THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES
THE SECRET ADVERSARY
THE MURDER ON THE LINKS
THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT
by
AGATHA CHRISTIE
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1924
Copyright, 1924,
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
The Quinn & Boden Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
To E. A. B.
IN MEMORY OF A JOURNEY, SOME
LION STORIES AND A REQUEST THAT
I SHOULD SOME DAY WRITE THE
“MYSTERY OF THE MILL HOUSE”
THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT
THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT
PROLOGUE
Nadina, the Russian dancer who had taken Paris by storm, swayed to
the sound of the applause, bowed and bowed again. Her narrow black
eyes narrowed themselves still more, the long line of her scarlet
mouth curved faintly upwards. Enthusiastic Frenchmen continued to
beat the ground appreciatively as the curtain fell with a swish,
hiding the reds and blues and magentas of the bizarre _décors._ In
a swirl of blue and orange draperies the dancer left the stage. A
bearded gentleman received her enthusiastically in his arms. It
was the Manager.
“Magnificent, _petite,_ magnificent,” he cried. “To-night you have
surpassed yourself.” He kissed her gallantly on both cheeks in a
somewhat matter-of-fact manner.
Madame Nadina accepted the tribute with the ease of long habit and
passed on to her dressing-room, where bouquets were heaped
carelessly everywhere, marvellous garments of futuristic design
hung on pegs, and the air was hot and sweet with the scent of the
massed blossoms and with more sophisticated perfumes and essences.
Jeanne, the dresser, ministered to her mistress, talking incessantly
and pouring out a stream of fulsome compliment.
A knock at the door interrupted the flow. Jeanne went to answer
it, and returned with a card in her hand.
“Madame will receive?”
“Let me see.”
The dancer stretched out a languid hand, but at the sight of the
name on the card, “Count Sergius Paulovitch,” a sudden flicker of
interest came into her eyes.
“I will see him. The maize _peignoir,_ Jeanne, and quickly. And
when the Count comes you may go.”
_“Bien, Madame.”_
Jeanne brought the _peignoir,_ an exquisite wisp of corn-coloured
chiffon and ermine. Nadina slipped into it, and sat smiling to
herself, whilst one long white hand beat a slow tattoo on the glass
of the dressing-table.
The Count was prompt to avail himself of the privilege accorded to
him—a man of medium height, very slim, very elegant, very pale,
extraordinarily weary. In feature, little to take hold of, a man
difficult to recognize again if one left his mannerisms out of
account. He bowed over the dancer’s hand with exaggerated
courtliness.
“Madame, this is a pleasure indeed.”
So much Jeanne heard before she went out closing the door behind
her. Alone with her visitor, a subtle change came over Nadina’s
smile.
“Compatriots though we are, we will not speak Russian, I think,”
she observed.
“Since we neither of us know a word of the language, it might be
as well,” agreed her guest.
By common consent, they dropped into English, and nobody, now that
the Count’s mannerisms had dropped from him, could doubt that it
was his native language. He had, indeed, started life as a
quick-change music-hall artiste in London.
“You had a great success to-night,” he remarked. “I congratulate
you.”
“All the same,” said the woman, “I am disturbed. My position is
not what it was. The suspicions aroused during the War have never
died down. I am continually watched and spied upon.”
“But no charge of espionage was ever brought against you?”
“Our chief lays his plans too carefully for that.”
“Long life to the ‘Colonel,’” said the Count, smiling. “Amazing
news, is it not, that he means to retire? To retire! Just like a
doctor, or a butcher, or a plumber——”
“Or any other business man,” finished Nadina. “It should not
surprise us. That is what the ‘Colonel’ has always been—an excellent
man of business. He has organized crime as another man might
organize a boot factory. Without committing himself, he has planned
and directed a series of stupendous _coups,_ embracing every branch
of what we might call his ‘profession.’ Jewel robberies, forgery,
espionage (the latter very profitable in war-time), sabotage,
discreet assassination, there is hardly anything he has not touched.
Wisest of all, he knows when to stop. The game begins to be
dangerous?—he retires gracefully—with an enormous fortune!”
“H’m!” said the Count doubtfully. “It is rather—upsetting for all
of us. We are at a loose end, as it were.”
