‘Tuppence!’ Tommy called, as he came into the house.
There was no answer. With some annoyance2, he ran up the stairs andalong the passage on the first floor. As he hastened along it, he nearly puthis foot through a gaping3 hole, and swore promptly4.
‘Some other bloody5 careless electrician,’ he said.
Some days before he had had the same kind of trouble. Electricians ar-riving in a kindly6 tangle7 of optimism and efficiency had started work.
‘Coming along fine now, not much more to do,’ they said. ‘We’ll be backthis afternoon.’ But they hadn’t been back that afternoon; Tommy was notprecisely surprised. He was used, now, to the general pattern of labour inthe building trade, electrical trade, gas employees and others. They came,they showed efficiency, they made optimistic remarks, they went away tofetch something. They didn’t come back. One rang up numbers on the tele-phone but they always seemed to be the wrong numbers. If they were theright numbers, the right man was not working at this particular branch ofthe trade, whatever it was. All one had to do was to be careful to not rickan ankle, fall through a hole, damage yourself in some way or another. Hewas far more afraid of Tuppence damaging herself than he was of doingthe damage to himself. He had had more experience than Tuppence. Tup-pence, he thought, was more at risk from scalding herself from kettles ordisasters with the heat of the stove. But where was Tuppence now? Hecalled again.
‘Tuppence! Tuppence!’
He worried about Tuppence. Tuppence was one of those people you hadto worry about. If you left the house, you gave her last words of wisdomand she gave you last promises of doing exactly what you counselled herto do: No she would not be going out except just to buy half a pound ofbutter, and after all you couldn’t call that dangerous, could you?
‘It could be dangerous if you went out to buy half a pound of butter,’ saidTommy.
‘Oh,’ said Tuppence, ‘don’t be an idiot.’
‘I’m not being an idiot,’ Tommy had said. ‘I am just being a wise andcareful husband, looking after something which is one of my favouritepossessions. I don’t know why it is–’
‘Because,’ said Tuppence, ‘I am so charming, so good- looking, such agood companion and because I take so much care of you.’
‘That also, maybe,’ said Tommy, ‘but I could give you another list.’
‘I don’t feel I should like that,’ said Tuppence. ‘No, I don’t think so. Ithink you have several saved-up grievances8. But don’t worry. Everythingwill be quite all right. You’ve only got to come back and call me when youget in.’
But now where was Tuppence?
‘The little devil,’ said Tommy. ‘She’s gone out somewhere.’
He went on into the room upstairs where he had found her before.
Looking at another child’s book, he supposed. Getting excited again aboutsome silly words that a silly child had underlined in red ink. On the trail ofMary Jordan, whoever she was. Mary Jordan, who hadn’t died a naturaldeath. He couldn’t help wondering. A long time ago, presumably, thepeople who’d had the house and sold it to them had been named Jones.
They hadn’t been there very long, only three or four years. No, this childof the Robert Louis Stevenson book dated from further back than that.
Anyway, Tuppence wasn’t here in this room. There seemed to be no loosebooks lying about with signs of having had interest shown in them.
‘Ah, where the hell can she be?’ said Thomas.
He went downstairs again, shouting once or twice. There was no an-swer. He examined one of the pegs9 in the hall. No signs of Tuppence’smackintosh. Then she’d gone out. Where had she gone? And where wasHannibal? Tommy varied10 the use of his vocal11 cords and called out forHannibal.
‘Hannibal–Hannibal–Hanny-boy. Come on, Hannibal.’
No Hannibal.
Well, at any rate, she’s got Hannibal with her, thought Tommy.
He didn’t know if it was worse or better that Tuppence should haveHannibal. Hannibal would certainly allow no harm to come to Tuppence.
The question was, might Hannibal do some damage to other people? Hewas friendly when taken visiting people, but people who wished to visitHannibal, to enter any house in which he lived, were always definitelysuspect in Hannibal’s mind. He was ready at all risks to both bark and biteif he considered it necessary. Anyway, where was everybody?
