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

Anne, that it was mainly on his account that I was so bitter against that woman. It had gone deeper with him than with me. I had been madly in love with her for the moment⁠—I even think that I frightened her sometimes⁠—but with him it was a quieter and deeper feeling. She had been the very centre of his universe⁠—and her betrayal of him tore up the very roots of life. The blow stunned him and left him paralyzed.”

Harry paused. After a minute or two he went on:

“As you know, I was reported ‘missing, presumed killed.’ I never troubled to correct the mistake. I took the name of Parker and came to this island, which I knew of old. At the beginning of the war, I had had ambitious hopes of proving my innocence, but now all that spirit seemed dead. All I felt was, ‘What’s the good?’ My pal was dead, neither he nor I had any living relations who would care. I was supposed to be dead too, let it remain at that. I led a peaceful existence here, neither happy nor unhappy⁠—numbed of all feeling. I see now, though I did not realize it at the time, that that was partly the effect of the war.

“And then one day something occurred to wake me right up again. I was taking a party of people in my boat on a trip up the river, and I was standing at the landing stage, helping them in, when one of the men uttered a startled exclamation. It focused my attention on him. He was a small, thin man with a beard, and he was staring at me for all he was worth as though I was a ghost. So powerful was his emotion that it awakened my curiosity. I made inquiries about him at the hotel and learned that his name was Carton, that he came from Kimberley, and that he was a diamond sorter employed by De Beers’. In a minute all the old sense of wrong surged over me again. I left the island and went to Kimberley.

“I could find out little more about him, however. In the end, I decided that I must force an interview. I took my revolver with me. In the brief glimpse I had had of him, I had realized that he was a physical coward. No sooner were we face to face than I recognized that he was afraid of me. I soon forced him to tell me all he knew. He had engineered part of the robbery and Anita Grünberg was his wife. He had once caught sight of both of us when we were dining with her at the hotel, and, having read that I was killed, my appearance in the flesh at the falls had startled him badly. He and Anita had married quite young, but she had soon drifted away from him. She had got in with a bad lot, he told me⁠—and it was then for the first time that I heard of the Colonel. Carton himself had never been mixed up in anything except this one affair⁠—so he solemnly assured me, and I was inclined to believe him. He was emphatically not of the stuff of which successful criminals are made.

“I still had the feeling that he was keeping back something. As a test, I threatened to shoot him there and then, declaring that I cared very little what became of me now. In a frenzy of terror he poured out a further story. It seems that Anita Grünberg did not quite trust the Colonel. Whilst pretending to hand over to him the stones she had taken from the hotel, she kept back some in her own possession. Carton advised her, with his technical knowledge, which to keep. If, at any time, these stones were produced, they were of such colour and quality as to be readily identifiable, and the experts at De Beers’ would admit at once that these stones had never passed through their hands. In this way my story of a substitution would be supported, my name would be cleared, and suspicion would be diverted to the proper quarter. I gathered that, contrary to his usual practice, the Colonel himself had been concerned in this affair, therefore Anita felt satisfied that she had a real hold over him, should she need it. Carton now proposed that I should make a bargain with Anita Grünberg, or Nadina, as she now called herself. For a sufficient sum of money he thought that she would be willing to give up the diamonds and betray her former employer. He would cable to her immediately.

“I was still suspicious of Carton. He was a man whom it was easy enough to frighten, but who, in his fright, would tell so many lies that to sift the truth out from them would be no easy job. I went back to the hotel and waited. By the following evening I judged that he would have received the reply to his cable. I called round at his house and was told that Mr. Carton was away, but would be returning on the morrow. Instantly I became suspicious. In the nick of time I found out that he was in reality sailing for England on the Kilmorden Castle, which left Cape Town in two days’ time. I had just time to journey down and catch the same boat.

“I had no intention of alarming Carton by revealing my presence on board. I had done a good deal of acting in my time at Cambridge, and it was comparatively easy for me to transform myself into a grave bearded gentleman of middle age. I avoided Carton carefully on board the boat, keeping to my own cabin as far as possible under the pretence of illness.

“I had no difficulty in trailing him when we got to London. He went straight to an hotel and did not go out until the following day. He left the hotel shortly