' said Tommy. 'That's interesting.'

'Is it?' said Tuppence. 'Does one drink it? It seems to me most unlikely.'

'No,' said Tommy, 'I think people used to put it on their hair. I mean men, not women.'

'I believe you're right,' said Tuppence. 'I remember my uncle - yes, I had an uncle who used bay rum. A friend of his used lo bring it him from America.'

'Oh really? That seems very interesting,' said Tommy.

'I don't think it is particularly interesting,' said Tuppence. 'It's no help to us, anyway. I mean, you couldn't hide anything in a bottle of bay rum.'

'Oh, so that's what you've been doing.'

'Well, one has to start somewhere,' said Tuppence. 'It's just possible if what your pal said to you was true, something could be hidden in this house, though it's rather difficult to imagine where it could be or what it could be, because, you see, when you sell a house or die and go out of it, the house is then of course emptied, isn't it? I mean, anyone who inherits it takes the furniture out and sells it, or if it's left, the next person comes in and they sell it, and so anything that's left in it now would have belonged to the last tenant but one and certainly not much further back than that.'

'Then why should somebody want to injure you or injure me or try to get us to leave this house - unless, I mean, there was something here that they didn't want us to find?'

'Well, that's all your idea,' said Tuppence. 'It mightn't be true at all. Anyway, it's not been an entirely wasted day. I have found some things.'

'Anything to do with Mary Jordan?'

'Not particularly. The cellar, as I say, is not much good. It had a few old things to do with photography, I think. You know, a developing lamp or something like they used to use in old days, with red glass in it, and the bay rum. But there were no sort of flagstones that looked as though you could pull them up and find anything underneath. There were a few decayed trunks, some tin trunks and a c

ouple of old suitcases, but things that just couldn't be used to put anything in any more. They'd fall to bits if you kicked them. No. It was a wash-out.'