Chapter 15（2）

II
‘And now, I suppose,’ said Tuppence, ‘we shall never know what any ofit means or what it is all about.’
She shook her head in deep despondency. Rising from her chair, shewent towards the fireplace.
‘Are you trying to put a log on?’ said Tommy. ‘Let me. You’ve been toldnot to move about much.’
‘My arm’s quite all right now,’ said Tuppence. ‘Anyone would think I’dbroken it or something. It was only a nasty scrape or graze.’
‘You have more to boast about than that,’ said Tommy. ‘It was definitelya bullet wound. You have been wounded in war.’
‘War it seems to have been all right,’ said Tuppence. ‘Really!’
‘Never mind,’ said Tommy, ‘we dealt with the Mullins very well, I think.’
‘Hannibal,’ said Tuppence, ‘was a very good dog there, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘he told us. Told us very definitely. He just leapt forthat pampas grass. His nose told him, I suppose. He’s got a wonderfulnose.’
‘I can’t say my nose warned me,’ said Tuppence. ‘I just thought she wasrather an answer to prayer, turning up. And I quite forgot we were onlysupposed to take someone who had worked for Mr Solomon. Did MrCrispin tell you anything more? I suppose his name isn’t really Crispin.’
‘Possibly not,’ said Tommy.
‘Did he come to do some sleuthing too? Too many of us here, I shouldsay.’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘not exactly a sleuth. I think he was sent for securitypurposes. To look after you.’
‘To look after me,’ said Tuppence, ‘and you, I should say. Where is henow?’
‘Dealing with Miss Mullins, I expect.’
‘Yes, well, it’s extraordinary how hungry these excitements make one.
Quite peckish, as one might say. Do you know, there’s nothing I can ima-gine I’d like to eat more than a nice hot crab¹ with a sauce made of creamwith just a touch of curry² powder.’
‘You’re well again,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m delighted to hear you feeling likethat about food.’
‘I’ve never been ill,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’ve been wounded. That’s quite dif-ferent.’
‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘anyway you must have realized as I did that whenHannibal let go all out and told you an enemy was close at hand in thepampas grass, you must have realized that Miss Mullins was the personwho, dressed as a man, hid there and shot at you–’
‘But then,’ said Tuppence, ‘we thought that she’d have another go. I wasimmured with my wound in bed and we made our arrangements. Isn’tthat right, Tommy?’
‘Quite right,’ said Tommy, ‘quite right. I thought probably she wouldn’tleave it too long to come to the conclusion that one of her bullets hadtaken effect and that you’d be laid up in bed.’
‘So she came along full of feminine solicitude,’ said Tuppence.
‘And our arrangement was very good, I thought,’ said Tommy. ‘Therewas Albert on permanent guard, watching every step she took, everysingle thing she did–’
‘And also,’ said Tuppence, ‘bringing me up on a tray a cup of coffee andadding another cup for the visitor.’
‘Did you see Mullins–or Dodo, as Crispin called her–put anything in yourcup of coffee?’
‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘I must admit that I didn’t. You see, she seemed tocatch her foot in something and she knocked over that little table with ournice vase on it, made a great deal of apology, and my eye of course was onthe broken vase and whether it was too bad to mend. So I didn’t see her.’
‘Albert did,’ said Tommy. ‘Saw it through the hinge where he’d enlargedit a crack so that he could look through.’
‘And then it was a very good idea to put Hannibal in confinement³ in thebathroom but leaving the door only half latched⁴ because, as we know,Hannibal is very good at opening doors. Not of course if they’re com-pletely latched, but if they only look latched or feel latched he takes onegreat spring and comes in like a–oh, like a Bengal tiger.’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘that is quite a good description.’
‘And now I suppose Mr Crispin or whatever his name is has finishedmaking his enquiries, although how he thinks Miss Mullins can be connec-ted with Mary Jordan, or with a dangerous figure like Jonathan Kane whoonly exists in the past–’
‘I don’t think he only exists in the past. I think there may be a new edi-tion of him, a re-birth, as you might say. There are a lot of young mem-bers, lovers of violence, violence at any price, the merry muggers society ifthere’s anything called that, and the super-fascists⁵ regretting the splendiddays of Hitler and his merry group.’
‘I’ve just been reading Count Hannibal,’ said Tuppence. ‘Stanley Wey-man. One of his best. It was among the Alexander books upstairs.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, I was thinking that nowadays it’s really still like that. And prob-ably always has been. All the poor children who went off to the Children’sCrusade so full of joy and pleasure and vanity, poor little souls. Thinkingthey’d been appointed by the Lord to deliver Jerusalem, that the seaswould part in front of them so that they could walk across, as Moses did inthe Bible. And now all these pretty girls and young men who appear incourts the whole time, because they’ve smashed down some wretched oldage pensioner⁶ or elderly person who had just got a little money or some-thing in the bank. And there was St Bartholomew’s Massacre⁷. You see, allthese things do happen again. Even the new fascists were mentioned theother day in connection with a perfectly⁸ respectable university. Ah well, Isuppose nobody will ever really tell us anything. Do you really think thatMr Crispin will find out something more about a hiding- place thatnobody’s yet discovered? Cisterns⁹. You know, bank robberies. They oftenhid things in cisterns. Very damp place, I should have thought, to hidesomething. Do you think when he’s finished making his enquiries orwhatever it is, he’ll come back here and continue looking after me–andyou, Tommy?’
‘I don’t need him to look after me,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh, that’s just arrogance,’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he’ll come to say goodbye,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh yes, because he’s got very nice manners, hasn’t he?’
‘He’ll want to make sure that you’re quite all right again.’
‘I’m only wounded and the doctor’s seen to that.’
‘He’s really very keen on gardening,’ said Tommy. ‘I realize that. Hereally did work for a friend of his who happened to be Mr Solomon, whohas been dead for some years, but I suppose it makes a good cover, that,because he can say he worked for him and people will know he workedfor him. So he’ll appear to be quite bona fide.’
‘Yes, I suppose one has to think of all those things,’ said Tuppence.
The front door bell rang and Hannibal dashed from the room, tiger-style, to kill any intruder who might be wishing to enter the sacred pre-cincts which he guarded. Tommy came back with an envelope.
‘Addressed to us both,’ he said. ‘Shall I open it?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Tuppence.
He opened it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this raises possibilities for the future.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an invitation from Mr Robinson. To you and to me. To dine withhim on a date the week after next when he hopes you’ll be fully¹⁰ recoveredand yourself again. In his country house. Somewhere in Sussex, I think.’
‘Do you think he’ll tell us anything then?’ said Tuppence.
‘I think he might,’ said Tommy.
‘Shall I take my list with me?’ said Tuppence. ‘I know it by heart now.’
She read rapidly.
‘Black Arrow, Alexander Parkinson, Oxford¹¹ and Cambridge porcelainVictorian seats, Grin- hen- lo, KK, Mathilde’s stomach, Cain and Abel,Truelove…’
‘Enough,’ said Tommy. ‘It sounds mad.’
‘Well, it is mad, all of it. Think there’ll be anyone else at Mr Robinson’s?’
‘Possibly Colonel Pikeaway.’
‘In that case,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’d better take a cough lozenge with me,hadn’t I? Anyway, I do want to see Mr Robinson. I can’t believe he’s as fatand yellow as you say he is–Oh!–but, Tommy, isn’t it the week after nextthat Deborah is bringing the children to stay with us?’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s this next weekend as ever is.’
‘Thank goodness, so that’s all right,’ said Tuppence.

