The medical evidence had been given. Two passers-by not far from thegate had given their evidence. The family had spoken, giving evidence asto the state of his health, any possible people who had had reason forenmity towards him (one or two youngish adolescent boys who had be-fore now been warned off by him) had been asked to assist the police andhad protested their innocence2. One or two of his employers had spoken in-cluding his latest employer, Mrs Prudence3 Beresford, and her husband, MrThomas Beresford. All had been said and done and a verdict had beenbrought in: Wilful4 Murder by a person or persons unknown.
Tuppence came out from the inquest and Tommy put an arm round heras they passed the little group of people waiting outside.
‘You did very well, Tuppence,’ he said, as they returned through thegarden gate towards the house. ‘Very well indeed. Much better than someof those people. You were very clear and you could be heard. The Coronerseemed to me to be very pleased with you.’
‘I don’t want anyone to be very pleased with me,’ said Tuppence. ‘I don’tlike old Isaac being coshed on the head and killed like that.’
‘I suppose someone might have had it in for him,’ said Tommy.
‘Why should they?’ said Tuppence.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tommy.
‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘and I don’t know either. But I just wondered if it’sanything to do with us.’
‘Do you mean–what do you mean, Tuppence?’
‘You know what I mean really,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s this–this place. Ourhouse. Our lovely new house. And garden and everything. It’s as though–isn’t it just the right place for us? We thought it was,’ said Tuppence.
‘Well, I still do,’ said Tommy.
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I think you’ve got more hope than I have. I’ve gotan uneasy feeling that there’s something–something wrong with it all here.
Something left over from the past.’
‘Don’t say it again,’ said Tommy.
‘Don’t say what again?’
‘Oh, just those two words.’
Tuppence dropped her voice. She got nearer to Tommy and spoke1 al-most into his ear.
‘Mary Jordan?’
‘Well, yes. That was in my mind.’
‘And in my mind, too, I expect. But I mean, what can anything then haveto do with nowadays? What can the past matter?’ said Tuppence. ‘Itoughtn’t to have anything to do with–now.’
‘The past oughtn’t to have anything to do with the present–is that whatyou mean? But it does,’ said Tommy. ‘It does, in queer ways that onedoesn’t think of. I mean that one doesn’t think would ever happen.’
‘A lot of things, you mean, happen because of what there was in thepast?’
‘Yes. It’s a sort of long chain. The sort of thing you have, with gaps andthen with beads5 on it from time to time.’
‘Jane Finn and all that. Like Jane Finn in our adventures when we wereyoung because we wanted adventures.’
‘And we had them,’ said Tommy. ‘Sometimes I look back on it and won-der how we got out of it alive.’
‘And then–other things. You know, when we went into partnership6, andwe pretended to be detective agents.’
‘Oh that was fun,’ said Tommy. ‘Do you remember–’
‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’m not going to remember. I’m not anxious to goback to thinking of the past except–well, except as a stepping-stone, as youmight say. No. Well, anyway that gave us practice, didn’t it? And then wehad the next bit.’
‘Ah,’ said Tommy. ‘Mrs Blenkinsop, eh?’
Tuppence laughed.
‘Yes. Mrs Blenkinsop. I’ll never forget when I came into that room andsaw you sitting there.’
‘How you had the nerve, Tuppence, to do what you did, move that ward-robe or whatever it was, and listen in to me and Mr What’s-his-name, talk-ing. And then–’
‘And then Mrs Blenkinsop,’ said Tuppence. She laughed too. ‘N or M andGoosey Goosey Gander.’
‘But you don’t–’ Tommy hesitated–‘you don’t believe that all those werewhat you call stepping-stones to this?’
‘Well, they are in a way,’ said Tuppence. ‘I mean, I don’t suppose that MrRobinson would have said what he did to you if he hadn’t had a lot ofthose things in his mind. Me for one of them.’
‘Very much you for one of them.’
‘But now,’ said Tuppence, ‘this makes it all different. This, I mean. Isaac.
Dead. Coshed on the head. Just inside our garden gate.’
‘You don’t think that’s connected with–’
‘One can’t help thinking it might be,’ said Tuppence. ‘That’s what Imean. We’re not just investigating a sort of detective mystery any more.
Finding out, I mean, about the past and why somebody died in the pastand things like that. It’s become personal. Quite personal, I think. I mean,poor old Isaac being dead.’
‘He was a very old man and possibly that had something to do with it.’
‘Not after listening to the medical evidence this morning. Someonewanted to kill him. What for?’
‘Why didn’t they want to kill us if it was anything to do with us,’ saidTommy.
‘Well, perhaps they’ll try that too. Perhaps, you know, he could have toldus something. Perhaps he was going to tell us something. Perhaps he eventhreatened somebody else that he was going to talk to us, say somethinghe knew about the girl or one of the Parkinsons. Or–or all this spying busi-ness in the 1914 war. The secrets that were sold. And then, you see, he hadto be silenced. But if we hadn’t come to live here and ask questions andwanted to find out, it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘Don’t get so worked up.’
‘I am worked up. And I’m not doing anything for fun any more. Thisisn’t fun. We’re doing something different now, Tommy. We’re huntingdown a killer7. But who? Of course we don’t know yet but we can find out.
