As the search for the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies continues, a former NSW detective has told Sunrise why he thinks nobody heard an alleged gunshot inside Baird’s home.

Retired NSW Detective Peter Moroney shares theory on why no one heard alleged Paddington terrace gunshot | Sunrise

A Paddington terrace sold for $9m on a weekend when auction clearance rates were weaker amid a surge in listings, indicating more properties on offer than buyers.

Sydney house prices: Sydney house beats reserve by $1.5 m despite a dip in clearance rate

Five bidders competed for the three-bedroom terrace with a separate studio, pushing the price $1.5 million over the reserve.

Sydney auctions: Unrenovated Paddington terrace sells for $9 million

An Oxford Street landmark in Sydney’s east, the former Palace Verona cinema, is set to be transformed into a $100 million upmarket office complex with retail and rooftop dining.

First look: Paddington’s arthouse Verona cinema to become $100m office block

In this week’s IFA Talk podcast, Sue and Brandon are talking to Ian Partington, CEO at investment platform and investment software business, Third Financial. Ian has created a useful six point checklist which we’ll be exploring with him in this ...

Podcast #63: Avoiding costly mistakes when choosing a wealth management partner – with Third Financial’s Ian Partington

Nathan Partington has worked in the product design world for over a decade. He launched product design consultancy npd Studio in 2014, which now works with a range of brands across two offices in Manchester and London. The agency claims to be “different ...

What I’ve Learnt: Nathan Partington, Design Director, npd Studio

Police have made a number of arrests on Lancashire’s roads over drink-driving, burglary and money laundering offences. In the first incident a man was spotted in Blackpool at 2pm on Monday swerving across the road and mounting the pavement. It was also reported that the driver was swigging from what looked like a bottle of vodka.

Arrests made for drink-driving and burglary offences on roads

U.K. alt-folk act All The Bees, which features Kirsty McGee and Gitika Partington have delivered their debut single “Wildflowers.” McGhee said this about the song: “Having grown up pretty wild in the country, as a child I was fascinated in a ...

U.K. alt-folk act All The Bees (Kirsty McGee and Gitika Partington) release debut single "Wildflowers"

A PRESENTATION will be music to the ears of Lees Methodist Church Meeting Point. Chris Partington, a brass band player for many years, is presenting Totally Brassed Off.

Bandsman talk will be music to the ears of Lees Meeting Point

The Gallagher Canada chief executive spoke to Insurance Business about how the firm built a comprehensive talent pipeline to ensure its future.

Gallagher Global Brokerage Canada CEO on building a talent pipeline and development opportunities

