Parker Pyne Investigates. Agatha Christie

to amuse you, to make love to you, to make you forget your husband. That was my job. A despicable one, eh?’

      ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked.

      ‘Because I’m through with it. I can’t carry on with it. Not with you. You’re different. You’re the kind of woman I could believe in, trust, adore. You think I’m just saying this; that it’s part of the game.’ He came closer to her. ‘I’m going to prove to you it isn’t. I’m going away–because of you. I’m going to make myself into a man instead of the loathsome creature I am because of you.’

      He took her suddenly in his arms. His lips closed on hers. Then he released her and stood away.

      ‘Goodbye. I’ve been a rotter–always. But I swear it will be different now. Do you remember once saying you liked to read the advertisements in the Agony column? On this day every year you’ll find there a message from me saying that I remember and am making good. You’ll know, then, all you’ve meant to me. One thing more. I’ve taken nothing from you. I want you to take something from me.’ He drew a plain gold seal ring from his finger. ‘This was my mother’s. I’d like you to have it. Now goodbye.’

      George Packington came home early. He found his wife gazing into the fire with a faraway look. She spoke kindly but absently to him.

      ‘Look here, Maria,’ he jerked out suddenly. ‘About that girl?’

      ‘Yes, dear?’

      ‘I–I never meant to upset you, you know. About her. Nothing in it.’

      ‘I know. I was foolish. See as much as you like of her if it makes you happy.’

      These words, surely, should have cheered George Packington. Strangely enough, they annoyed him. How could you enjoy taking a girl about when your wife fairly urged you on? Dash it all, it wasn’t decent! All that feeling of being a gay dog, of being a strong man playing with fire, fizzled out and died an ignominious death. George Packington felt suddenly tired and a great deal poorer in pocket. The girl was a shrewd little piece.

      ‘We might go away together somewhere for a bit if you like, Maria?’ he suggested timidly.

      ‘Oh, never mind about me. I’m quite happy.’

      ‘But I’d like to take you away. We might go to the Riviera.’

      Mrs Packington smiled at him from a distance.

      Poor old George. She was fond of him. He was such a pathetic old dear. There was no secret splendour in his life as there was in hers. She smiled more tenderly still.

      ‘That would be lovely, my dear,’ she said.

      Mr Parker Pyne was speaking to Miss Lemon. ‘Entertainment account?’

      ‘One hundred and two pounds, fourteen and sixpence,’ said Miss Lemon.

      The door was pushed open and Claude Luttrell entered. He looked moody.

      ‘Morning, Claude,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Everything go off satisfactorily?’

      ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘The ring? What name did you put in it, by the way?’

      ‘Matilda,’ said Claude gloomily. ‘1899.’

      ‘Excellent. What wording for the advertisement?’

      ‘“Making good. Still remember. Claude.”’

      ‘Make a note of that, please, Miss Lemon. The Agony column. November third for–let me see, expenses a hundred and two pounds, fourteen and six. Yes, for ten years, I think. That leaves us a profit of ninety-two pounds, two and fourpence. Adequate. Quite adequate.’

      Miss Lemon departed.

      ‘Look here,’ Claude burst out. ‘I don’t like this. It’s a rotten game.’

      ‘My dear boy!’

      ‘A rotten game. That was a decent woman–a good sort. Telling her all those lies, filling her up with this sob-stuff, dash it all, it makes me sick!’

      Mr Parker Pyne adjusted his glasses and looked at Claude with a kind of scientific interest. ‘Dear me!’ he said drily. ‘I do not seem to remember that your conscience ever troubled you during your somewhat–ahem!–notorious career. Your affairs on the Riviera were particularly brazen, and your exploitation of Mrs Hattie West, the Californian Cucumber King’s wife, was especially notable for the callous mercenary instinct you displayed.’

      ‘Well, I’m beginning to feel different,’ grumbled Claude. ‘It isn’t–nice, this game.’

      Mr Parker Pyne spoke in the voice of a headmaster admonishing a favourite pupil. ‘You have, my dear Claude, performed a meritorious action. You have given an unhappy woman what every woman needs–a romance. A woman tears a passion to pieces and gets no good from it, but a romance can be laid up in lavender and looked at all through the long years to come. I know human nature, my boy, and I tell you that a woman can feed on such an incident for years.’ He coughed. ‘We have discharged our commission to Mrs Packington very satisfactorily.’

      ‘Well,’ muttered Claude, ‘I don’t like it.’ He left the room.

      Mr Parker Pyne took a new file from a drawer. He wrote:

      ‘Interesting vestiges of a conscience noticeable in hardened Lounge Lizard. Note: Study developments.’

      The Case of the Discontented Soldier

      I

      Major Wilbraham hesitated outside the door of Mr Parker Pyne’s office to read, not for the first time, the advertisement from the morning paper which had brought him there. It was simple enough:

      The major took a deep breath and abruptly plunged through the swing door leading to the outer office. A plain young woman looked up from her typewriter and glanced at him inquiringly.

      ‘Mr Parker Pyne?’ said Major Wilbraham, blushing.

      ‘Come this way, please.’

      He followed her into an inner office–into the presence of the bland Mr Parker Pyne.

      ‘Good-morning,’ said Mr Pyne. ‘Sit down, won’t you? And now tell me what I can do for you.’

      ‘My name is Wilbraham–’ began the other.

      ‘Major? Colonel?’ said Mr Pyne.

      ‘Major.’

      ‘Ah! And recently returned from abroad? India? East Africa?’

      ‘East Africa.’

      ‘A fine country, I believe. Well, so you are home again–and you don’t like it. Is that the trouble?’

      ‘You’re absolutely right. Though how you knew–’

      Mr Parker Pyne waved an impressive hand. ‘It is my business to know. You see, for thirty-five years of my life I have been engaged in the compiling of statistics in a government office. Now I have retired and it has occurred to me to use the experience I have gained in a novel fashion. It is all so simple. Unhappiness can be classified under five main heads–no more I assure you. Once you know the cause of a malady, the remedy should not be impossible.

      ‘I stand in the place of the doctor. The doctor first diagnoses the patient’s disorder, then he recommends a course of treatment. There are cases where no treatment can be of any avail. If that is so, I say quite frankly that I can do nothing about it. But if I undertake a case, the cure is practically guaranteed.

      ‘I can assure you, Major Wilbraham, that ninety-six per cent of retired empire builders–as I call them–are unhappy. They exchange an active life, a life full of responsibility, a life of possible danger, for–what? Straitened means, a