N or M? by Agatha Christie
"Thank you, Mr Robbins," and they drove off, leaving him staring after them with his mouth open.
They drove rapidly through the town, avoiding accidents more by good luck than by skill. But the luck held. They came out at last at a mass of straggling building development, somewhat marred by proximity to the gas works. A series of little roads led up towards the downs, stopping abruptly a short way up the hill. Ernes Cliff Road was the third of these.
Commander Haydock turned smartly into it and drove up. At the end the road petered out on to bare hillside up which a footpath meandered.
"Better get out and walk here," said Bletchley.
Haydock said dubiously:
"Could almost take the car up. Ground's firm enough. Bit bumpy but I think she could do it."
Mrs Sprot cried:
"Oh, yes, please, please... We must be quick."
The Commander murmured to himself:
"Hope to goodness we're after the right lot. That little pip-squeak may have seen any woman with a kid."
The car groaned uneasily as she ploughed her way up over the rough ground. The gradient was severe, but the turf was short and springy. They came out without mishap on the top of the rise. Here the view was less interrupted till it rested in the distance on the curve of Whitehaven Bay.
Bletchley said:
"Not a bad idea. The woman could spend the night up here if need be, drop down into Whitehaven tomorrow morning and take a train there."
Haydock said:
"No signs of them as far as I can see."
He was standing up holding to his eyes some field glasses that he had thoughtfully brought with him. Suddenly his figure became tense as he focussed the glasses on two small moving dots.
"Got 'em, by Jove..."
He dropped into the driver's seat again and the car bucketed forward. The chase was a short one now. Shot up in the air, tossed from side to side, the occupants of the car gained rapidly on those two small dots. They could be distinguished now - a tall figure and a short one - nearer still, a woman holding a child by the hand - still nearer, yes, a child in a green gingham frock. Betty.
Mrs Sprot gave a strangled cry.
"All right now, my dear," said Major Bletchley, patting her kindly. "We've got 'em."
They went on. Suddenly the woman turned and saw the car advancing towards her.
With a cry she caught up the child in her arms and began running.
She ran, not forward, but sideways toward the edge of the cliff.
The car, after a few yards, could not follow, the ground was too uneven and blocked with big boulders. It stopped and the occupants tumbled out.
Mrs Sprot was out first and running wildly after the two fugitives.
The others followed her.
When they were within twenty yards, the other woman turned at bay. She was standing now at the very edge of the cliff. With a hoarse cry she clutched the child closer.
Haydock cried out:
"My God, she's going to throw the kid over the cliff..."
The woman stood there, clutching Betty tightly. Her face was disfigured with a frenzy of hate. She uttered a long hoarse sentence that none of them understood. And still she held the child and looked from time to time at the drop below - not a yard from where she stood.
It seemed clear that she was threatening to throw the child over the cliff.
All of them stood there, dazed, terrified, unable to move for fear of precipitating a catastrophe.
Haydock was tugging at his pocket. He pulled out a service revolver.
He shouted: "Put that child down - or I fire."
The foreign woman laughed. She held the child closer to her breast. The two figures were moulded into one.
Haydock muttered:
"I daren't shoot. I'd hit the child."
Tommy said:
"The woman's crazy. She'll jump over with the child in another moment."
Haydock said again, helplessly:
"I daren't shoot -"
But at that moment a shot rang out. The woman swayed and fell, the child still clasped in her arms.
The men ran forward. Mrs Sprot stood swaying, the smoking pistol in her hand, her eyes dilated.
She took a few stiff steps forward.
Tommy was kneeling by the bodies. He turned them gently. He saw the woman's face - noted appreciatively its strange wild beauty. The eyes opened, looked at him, then went blank. With a little sigh, the woman died, shot through the head.
Unhurt, little Betty Sprot wriggled out and ran towards her mother who was standing like a statue.
Then, at last, Mrs Sprot crumpled. She flung away the pistol and dropped down, clutching the child to her.
She cried:
"She's safe - she's safe - Oh, Betty - Betty." And then, in a low, awed whisper:
"Did I - did I - kill her?"
Tuppence said firmly:
"Don't think about it - don't think about it. Think about Betty. Just think about Betty."
Mrs Sprot held the child close against her, sobbing.
Tuppence went forward to join the men.
Haydock murmured;
"Bloody miracle. I couldn't have brought off a shot like that. Don't believe the woman's ever handled a pistol before either - sheer instinct. A miracle, that's what it is."
Tuppence said:
"Thank God! It was a near thing!" And she looked down at the sheer drop to the sea below and shuddered.