Partington

partington

Marriage by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Trail to the Sea The Trail to the Sea § 1 One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness to Lonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down the Green River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in a sort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow," he said, "and little fur." -518- After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, his purpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to them to see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a line of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trap in his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good forty miles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look. His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big pack, a rifle and a dead marten,—they lay beside him—and out of his shapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings, peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand of blue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile, and little, squeezed-up eyes. Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range at first, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemed guttural rather than really bad. He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, and felt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show how completely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began a speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a great reservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimented Marjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce a pause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up the whole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said. -519- ("I thought, perhaps——" whispered Louis Napoleon.) "Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can get a sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge—like this. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's old arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down with us, grub, blankets—not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of the heavy gear." "You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon. "I said leave the tent." "And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins." "Nearly all of them." "And the ammunition, there;—except just a little." "Just enough for the journey down." "Perhaps a gun?" "No, not a gun. Though, after all,—well, we'd return one of the guns. Give it you to bring back here." "Bring back here?" "If you liked." For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke his voice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and paused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave will be mine? Eh?" -520- Trafford said that was the idea. Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm. "I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs. And then I can come back here...." § 2 They had talked out nearly every particular of their return before they slept that night; they yarned away three hours over the first generous meal that any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis Napoleon stayed in the hut as a matter of course, and reposed with snores and choking upon Marjorie's sledge and within a yard of her. It struck her as she lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex Square would have thought things a little congested for a lady's bedroom, and then she reflected that after all it wasn't much worse than a crowded carriage in an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to count how many people there had been in that compartment, and failed. How stuffy that had been—the smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a dream that she was whaling and had harpooned a particularly short-winded whale she fell very peacefully into oblivion. Next day was spent in the careful preparation of the two sledges. They intended to take a full provision for six weeks, although they reckoned that with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's in four. The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at the sledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service which consisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old New Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book of Corinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. He was rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In the afternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it would appear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped, he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefs and procedure. -521- He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly. Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had made them sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the broken English and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirty mongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It was inconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was as touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He was superstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, very earnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs about the weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed with emotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddle they felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely. He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of the truths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon the coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more careful and infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford or Marjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then he quite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number of increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating at first the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism, but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coast and the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman. -522- And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women, and how that some day he would marry. His voice softened, and he addressed himself more particularly to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic of the lady as allow the destined young woman suddenly to pervade his discourse. She was, it seemed, a servant, an Esquimaux girl at the Moravian Mission station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her for nine years. He described a gramophone he had purchased down at Port Dupré and brought back to her three hundred miles up the coast—it seemed to Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden—and he gave his views upon its mechanism. He said God was with the man who invented the gramophone "truly." They would have found one a very great relief to the tediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut. The gramophone he had given his betrothed possessed records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching and of Madame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called "Sowing the Seed," and a comic song—they could not make out his pronunciation of the title—that made you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble, gobble," he said, with a solemn appreciative reflection of those distant joys. "It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his bright eyes scanning Marjorie's face a little doubtfully, as if such ideas were better left for week-day expression. § 3 Their return was a very different journey from the toilsome ascent of the summer. An immense abundance of snow masked the world, snow that made them regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with ski. With ski and a good circulation, a man may go about Labrador in winter, six times more easily than by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel. As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow shoes. One needs only shelters after the Alpine Club hut fashion, and all that vast solitary country would be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no shorter than the shortest day in Cumberland or Dublin. -523- This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder of snow and ice, the soft contours of gentle slopes, the rippling of fine snow under a steady wind, the long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of trees and stones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks over broad surfaces like the marks of a chisel in marble, the crests and cornices, the vivid brightness of edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlit surfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset and sunrise and the pallid unearthly desolation of snow beneath the moon. Nor need the broken snow in woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described, nor the vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding rock beside the icebound river, nor the huge stalactites and stalagmites of green-blue ice below the cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and