“But we are being paid off—on a most generous scale!” Something,
some undercurrent of mockery in her tone, made the man look at her
sharply. She was smiling to herself, and the quality of her smile
aroused his curiosity. But he proceeded diplomatically:
“Yes, the ‘Colonel’ has always been a generous paymaster. I
attribute much of his success to that—and to his invariable plan
of providing a suitable scapegoat. A great brain, undoubtedly a
great brain! And an apostle of the maxim, ‘If you want a thing done
safely, do not do it yourself!’ Here are we, every one of us
incriminated up to the hilt and absolutely in his power, and not
one of us has anything on him.”
He paused, almost as though he were expecting her to disagree with
him, but she remained silent, smiling to herself as before.
“Not one of us,” he mused. “Still, you know, he is superstitious,
the old man. Years ago, I believe, he went to one of these
fortune-telling people. She prophesied a lifetime of success, but
declared that his downfall would be brought about through a woman.”
He had interested her now. She looked up eagerly.
“That is strange, very strange! Through a woman, you say?”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Doubtless, now that he has—retired, he will marry. Some young
society beauty, who will disperse his millions faster than he
acquired them.”
Nadina shook her head.
“No, no, that is not the way of it. Listen, my friend, to-morrow
I go to London.”
“But your contract here?”
“I shall be away only one night. And I go incognito, like Royalty.
No one will ever know that I have left France. And why do you think
that I go?”
“Hardly for pleasure at this time of year. January, a detestable
foggy month! It must be for profit, eh?”
“Exactly.” She rose and stood in front of him, every graceful line
of her arrogant with pride. “You said just now that none of us had
anything on the chief. You were wrong. I have. I, a woman, have
had the wit and, yes, the courage—for it needs courage—to
double-cross him. You remember the De Beer diamonds?”
“Yes, I remember. At Kimberley, just before the war broke out? I
had nothing to do with it, and I never heard the details, the case
was hushed up for some reason, was it not? A fine haul too.”
“A hundred thousand pounds worth of stones. Two of us worked
it—under the ‘Colonel’s’ orders, of course. And it was then that
I saw my chance. You see, the plan was to substitute some of the
De Beer diamonds for some sample diamonds brought from South
America by two young prospectors who happened to be in Kimberley
at the time. Suspicion was then bound to fall on them.”
“Very clever,” interpolated the Count approvingly.
“The ‘Colonel’ is always clever. Well, I did my part—but I also
did one thing which the ‘Colonel’ had not foreseen. I kept back
some of the South American stones—one or two are unique and could
easily be proved never to have passed through De Beer’s hands. With
these diamonds in my possession, I have the whip-hand of my esteemed
chief. Once the two young men are cleared, his part in the matter
is bound to be suspected. I have said nothing all these years, I
have been content to know that I had this weapon in reserve, but
now matters are different. I want my price—and it will be a big,
I might almost say a staggering price.”
“Extraordinary,” said the Count. “And doubtless you carry these
diamonds about with you everywhere?”
His eyes roamed gently round the disordered room.
Nadina laughed softly. “You need suppose nothing of the sort. I am
not a fool. The diamonds are in a safe place where no one will
dream of looking for them.”
“I never thought you a fool, my dear lady, but may I venture to
suggest that you are somewhat foolhardy? The ‘Colonel’ is not the
type of man to take kindly to being blackmailed, you know.”
“I am not afraid of him,” she laughed. “There is only one man I
have ever feared—and he is dead.”
The man looked at her curiously.
“Let us hope that he will not come to life again, then,” he remarked
lightly.
“What do you mean?” cried the dancer sharply.
The Count looked slightly surprised.
“I only meant that a resurrection would be awkward for you,” he
explained. “A foolish joke.”
She gave a sigh of relief.
“Oh, no, he is dead all right. Killed in the war. He was a man who
once—loved me.”
“In South Africa?” asked the Count negligently.
“Yes, since you ask it, in South Africa.”
“That is your native country, is it not?”
She nodded. Her visitor rose and reached for his hat.
“Well,” he remarked, “you know your own business best, but, if I
were you, I should fear the ‘Colonel’ far more than any disillusioned
lover. He is a man whom it is particularly easy to—underestimate.”
She laughed scornfully.
“As if I did not know him after all these years!”
“I wonder if you do?” he said softly. “I very much wonder if you
do.”
“Oh, I am not a fool! And I am not alone in this. The South African
mail-boat docks at Southampton to-morrow, and on board her is a
man who has come specially from Africa at my request and who has
carried out certain orders of mine. The ‘Colonel’ will have not
one of us to deal with, but two.”