Chapter 8
The inquest on the dead woman was held some days later. There had been an adjournment whilst the police identified her as a certain Vanda Polonska, a Polish refugee.
After the dramatic scene on the cliffs, Mrs Sprot and Betty, the former in a state of collapse, had been driven back to Sans Souci, where hot bottles, nice cups of tea, ample curiosity, and finally a stiff dollop of brandy had been administered to the half-fainting heroine of the night.
Commander Haydock had immediately got in touch with the police, and under his guidance they had gone out to the scene of the tragedy on the cliff.
But for the disturbing war news, the tragedy would probably have been given much greater space in the papers than it was. Actually it occupied only one small paragraph.
Both Tuppence and Tommy had to give evidence at the inquest, and in case any reporters should think fit to take pictures of the more unimportant witnesses, Mr Meadowes was unfortunate enough to get something in his eye which necessitated a highly disfiguring eyeshade. Mrs Blenkensop was practically obliterated by her hat.
However, such interest as there was focused itself entirely on Mrs Sprot and Commander Haydock. Mr Sprot, hysterically summoned by telegraph, rushed down to see his wife, but had to go back again the same day. He seemed an amiable but not very interesting young man.
The inquest opened with the formal identification of the body by a certain Mrs Calfont, a thin-lipped, gimlet-eyed woman who had been dealing for some months with refugee relief.
Polonska, she said, had come to England in company with a cousin and his wife who were her only relatives, so far as she knew. The woman, in her opinion, was slightly mental. She understood from her that she had been through scenes of great horror in Poland and that her family, including several children, had all been killed. The woman seemed not at all grateful for anything done for her, and was suspicious and taciturn. She muttered to herself a lot and did not seem normal. A domestic post was found for her, but she had left it without noctice some weeks ago and without reporting to the police.
The Coroner asked why the woman's relatives had not come forward, and at this point Inspector Brassey made an explanation.
The couple in question were detained under the Defence of the Realm Act for an offence in connection with a Naval dockyard. He stated that these two aliens had posed as refugees to enter the country, but had immediately tried to obtain employment near a Naval base. The whole family was looked upon with suspicion. They had had a larger sum of money in their possession than co
Mrs Sprot, when called, dissolved at once into tears. The Coroner was gentle with her, leading her tactfully along the path of what had occurred.
"It's so awful," gasped Mrs Sprot. "So awful to have killed someone. I didn't mean to do that - I mean I never thought - but it was Betty - and I thought that woman was going to throw her over the cliff and I had to stop her - and oh, dear - I don't know how I did it."
"You are accutomed to the use of firearms?"
"Oh, no! Only those rifles at regattas - at fairs - when you shoot at booths, and even then I never used to hit anything. Oh, dear - I feel as though I'd murdered someone."
The Coroner soothed her and asked if she had ever come in contact with the dead woman.
"Oh, no. I'd never seen her in my life. I think she must have been quite mad - because she didn't even know me or Betty."
In reply to further questions, Mrs Sprot said that she had attended a sewing party for comforts for Polish refugees, but that that was the extent of her connection with Poles in this country.
Haydock was the next witness, and he described the steps he had taken tot rack down the kidnapper and what had eventually happened.
"You are clear in your mind that the woman was definitely preparing to jump over the cliff?"
"Either that or throw the child over. She seemed to me quite demented with hate. It would have been impossible to reason with her. It was a moment for immediate action. I myself conceived the idea of firing and crippling her, but she was holding up the child as a shield. I was afraid of killing the child if I fired. Mrs Sprot took the risk and was successful in saving her little girl's life."
Mrs Sprot began to cry again.
Mrs Blenkensop's evidence was short - a mere confirming of the Commander's evidence.
Mr Meadowes followed.
"You agree with Commander Haydock and Mrs Blenkensop as to what occurred?"
"I do. The woman was definitely so distraught that it was impossible to get near her. She was about to throw herself and the child over the cliff."
There was little more evidence. The Coroner directed the jury that Vanda Polonska came to her death by the hand of Mrs Sprot and formally exonerated the latter from blame. There was no evidence to show what was the state of the dead woman's mind. She might have been actuated by hate of England. Some of the Polish "comforts" distributed to refugees bore the name of the ladies sending them, and it was possible that the woman got Mrs Sprot's name and address this way, but it was not easy to get at her reason for kidnapping the child - possibly some crazy motive quite incomprehensible to the normal mind. Polonska, according to her own story, had suffered great bereavement in her own country, and that might have turned her brain. On the other hand, she might be an enemy agent.