snow, nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day upon the surface of the ice-stream. Across the smooth wind-swept ice of the open tarns they would find a growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated, more abundant and more beautiful than the Alpine summer flowers. -524- But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had scarcely passed its zenith before the thought of fuel and shelter came back into their minds. As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point where his trapping ground turned out of the Green River gorge, he became greatly obsessed by the thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he might find in them, all he hoped to find, and the "dallars" that might ensue. They slept the third night, Marjorie within and the two men under the lee of the little cabin, and Partington was up and away before dawn to a trap towards the ridge. He had infected Marjorie and Trafford with a sympathetic keenness, but when they saw his killing of a marten that was still alive in its trap, they suddenly conceived a distaste for trapping. They insisted they must witness no more. They would wait while he went to a trap.... "Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they sat together under the lee of a rock waiting for him. "We imagined this was a free, simple-souled man leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge of humanity, and really he is as much a dependant of your woman's world, Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how far those pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these poor broken and starving beasts he finds and slaughters are, from the point of view of our world, just furs. Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Their pelts will be dressed and prepared because women who have never dreamt of this bleak wilderness desire them. They will get at last into Regent Street shops, and Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and in Paris and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs, with scent and little bags and powder puffs and all sorts of things tucked away inside, and long wraps for tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur for pretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive little babies in Kensington Gardens."... -525- "I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy one perhaps. As a memento." He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement. "Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old Eve!" "The old Adam is with her," said Trafford. "He's wanting to give it her.... We don't cease to be human, Madge, you know, because we've got an idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which would you like? I dare say we could arrange it." "No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would be jolly," she said. "All the same, you know—and just to show you—I'm not going to let you buy me that fur." "I'd like to," said Trafford. "No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was almost fierce. "I mean it. I've got more to do than you in the way of reforming. It's just because always I've let my life be made up of such little things that I mustn't. Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things hard for me." He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he said. "But I'd have liked to."... "You're right," he added, five seconds later. "Oh! I'm right." § 4 One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the trail while he went up the mountain to a trap among the trees. He rejoined them—not as his custom was, shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred yards or so, but in silence. They wondered at that, and at the one clumsy gesture that flourished something darkly grey at them. What had happened to the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging it as one hugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!" A solemn joy irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy found expression. -526- He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver fox, the best luck of Labrador! One goes for years without one, in hope, and when it comes, it pays the trapper's debts, it clears his life—for years! They tried poor inadequate congratulation.... As they sat about the fire that night a silence came upon Louis Napoleon. It was manifest that his mind was preoccupied. He got up, walked about, inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to him, returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and stroked his chin with his forefinger. A certain diffidence and yet a certain dignity of assurance mingled in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own correctness as of some possible ignorance of the finer shades on their part that might embarrass him. He coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had a request to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face glowed tremendous feeling, like the light of a foundry furnace shining through chinks in the door. He spoke in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control. His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened, was a little thing.... This was nearly a perfect day for him, and one thing only remained.... "Well," he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. He plunged. Just simply this. Would they give him the brandy bottle and let him get drunk? Mr. Grenfell was a good man, a very good man, but he had made brandy dear—dear beyond the reach of common men altogether—along the coast.... -527- He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt! that he was always perfectly respectable when he was drunk. § 5 It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie was going home, a wild impatience to see her children should possess her. So long as it had been probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador, that separation had seemed mainly a sentimental trouble; now at times it was like an animal craving. She would talk of them for hours at a stretch, and when she was not talking he could see her eyes fixed ahead, and knew that she was anticipating a meeting. And for the first time it seemed the idea of possible misadventure troubled her.... They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days from Lonely Hut, three days they had been forced to camp because of a blizzard, and three because Louis Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted from him reluctantly, and the next day Hammond's produced its dogs, twelve stout but extremely hungry dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green River pulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious supply of hot water. Thence they went to Manivikovik, and thence the new Marconi station sent their inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next day with matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love from all." When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie she received it off-handedly, glanced at it carelessly, asked him to smoke, remarked that wireless telegraphy was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midst of some unfinished commonplace about the temperature, broke down and wept wildly and uncontrollably.... -528- § 6 Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along the coast to Port Dupré, a ride from headland to headland across the frozen bays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelped as they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered and called for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komatic chased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and shot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped to their noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarry behind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea beyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they breathed as a sort of joyous hunger. One day their teams insisted upon racing. Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and her sledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish, but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously. "Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?" Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack of whimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know, that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they met overhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In the lane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"... -529- § 7 At Port Dupré they stayed ten days—days that Marjorie could only make tolerable by knitting absurd garments for the children (her knitting was atrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the gun of the Grenfell, the new winter steamer from St. John's, signalling as it came in through the fog, very slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and women beyond the seaward grey. THE END About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2011). Marriage. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35338/35338-h/35338-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

