Detectives and Young Adventurers: The Complete Short Stories. Agatha Christie

for a few details of their ‘smart’ supper party at the Savoy on Tuesday evening. These details Mrs Oglander was only too willing to supply. Just as she was leaving Tuppence added carelessly. ‘Let me see, wasn’t Miss Drake sitting at the table next to you? Is it really true that she is engaged to the Duke of Perth? You know her, of course.’

      ‘I know her slightly,’ said Mrs Oglander. ‘A very charming girl, I believe. Yes, she was sitting at the next table to ours with Mr le Marchant. My girls know her better than I do.’

      Tuppence’s next port of call was the flat in Clarges Street. Here she was greeted by Miss Marjory Leicester, the friend with whom Miss Drake shared a flat.

      ‘Do tell me what all this is about?’ asked Miss Leicester plaintively. ‘Una has some deep game on and I don’t know what it is. Of course she slept here on Tuesday night.’

      ‘Did you see her when she came in?’

      ‘No, I had gone to bed. She has got her own latch key, of course. She came in about one o’clock, I believe.’

      ‘When did you see her?’

      ‘Oh, the next morning about nine – or perhaps it was nearer ten.’ As Tuppence left the flat she almost collided with a tall gaunt female who was entering.

      ‘Excuse me, Miss, I’m sure,’ said the gaunt female.

      ‘Do you work here?’ asked Tuppence.

      ‘Yes, Miss, I come daily.’

      ‘What time do you get here in the morning?’

      ‘Nine o’clock is my time, Miss.’

      Tuppence slipped a hurried half-crown into the gaunt female’s hand.

      ‘Was Miss Drake here last Tuesday morning when you arrived?’

      ‘Why, yes, Miss, indeed she was. Fast asleep in her bed and hardly woke up when I brought her in her tea.’

      ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Tuppence and went disconsolately down the stairs.

      She had arranged to meet Tommy for lunch in a small restaurant in Soho and there they compared notes.

      ‘I have seen that fellow Rice. It is quite true he did see Una Drake in the distance at Torquay.’

      ‘Well,’ said Tuppence, ‘we have checked these alibis all right. Here, give me a bit of paper and a pencil, Tommy. Let us put it down neatly like all detectives do.’

1.30	Una Drake seen in Luncheon Car of train.
4 o’clock	Arrives at Castle Hotel.
5 o’clock	Seen by Mr Rice.
8 o’clock	Seen dining at hotel.
9.30	Asks for hot water bottle.
11.30	Seen at Savoy with Mr le Marchant.
7.30 a.m.	Called by chambermaid at Castle Hotel.
9 o’clock.	Called by charwoman at flat at Clarges Street.

      They looked at each other.

      ‘Well, it looks to me as if Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives are beat,’ said Tommy.

      ‘Oh, we mustn’t give up,’ said Tuppence. ‘Somebody must be lying!’

      ‘The queer thing is that it strikes me nobody was lying. They all seemed perfectly truthful and straightforward.’

      ‘Yet there must be a flaw. We know there is. I think of all sorts of things like private aeroplanes, but that doesn’t really get us any forwarder.’

      ‘I am inclined to the theory of an astral body.’

      ‘Well,’ said Tuppence, ‘the only thing to do is to sleep on it. Your subconscious works in your sleep.’

      ‘H’m,’ said Tommy. ‘If your sub-conscious provides you with a perfectly good answer to this riddle by tomorrow morning, I take off my hat to it.’

      They were very silent all that evening. Again and again Tuppence reverted to the paper of times. She wrote things on bits of paper. She murmured to herself, she sought perplexedly through Rail Guides. But in the end they both rose to go to bed with no faint glimmer of light on the problem.

      ‘This is very disheartening,’ said Tommy.

      ‘One of the most miserable evenings I have ever spent,’ said Tuppence.

      ‘We ought to have gone to a Music Hall,’ said Tommy. ‘A few good jokes about mothers-in-law and twins and bottles of beer would have done us no end of good.’

      ‘No, you will see this concentration will work in the end,’ said Tuppence. ‘How busy our sub-conscious will have to be in the next eight hours!’ And on this hopeful note they went to bed.

      ‘Well,’ said Tommy next morning. ‘Has the subconscious worked?’

      ‘I have got an idea,’ said Tuppence.

      ‘You have. What sort of an idea?’

      ‘Well, rather a funny idea. Not at all like anything I have ever read in detective stories. As a matter of fact it is an idea that you put into my head.’

      ‘Then it must be a good idea,’ said Tommy firmly. ‘Come on, Tuppence, out with it.’

      ‘I shall have to send a cable to verify it,’ said Tuppence. ‘No, I am not going to tell you. It’s a perfectly wild idea, but it’s the only thing that fits the facts.’

      ‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘I must away to the office. A roomful of disappointed clients must not wait in vain. I leave this case in the hands of my promising subordinate.’

      Tuppence nodded cheerfully.

      She did not put in an appearance at the office all day. When Tommy returned that evening about half-past five it was to find a wildly exultant Tuppence awaiting him.

      ‘I have done it, Tommy. I have solved the mystery of the alibi. We can charge up all these half-crowns and ten-shilling notes and demand a substantial fee of our own from Mr Montgomery Jones and he can go right off and collect his girl.’

      ‘What is the solution?’ cried Tommy.

      ‘A perfectly simple one,’ said Tuppence. ‘Twins.’

      ‘What do you mean? – Twins?’

      ‘Why, just that. Of course it is the only solution. I will say you put it into my head last night talking about mothers-in-law, twins, and bottles of beer. I cabled to Australia and got back the information I wanted. Una has a twin sister, Vera, who arrived in England last Monday. That is why she was able to make this bet so spontaneously. She thought it would be a frightful rag on poor Montgomery Jones. The sister went to Torquay and she stayed in London.’

      ‘Do you think she’ll be terribly despondent that she’s lost?’ asked Tommy.

      ‘No,’ said Tuppence, ‘I don’t. I gave you my views about that before. She will put all the kudos down to Montgomery Jones. I always think respect for your husband’s abilities should be the foundation of married life.’

      ‘I am glad to have inspired these sentiments in you, Tuppence.’

      ‘It is not a really satisfactory solution,’ said Tuppence. ‘Not the ingenious sort of flaw that Inspector French would have detected.’

      ‘Nonsense,’ said Tommy. ‘I think the way I showed these photographs to the waiter in the restaurant was exactly like Inspector French.’