“Is that wise?”
“It is necessary.”
“You are sure of this man?”
A rather peculiar smile played over the dancer’s face.
“I am quite sure of him. He is inefficient, but perfectly
trustworthy.” She paused, and then added in an indifferent tone of
voice: “As a matter of fact, he happens to be my husband.”
CHAPTER I
Everybody has been at me, right and left, to write this story from
the great (represented by Lord Nasby) to the small (represented by
our late maid of all work, Emily, whom I saw when I was last in
England. “Lor’, miss, what a beyewtiful book you might make out of
it all—just like the pictures!”).
I’ll admit that I’ve certain qualifications for the task. I was
mixed up in the affair from the very beginning, I was in the thick
of it all through, and I was triumphantly “in at the death.” Very
fortunately, too, the gaps that I cannot supply from my own
knowledge are amply covered by Sir Eustace Pedler’s diary, of which
he has kindly begged me to make use.
So here goes. Anne Beddingfeld starts to narrate her adventures.
I’d always longed for adventures. You see, my life had such a
dreadful sameness. My father, Professor Beddingfeld, was one of
England’s greatest living authorities on Primitive Man. He really
was a genius—every one admits that. His mind dwelt in Palaeolithic
times, and the inconvenience of life for him was that his body
inhabited the modern world. Papa did not care for modern man—even
Neolithic Man he despised as a mere herder of cattle, and he did
not rise to enthusiasm until he reached the Mousterian period.
Unfortunately one cannot entirely dispense with modern men. One is
forced to have some kind of truck with butchers and bakers and
milkmen and greengrocers. Therefore, Papa being immersed in the
past, Mamma having died when I was a baby, it fell to me to
undertake the practical side of living. Frankly, I hate Palaeolithic
Man, be he Aurignacian, Mousterian, Chellian, or anything else,
and though I typed and revised most of Papa’s _Neanderthal Man and
his Ancestors,_ Neanderthal men themselves fill me with loathing,
and I always reflect what a fortunate circumstance it was that they
became extinct in remote ages.
I do not know whether Papa guessed my feelings on the subject,
probably not, and in any case he would not have been interested.
The opinion of other people never interested him in the slightest
degree. I think it was really a sign of his greatness. In the same
way, he lived quite detached from the necessities of daily life.
He ate what was put before him in an exemplary fashion, but seemed
mildly pained when the question of paying for it arose. We never
seemed to have any money. His celebrity was not of the kind that
brought in a cash return. Although he was a fellow of almost every
important society, and had rows of letters after his name, the
general public scarcely knew of his existence, and his long learned
books, though adding signally to the sum-total of human knowledge,
had no attraction for the masses. Only on one occasion did he leap
into the public gaze. He had read a paper before some society on
the subject of the young of the chimpanzee. The young of the human
race show some anthropoid features, whereas the young of the
chimpanzee approach more nearly to the human than the adult
chimpanzee does. That seems to show that whereas our ancestors were
more Simian than we are, the chimpanzee’s were of a higher type
than the present species—in other words, the chimpanzee is a
degenerate. That enterprising newspaper, the _Daily Budget,_ being
hard up for something spicy, immediately brought itself out with
large headlines. “We are not descended from monkeys, but are
monkeys descended from _us?_ Eminent Professor says chimpanzees
are decadent humans.” Shortly afterwards a reporter called to see
Papa, and endeavoured to induce him to write a series of popular
articles on the theory. I have seldom seen Papa so angry. He turned
the reporter out of the house with scant ceremony, much to my
secret sorrow, as we were particularly short of money at the
moment. In fact, for a moment I meditated running after the young
man and informing him that my father had changed his mind and would
send the articles in question. I could easily have written them
myself, and the probabilities were that Papa would never have
learnt of the transaction, not being a reader of the _Daily Budget._
However, I rejected this course as being too risky, so I merely
put on my best hat and went sadly down the village to interview
our justly irate grocer.
The reporter from the _Daily Budget_ was the only young man who
ever came to our house. There were times when I envied Emily, our
little servant, who “walked out” whenever occasion offered with a
large sailor to whom she was affianced. In between times, to “keep
her hand in” as she expressed it, she walked out with the
greengrocer’s young man, and the chemist’s assistant. I reflected
sadly that I had no one to “keep my hand in” with. All Papa’s
friends were aged Professors—usually with long beards. It is true
that Professor Peterson once clasped me affectionately and said I
had a “neat little waist” and then tried to kiss me. The phrase
alone dated him hopelessly. No self-respecting female has had a
“neat little waist” since I was in my cradle.