The Trail to the Sea

What Are the Top Startups in Oceania?

… so now what am I thinking? Introduction — tests that makes me happy One of my favourite things about joining digital product consultancy six years ago was discovering Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). As a developer, the satisfaction of seeing descriptions of users’ actual behaviour with an application scroll past in green was hard to beat… White October ...Then I should see a thanks messageAnd my account should be credited with 500 pointsAnd Sam should feel like an awesome developer because his code Officially Works You get the picture. Gradually, I decided I wanted to learn more about this BDD thing. Much of my initial learning was around tooling, but recently I’ve done two things that have really opened my eyes: I read by John Ferguson Smart (with an introduction by Dan North, the creator of BDD) BDD in Action I watched by Liz Keogh, co-creator of JBehave 10 years of Doing Behaviour-Driven Development All Wrong What I discovered made me realise that I didn’t actually know very much about BDD at all… BDD starts earlier than I thought Here’s a question: What’s the “main thing” about BDD? If you said “automated tests that simulate real user behaviour”, you’re just like I was until recently. But here’s “BDD in a tweet” from its creator Dan North: And here’s an oft-quoted : line from Liz Keogh …having conversations is more important than capturing conversations is more important than automating conversations. In the conference talk I mentioned by Liz Keogh, she even reports a conversation with Dan along the lines of “it’s a shame we made it so easy to create automated tests from examples, because now everyone thinks that’s what BDD is about”. Guilty as charged! I was aware of some of the broader implications of BDD, but wasn’t seriously engaged with them. Writing executable specifications and creating automated tests from a user perspective is incredibly valuable, and I’m definitely going to keep doing those things, but there’s more to BDD than that. So, if BDD is actually , what else does it cover? Here are some of the bigger pieces of the puzzle: a process for the full software-development lifecycle Focus on business goals BDD brings a set of project principles to the table, and includes techniques to ensure you’re following those principles. These techniques and principles come into play from the beginning of a software project, you start talking about examples or scenarios — the BDD process starts earlier than I thought! way before One of the key BDD principles is to , and to only work on features that will help achieve those business goals. BDD pioneer Chris Matts invented a process called to help you do this: focus on business goals Feature Injection Essentially, you start by working out your business goals, and then from those you “inject the features”, proactively looking for features that will deliver those business goals. This is fundamentally different from devising a big backlog of stories and then trying to prioritise them in relation to goals. It’s also different from User Story Mapping, which arranges your stories to walk you through a first version of the system. With feature injection, everything flows from the goals, rather than the goals being simply a guiding principle when working with stories you derived when thinking about a system. The third stage of Feature Injection is to “spot the examples”, using high-level examples to flesh out the missing scope of the features identified. (Whilst this suggests that there are only 3 “levels” of description of a system — goals, features and examples — BDD actually defines a fuller set of levels which go all the way down to code and include other steps in between. Read for more on this.) BDD in Action Another process which BDD practitioners use to keep this explicit link to business goals is , invented by Gojko Adzic. You can read more about it at Impact Mapping https://www.impactmapping.org/index.html Embrace uncertainty and change Two more important BDD principles are and . These allow you to embrace uncertainty and change in your projects. Real Options Deliberate Discovery In short, Real Options is the idea that you shouldn’t commit to a solution until the “last responsible moment”, waiting until you have maximum possible certainty that it’s the right one. But this doesn’t mean putting of decisions forever — decisions should be at the last moment, not just the last moment! responsible Deliberate Discovery is the other side of this coin, taking seriously your own ignorance about which solution to a problem is the best. In a nutshell, Deliberate Discovery says that you should aim to identify and reduce uncertainty by proactively investigating areas of ignorance about a possible solution. You can read more about Feature Injection, Real Options and Deliberate Discovery here: https://lizkeogh.com/2012/06/01/bdd-in-the-large/ Examples expressed in scenarios are an aid to conversation, which is an aid to understanding. Finally, a broader point, which also links back to the scenarios that I started my BDD journey with: The key reason for creating scenarios (structured natural-language descriptions of user actions) is not so that you can created automated tests from them. In BDD, the key reason is the that happen when a developer creates those scenarios with a Business Analyst and a Tester (a “Three Amigos” session). And, even more than that, it’s the increased of what the system actually needs to do that comes from those conversations. conversations together understanding Of course, you can still go on to automate the scenarios, but that’s a secondary benefit. BDD goes deeper than I thought As I’ve just explained, I realised belatedly that Behaviour-Driven Development is a framework and set of principles for thinking about the whole software lifecycle, and includes techniques to use to keep you focussed on those principles at all phases of a project, not just when writing test code. But it turns out that I also wasn’t embracing BDD to the full when actually coding either! To see my problem, let’s take a look at the famous BDD “double loop” diagram. Here’s one version of it: The behaviour-driven development “double loop” Now, the Acceptance Tests that you write first are based on the examples you’ve already derived, which come out of the processes I talked about earlier (crucially, from conversations and shared understanding), so you should be able to trace the thread back from here to the business goals. I was doing the left-hand part of the loop right. BDD and low-level testing However, although BDD practitioners do talk about “Unit Tests”, to take BDD “all the way down”, I needed to start thinking less about unit-tests and more about (Acceptance Tests being the high-level executable specifications). This might sound like a simple difference in phrasing, but there’s more to it than that: low-level executable specifications In BDD unit testing you focus on specifying (and thus testing) the , rather than testing it method-by-method. This “outside-in” approach is a parallel of what you do with your automated acceptance tests at the higher level. behaviour of the class (Interestingly, this idea of outside-in unit testing has similarities with the so-called “ ” of TDD, but I’ll save the comparison of those for another time!) London School As part of the shift away from unit tests and towards low-level executable specifications, you’ll want to write in something closer to the used in your application-level BDD scenarios. There are plenty of tools around which allow you to do that at this lower level. Here’s an example from the manual: structured natural language PHPSpec <?phpnamespace spec;use PhpSpec\ObjectBehavior; class MarkdownSpec extends ObjectBehavior{function it_converts_plain_text_to_html_paragraphs(){$this->toHtml("Hi, there")->shouldReturn("<p>Hi, there</p>");}} PHPSpec, and other “xSpec” tools like it, can generate nice similar to that shown at the start of this article. natural language output But you can do BDD at the low-level with “traditional” unit-testing tools too. Here are some principles from to help you do that: BDD in Action Write test methods names that describe the behaviour (using “should” helps here) Use test class names that provide context (using “when” helps here) And here’s an example in PHPUnit — notice the “when” and “should”: <?php use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase; class WhenChangingUserStatus extends TestCase{/*** @test*/public function should_be_able_to_revert_status_changes(){// ...