Mr. Morales was staying at the Ritz. He was hardly a pretty sight at this
hour in the morning, still unshaven, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and
with every sign of a severe hangover.
Mr. Morales was an American subject and spoke1 a variant2 of the Amer-
ican language. Though professing3 himself willing to remember anything
he could, his recollections of the previous evening were of the vaguest de-
scription.
“Went with Chrissie—that baby is sure hard-boiled! She said it was a
good joint4. Honey pie, I said, we’ll go just where you say. It was a classy
joint, that I’ll admit—and do they know how to charge you! Set me back
the best part of thirty dollars. But the band was punk—they just couldn’t
seem to swing it.”
Diverted from his recollections of his own evening, Mr. Morales was
pressed to remember the table in the middle of the alcove5. Here he was
not very helpful.
“Sure there was a table and some people at it. I don’t remember what
they looked like, though. Didn’t take much account of them till the guy
there croaked6. Thought at first he couldn’t hold his liquor. Say now, I re-
member one of the dames7. Dark hair and she had what it takes, I should
say.”
“You mean the girl in the green velvet8 dress?”
“No, not that one. She was skinny. This baby was in black with some
good curves.”
It was Ruth Lessing who had taken Mr. Morales’ roving eye.
He wrinkled up his nose appreciatively.
“I watched her dancing—and say, could that baby dance! I gave her the
high sign once or twice, but she had a frozen eye—just looked through me
in your British way.”
Nothing more of value could be extracted from Mr. Morales and he ad-
mitted frankly10 that his alcoholic11 condition was already well advanced by
the time the cabaret was on.
Kemp thanked him and prepared to take his leave.
“I’m sailing for New York tomorrow,” said Morales. “You wouldn’t,” he
asked wistfully, “care for me to stay on?”
“Thank you, but I don’t think your evidence will be needed at the in-
quest.”
“You see I’m enjoying it right here—and if it was police business the
firm couldn’t kick. When the police tell you to stay put, you’ve got to stay
put. Maybe I could remember something if I thought hard enough?”
But Kemp declined to rise to this wistful bait, and he and Race drove to
Brook12 Street where they were greeted by a choleric13 gentleman, the father
of the Hon. Patricia Brice-Woodworth.
General Lord Woodworth received them with a good deal of outspoken14
comment.
What on earth was the idea of suggesting that his daughter—his daugh-
ter!—was mixed up in this sort of thing? If a girl couldn’t go out with her
fiancé to dine in a restaurant without being subjected to annoyance15 by de-
tectives and Scotland Yard, what was England coming to? She didn’t even
know these people what was their name—Hubbard—Barton? Some City
fellow or other! Showed you couldn’t be too careful where you went—Lux-
embourg was always supposed to be all right—but apparently16 this was the
second time a thing of this sort had happened there. Gerald must be a fool
to have taken Pat there—these young men thought they knew everything.
But in any case he wasn’t going to have his daughter badgered and bullied17
and cross-questioned—not without a solicitor’s say so. He’d ring up old
Anderson in Lincoln’s Inn and ask him—
Here the general paused abruptly18 and staring at Race said, “Seen you
somewhere. Now where—?”
Race’s answer was immediate19 and came with a smile.
“Badderpore. 1923.”
“By Jove,” said the general. “If it isn’t Johnny Race! What are you doing
mixed up in this show?”
Race smiled.
“I was with Chief Inspector20 Kemp when the question of interviewing
your daughter came up. I suggested it would be much pleasanter for her if
Inspector Kemp came round here than if she had to come down to Scot-
land Yard, and I thought I’d come along too.”
“Oh—er—well, very decent, of you, Race.”
“We naturally wanted to upset the young lady as little as possible,” put
in Chief Inspector Kemp.
But at this moment the door opened and Miss Patricia Brice-Woodworth
walked in and took charge of the situation with the coolness and detach-
ment of the very young.
“Hallo,” she said. “You’re from Scotland Yard, aren’t you? About last
night? I’ve been longing21 for you to come. Is father being tiresome22? Now
don’t, daddy—you know what the doctor said about your blood pressure.