I yearned for adventure, for love, for romance, and I seemed
condemned to an existence of drab utility. The village possessed
a lending library, full of tattered works of fiction, and I enjoyed
perils and love-making at second hand, and went to sleep dreaming
of stern, silent Rhodesians, and of strong men who always “felled
their opponent with a single blow.” There was no one in the village
who even looked as though he could “fell” an opponent, with a
single blow or with several.
There was the Kinema too, with a weekly episode of “The Perils of
Pamela.” Pamela was a magnificent young woman. Nothing daunted her.
She fell out of aeroplanes, adventured in submarines, climbed
skyscrapers and crept about in the Underworld without turning a
hair. She was not really clever, the Master Criminal of the
Underworld caught her each time, but as he seemed loath to knock
her on the head in a simple way, and always doomed her to death in
a sewer-gas chamber or by some new and marvellous means, the hero
was always able to rescue her at the beginning of the following
week’s episode. I used to come out with my head in a delirious
whirl—and then I would get home and find a notice from the Gas
Company threatening to cut us off if the outstanding account was
not paid!
And yet, though I did not suspect it, every moment was bringing
adventure nearer to me.
It is possible that there are many people in the world who have
never heard of the finding of an antique skull at the Broken Hill
Mine in Northern Rhodesia. I came down one morning to find Papa
excited to the point of apoplexy. He poured out the whole story to
me.
“You understand, Anne? There are undoubtedly certain resemblances
to the Java skull, but superficial—superficial only. No, here we
have what I have always maintained—the ancestral form of the
Neanderthal race. You grant that the Gibraltar skull is the most
primitive of the Neanderthal skulls found? Why? The cradle of the
race was in Africa. They passed to Europe——”
“Not marmalade on kippers, papa,” I said hastily, arresting my
parent’s absent-minded hand. “Yes, you were saying?”
“They passed to Europe on——”
Here he broke down with a bad fit of choking, the result of an
immoderate mouthful of kipper-bones.
“But we must start at once,” he declared, as he rose to his feet
at the conclusion of the meal. “There is no time to be lost. We
must be on the spot—there are doubtless incalculable finds to be
found in the neighbourhood. I shall be interested to note whether
the implements are typical of the Mousterian period—there will be
the remains of the primitive ox, I should say, but not those of
the woolly rhinoceros. Yes, a little army will be starting soon.
We must get ahead of them. You will write to Cook’s to-day, Anne?”
“What about money, papa?” I hinted delicately.
He turned a reproachful eye upon me.
“Your point of view always depresses me, my child. We must not be
sordid. No, no, in the cause of science one must not be sordid.”
“I feel Cook’s might be sordid, papa.”
Papa looked pained.
“My dear Anne, you will pay them in ready money.”
“I haven’t got any ready money.”
Papa looked thoroughly exasperated.
“My child, I really cannot be bothered with these vulgar money
details. The bank—I had something from the Manager yesterday,
saying I had twenty-seven pounds.”
“That’s your overdraft, I fancy.”
“Ah, I have it! Write to my publishers.”
I acquiesced doubtfully, Papa’s books bringing in more glory than
money. I liked the idea of going to Rhodesia immensely. “Stern
silent men,” I murmured to myself in an ecstasy. Then something in
my parent’s appearance struck me as unusual.
“You have odd boots on, papa,” I said. “Take off the brown one and
put on the other black one. And don’t forget your muffler. It’s a
very cold day.”
In a few minutes Papa stalked off, correctly booted and well
mufflered.
He returned late that evening, and, to my dismay, I saw his muffler
and overcoat were missing.
“Dear me, Anne, you are quite right. I took them off to go into
the cavern. One gets so dirty there.”
I nodded feelingly, remembering an occasion when Papa had returned
literally plastered from head to foot with rich Pleiocene clay.
Our principal reason for settling in Little Hampsly had been the
neighbourhood of Hampsly Cavern, a buried cave rich in deposits of
the Aurignacian culture. We had a tiny Museum in the village, and
the curator and Papa spent most of their days messing about
underground and bringing to light portions of woolly rhinoceros
and cave bear.
Papa coughed badly all the evening, and the following morning I
saw he had a temperature and sent for the doctor.
Poor Papa, he never had a chance. It was double pneumonia. He died
four days later.