‘Where on earth have you been, Tuppence?’ demanded her husband whenhe returned to the family mansion1 the following day.
‘Well, last of all I’ve been in the cellar2,’ said Tuppence.
‘I can see that,’ said Tommy. ‘Yes, I do see. Do you know that your hair isabsolutely full of cobwebs?’
‘Well, it would be of course. The cellar is full of cobwebs. There wasn’tanything there, anyway,’ said Tuppence. ‘At least there were some bottlesof 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 meanmen, not women.’
‘I believe you’re right,’ said Tuppence. ‘I remember my uncle–yes, I hadan uncle who used bay rum. A friend of his used to bring it him fromAmerica.’
‘Oh really? That seems very interesting,’ said Tommy.
‘I don’t think it is particularly interesting,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s no help tous, 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 ifwhat your pal3 said to you was true, something could be hidden in thishouse, though it’s rather difficult to imagine where it could be or what itcould 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 inheritsit takes the furniture out and sells it, or if it’s left, the next person comes inand they sell it, and so anything that’s left in now would have belonged tothe last tenant4 but one and certainly not much further back than that.’
‘Then why should somebody want to injure you or injure me or try toget us to leave this house–unless, I mean, there was something here thatthey didn’t want us to find?’
‘Well, that’s all your idea,’ said Tuppence. ‘It mightn’t be true at all. Any-way, it’s not been an entirely5 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 oldthings to do with photography, I think. You know, a developing lamp orsomething like they used to use in old days, with red glass in it, and thebay rum. But there were no sort of flagstones that looked as though youcould pull them up and find anything underneath6. There were a few de-cayed trunks, some tin trunks and a couple of old suitcases, but things thatjust couldn’t be used to put anything in any more. They’d fall to bits if youkicked them. No. It was a wash-out.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Tommy. ‘So no satisfaction.’
‘Well, there were some things that were interesting. I said to myself, onehas to say something to oneself–I think I’d better go upstairs now and takethe cobwebs off before I go on talking.’
‘Well, I think perhaps you had,’ said Tommy. ‘I shall like looking at youbetter when you’ve done that.’
‘If you want to get the proper Darby and Joan feeling,’ said Tuppence,‘you must always look at me and consider that your wife, no matter whather age, still looks lovely to you.’
‘Tuppence dearest,’ said Tommy, ‘you look excessively lovely to me. Andthere is a kind of roly-poly of a cobweb hanging down over your left earwhich is most attractive. Rather like the curl that the Empress Eugenie issometimes represented as having in pictures. You know, running alongthe corner of her neck. Yours seems to have got a spider in it, too.’
‘Oh,’ said Tuppence, ‘I don’t like that.’
She brushed the web away with her hand. She duly went upstairs andreturned to Tommy later. A glass was awaiting her. She looked at it doubt-fully.
‘You aren’t trying to make me drink bay rum, are you?’
‘No. I don’t think I particularly want to drink bay rum myself.’
‘Well,’ said Tuppence, ‘if I may get on with what I was saying–’
‘I should like you to,’ said Tommy. ‘You’ll do it anyway, but I would liketo feel it was because I urged you to do so.’
‘Well, I said to myself, “Now if I was going to hide anything in this housethat I didn’t want anyone else to find, what sort of place would I choose?”’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘very logical.’
‘And so I thought, what places are there where one can hide things?
Well, one of them of course is Mathilde’s stomach.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tommy.
‘Mathilde’s stomach. The rocking-horse. I told you about the rocking-horse. It’s an American rocking-horse.’
‘A lot of things seem to have come from America,’ said Tommy. ‘The bayrum too, you said.’
‘Well, anyway, the rocking-horse did have a hole in its stomach becauseold Isaac told me about it; it had a hole in its stomach and a lot of sort ofqueer old paper stuff came out of it. Nothing interesting. But anyway,that’s the sort of place where anyone might have hidden anything, isn’t it?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘And Truelove, of course. I examined Truelove again. You know it’s got asort of rather old decayed7 mackintosh seat but there was nothing there.
And of course there were no personal things belonging to anyone. So Ithought again. Well, after all, there’s still the bookcase and books. Peoplehide things in books. And we haven’t quite finished doing the book-roomupstairs, have we?’
‘I thought we had,’ said Tommy hopefully.
‘Not really. There was the bottom shelf still.’
‘That doesn’t really need doing. I mean, one hasn’t got to get up a ladderand take things down.’
‘No. So I went up there and sat down on the floor and looked throughthe bottom shelf. Most of it was sermons8. Sermons of somebody in oldtimes written by a Methodist minister, I think. Anyway, they weren’t inter-esting, there was nothing in them. So I pulled all those books out on thefloor. And then I did make a discovery. Underneath, some time or other,somebody had made a sort of gaping9 hole, and pushed all sorts of things init, books all torn to pieces more or less. There was one rather big one. Ithad a brown paper cover on it and I just pulled it out to see. After all, onenever knows, does one? And what do you think it was?’