}} Note the since the method name itself doesn’t begin with test. @test annotation So, to do BDD all the way down, I needed to think in terms of outside-in testing and low-level executable specifications, not method-by-method unit tests. There was one more area where I realised I could apply BDD more thoroughly — living documentation. Living documentation can do more than I thought The idea of living documentation, always up-to-date, is one of the things that’s always attracted me to BDD. However, I realised that I hadn’t seen the full potential of this idea. My thinking around living documentation and BDD only went as far as encouraging people to share the feature files with the full project team. I hadn’t considered the possibility of integrating with project management processes or tools more closely, such as… Using BDD reporting tools (e.g. ) to make the features easier to digest (providing summaries/aggregation and better navigation) Serenity Using the living documentation to demonstrate feature readiness (showing what can be deployed). Using the living documentation to show feature coverage (demonstrating progress and what has/hasn’t been built) The first of these is fairly self-explanatory, but the second and third are a more radical departure from what I was originally doing, so let’s explore those in a little more depth. Feature readiness Looking at something as basic as a directory full of .feature files (or .story files in JBehave) can be a bit overwhelming, especially for a non-developer — where do you start, and how do you see the wood for the trees? Making more use of BDD reporting tools, however, we could , showing when a complete application feature was ready to deploy (i.e. all tests were passing). aggregate scenario results at the feature level Feature coverage “Feature coverage” is an even more interesting idea — showing progress through a whole project by seeing , including reporting on those which have no AC yet. To make the most of this, we’d need to combine a BDD reporting tool with our project-management tools, so that details of non-started stories could be retrieved. how many acceptance criteria have been defined and automated for each requirement This would be quite a major process and technical undertaking, however. In fact, almost all of what I’ve described so far has repercussions on process throughout a large part of our business, going way beyond development. So what am I, as a Tech Lead, going to do about all of this? That’s what I’ll explore in the final section. So now what do I think? As you’ve now seen, my research has highlighted a lot of areas where we’re not engaging with the full BDD methodology. However, I’m not about to suggest that we overhaul all our processes to run projects “by the BDD book”. Before I jump in with both feet, I still have questions I want to explore. I’ll share some of those questions with you, and then finish with what I actually am going to do to keep these ideas moving forward nonetheless. Questions raised for me Done right, BDD helps you focus on business goals and drive towards shared understanding through conversations. However, BDD isn’t the only way to focus on business goals, and shared examples aren’t the only way to create shared understanding. At White October, we’ve always prided ourselves on working “unusually closely” with our clients — we don’t have business analysts between developers and clients — clients are full team members from the word go, and work directly with developers and designers (among others). Do we really need new processes to help us adhere to the principles that BDD espouses or ? are our existing process doing that already As mentioned, we don’t have business analysts. As a small company, we don’t have QA staff either; the QA role is shared around different team members at different time. This means that a “3 Amigos” example-writing session — with Business Analyst, Tester and Developer — could end up being just one person! Of course, we’d bring in the client themselves rather than a BA, and a designer would be a natural replacement for the Tester role here — they have a different perspective which would really help. But to the level of involvement example-writing would require? This is quite different than running the meeting with solely in-house staff. would clients really be willing to commit Part of the answer here is to say that uncovering examples via conversations is different to (and quicker than) writing the formal scenarios, but does that make it ? legitimate to write scenarios unilaterally We pride ourselves on doing Agile well, and that gives us strong emphasis on embracing uncertainty and change already. Do to do this better? we need to adopt new techniques like Real Options As a developer, I like the idea of programatically tying together different tools, linking our project tracking software to outputs from our automated behavioural tests (as discussed in the living documentation section above). However, as a small company, , or can we just rely on manual processes and conversations as at present? do we need heavy processes to help us track progress better What I’m doing Whilst I do have questions around exactly what we should take from BDD, and whether a “pick-and-mix” approach is in fact the best for us, I’m keen that we keep moving forward in exploring BDD further. So here’s what I am doing: I’m going to think more about how I use language — are we doing enough to say “we do BDD”, or should I restrict myself to terms like “behavioural testing” and “executable specifications” which are more closely aligned with what we actually do? I’m going to lend the book to others in the business, particularly those involved in non-developer roles. BDD in Action I’ve also been thumbing through that book in meetings about how we do product strategy, showing key sections to our Product Strategists. And I’ve shared other related articles with the rest of the company too. I’ve recommended that my Project Manager and developer colleagues attend , a BDD and agile conference. Cukenfest London I’m going to keep on learning and reading myself, and suggesting smaller changes that bring us closer to the approaches BDD espouses, even if they’re lighter than the full techniques. Although the questions in the previous section might make me sound like a skeptic, they’re more accurately seen as a reflection of the fact that I’m keen to . I’m passionate about the principles of BDD and really pleased to understand them so much better now. engage seriously with BDD and what it means for us Conclusion My research suggests that there are a lot of people out there like I used to be, who treat Behaviour-Driven Development as synonymous with automated behavioural testing. Automated behavioural testing , but hopefully this article has shown you that there’s a lot more to BDD than that, as it actually covers the full software development process. is great Or if you already knew all that, then I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments on the questions that this has raised for me. I’m looking forward to seeing how we take BDD forward, and maybe even sharing the next steps of our journey in a future blog post.

