And Then There Was No One полностью

‘Yes,’ Evie interrupted me, ‘it’s true, she was a character, an eccentric, the kind of person who refuses to believe that society’s codes and conventions ever apply to her. My point is that, where a hundred million dollars are involved, all the moral imperatives which dictate the way we conduct our private and professional lives are suspended. This Hugh Spaulding, for instance. I may be slandering him – like a lot of writers, he may be just as much of a character as Cora – but he does strike me as a man in urgent need of money.’

‘Funny you should say that.’

‘Why so?’

‘Well, only yesterday he asked me if I would lend him some. A tidy amount it was too, considering we barely know each other.’

‘How much?’

‘Ten thousand pounds. Though he said he’d settle for seven.’

‘Ten thousand! Blimey! Did he tell you what it was for?’

‘He’s being pursued by the Inland Revenue for years of unpaid back taxes. It appears he moved to London in the nineties when his books were bestsellers but never paid a penny in tax. And now that his thrillers have gone out of fashion, or else he’s running out of sporting milieux to write about, the British tax authorities have caught up with him and he no longer has anything like the necessary wherewithal to pay them. He also squandered his royalties a few years back on some hilarious show-business venture, Doctor Zhivago on Ice, I kid you not. But, please, you mustn’t ever let him know I told you.’

‘Mum’s the word. You didn’t lend it to him, I suppose?’

‘What do you think? The only money I’m ready to lend, even to close friends, is money I can afford to lose, and I certainly can’t afford to kiss goodbye to ten thousand pounds. There’s something else, though, which may be worth mentioning. As we were all waiting to go into dinner, I saw him attempt to ingratiate himself with Slavorigin. I too may be slandering him, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he had tried to touch him for the same amount. Slavorigin may have been an arch-meanie, the man we loved to hate, but at least he had it to spare.’

‘Interesting, very interesting. But you mentioned sporting milieux?’

‘You don’t know his thrillers? Each of them is set in the world of a different sport. He’s apparently written scores of the things, about soccer, cricket, tennis – that’s the only one I read. He used to be a decent all-rounder himself, I believe, before he took to drinking heavily.’

‘Soccer, cricket, tennis … Archery, anyone?’

It took me a few seconds to understand what she was driving at.

‘H’m, I see what you mean. Well, let me think. It’s true, I’m not all that au fait with the Spaulding oeuvre. But Hugh did tell me once, when he was in his cups, that his big mistake as a writer was switching sports with each thriller instead of, like Dick Francis,* sticking with a single one, soccer ideally, and that he was so prolific that, in his later books, he found himself reduced to writing about motocross and curling, for God’s sake, and darts and the tedious Tour de France and … and yes, bullseye!’

‘What?’

‘I said Bullseye! That’s the title of one of his books.’

‘Great Scott Moncrieff!’ exclaimed Evie. ‘You may be on to something there.’

‘Evie,’ I said tetchily, ‘must you keep exclaiming “Great Scott Moncrieff!”? The joke’s long since worn off.’

She looked back at me in reproachful surprise, but retained a dignified silence.

‘Oh well, never mind. To return to what we were talking about, I suppose it’s not wholly out of the question that Hugh possesses some small degree of skill with a bow and arrow, if that’s what you’ve been waiting to hear me say.’

‘You must say only what you know to be true and relevant. Now let’s move on. Our friend Sanary. What motive are we to attribute to him, would you suggest?’

‘Your guess, Evie,’ I replied with a maladroitly stifled yawn, ‘is as good as mine.’

‘No, Gilbert, I fear that’s not the case at all. I rather fancy my guess is much better than yours. You see, I already have a theory about Sanary.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘My theory is that it may well have been Slavorigin who tried to murder Sanary, not vice versa.’

‘What!’

‘You heard me.’

‘Evie, be reasonable. I’ve indulged you to the extent of pretending, yes, pretending, that other murderers and other motives might exist for a crime which, in my opinion, is so limpid and lucid as to be in no need of such extramural explanations. Now you spring on me the theory that Sanary could have been the real victim and Slavorigin potentially the real murderer. My head’s spinning!’