‘I’ve no idea. First edition of Robinson Crusoe or something valuable likethat?’
‘No. It was a birthday book.’
‘A birthday book. What’s that?’
‘Well, they used to have them. Goes back a long time. Back to the Parkin-sons, I think. Probably before that. Anyway, it was rather battered10 andtorn. Not worth keeping, and I don’t suppose anyone would have botheredabout it. But it does date back and one might find something in it, Ithought.’
‘I see. You mean the sort of thing people might have slipped somethinginto.’
‘Yes. But nobody has done that, of course. Nothing so simple. But I’mstill going through it quite carefully. I haven’t gone through it properlyyet. You see, it might have interesting names in it and one might find outsomething.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Tommy, sounding sceptical.
‘Well, that’s one thing. That’s the only thing in the book line that I cameacross. There was nothing else on the bottom shelf. The other thing to lookthrough, of course, is the cupboards.’
‘What about furniture?’ said Tommy. ‘Lots of things like secret drawersin furniture, and all that.’
‘No, Tommy, you’re not looking at things straight. I mean, all the fur-niture in the house now is ours. We moved into an empty house andbrought our furniture with us. The only thing we found here from reallyold times is all that mess out in the place called KK, old decayed toys andgarden seats. I mean, there’s no proper antique11 furniture left in the house.
Whoever it was lived here last took it away or else sent it to be sold.
There’s been lots of people, I expect, since the Parkinsons, so therewouldn’t be anything left of theirs here. But, I did find something. I don’tknow, it may mean something helpful.’
‘What was that?’
‘China menu cards.’
‘China menu cards?’
‘Yes. In that old cupboard we haven’t been able to get into. The one offthe larder12. You know, they’d lost the key. Well, I found the key in an oldbox. Out in KK, as a matter of fact. I put some oil on it and I managed toget the cupboard door open. And, well, there was nothing in it. It was justa dirty cupboard with a few broken bits of china left in it. I should thinkfrom the last people who were here. But shoved13 up on the top shelf therewas a little heap of the Victorian china menus people used to have atparties. Fascinating, the things they ate–really the most delicious meals.
I’ll read you some after we’ve had dinner. It was fascinating. You know,two soups, clear and thick, and on top of that there were two kinds of fishand then there were two entrées, I think, and then you had a salad orsomething like that. And then after that you had the joint14 and after that–I’m not quite sure what came next. I think a sorbet–that’s ice cream, isn’tit? And actually after that–lobster salad! Can you believe it?’
‘Hush, Tuppence,’ said Tommy, ‘I don’t really think I can stand anymore.’
‘Well, anyway I thought it might be interesting. It dates back, you know.
It dates back, I should think, quite a long time.’
‘And what do you hope to get from all these discoveries?’
‘Well, the only thing with possibilities is the birthday book. In it I seethere is a mention of somebody called Winifred Morrison.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, Winifred Morrison, I gather, was the maiden15 name of old MrsGriffin. That’s the one I went to tea with the other day. She’s one of theoldest inhabitants, you know, and she remembers or knows about a lot ofthings that happened before her time. Well, I think she might rememberor have heard of some of the other names in the birthday book. We mightget something from that.’
‘We might,’ said Tommy still sounding doubtful. ‘I still think–’
‘Well, what do you still think?’ said Tuppence.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Tommy. ‘Let’s go to bed and sleep.
Don’t you think we’d better give this business up altogether? Why shouldwe want to know who killed Mary Jordan?’
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Tommy. ‘At least–oh I give in. You’ve got me involvednow, I admit.’
‘Haven’t you found out anything?’ asked Tuppence.
‘I hadn’t time today. But I’ve got a few more sources of information. Iput that woman I told you about–you know, the one who’s quite cleverabout research–I put her on to a few things.’
‘Oh well,’ said Tuppence, ‘we’ll still hope for the best. It’s all nonsense,but perhaps it is rather fun.’
‘Only I’m not so sure it’s going to be as much fun as you think,’ saidTommy.
‘Oh well. No matter,’ said Tuppence, ‘we’ll have done our best.’
‘Well, don’t go on doing your best all by yourself,’ said Tommy. ‘That’sexactly what worries me so much–when I’m away from you.’
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收听单词发音
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1
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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cellar
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| n.地窖，地下室，酒窖 | |
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3
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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5
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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7
decayed
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| a.腐败的，被蛀的 | |
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8
sermons
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| 布道( sermon的名词复数 )； 讲道； 讲道文章； 一大通教训 | |
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9
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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10
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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antique
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| adj.古时的，古代的；n.古物，古器，古玩 | |
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12
larder
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| n.食物贮藏室，食品橱 | |
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13
shoved
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| 推，猛推，乱推( shove的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱放； 随便放； 胡乱丢 | |
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14
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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15
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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