Postern of Fate (Tommy & Tuppence 5)

'What are you going to do this afternoon, Tuppence? Go on helping me with these lists of names and dates and things?'

'I don't think so,' said Tuppence. 'I've had all that. It really is most exhausting writing everything down. Every now and then I do get things a bit wrong, don't I?'

'Well, I wouldn't put it past you. You have made a few mistakes.'

'I wish you weren't more accurate than I am, Tommy. I find it so annoying sometimes.'

'What are you going to do instead?'

'I wouldn't mind having a good nap. Oh no, I'm not going to actually relax,' said Tuppence. 'I think I'm going to disembowel Mathilde.'

'I beg your pardon, Tuppence.'

'I said I was going to disembowel Mathilde.'

'What's the matter with you? You seem very set on violence.'

'Mathilde - she's in KK.'

'What do you mean, she's in KK?'

'Oh, the place where all the dumps are. You know, she's the rocking-horse, the one that's got a hole in her stomach.'

'Oh. And - you're going to examine her stomach, is that it?'

'That's the idea,' said Tuppence. 'Would you like to come and help me?'

'Not really,' said Tommy.

'Would you be kind enough to come and help me?' suggested Tuppence.

'Put like that,' said Tommy, with a deep sigh, 'I will force myself to consent. Anyway, it won't be as bad as making lists. Is Isaac anywhere about?'

'No. I think it's his afternoon off. Anyway, we don't want Isaac about. I think I've got all the information I can out of him.'

'He knows a good deal,' said Tommy thoughtfully. 'I found that out the other day, he was telling me a lot of things about the past. Things he can't remember himself.'

'Well, he must be nearly eighty,' said Tuppence. 'I'm quite sure of that.'

'Yes, I know, but things really far back.'

'People have always heard so many things,' said Tuppence. 'You never know if they're right or not in what they've heard. Anyway, let's go and disembowel Mathilde. I'd better change my clothes first because it's excessively dusty and cobwebby in KK and we have to burrow right inside her.'

'You might get Isaac if he's about to turn her upside down, then we could get at her stomach more easily.'

'You really sound as though in your last reincarnation you must have been a surgeon.'

'Well, I suppose it is a little like that. We are now going to remove foreign matter which might be dangerous to the preservation of Mathilde's life, such as is left of it. We might have her painted up and Deborah's twins perhaps would like to ride on her when they next come to stay.'

'Oh, our grandchildren have so many toys and presents already.'

'That won't matter,' said Tuppence. 'Children don't particularly like expensive presents. They'll play with an old bit of string or a rag doll or something they call a pet bear which is only a bit of a hearthrug just made up into a bundle with a couple of black boot-button eyes put on it. Children have their own ideas about toys.'

'Well, come on,' said Tommy. 'Forward to Mathilde. To the operating theatre.'

The reversal of Mathilde to a position suitable for the necessary operation to take place was not an easy job. Mathilde was a very fair weight. In addition to that, she was very well studded with various nails which would on occasions reverse their position, and which had points sticking out. Tuppence wiped blood from her hand and Tommy swore as he caught his pullover which immediately tore itself in a somewhat disastrous fashion.

'Blow this damned rocking-horse,' said Tommy.

'Ought to have been put on a bonfire years ago,' said Tuppence.

It was at that moment that the aged Isaac suddenly appeared and joined them.

'Whatever now!' he said with some surprise. 'Whatever be you two doing here now? What do you want with this old bit of horse-flesh here? Can I help you at all? What do you want to do with it - do you want it taken out of here?'

'Not necessarily,' said Tuppence. 'We want to turn it upside down so that we can get at the hole there and pull things out.'

'You mean pull things out from inside her, as you might say? Who's been putting that idea into your head?'

'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'that's what we do mean to do.'

'What do you think you'll find there?'

'Nothing but rubbish, I expect,' said Tommy. 'But it would be nice,' he said in a rather doubtful voice, 'if things were cleared up a bit, you know. We might want to keep other things in here. You know - games, perhaps, a croquet set. Something like that.'

'There used to be a crookey lawn once. Long time ago. That was in Mrs Faulkner's time. Yes. Down where the rose garden is now. Mind you, it wasn't a full size one.'

'When was that?' asked Tommy.

'What, you mean the crookey lawn? Oh, well before my time, it was. There's always people as want to tell you things about what used to happen - things as used to be hidden and why and who wanted to hide them. Lot of tall stories, some of them lies. Some maybe as was true.'

'You're very clever, Isaac,' said Tuppence, 'you always seem to know about everything. How do you know about the croquet lawn?'

'Oh, used to be a box of crookey things in here. Been there for ages. Shouldn't think there's much of it left now.'

Tuppence relinquished Mathilde and went over to a corner where there was a long wooden box. After releasing the lid with some difficulty as it had stuck under the ravages of time, it yielded a faded red ball, a blue ball and one mallet bent and warped. The rest of it was mainly cobwebs.

'Might have been in Mrs Fautkner's time, that might. They do say, you know, as she played in the tournaments in her time,' said Isaac.

'At Wimbledon?' said Tuppence, incredulous.

'Well, not exactly at Wimbledon, I don't think it was. No. The locals, you know. They used to have them down here. Pictures I've seen down at the photographer's -'

'The photographer's?'

'Ah. In the village, Durrance. You know Durrance, don't you?'

'Durrance?' said Tuppence vaguely. 'Oh yes, he sells films and things like that, doesn't he?'

'That's right. Mind you, he's not the old Durrance, as manages it now. It's his grandson, or his great-grandson, I shouldn't wonder. He sells mostly postcards, you know, and Christmas cards and birthday cards and things like that. He used to take photographs of people. Got a whole lot tucked away. Somebody come in the other day, you know. Wanted a picture of her great-grandmother, she said. She said she'd had one but she'd broken it or burnt it or lost it or something, and she wondered if there was the negative left. But I don't think she found it. But there's a lot of old albums in there stuck away somewhere.'

'Albums,' said Tuppence thoughtfully.

'Anything more I can do?' said Isaac.

'Well, just give us a bit of a hand with Jane, or whatever her name is.'

'Not Jane, it's Mathilde, and it's not Matilda, either which it ought by rights to be, I shoul

d say. I believe it was always called Mathilde, for some reason. French, I expect.'

'French or American,' said Tommy, thoughtfully. 'Mathilde. Louise. That sort of thing.'

'Quite a good place to have hidden things, don't you think?' said Tuppence, placing her arm into the cavity in Mathilde's stomach. She drew out a dilapidated indiarubber ball, which had once been red and yellow but which now had gaping holes in it.

'I suppose that's children,' said Tuppence. 'They always put things in like this.'