Why you want to get into such states about everything, I can’t think. I’ll
just take the inspectors23 or superintendents24 or whatever they are into my
room and I’ll send Walters to you with a whisky and soda25.”
The general had a choleric desire to express himself in several blistering26
ways at once, but only succeeded in saying, “Old friend of mine, Major
Race,” at which introduction, Patricia lost interest in Race and bent27 a be-
atific smile on Chief Inspector Kemp.
With cool generalship, she shepherded them out of the room and into
her own sitting room, firmly shutting her father in his study.
“Poor daddy,” she observed. “He will fuss. But he’s quite easy to manage
really.”
The conversation then proceeded on most amicable28 lines but with very
little result.
“It’s maddening really,” said Patricia. “Probably the only chance in my
life that I shall ever have of being right on the spot when a murder was
done—it is a murder, isn’t it? The papers were very cautious and vague,
but I said to Gerry on the telephone that it must be murder. Think of it, a
murder done right close by me and I wasn’t even looking!”
The regret in her voice was unmistakable.
It was evident enough that, as the chief inspector had gloomily pro-
gnosticated, the two young people who had got engaged only a week pre-
viously had had eyes only for each other.
With the best will in the world, a few personalities29 were all that Patricia
Brice-Woodworth could muster30.
“Sandra Farraday was looking very smart, but then she always does.
That was a Schiaparelli model she had on.”
“You know her?” Race asked.
Patricia shook her head.
“Only by sight. He looks rather a bore, I always think. So pompous31, like
most politicians.”
“Did you know any of the others by sight?”
She shook her head.
“No, I’d never seen any of them before—at least I don’t think so. In fact, I
don’t suppose I would have noticed Sandra Farraday if it hadn’t been for
the Schiaparelli.”
“And you’ll find,” said Chief Inspector Kemp grimly as they left the
house, “that Master Tollington will be exactly the same—only there won’t
even have been a Skipper—skipper what—sounds like a sardine—to at-
tract9 his attention.”
“I don’t suppose,” agreed Race, “that the cut of Stephen Farraday’s dress
suit will have caused him any heart pangs32.”
“Oh, well,” said the inspector. “Let’s try Christine Shannon. Then we’ll
have finished with the outside chances.”
Miss Shannon was, as Chief Inspector Kemp had stated, a blonde lovely.
The bleached33 hair, carefully arranged, swept back from a soft vacant
baby-like countenance34. Miss Shannon might be as Inspector Kemp had af-
firmed, dumb — but she was eminently35 easy to look at, and a certain
shrewdness in the large baby-blue eyes indicated that her dumbness only
extended in intellectual directions and that where horse sense and a
knowledge of finance were indicated, Christine Shannon was right on the
spot.
She received the two men with the utmost sweetness, pressing drinks
upon them and when these were refused, urging cigarettes. Her flat was
small and cheaply modernistic.
“I’d just love to be able to help you, chief inspector. Do ask me any ques-
tions you like.”
Kemp led off with a few conventional questions about the bearing and
demeanour of the party at the centre table.
At once Christine showed herself to be an unusually keen and shrewd
observer.
“The party wasn’t going well—you could see that. Stiff as stiff could be. I
felt quite sorry for the old boy—the one who was giving it. Going all out he
was to try and make things go—and just as nervous as a cat on wires—but
all he could do didn’t seem to cut any ice. The tall woman he’d got on his
right was as stiff as though she’d swallowed the poker36 and the kid on his
left was just mad, you could see, because she wasn’t sitting next to the
nice-looking dark boy opposite. As for the tall fair fellow next to her he
looked as though his tummy was out of order, ate his food as though he
thought it would choke him. The woman next to him was doing her best,
she pegged37 away at him, but she looked rather as though she had the
jumps herself.”
“You seem to have been able to notice a great deal, Miss Shannon,” said
Colonel Race.