1 crab   

n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气

参考例句：

• I can't remember when I last had crab.我不记得上次吃蟹是什么时候了。
• The skin on my face felt as hard as a crab's back.我脸上的皮仿佛僵硬了，就象螃蟹的壳似的。

2 curry   

n.咖哩粉，咖哩饭菜；v.用咖哩粉调味，用马栉梳，制革

参考例句：

• Rice makes an excellent complement to a curry dish.有咖喱的菜配米饭最棒。
• Add a teaspoonful of curry powder.加一茶匙咖喱粉。

3 confinement   

n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限

参考例句：

• He spent eleven years in solitary confinement.他度过了11年的单独监禁。
• The date for my wife's confinement was approaching closer and closer.妻子分娩的日子越来越近了。

4 latched   

v.理解( latch的过去式和过去分词 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上）

参考例句：

• The government have latched onto environmental issues to win votes. 政府已开始大谈环境问题以争取选票。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He latched onto us and we couldn't get rid of him. 他缠着我们，甩也甩不掉。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 fascists   

n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists. 老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Zoya heroically bore the torture that the Fascists inflicted upon her. 卓娅英勇地承受法西斯匪徒加在她身上的酷刑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 pensioner   

n.领养老金的人

参考例句：

• The tax threshold for a single pensioner is$ 445.单身领退休年金者的纳税起点为445英镑。
• It was the pensioner's vote late in the day that influenced the election of Mr.Sweet.最后是领取养老金者的选票影响了斯威特先生的当选。

7 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

8 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

9 cisterns   

n.蓄水池，储水箱( cistern的名词复数 )；地下储水池

参考例句：

• Continental production and flower pots, cisterns, nursery toys, chemical preservative products. 兼产欧式花盆、水箱、幼儿园玩具、化工防腐产品。 来自互联网
• And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. 还有声音在空的水池、干的井里歌唱。 来自互联网

10 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

11 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。