N Or M? Part 6

"Of course she's Irish. I know my own countrywomen. I could name you the county she comes from. But there! 'I'm English,' she says, 'and my husband was a Spaniard' -"

Mrs O'Rourke broke off abruptly as Mrs Sprot came in, closely followed by Tommy.

Tuppence immediately a.s.sumed a sprightly manner.

"Good evening, Mr Meadowes. You look very brisk this evening."

Tommy said: "Plenty of exercise, that's the secret. A round of golf this morning and a walk along the front this afternoon."

Millicent Sprot said: "I took Baby down to the beach this afternoon. She wanted to paddle but I really thought it was rather cold. I was helping her build a castle and a dog ran off with my knitting and pulled out yards of it. So annoying, and so difficult picking up all the st.i.tches again. I'm such a bad knitter."

"You're getting along fine with that helmet, Mrs Blenkensop," said Mrs O'Rourke, suddenly turning her attention to Tuppence. "You've been just racing along. I thought Miss Minton said that you were an inexperienced knitter."

Tuppence flushed faintly. Mrs O'Rourke's eyes were sharp. With a slightly vexed air, Tuppence said: "I have really done quite a lot of knitting. I told Miss Minton so. But I think she likes teaching people."

Everybody laughed in agreement, and a few minutes later the rest of the party came in and the gong was sounded.

The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies. Well-known h.o.a.ry chestnuts were retold. The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a b.u.mp, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present. That led easily to Fifth Column activities. To denunciations of the British Fascists, of the Communists, of the Peace Party, of conscientious objectors. It was a very normal conversation, of the kind that may be heard almost every day, nevertheless Tuppence watched keenly the faces and demeanour of the people as they talked, striving to catch some tell-tale expression or word. But there was nothing. Sheila Perenna alone took no part in the conversation, but that might be put down to her habitual taciturnity. She sat there, her dark rebellious face sullen and brooding.

Carl von Deinim was out tonight, so tongues could be quite unrestrained.

Sheila only spoke once towards the end of diner.

Mrs Sprot had just said in her thin fluting voice: "Where I do think the Germans made such a mistake in the last war was to shoot Nurse Cavell. It turned everybody against them."

It was then that Sheila, flinging back her head, demanded in her fierce young voice: "Why shouldn't they shoot her? She was a spy, wasn't she?"

"Oh, no, not a spy."

"She helped English people to escape - in an enemy country. That's the same thing. Why shouldn't she be shot?"

"Oh, but shooting a woman - and a nurse."

Sheila got up.

"I think the Germans were quite right," she said.

She went out of the window into the garden.

Dessert, consisting of some under-ripe bananas and some tired oranges, had been on the table some time. Everyone rose and adjourned to the lounge for coffee.

Only Tommy un.o.btrusively betook himself to the garden. He found Sheila Perenna leaning over the terrace wall staring out at the sea. He came and stood beside her.

By her hurried, quick breathing he knew that something had upset her badly. He offered her a cigarette, which she accepted.

He said: "Lovely night."

In a low intense voice the girl answered: "It could be..."

Tommy looked at her doubtfully. He felt, suddenly, the attraction and the vitality of this girl. There was a tumultuous life in her, a kind of compelling power. She was the kind of girl, he thought, that a man might easily lose his head over.

"If it weren't for the war, you mean?" he said.

"I don't mean that at all, I hate the war."

"So do we all."

"Not in the way I mean. I hate the cant about it, the smugness - the horrible, horrible patriotism."

"Patriotism?" Tommy was startled.

"Yes, I hate patriotism, do you understand? All this country, country, country! Betraying your country - dying for your country - serving your country. Why should one's country mean anything at all?"

Tommy said simply: "I don't know. It just does."

"Not to me! Oh, it would to you - you go abroad and buy and sell in the British Empire and come back bronzed and full of cliches, talking about the natives and calling for Chota Pegs and all that sort of thing."

Tommy said gently: "I'm not quite as bad as that, I hope, my dear."

"I'm exaggerating a little - but you know what I mean. You believe in the British Empire - and - and - the stupidity of dying for one's country."

"My country," said Tommy drily, "doesn't seem particularly anxious to allow me to die for it."

"Yes, but you want to. And it's so stupid! Nothing's worth dying for. It's all an idea - talk - froth - high flown idiocy. My country doesn't mean anything to me at all."

"Some day," said Tommy, "you'll be surprised to find that it does."

"No. Never. I've suffered - I've seen -"

She broke off - then turned suddenly and impetuously upon him.

"Do you know who my father was?"

"No?" Tommy's interest quickened.

"His name was Patrick Maguire, He - he was a follower of Cas.e.m.e.nt in the last war. He was shot as a traitor! All for nothing! For an idea - he worked himself up with those other Irishmen. Why couldn't he just stay at home quietly and mind his own business? He's a martyr to some people and a traitor to others. I think he was just - stupid!"