BDD is bigger than I thought

A Long Day in London

The French Stranger

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Anthony Disposes of a Body IX. Anthony Disposes of a Body Anthony followed Virginia out of the room, smiling a little to himself. Events had taken quite an unexpected turn. But as he bent over the figure in the chair he grew grave again. “He’s still warm,” he said sharply. “He was killed less than half an hour ago.” “Just before I came in?” “Exactly.” He stood upright, drawing his brows together in a frown. Then he asked a question of which Virginia did not at once see the drift: “Your maid’s not been in this room, of course?” “No.” “Does she know that you’ve been into it?” “Why—yes. I came to the door to speak to her.” “After you’d found the body.” “Yes.” “And you said nothing?” “Would it have been better if I had? I thought she would go into hysterics—she’s French, you know, and easily upset—I wanted to think over the best thing to do.” Anthony nodded, but did not speak. “You think it a pity, I can see?” “Well, it was rather unfortunate, Mrs. Revel. If you and the maid had discovered the body together, immediately on your return, it would have simplified matters very much. The man would then definitely have been shot before your return to the house.” “Whilst now they might say he was shot after—I see—” He watched her taking in the idea, and was confirmed in his first impression of her formed when she had spoken to him on the steps outside. Besides beauty, she possessed courage and brains. Virginia was so engrossed in the puzzle presented to her that it did not occur to her to wonder at this strange man’s ready use of her name. “Why didn’t Élise hear the shot, I wonder?” she murmured. Anthony pointed to the open window, as a loud backfire came from a passing car. “There you are. London’s not the place to notice a pistol shot.” Virginia turned with a little shudder to the body in the chair. “He looks like an Italian,” she remarked curiously. “He is an Italian,” said Anthony. “I should say that his regular profession was that of a waiter. He only did blackmailing in his spare time. His name might very possibly be Giuseppe.” “Good heavens!” cried Virginia. “Is this Sherlock Holmes?” “No,” said Anthony regretfully. “I’m afraid it’s just plain or garden cheating. I’ll tell you all about it presently. Now you say this man showed you some letters and asked you for money. Did you give him any?” “Yes, I did.” “How much?” “Forty pounds.” “That’s bad,” said Anthony, but without manifesting any undue surprise. “Now let’s have a look at the telegram.” Virginia picked it up from the table and gave it to him. She saw his face grow grave as he looked at it. “What’s the matter?” He held it out, pointing silently to the place of origin. “Barnes,” he said. “And you were at Ranelagh this afternoon. What’s to prevent you having sent it off yourself?” Virginia felt fascinated by his words. It was as though a net was closing tighter and tighter round her. He was forcing her to see all the things which she had felt dimly at the back of her mind. Anthony took out his handkerchief and wound it round his hand, then he picked up the pistol. “We criminals have to be so careful,” he said apologetically. “Fingerprints, you know.” Suddenly she saw his whole figure stiffen. His voice, when he spoke, had altered. It was terse and curt. “Mrs. Revel,” he said, “have you ever seen this pistol before?” “No,” said Virginia wonderingly. “Are you sure of that?” “Quite sure.” “Have you a pistol of your own?” “No.” “Have you ever had one?” “No, never.” “You are sure of that?” “Quite sure.” He stared at her steadily for a minute, and Virginia stared back in complete surprise at his tone. Then, with a sigh, he relaxed. “That’s odd,” he said. “How do you account for this?” He held out the pistol. It was a small, dainty article, almost a toy—though capable of doing deadly work. Engraved on it was the name Virginia. “Oh, it’s impossible!” cried Virginia. Her astonishment was so genuine that Anthony could but believe in it. “Sit down,” he said quietly. “There’s more in this than there seemed to be first go off. To begin with, what’s our hypothesis? There are only two possible ones. There is, of course, the real Virginia of the letters. She may have somehow or other tracked him down, shot him, dropped the pistol, stolen the letters, and taken herself off. That’s quite possible, isn’t it?” “I suppose so,” said Virginia unwillingly. “The other hypothesis is a good deal more interesting. Whoever wished to kill Giuseppe, wished also to incriminate you—in fact that may have been their main object. They could get him easily enough anywhere, but they took extraordinary pains and trouble to get him here, and whoever they were they knew all about you, your cottage at Datchet, your usual household arrangements, and the fact that you were at Ranelagh this afternoon. It seems an absurd question, but have you any enemies, Mrs. Revel?” “Of course I haven’t—not that kind, anyway.” “The question is,” said Anthony, “what are we going to do now? There are two courses open to us. A: Ring up the police, tell the whole story, and trust to your unassailable position in the world and your hitherto blameless life. B: An attempt on my part to dispose successfully of the body. Naturally my private inclinations urge me to B. I’ve always wanted to see if I couldn’t conceal a crime with the necessary cunning, but have had a squeamish objection to shedding blood. On the whole, I expect A’s the soundest. Then there’s a sort of bowdlerized A. Ring up the police, etc., but suppress the pistol and the blackmailing letters—that is, if they are on him still.” Anthony ran rapidly through the dead man’s pockets. “He’s been stripped clean,” he announced. “There’s not a thing on him. There’ll be dirty work at the crossroads over those letters yet. Hullo, what’s this? Hole in the lining—something got caught there, torn roughly out, and a scrap of paper left behind.” He drew out the scrap of paper as he spoke, and brought it over to the light. Virginia joined him. “Pity we haven’t got the rest of it,” he muttered. “Chimneys 11.45 Thursday—Sounds like an appointment.” “Chimneys?” cried Virginia. “How extraordinary!” “Why extraordinary? Rather high toned for such a low fellow?” “I’m going to Chimneys this evening. At least I was.” Anthony wheeled round on her. “What’s that? Say that again.” “I was going to Chimneys this evening,” repeated Virginia. Anthony stared at her. “I begin to see. At least, I may be wrong—but it’s an idea. Suppose some one wanted badly to prevent your going to Chimneys?” “My cousin George Lomax does,” said