“I’ll let you into a secret. I wasn’t being so much amused myself. I’d been
out with that boyfriend of mine three nights running, and was I getting
tired of him! He was all out for seeing London—especially what he called
the classy spots—and I will say for him he wasn’t mean. Champagne38 every
time. We went to the Compradour and the Mille Fleurs and finally the
Luxembourg, and I’ll say he enjoyed himself. In a way it was kind of
pathetic. But his conversation wasn’t what you’d call interesting. Just long
histories of business deals he’d put through in Mexico and most of those I
heard three times—and going on to all the dames he’d known and how
mad they were about him. A girl gets kind of tired listening after a while
and you’ll admit that Pedro is nothing much to look at—so I just concen-
trated on the eats and let my eyes roam round.”
“Well, that’s excellent from our point of view, Miss Shannon,” said the
chief inspector. “And I can only hope that you will have seen something
that may help us solve our problem.”
Christine shook her blonde head.
“I’ve no idea who bumped the old boy off—no idea at all. He just took a
drink of champagne, went purple in the face and sort of collapsed39.”
“Do you remember when he had last drunk from his glass before that?”
The girl reflected.
“Why—yes—it was just after the cabaret. The lights went up and he
picked up his glass and said something and the others did it too. Seemed to
me it was a toast of some kind.”
The chief inspector nodded.
“And then?”
“Then the music began and they all got up and went off to dance, push-
ing their chairs back and laughing. Seemed to get warmed up for the first
time. Wonderful what champagne will do for the stickiest parties.”
“They all went together—leaving the table empty?”
“Yes.”
“And no one touched Mr. Barton’s glass.”
“No one at all.” Her reply came promptly40. “I’m perfectly41 certain of that.”
“And no one—no one at all came near the table while they were away.”
“No one—except the waiter, of course.”
“A waiter? Which waiter?”
“One of the half-fledged ones with an apron42, round about sixteen. Not
the real waiter. He was an obliging little fellow rather like a monkey—
Italian I guess he was.”
Chief Inspector Kemp acknowledged this description of Giuseppe Bols-
ano with a nod of the head.
“And what did he do, this young waiter? He filled up the glasses?”
Christine shook her head.
“Oh, no. He didn’t touch anything on the table. He just picked up an
evening bag that one of the girls had dropped when they all got up.”
“Whose bag was it?”
Christine took a minute or two to think. Then she said:
“That’s right. It was the kid’s bag—a green and gold thing. The other two
women had black bags.”
“What did the waiter do with the bag?”
Christine looked surprised.
“He just put it back on the table, that’s all.”
“You’re quite sure he didn’t touch any of the glasses?”
“Oh, no. He just dropped the bag down very quick and ran off because
one of the real waiters was hissing43 at him to go somewhere or get some-
thing and everything was going to be his fault!”
“And that’s the only time anyone went near the table?”
“That’s right.”
“But of course someone might have gone to the table without your noti-
cing?”
But Christine shook her head very determinedly44.
“No, I’m quite sure they didn’t. You see Pedro had been called to the tele-
phone and hadn’t got back yet, so I had nothing to do but look around and
feel bored. I’m pretty good at noticing things and from where I was sitting
there wasn’t much else to see but the empty table next to us.”
Race asked:
“Who came back first to the table?”
“The girl in green and the old boy. They sat down and then the fair man
and the girl in black came back and after them the haughty45 piece of goods
and the good-looking dark boy. Some dancer, he was. When they were all
back and the waiter was warming up a dish like mad on the spirit lamp,
the old boy leaned forward and made a kind of speech and then they all
picked up their glasses again. And then it happened.” Christine paused
and added brightly, “Awful, wasn’t it? Of course I thought it was a stroke.
My aunt had a stroke and she went down just like that. Pedro came back
just then and I said, ‘Look, Pedro, that man’s had a stroke.’ And all Pedro
would say was, ‘Just passing out—just passing out—that’s all’ which was
about what he was doing. I had to keep my eye on him. They don’t like you
passing out at a place like the Luxembourg. That’s why I don’t like Dagoes.