That’s not the past, that’s Now. That’s something that happened– what–only days ago, six days ago. That’s the present. It’s here and it’s connectedwith us and it’s connected with this house. And we’ve got to find out andwe’re going to find out. I don’t know how but we’ve got to go after all theclues and follow up things. I feel like a dog with my nose to the ground,following a trail. I’ll have to follow it here, and you’ve got to be a huntingdog. Go round to different places. The way you’re doing now. Finding outabout things. Getting your– whatever you call it– research done. Theremust be people who know things, not of their own knowledge, but whatpeople have told them. Stories they’ve heard. Rumours8. Gossip.’
‘But, Tuppence, you can’t really believe there’s any chance of our–’
‘Oh yes I do,’ said Tuppence. ‘I don’t know how or in what way, but I be-lieve that when you’ve got a real, convincing idea, something that youknow is black and bad and evil, and hitting old Isaac on the head wasblack and evil…’ She stopped.
‘We could change the name of the house again,’ said Tommy.
‘What do you mean? Call it Swallow’s Nest and not The Laurels9?’
A flight of birds passed over their heads. Tuppence turned her head andlooked back towards the garden gate. ‘Swallow’s Nest was once its name.
What’s the rest of that quotation10? The one your researcher quoted.
Postern of Death, wasn’t it?’
‘No, Postern of Fate.’
‘Fate. That’s like a comment on what has happened to Isaac. Postern ofFate–our Garden Gate–’
‘Don’t worry so much, Tuppence.’
‘I don’t know why,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s just a sort of idea that came intomy mind.’
Tommy gave her a puzzled look and shook his head.
‘Swallow’s nest is a nice name, really,’ said Tuppence. ‘Or it could be.
Perhaps it will some day.’
‘You have the most extraordinary ideas, Tuppence.’
‘Yet something singeth like a bird. That was how it ended. Perhaps allthis will end that way.’
Just before they reached the house, Tommy and Tuppence saw a womanstanding on the doorstep.
‘I wonder who that is,’ said Tommy.
‘Someone I’ve seen before,’ said Tuppence. ‘I don’t remember who at themoment. Oh. I think it’s one of old Isaac’s family. You know they all livedtogether in one cottage. About three or four boys and this woman and an-other one, a girl. I may be wrong, of course.’
The woman on the doorstep had turned and came towards them.
‘Mrs Beresford, isn’t it?’ she said, looking at Tuppence.
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence.
‘And– I don’t expect you know me. I’m Isaac’s daughter- in- law, youknow. Married to his son, Stephen, I was. Stephen–he got killed in an acci-dent. One of them lorries. The big ones that go along. It was on one of theM roads, the M1 I think it was. M1 or the M5. No, the M5 was before that.
The M4 it could be. Anyway, there it was. Five or six years ago it was. Iwanted to–I wanted just to speak to you. You and–you and your husband–’
She looked at Tommy. ‘You sent flowers, didn’t you, to the funeral? Isaacworked in the garden here for you, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence. ‘He did work for us here. It was such a terriblething to have happened.’
‘I came to thank you. Very lovely flowers they was, too. Good ones.
Classy ones. A great bunch of them.’
‘We thought we’d like to do it,’ said Tuppence, ‘because Isaac had beenvery helpful to us. He’d helped us a lot, you know, with getting into thehouse. Telling us about things, because we don’t know much about thehouse. Where things were kept, and everything. And he gave me a lot ofknowledge about planting things, too, and all that sort of thing.’
‘Yes, he knew his stuff, as you might say. He wasn’t much of a workerbecause he was old, you know, and he didn’t like stooping. Got lumbago alot, so he couldn’t do as much as he’d have liked to do.’
‘He was very nice and very helpful,’ said Tuppence firmly. ‘And he knewa lot about things here, and the people, and told us a lot.’
‘Ah. He knew a lot, he did. A lot of his family, you know, worked beforehim. They lived round about and they’d known a good deal of what wenton in years gone by. Not of their own knowledge, as you might say but–well, just hearing what went on. Well, ma’am, I won’t keep you. I justcame up to have a few words and say how much obliged I was.’
‘That’s very nice of you,’ said Tuppence. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘You’ll have to get someone else to do a bit of work in the garden, I ex-pect.’
‘I expect so,’ said Tuppence. ‘We’re not very good at it ourselves. Doyou– perhaps you–’ she hesitated, feeling perhaps she was saying thewrong thing at the wrong moment–‘perhaps you know of someone whowould like to come and work for us.’
‘Well, I can’t say I do offhand11, but I’ll keep it in mind. You never know.
I’ll send along Henry–that’s my second boy, you know–I’ll send him alongand let you know if I hear of anyone. Well, good day for now.’
‘What was Isaac’s name? I can’t remember,’ said Tommy, as they wentinto the house. ‘I mean, his surname.’
‘Oh, Isaac Bodlicott, I think.’
‘So that’s a Mrs Bodlicott, is it?’
‘Yes. Though I think she’s got several sons, boys and a girl and they alllive together. You know, in that cottage half-way up the Marshton Road.
Do you think she knows who killed him?’ said Tuppence.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Tommy. ‘She didn’t look as though she did.’
‘I don’t know how you’d look,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s rather difficult to say,isn’t it?’
‘I think she just came to thank you for the flowers. I don’t think she hadthe look of someone who was–you know–revengeful. I think she’d havementioned it if so.’
‘Might. Might not,’ said Tuppence.
She went into the house looking rather thoughtful.
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1
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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2
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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5
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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8
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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10
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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11
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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