Tommy could hear the note of pent-up rebellion coming out into the open. He said: "So that's the shadow you've grown up with?"

"Shadow's right. Mother changed her name. We lived in Spain for some years. She always says that my father was half a Spaniard. We always tell lies wherever we go. We've been all over the Continent. Finally we came here and started this place. I think this is quite the most hateful thing we've done yet."

Tommy asked: "How does your mother feel about - things?"

"You mean - about my father's death?" Sheila was silent a moment frowning, puzzled. She said slowly: "I've never really known... she never talks about it. It's not easy to know what mother feels or thinks."

Tommy nodded his head thoughtfully.

Sheila said abruptly: "I - I don't know why I've been telling you this. I got worked up. Where did it all start?"

"A discussion on Edith Cavell."

"Oh, yes - patriotism. I said I hated it."

"Aren't you forgetting Nurse Cavell's own words?"

"What words?"

"Before she died. Don't you know what she said?"

He repeated the words: "Patriotism is not enough... I must have no hatred in my heart."

"Oh." She stood there stricken for a moment.

Then, turning quickly, she wheeled away into the shadow of the garden.

II.

"So you see, Tuppence, it would all fit in."

Tuppence nodded thoughtfully. The beach around them was empty. She herself leaned against a breakwater, Tommy sat above her, on the breakwater itself, from which post he could see anyone who approached along the esplanade. Not that he expected to see anyone, having ascertained with a fair amount of accuracy where people would be this morning. In any case his rendezvous with Tuppence had borne all the signs of a casual meeting, pleasurable to the lady and slightly alarming to himself.

Tuppence said: "Mrs Perenna?"

"Yes. M, not N. She satisfies the requirements."

Tuppence nodded thoughtfully again.

"Yes. She's Irish - as spotted by Mrs O'Rourke - won't admit the fact. Has done a good deal of coming and going on the continent. Changed her name to Perenna, came here and started this boarding house. A splendid bit of camouflage, full of innocuous bores. Her husband was shot as a traitor - she's got every incentive for running a Fifth Column show in this country. Yes, it fits. Is the girl in it, too, do you think?"

Tommy said finally: "Definitely not. She'd never have told me all this otherwise. I - I feel a bit of a cad, you know."

Tuppence nodded with complete understanding "Yes, one does. In a way it's a foul job, this."

"But very necessary."

"Oh, of course."

Tommy said, flus.h.i.+ng slightly: "I don't like lying any better than you do -"

Tuppence interrupted him.

"I don't mind lying in the least. To be quite honest I get a lot of artistic pleasure out of my lies. What gets me down is those moments when one forgets to lie - the times when one is just oneself - and gets results that way that you couldn't have got any other." She paused and went on: "That's what happened to you last night - with the girl. She responded to the real you - that's why you feel badly about it."

"I believe you're right, Tuppence."

"I know. Because I did the same thing myself - with the German boy."

Tommy said: "What do you think about him?"

Tuppence said quickly: "If you ask me, I don't think he's got anything to do with it."

"Grant thinks he has."

"Your Mr Grant!" Tuppence's mood changed. She chuckled. "How I'd like to have seen his face when you told him about me."

"At any rate, he's made the amende honorable. You're definitely on the job."

Tuppence nodded, but she looked a trifle abstracted.

She said: "Do you remember after the last war - when we were hunting down Mr Brown? Do you remember what fun it was? How excited we were?"

Tommy agreed, his face lighting up.

"Rather!"

"Tommy - why isn't it the same now?"

He considered the question, his quiet ugly face grave. Then he said: "I suppose it's really - a question of age."

Tuppence said sharply: "You don't think - we're too old?"

"No, I'm sure we're not. It's only that - this time - it won't be fun. This is the second war we've been in - and we feel quite different about this one."

"I know - we see the pity of it and the waste - and the horror. All the things we were too young to think about before."

"That's it. In the last war I was scared every now and then - and had some pretty close shaves, and went through h.e.l.l once or twice, but there were good times, too."

Tuppence said: "I suppose Derek feels like that?"

"Better not think about him, old thing," Tommy advised.

"You're right." Tuppence set her teeth. "We've got a job. We're going to do that job. Let's get on with it. Have we found what we're looking for in Mrs Perenna?"

"We can at least say that she's strongly indicated. There's no one else, is there, Tuppence, that you've got your eye on?"

Tuppence considered.

"No, there isn't. The first thing I did When I arrived, of course, was to size them all up and a.s.sess, as it were, possibilities. Some of them seem quite impossible."

"Such as?"

"Well, Miss Minton, for instance, the 'compleat' British spinster, and Mrs Sprot and her Betty, and the vacuous Mrs Cayley."

"Yes, but nitwittishness can be a.s.sumed."

"Oh, quite, but the fussy spinster and the absorbed young mothers are parts that would be fatally easy to overdo - and these people are quite natural. Then, where Mrs Sprot is concerned, there's the child."

"I suppose," said Tommy, "that even a secret agent might have a child."