Postern of Fate (Tommy & Tuppence 5)

'She was pretending to spy, perhaps,' said Tuppence, 'for Germany. Making friends with Commander - whoever it was.'

'Call him Commander X,' said Tommy, 'if you can't remember.'

'All right, all right. Commander X. She was getting friendly with him.'

'There was also,' said Tommy, 'an enemy agent living down here. The head of a big organization. He lived in a cottage somewhere, down near the quay I think it was, and he wrote a lot of propaganda, and used to say that really our best plan would be to join in with Germany and get together with them - and things like that.'

'It is all so confusing,' said Tuppence. 'All these things - plans, and secret papers and plots and espionage - have been so confusing. Well, anyway, we've probably been looking in all the wrong places.'

'Not really,' said Tommy, 'I don't think so.'

'Why don't you think so?'

'Well, because if she, Mary Jordan, was here to find out something, and if she did find out something, then perhaps when they - I mean Commander X or other people - there must have been other people too in it - when they found out that she'd found out something -'

'Now don't get me muddled again,' said Tuppence. 'If you say things like that, it's very muddling. Yes. Go on.'

'All right. Well, when they found out that she'd found out a lot of things, well, then they had to -'

'To silence her,' said Tuppence.

'You make it sound like Phillips Oppenheim now,' said Tommy. 'And he was before 1914, surely.'

'Well, anyway, they had to silence Mary before she could report what she'd found out.'

'There must be a little more to it than that,' said Tommy. 'Perhaps she'd got hold of something important. Some kind of papers or written document. Letters that might have been sent or passed to someone.'

'Yes. I see what you mean. We've got to look among a different lot of people. But if she was one of the ones to die because of a mistake that had been made about the vegetables, then I don't see quite how it could be what Alexander called "one of us". It presumably wasn't one of his family.'

'It could have been like this,' said Tommy. 'It needn't have been actually someone in the house. It's very easy to pick wrong leaves looking alike, bunch 'em all up together and take them into the kitchen; you wouldn't, I think, make them really - I mean, not really - too lethal. Just the people at one particular meal would get rather ill after it and they'd send for a doctor and the doctor would get the food analysed and he'd realize somebody'd made a mistake over vegetables. He wouldn't think anyone had done it on purpose.'

'But then everybody at that meal would have died" said Tuppence. 'Or everybody would have been ill but not died.'

'Not necessarily,' said Tommy. 'Suppose they wanted a certain person - Mary J. - to die, and they were going to give a dose of poison to her, oh, in a cocktail before the lunch or dinner or whatever it was or in coffee or something after the meal - actual digitalin, or aconite or whatever it is in foxgloves -'

'Aconite's in monkshood. I think,' said Tuppence.

'Don't be so knowledgeable.' said Tommy. 'The point is everyone gets a mild dose by what is clearly a mistake, so everyone gets mildly ill - but one person dies. Don't you see, if most people were taken ill after whatever it was - dinner or lunch one day and it was looked into, and they found out about the mistake, well, things do happen like that. You know, people eat fungus instead of mushrooms, and deadly nightshade berries children eat by mistake because the berries look like fruit. Just a mistake and people are ill, but they don't usually all die. Just one of them does, and the one that did die would be assumed to have been particularly allergic to whatever it was and so she had died but the others hadn't. You see. It would pass off as really due to the mistake and they wouldn't have looked to see or even suspected there was some other way in which it happened -'

'She might have got a little ill like the others and then the real dose might have been put in her early tea the next morning,' said Tuppence.

'I'm sure, Tuppence, that you've lots of ideas.'

'About that part of it, yes,' said Tuppence. 'But what about the other things? I mean who and what and why? Who was the "one of us" - "one of them" as we'd better say now - who had the opportunity? Someone staying down here, friends of other people perhaps? People who brought a letter, forged perhaps, from a friend saying "Do be kind to my friend, Mr or Mrs Murray Wilson, or some name, who is down here. She is so anxious to see your pretty garden," or something. All that would be easy enough.'

'Yes, I think it would.'

'In that case.' said Tuppence. 'there's perhaps something still here in the house that would explain what happened to me today and yesterday, too.'

'What happened to you yesterday, Tuppence?'

'The wheels came off that beastly little cart and horse I was going down the hill in the other day, and so I came a terrible cropper right down behind the monkey puzzle and into it. And I very nearly - well, I might have had a serious accident. That silly old man Isaac ought to have seen that the thing was safe. He said he did look at it. He told me it was quite all right before I started.'

'And it wasn't?'

'No. He said afterwards that he thought someone had been playing about with it, tampering with the wheels or something, so that they came off.'

'Tuppence,' said Tommy, 'do you think that's the second or third thing that's happened here to us? You know that other thing that nearly came down on the top of me in the book-room?'

'You mean somebody wants to get rid of us? But that would mean -'

'That would mean" said Tommy, 'that there must be something. Something that's here - in the house.'

Tommy looked at Tuppence and Tuppence looked at Tommy. It was the moment for consideration. Tuppence opened her mouth three times but checked herself each time, frowning, as she considered. It was Tommy who spoke at last.

'What did he think? What did he say about Truelove? Old Isaac, I mean.'

'That it was only to be expected, that the thing was pretty rotten anyway.'

'But he said somebody had been monkeying about with it?'

'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'very definitely. "Ah," he said. "these youngsters have been in tryin' it out, you know. Enjoy pulling wheels off things, they do, young monkeys." Not that I've seen anyone about. But then I suppose they'd be sure that I didn't catch them at it. They'd wait till I'm away from home, I expect.

'I asked him if he thought it was just - just something mischievous,' said Tuppence.

'What did he say to that?' said Tommy.

'He didn't really know what to say.'

'It could have been mischief, I suppose,' said Tommy, 'People do do those things.'

'Are you trying to say you think that it was meant in some way so that I should go on playing the fool with the cart and that the wheel would come off and the thing would fall to pieces - oh, but that is nonsense, Tommy.'

'Well, it sounds like nonsense,' said Tommy, 'but things aren't nonsense sometimes. It depends where and how they happen and why.'

'I don't see what "why" there could be.'

'One might make a guess - about the most likely thing,' said Tommy.

'Now what do you mean by the most likely?'

'I mean perhaps people want us to go away from here.'

'Why should they? If somebody wants the house for themselves, they could make us an offer for it.'

'Yes, they could.'

'Well, I wondered - Nobody else has wanted this house as far as we know. I mean, there was nobody else l

ooking at it when we were. It seemed to be generally regarded as if it had come into the market rather cheap but not for any other reason, except that it was out of date and needed a lot doing to it.'

'I can't believe they wanted to do away with us, maybe it's because you've been nosing about, asking too many questions, copying things out of books.'

'You mean that I'm stirring up things that somebody doesn't want to be stirred up?'

'That sort of thing,' said Tommy. 'I mean, if we suddenly were meant to feel that we didn't like living here, and put the house up for sale and went away, that would be quite all right. They'd be satisfied with that. I don't think that they -'