Virginia with a smile. “But I can’t seriously suspect George of murder.” Anthony did not smile. He was lost in thought. “If you ring up the police, it’s good-bye to any idea of getting to Chimneys to-day—or even to-morrow. And I should like you to go to Chimneys. I fancy it will disconcert our unknown friends. Mrs. Revel, will you put yourself in my hands?” “It’s to be Plan B, then?” “It’s to be Plan B. The first thing is to get that maid of yours out of the house. Can you manage that?” “Easily.” Virginia went out in the hall and called up the stairs. “Élise. Élise.” “Madame?” Anthony heard a rapid colloquy, and then the front door opened and shut. Virginia came back into the room. “She’s gone. I sent her for some special scent—told her the shop in question was open until eight. It won’t be, of course. She’s to follow after me by the next train without coming back here.” “Good,” said Anthony approvingly. “We can now proceed to the disposal of the body. It’s a time-worn method, but I’m afraid I shall have to ask you if there’s such a thing in the house as a trunk?” “Of course there is. Come down to the basement and take your choice.” There was a variety of trunks in the basement. Anthony selected a solid affair of suitable size. “I’ll attend to this part of it,” he said tactfully. “You go upstairs and get ready to start.” Virginia obeyed. She slipped out of her tennis kit, put on a soft brown travelling dress and a delightful little orange hat, and came down to find Anthony waiting in the hall with a neatly strapped trunk beside him. “I should like to tell you the story of my life,” he remarked, “but it’s going to be rather a busy evening. Now this is what you’ve got to do. Call a taxi, have your luggage put on it, including the trunk. Drive to Paddington. There have the trunk put in the Left Luggage Office. I shall be on the platform. As you pass me, drop the Cloak Room ticket. I will pick it up and pretend to return it to you, but in reality I shall keep it. Go on to Chimneys, and leave the rest to me.” “It’s awfully good of you,” said Virginia. “It’s really dreadful of me saddling a perfect stranger with a dead body like this.” “I like it,” returned Anthony nonchalantly. “If one of my friends, Jimmy McGrath, were here, he’d tell you that anything of this kind suits me down to the ground.” Virginia was staring at him. “What name did you say? Jimmy McGrath?” Anthony returned her glance keenly. “Yes. Why? Have you heard of him?” “Yes—and quite lately.” She paused irresolutely, and then went on. “Mr. Cade, I must talk to you. Can’t you come down to Chimneys?” “You’ll see me before very long, Mrs. Revel—I’ll tell you that. Now, exit Conspirator A by back door slinkingly. Exit Conspirator B in blaze of glory by front door to taxi.” The plan went through without a hitch. Anthony, having picked up a second taxi, was on the platform and duly retrieved the fallen ticket. He then departed in search of a somewhat battered second-hand Morris Cowley which he had acquired earlier in the day in case it should be necessary to his plans. Returning to Paddington in this, he handed the ticket to the porter, who got the trunk out of the cloak room and wedged it securely at the back of the car. Anthony drove off. His objective now was out of London. Through Notting Hill, Shepherd’s Bush, down Goldhawk Road, through Brentford and Hounslow till he came to the long stretch of road mid-way between Hounslow and Staines. It was a well-frequented road, with motors passing continually. No footmarks or tyre marks were likely to show. Anthony stopped the car at a certain spot. Getting down, he first obscured the number-plate with mud. Then, waiting until he heard no car coming in either direction, he opened the trunk, heaved out Giuseppe’s body, and laid it neatly down by the side of the road, on the inside of a curve, so that the headlights of passing motors would not strike on it. Then he entered the car again and drove away. The whole business had occupied exactly one minute and a half. He made a détour to the right, returning to London by way of Burnham Beeches. There again he halted the car, and choosing a giant of the forest he deliberately climbed the huge tree. It was something of a feat, even for Anthony. To one of the topmost branches, he affixed a small brown-paper parcel, concealing it in a little niche close to the bole. “A very clever way of disposing of the pistol,” said Anthony to himself with some approval. “Everybody hunts about on the ground, and drags ponds. But there are very few people in England who could climb that tree.” Next, back to London and Paddington Station. Here he left the trunk—at the other cloak room this time, the one on the Arrival side. He thought longingly of such things as good rumpsteaks, juicy chops, and large masses of fried potatoes. But he shook his head ruefully, glancing at his wrist watch. He fed the Morris with a fresh supply of petrol, and then took the road once more. North this time. It was just after half-past eleven that he brought the car to rest in the road adjoining the park of Chimneys. Jumping out he scaled the wall easily enough, and set out towards the house. It took him longer than he thought, and presently he broke into a run. A great grey mass loomed up out of the darkness—the venerable pile of Chimneys. In the distance a stable clock chimed the three quarters. 11.45—the time mentioned on the scrap of paper. Anthony was on the terrace now, looking up at the house. Everything seemed dark and quiet. “They go to bed early, these politicians,” he murmured to himself. And suddenly a sound smote upon his ears—the sound of a shot. Anthony spun round quickly. The sound had come from within the house—he was sure of that. He waited a minute, but everything was still as death. Finally he went up to one of the long French windows from where he judged the sound that had startled him had come. He tried the handle. It was locked. He tried some of the other windows, listening intently all the while. But the silence remained unbroken. In the end he told himself that he must have imagined the sound, or perhaps mistaken a stray shot coming from a poacher in the woods. He turned and retraced his steps across the park, vaguely dissatisfied and uneasy. He looked back at the house, and whilst he looked a light sprang up in one of the windows on the first floor. In another minute it went out again, and the whole place was in darkness once more. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (1998). The Secret of Chimneys. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65238/pg65238-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

