Detectives and Young Adventurers: The Complete Short Stories

‘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.’

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.’

‘He didn’t have to use nearly so many half-crowns and ten-shilling notes as we seem to have done,’ said Tuppence.

‘Never mind,’ said Tommy. ‘We can charge them all up with additions to Mr Montgomery Jones. He will be in such a state of idiotic bliss that he would probably pay the most enormous bill without jibbing at it.’

‘So he should,’ said Tuppence. ‘Haven’t Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives been brilliantly successful? Oh, Tommy, I do think we are extraordinarily clever. It quite frightens me sometimes.’

‘The next case we have shall be a Roger Sheringham case, and you, Tuppence, shall be Roger Sheringham.’

‘I shall have to talk a lot,’ said Tuppence.

‘You do that naturally,’ said Tommy. ‘And now I suggest that we carry out my programme of last night and seek out a Music Hall where they have plenty of jokes about mothers-in-law, bottles of beer, and Twins.’