When they’ve drunk too much they’re not a bit refined anymore—a girl
never knows what unpleasantness she may be let in for.” She brooded for
a moment and then glancing at a showy looking bracelet46 on her right
wrist, she added, “Still, I must say they’re generous enough.”
Gently distracting her from the trials and compensations of a girl’s exist-
ence Kemp took her through her story once more.
“That’s our last chance of outside help gone,” he said to Race when they
had left Miss Shannon’s flat. “And it would have been a good chance if it
had come off. That girl’s the right kind of witness. Sees things and remem-
bers them accurately47. If there had been anything to see, she’d have seen it.
So the answer is that there wasn’t anything to see. It’s incredible. It’s a
conjuring48 trick! George Barton drinks champagne and goes and dances.
He comes back, drinks from the same glass that no one has touched and
Hey Presto49 it’s full of cyanide. It’s crazy — I tell you — it couldn’t have
happened except that it did.”
He stopped a minute.
“That waiter. The little boy. Giuseppe never mentioned him. I might
look into that. After all, he’s the one person who was near the table whilst
they were all away dancing. There might be something in it.”
Race shook his head.
“If he’d put anything in Barton’s glass, that girl would have seen him.
She’s a born observer of detail. Nothing to think about inside her head and
so she uses her eyes. No, Kemp, there must be some quite simple explana-
tion if only we could get it.”
“Yes, there’s one. He dropped it in himself.”
“I’m beginning to believe that that is what happened—that it’s the only
thing that can have happened. But if so, Kemp, I’m convinced he didn’t
know it was cyanide.”
“You mean someone gave it to him? Told him it was for indigestion or
blood pressure—something like that?”
“It could be.”
“Then who was the someone? Not either of the Farradays.”
“That would certainly seem unlikely.”
“And I’d say Mr. Anthony Browne is equally unlikely. That leaves us two
people—an affectionate sister-in-law—”
“And a devoted50 secretary.”
Kemp looked at him.
“Yes—she could have planted something of the kind on him—I’m due
now to go to Kidderminster House—What about you? Going round to see
Miss Marle?”
“I think I’ll go and see the other one—at the office. Condolences of an old
friend. I might take her out to lunch.”
“So that is what you think.”
“I don’t think anything yet. I’m casting about for spoor.”
“You ought to see Iris51 Marle, all the same.”
“I’m going to see her—but I’d rather go to the house first when she isn’t
there. Do you know why, Kemp?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“Because there’s someone there who twitters—twitters like a little bird
. . . A little bird told me—was a saying of my youth. It’s very true, Kemp—
these twitterers can tell one a lot if one just lets them—twitter!”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
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
variant
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| adj.不同的，变异的；n.变体，异体 | |
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3
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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4
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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5
alcove
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| n.凹室 | |
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6
croaked
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的过去式和过去分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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7
dames
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| n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人 | |
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8
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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9
tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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10
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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11
alcoholic
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| adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者 | |
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12
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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13
choleric
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| adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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14
outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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15
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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16
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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17
bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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19
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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20
inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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21
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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22
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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23
inspectors
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| n.检查员( inspector的名词复数 )；（英国公共汽车或火车上的）查票员；（警察）巡官；检阅官 | |
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24
superintendents
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| 警长( superintendent的名词复数 )； （大楼的）管理人； 监管人； （美国）警察局长 | |
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25
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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26
blistering
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| adj.酷热的；猛烈的；使起疱的；可恶的v.起水疱；起气泡；使受暴晒n.[涂料] 起泡 | |
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27
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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28
amicable
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| adj.和平的，友好的；友善的 | |
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29
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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30
muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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31
pompous
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的 | |
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32
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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33
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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34
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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35
eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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36
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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37
pegged
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| v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的过去式和过去分词 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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38
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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39
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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40
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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41
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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42
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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43
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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44
determinedly
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| adv.决意地；坚决地，坚定地 | |
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45
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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46
bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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47
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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48
conjuring
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| n.魔术 | |
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49
presto
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| adv.急速地；n.急板乐段；adj.急板的 | |
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50
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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51
iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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