He walked a little way along the street, could see no signs of any smallblack dog with a medium-sized woman in a bright red mackintosh walk-ing in the distance. Finally, rather angrily, he came back to the house.
Rather an appetizing smell met him. He went quickly to the kitchen,where Tuppence turned from the stove and gave him a smile of welcome.
‘You’re ever so late,’ she said. ‘This is a casserole. Smells rather good,don’t you think? I put some rather unusual things in it this time. Therewere some herbs in the garden, at least I hope they were herbs.’
‘If they weren’t herbs,’ said Tommy, ‘I suppose they were Deadly Night-shade, or Digitalis leaves pretending to be something else but really fox-glove. Where on earth have you been?’
‘I took Hannibal for a walk.’
Hannibal, at this moment, made his own presence felt. He rushed atTommy and gave him such a rapturous welcome as nearly to fell him tothe ground. Hannibal was a small black dog, very glossy12, with interestingtan patches on his behind and each side of his cheeks. He was aManchester terrier of very pure pedigree and he considered himself to beon a much higher level of sophistication and aristocracy than any otherdog he met.
‘Oh, good gracious. I took a look round. Where’ve you been? It wasn’tvery nice weather.’
‘No, it wasn’t. It was very sort of foggy and misty13. Ah–I’m quite tired,too.’
‘Where did you go? Just down the street for the shops?’
‘No, it’s early closing day for the shops. No… Oh no, I went to thecemetery.’
‘Sounds gloomy,’ said Tommy. ‘What did you want to go to the cemeteryfor?’
‘I went to look at some of the graves.’
‘It still sounds rather gloomy,’ said Tommy. ‘Did Hannibal enjoy him-self?’
‘Well, I had to put Hannibal on the lead. There was something thatlooked like a verger who kept coming out of the church and I thought hewouldn’t like Hannibal because–well, you never know, Hannibal mightn’tlike him and I didn’t want to prejudice people against us the moment we’darrived.’
‘What did you want to look in the cemetery for?’
‘Oh, to see what sort of people were buried there. Lots of people, I meanit’s very, very full up. It goes back a long way. It goes back well in theeighteen hundreds and I think one or two older than that, only the stone’sso rubbed away you can’t really see.’
‘I still don’t see why you wanted to go to the cemetery.’
‘I was making my investigations,’ said Tuppence.
‘Investigations about what?’
‘I wanted to see if there were any Jordans buried there.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Tommy. ‘Are you still on that? Were you lookingfor–’
‘Well, Mary Jordan died. We know she died. We know because we had abook that said she didn’t die a natural death, but she’d still have to be bur-ied somewhere, wouldn’t she?’
‘Undeniably,’ said Tommy, ‘unless she was buried in this garden.’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said Tuppence, ‘because I think that itwas only this boy or girl–it must have been a boy, I think–of course it wasa boy, his name was Alexander– and he obviously thought he’d beenrather clever in knowing that she’d not died a natural death. But if he wasthe only person who’d made up his mind about that or who’d discoveredit–well, I mean, nobody else had, I suppose. I mean, she just died and wasburied and nobody said…’
‘Nobody said there had been foul14 play,’ suggested Tommy.
‘That sort of thing, yes. Poisoned or knocked on the head or pushed off acliff or run over by a car or–oh, lots of ways I can think of.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ said Tommy. ‘Only good thing about you, Tuppence,is that at least you have a kindly heart. You wouldn’t put them into execu-tion just for fun.’
‘But there wasn’t any Mary Jordan in the cemetery. There weren’t anyJordans.’
‘Disappointing for you,’ said Tommy. ‘Is that thing you’re cooking readyyet, because I’m pretty hungry. It smells rather good.’
‘It’s absolutely done a` point,’ said Tuppence. ‘So, as soon as you’vewashed, we eat.’
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收听单词发音
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1
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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3
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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4
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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5
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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6
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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7
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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8
grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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pegs
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| n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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10
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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12
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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13
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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14
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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