The verdict was in accordance with the Coroner's summing up.
II
On the day following the inquest Mrs Blenkensop and Mr Meadowes met to compare notes.
"Exit Vanda Polonska and a blank wall as usual," said Tommy gloomily.
Tuppence nodded.
"Yes, they seal up both ends, don't they? No papers, no hints of any kind as to where the money came from that she and her cousins had, no record of whom they had dealings with."
"Too damned efficient," said Tommy.
He added: "You know, Tuppence, I don't like the look of things."
Tuppence assented. The news was indeed far from reassuring.
The French Army was in retreat and it seemed doubtful if the tide could be turned. Evacuation from Dunkirk was in progress. It was clearly a matter of a few days only before Paris fell. There was a general dismay at the revelation of lack of equipment and of material for resisting the Germans' great mechanized units.
Tommy said:
"Is it only our usual muddling and slowness? Or has there been deliberate engineering behind this?"
"The latter, I think, but they'll never be able to prove it."
"No. Our adversaries are too darned clever for that."
"We are combing out a lot of the rot now."
"Oh, yes, we're rounding up the obvious people, but I don't believe we've got at the brains that are behind it all. Brains, organization, a whole carefully thought-out plan - a plan which uses our habits of dilatoriness, and our petty feuds, and our slowness for its own ends."
Tuppence said:
"That's what we're here for - and we haven't got results."
"We've done something," Tommy reminded her.
"Carl von Deinim and Vanda Polonska, yes. The small fry."
"You think they were working together?"
"I think they must have been," said Tuppence thoughtfully. "Remember, I saw them talking."
"Then Carl von Deinim must have engineered the kidnapping."
"I suppose so."
"But why?"
"I know," said Tuppence. "That's what I keep thinking and thinking about. It doesn't make sense."
"Why kidnap that particular child? Who are the Sprots? They've no money - so it isn't ransom. They're neither of them employed by the Government in any capacity."
"I know, Tommy. It just doesn't make any sense at all."
"Hasn't Mrs Sprot any idea herself?"
"That woman," said Tuppence scornfully, "hasn't got the brains of a hen. She doesn't think at all. Just says it's the sort of thing the wicked Germans would do."
"Silly ass," said Tommy. "The Germans are efficient. If they send one of their agents to kidnap a brat, it's for some reason."
"I've a feeling, you know," said Tuppence, "that Mrs Sprot could get at the reason if only she'd think about it. There must be something - some piece of information that she herself has inadvertently got hold of, perhaps without knowing what it is exactly."
"Say nothing. Wait for instructions," Tommy quoted from the note found on Mrs Sprot's bedroom floor. "Damn it all, that means something."
"Of course it does - it must. The only thing I can think of is that Mrs Sprot, or her husband, has been given something to keep by someone else - given it, perhaps, just because they are such humdrum ordinary people that no one would ever suspect they had it - whatever 'it' may be."
"It's an idea, that."
"I know - but it's awfully like a spy story. It doesn't seem real somehow."
"Have you asked Mrs Sprot to rack her brains a bit?"
"Yes, the trouble is that she isn't really interested. All she cares about is getting Betty back - that, and having hysterics because she's shot someone."
"Funny creatures, women," mused Tommy. "There was that woman, went out that day like an avenging fury, she'd have shot down a regiment in cold blood without turning a hair just to get her child back, and then, having shot the kidnapper by a perfectly incredible fluke, she breaks down and comes all over squeamish about it."
"The coroner exonerated her all right," said Tuppence.
"Naturally. By jove, I wouldn't have risked firing when she did."
Tuppence said:
"No more would she, probably, if she'd known more about it. It was sheer ignorance of the difficulty of the shot that made her bring it off."
Tommy nodded.
"Quite Biblical," he said. "David and Goliath."
"Oh!" said Tuppence.
"What is it, old thing?"
"I don't quite know. When you said that something twanged somewhere in my brain, and now it's gone again!"
"Very useful," said Tommy.
"Don't be scathing. That sort of thing does happen sometimes."
"Gentleman who draw a bow at a venture, was that it?"
"No, it was - wait a minute - I think it was something to do with Solomon."
"Cedars, temples, a lot of wives and concubines?"
"Stop," said Tuppence, putting her hands to her ears. "You'r
"Jews?" said Tommy hopefully. "Tribes of Israel?"
But Tuppence shook her had. After a minute or two she said:
"I wish I could remember who it was that woman reminded me of."