The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

an extraordinary one! And I liked her; liked her ease of manner, her lack of sentimentality, her freedom from any form of affectation.

My mind was made up. I decided to seek her out then and there. She would hardly be in bed yet.

Then I remembered that I did not know the number of her cabin. My friend, the night stewardess, would probably know. I rang the bell. After some delay it was answered by a man. He gave me the information I wanted. Mrs. Blair’s cabin was no. 71. He apologized for the delay in answering the bell, but explained that he had all the cabins to attend to.

“Where is the stewardess, then?” I asked.

“They all go off duty at ten o’clock.”

“No⁠—I mean the night stewardess.”

“No stewardess on at night, miss.”

“But⁠—but a stewardess came the other night⁠—about one o’clock.”

“You must have been dreaming, miss. There’s no stewardess on duty after ten.”

He withdrew and I was left to digest this morsel of information. Who was the woman who had come to my cabin on the night of the 22nd? My face grew graver as I realized the cunning and audacity of my unknown antagonists. Then, pulling myself together, I left my own cabin and sought that of Mrs. Blair. I knocked at the door.

“Who’s that?” called her voice from within.

“It’s me⁠—Anne Beddingfeld.”

“Oh, come in, gipsy girl.”

I entered. A good deal of scattered clothing lay about, and Mrs. Blair herself was draped in one of the loveliest kimonos I had ever seen. It was all orange and gold and black and made my mouth water to look at it.

“Mrs. Blair,” I said abruptly, “I want to tell you the story of my life⁠—that is, if it isn’t too late, and you won’t be bored.”

“Not a bit. I always hate going to bed,” said Mrs. Blair, her face crinkling into smiles in the delightful way it had. “And I should love to hear the story of your life. You’re a most unusual creature, gipsy girl. Nobody else would think of bursting in on me at 1 a.m. to tell me the story of their life. Especially after snubbing my natural curiosity for weeks as you have done! I’m not accustomed to being snubbed. It’s been quite a pleasing novelty. Sit down on the sofa and unburden your soul.”

I told her the whole story. It took some time as I was conscientious over all the details. She gave a deep sigh when I had finished, but she did not say at all what I had expected her to say. Instead she looked at me, laughed a little and said:

“Do you know, Anne, you’re a very unusual girl? Haven’t you ever had qualms?”

“Qualms?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes, qualms, qualms, qualms! Starting off alone with practically no money. What will you do when you find yourself in a strange country with all your money gone?”

“It’s no good bothering about that until it comes. I’ve got plenty of money still. The twenty-five pounds that Mrs. Flemming gave me is practically intact, and then I won the sweep yesterday. That’s another fifteen pounds. Why, I’ve got lots of money. Forty pounds!”

“Lots of money! My God!” murmured Mrs. Blair. “I couldn’t do it, Anne, and I’ve plenty of pluck in my own way. I couldn’t start off gaily with a few pounds in my pocket and no idea as to what I was doing and where I was going.”

“But that’s the fun of it,” I cried, thoroughly roused. “It gives one such a splendid feeling of adventure.”

She looked at me, nodded once or twice, and then smiled.

“Lucky Anne! There aren’t many people in the world who feel as you do.”

“Well,” I said impatiently, “what do you think of it all, Mrs. Blair?”

“I think it’s the most thrilling thing I ever heard! Now, to begin with, you will stop calling me Mrs. Blair. Suzanne will be ever so much better. Is that agreed?”

“I should love it, Suzanne.”

“Good girl. Now let’s get down to business. You say that in Sir Eustace’s secretary⁠—not that long-faced Pagett, the other one⁠—you recognized the man who was stabbed and came into your cabin for shelter?”

I nodded.

“That gives us two links connecting Sir Eustace with the tangle. The woman was murdered in his house, and it’s his secretary who gets stabbed at the mystic hour of one o’clock. I don’t suspect Sir Eustace himself, but it can’t be all coincidence. There’s a connection somewhere even if he himself is unaware of it.

“Then there’s the queer business of the stewardess,” she continued thoughtfully. “What was she like?”

“I hardly noticed her. I was so excited and strung up⁠—and a stewardess seemed such an anticlimax. But⁠—yes⁠—I did think her face was familiar. Of course it would be if I’d seen her about the ship.”

“Her face seemed familiar to you,” said Suzanne. “Sure she wasn’t a man?”

“She was very tall,” I admitted.

“Hum. Hardly Sir Eustace, I should think, nor Mr. Pagett⁠—Wait!”

She caught up a scrap of paper and began drawing feverishly. She inspected the result with her head poised on one side.

“A very good likeness of the Rev. Edward Chichester. Now for the etceteras.” She passed the paper over to me. “Is that your stewardess?”

“Why, yes,” I cried. “Suzanne, how clever of you!”

She disdained the compliment with a light gesture.

“I’ve always had suspicions of that Chichester creature. Do you remember how he dropped his coffee cup and turned a sickly green when we were discussing Crippen the other day?”

“And he tried to get Cabin 17!”

“Yes, it all fits in so far. But what does it all mean? What was really meant to happen at one o’clock in Cabin 17? It can’t be the stabbing of the secretary. There would be no point in timing that for a special hour on a special day in a special place. No, it must have been some kind of appointment and he was on his way to keep it when they knifed him. But who was the appointment with? Certainly not with you. It might have been with Chichester. Or it might have been with Pagett.”

“That seems