Towards Zero. Агата Кристи
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May 29th
Thomas Royde, pipe in mouth, was surveying the progress of his packing with which the deft-fingered Malayan No 1 boy was busy. Occasionally his glance shifted to the view over the plantations. For some six months he would not see that view which had been so familiar for the past seven years.
It would be queer to be in England again.
Allen Drake, his partner, looked in.
‘Hullo, Thomas, how goes it?’
‘All set now.’
‘Come and have a drink, you lucky devil. I’m consumed with envy.’
Thomas Royde moved slowly out of the bedroom and joined his friend. He did not speak, for Thomas Royde was a man singularly economical of words. His friends had learned to gauge his reactions correctly from the quality of his silences.
A rather thickset figure, with a straight solemn face and observant thoughtful eyes, he walked a little sideways, crablike. This, the result of being jammed in a door during an earthquake, had contributed towards his nickname of the Hermit Crab. It had left his right arm and shoulder partially helpless which, added to an artificial stiffness of gait, often led people to think he was feeling shy and awkward when in reality he seldom felt anything of the kind.
Allen Drake mixed the drinks.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good hunting!’
Royde said something that sounded like ‘Ah hum.’
Drake looked at him curiously.
‘Phlegmatic as ever,’ he remarked. ‘Don’t know how you manage it. How long is it since you went home?’
‘Seven years—nearer eight.’
‘It’s a long time. Wonder you haven’t gone completely native.’
‘Perhaps I have.’
‘You always did belong to Our Dumb Friends rather than to the human race! Planned out your leave?’
‘Well—yes—partly.’
The bronze impassive face took a sudden and a deeper brick-red tinge.
Allen Drake said with lively astonishment:
‘I believe there’s a girl! Damn it all, you are blushing!’
Thomas Royde said rather huskily: ‘Don’t be a fool!’
And he drew very hard on his ancient pipe.
He broke all previous records by continuing the conversation himself.
‘Dare say,’ he said, ‘I shall find things a bit changed.’
Allen Drake said curiously:
‘I’ve always wondered why you chucked going home last time. Right at the last minute, too.’
Royde shrugged his shoulders.
‘Thought that shooting trip might be interesting. Bad news from home about then.’
‘Of course. I forgot. Your brother was killed—in that motoring accident.’
Thomas Royde nodded.
Drake reflected that, all the same, it seemed a curious reason for putting off a journey home. There was a mother—he believed a sister also. Surely at such a time—then he remembered something. Thomas had cancelled his passage before the news of his brother’s death arrived.
Allen looked at his friend curiously. Dark horse, old Thomas!
After a lapse of three years he could ask:
‘You and your brother great pals?’
‘Adrian and I? Not particularly. Each of us always went his own way. He was a barrister.’
‘Yes,’ thought Drake, ‘a very different life. Chambers in London, parties—a living earned by the shrewd use of the tongue.’ He reflected that Adrian Royde must have been a very different chap from old Silent Thomas.
‘Your mother’s alive, isn’t she?’
‘The mater? Yes.’
‘And you’ve got a sister, too.’
Thomas shook his head.
‘Oh, I thought you had. In that snapshot—’
Royde mumbled, ‘Not a sister. Sort of distant cousin or something. Brought up with us because she was an orphan.’
Once more a slow tide of colour suffused the bronzed skin.
Drake thought, ‘Hello—o—?’
He said: ‘Is she married?’
‘She was. Married that fellow Nevile Strange.’
‘Fellow who plays tennis and racquets and all that?’
‘Yes. She divorced him.’
‘And you’re going home to try your luck with her,’ thought Drake.
Mercifully he changed the subject of the conversation.
‘Going to get any fishing or shooting?’
‘Shall go home first. Then I thought of doing a bit of sailing down at Saltcreek.’
‘I know it. Attractive little place. Rather a decent old-fashioned hotel there.’
‘Yes. The Balmoral Court. May stay there, or may put up with friends who’ve got a house there.’
‘Sounds all right to me.’
‘Ah hum. Nice peaceful place, Saltcreek. Nobody to hustle you.’
‘I know,’ said Drake. ‘The kind of place where nothing ever happens.’
May 29th
‘It is really most annoying,’ said old Mr Treves. ‘For twenty-five years now I have been to the Marine Hotel at Leahead—and now, would you believe it, the whole place is being pulled down. Widening the front or some nonsense of that kind. Why they can’t let these seaside places alone—Leahead always had a peculiar charm of its own—Regency—pure Regency.’
Rufus Lord said consolingly:
‘Still, there are other places to stay there, I suppose?’
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