Chapter 4 Expedition on Truelove; Oxford and Cambridge（4）

IV
‘Well,’ said Tuppence, as she left the dinner table that night and wentinto the other room to drink coffee, ‘was it fun or not fun? How were allthe old boys?’
‘Oh, very much the old boys,’ said Tommy. ‘How was your old lady?’
‘Oh the piano tuner came,’ said Tuppence, ‘and it rained in the after-noon so I didn’t see her. Rather a pity, the old lady might have said somethings that were interesting.’
‘My old boy did,’ said Tommy. ‘I was quite surprised. What do you thinkof this place really, Tuppence?’
‘Do you mean the house?’
‘No, I didn’t mean the house. I think I mean Hollowquay.’
‘Well, I think it’s a nice place.’
‘What do you mean by nice?’
‘Well, it’s a good word really. It’s a word one usually despises, but I don’tknow why one should. I suppose a place that’s nice is a place where thingsdon’t happen and you don’t want them to happen. You’re glad they don’t.’
‘Ah. That’s because of our age, I suppose.’
‘No, I don’t think it’s because of that. It’s because it’s nice to know thereare places where things don’t happen. Though I must say somethingnearly happened today.’
‘What do you mean by nearly happened? Have you been doing anythingsilly, Tuppence?’
‘No, of course I haven’t.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘I mean that pane¹ of glass at the top of the greenhouse, you know, it wastrembling the other day a bit, had the twitches². Well it practically camedown on my head. Might have cut me to bits.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have cut you to bits,’ said Tommy, looking at her.
‘No. I was lucky. But still, it made me jump rather.’
‘Oh, we’ll have to get our old boy who comes and does things, what’s-his-name? Isaac, isn’t it? Have to get him to look at some of the other panes–Imean, we don’t want you being done in, Tuppence.’
‘Well, I suppose when you buy an old house there’s always somethingwrong with it.’
‘Do you think there’s something wrong with this house, Tuppence?’
‘What on earth do you mean by wrong with this house?’
‘Well, because I heard something rather queer about it today.’
‘What–queer about this house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really, Tommy, that seems impossible,’ said Tuppence.
‘Why does it seem impossible? Because it looks so nice and innocent?
Well painted and done up?’
‘No. Well painted and done up and looking innocent, that’s all due to us.
It looked rather shabby and decayed when we bought it.’
‘Well, of course, that’s why it was cheap.’
‘You look peculiar³, Tommy,’ said Tuppence. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, it was old Moustachio-Monty, you know.’
‘Oh, dear old boy, yes. Did he send his love to me?’
‘Yes, he certainly did. He told me to make you take care of yourself, andme to take care of you.’
‘He always says that. Though why I should take care of myself here Idon’t know.’
‘Well, it seems it’s the sort of place you might have to take care of your-self.’
‘Now what on earth do you mean by that, Tommy?’
‘Tuppence, what would you think if I said that he suggested or hinted,whatever way you like, that we were here not as old retired⁴ has-beens butas people on active service? That we were once more, as in the N or Mdays, on duty here. Sent here by the forces of security and order to dis-cover something. To find out what was wrong with this place.’
‘Well, I don’t know if you’re dreaming, Tommy, or if it was old Mousta-chio-Monty who was, if it was he who suggested it.’
‘Well, he did. He seemed to think that we were definitely here on somekind of mission, to find something.’
‘To find something? What sort of thing?’
‘Something that might be hidden in this house.’
‘Something that might be hidden in this house! Tommy, are you mad, orwas he mad?’
‘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 inthe 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 scandalabout this place donkey’s years ago. I don’t mean anyone actually remem-bers, but it’s the sort of thing that your grandmother told you, or the ser-vants gossiped about. Actually, Beatrice has a friend who seemed to knowsomething about it. And Mary Jordan was mixed up in it. It was all veryhush-hush.’
‘Are you imagining things, Tuppence? Have you gone back to the glori-ous days of our youth, to the time when someone gave a girl on the Lusit-ania something secret, the days when we had adventure, when we trackeddown the enigmatic Mr Brown?’
‘Goodness, that was a long time ago, Tommy. The Young Adventurers wecalled 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 alot 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 wouldhave created or did create some great political upheaval⁵ of some kind.
Someone in a position of power and who oughtn’t to have been in a posi-tion of power, and there were letters, or papers, or something that woulddefinitely cook his goose if they ever came to light. All sorts of intriguesand 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, anddreamt 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 beenlikely to be hidden. Lots of other people have lived in the house sincethose days.’
‘Yes. Family after family, as far as I can make out. Well, I suppose itmight be hidden up in an attic⁶ or down in the cellar. Or perhaps buriedunder the summer-house floor. Anywhere.’
‘Anyway, it’ll be quite fun,’ said Tuppence. ‘Perhaps, you know, whenwe haven’t got anything else to do and our backs are aching because ofplanting 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 un-discovered?”’
‘I don’t think anything could remain undiscovered here,’ said Tommy.
‘Not with gardeners and people, you know, tearing up the place, and dif-ferent 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 astool and took down a Chinese teapot. She took off the lid and peered in-side.
‘Nothing there,’ she said.
‘A most unlikely place,’ said Tommy.
‘Do you think,’ said Tuppence, with a voice that was more hopeful thandespondent, ‘that somebody was trying to put an end to me and loosenedthe glass skylight in the conservatory⁷ 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 thatI 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 pleasedto 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 goout driving next time. Of course this is all completely ridiculous,’ he ad-ded.
‘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?’ askedTommy.
‘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 knowjust all about US. An “US” here in this house in the past. It’s a crime we’vegot to solve. Go back to the past to solve it–to where it happened and whyit happened. That’s a thing we’ve never tried to do before.’

1 pane   

n.窗格玻璃，长方块

参考例句：

• He broke this pane of glass.他打破了这块窗玻璃。
• Their breath bloomed the frosty pane.他们呼出的水气，在冰冷的窗玻璃上形成一层雾。

2 twitches   

n.（使）抽动， （使）颤动， （使）抽搐( twitch的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• No response, just a flutter of flanks and a few ear twitches. 没反应，只有胁腹和耳朵动了几下。 来自互联网
• BCEF(50,100 mg·kg~-1 ) could distinctly increase the head-twitch number in the 5-HTP induced head-twitches test. BCEF50、100mg·kg-1可明显增加5羟色胺酸诱导甩头小鼠的甩头次数。 来自互联网

3 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

4 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

5 upheaval   

n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱

参考例句：

• It was faced with the greatest social upheaval since World War Ⅱ.它面临第二次世界大战以来最大的社会动乱。
• The country has been thrown into an upheaval.这个国家已经陷入动乱之中。

6 attic   

n.顶楼，屋顶室

参考例句：

• Leakiness in the roof caused a damp attic.屋漏使顶楼潮湿。
• What's to be done with all this stuff in the attic?顶楼上的材料怎么处理？

7 conservatory   

n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的

参考例句：

• At the conservatory,he learned how to score a musical composition.在音乐学校里，他学会了怎样谱曲。
• The modern conservatory is not an environment for nurturing plants.这个现代化温室的环境不适合培育植物。