Anthony Disposes of a Body

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A Dead Man VIII. A Dead Man On that same Thursday afternoon Virginia Revel had been playing tennis at Ranelagh. All the way back to Pont Street, as she lay back in the long, luxurious limousine, a little smile played upon her lips, as she rehearsed her part in the forthcoming interview. Of course it was within the bounds of possibility that the blackmailer might not reappear, but she felt pretty certain that he would. She had shown herself an easy prey. Well, perhaps this time there would be a little surprise for him! When the car drew up at the house, she turned to speak to the chauffeur before going up the steps. “How’s your wife, Walton? I forgot to ask.” “Better I think, ma’am. The doctor said he’d look in and see her about half-past six. Will you be wanting the car again?” Virginia reflected for a minute. “I shall be away for the week-end. I’m going by the 6.40 from Paddington, but I shan’t need you again—a taxi will do for that. I’d rather you saw the doctor. If he thinks it would do your wife good to go away for the week-end, take her somewhere, Walton. I’ll stand the expense.” Cutting short the man’s thanks with an impatient nod of the head, Virginia ran up the steps, delved into her bag in search of her latchkey, remembered she hadn’t got it with her, and hastily rang the bell. It was not answered at once, but as she waited there a young man came up the steps. He was shabbily dressed, and carried in his hand a sheaf of leaflets. He held one out to Virginia with the legend on it plainly visible: “Why Did I Serve my Country?” In his left hand he held a collecting-box. “I can’t buy two of those awful poems in one day,” said Virginia pleadingly. “I bought one this morning. I did, indeed, honour bright.” The young man threw back his head and laughed. Virginia laughed with him. Running her eyes carelessly over him, she thought him a more pleasing specimen than usual of London’s unemployed. She liked his brown face, and the lean hardness of him. She went so far as to wish she had a job for him. But at that moment the door opened, and immediately Virginia forgot all about the problem of the unemployed, for to her astonishment the door was opened by her own maid, Élise. “Where’s Chilvers?” she demanded sharply, as she stepped into the hall. “But he is gone, madame, with the others.” “What others? Gone where?” “But to Datchet, madame—to the cottage, as your telegram said.” “My telegram?” said Virginia, utterly at sea. “Did not madame send a telegram? Surely there can be no mistake. It came but an hour ago.” “I never sent any telegram. What did it say?” “I believe it is still on the table là-bas.” Élise retired, pounced upon it, and brought it to her mistress in triumph. “Voilà, madame!” The telegram was addressed to Chilvers and ran as follows: “Please take household down to cottage at once, and make preparations for week-end party there. Catch 5.49 train.” There was nothing unusual about it, it was just the sort of message she herself had frequently sent before, when she had arranged a party at her riverside bungalow on the spur of the moment. She always took the whole household down, leaving an old woman as caretaker. Chilvers would not have seen anything wrong with the message, and like a good servant had carried out his orders faithfully enough. “Me, I remained,” explained Élise, “knowing that madame would wish me to pack for her.” “It’s a silly hoax,” cried Virginia, flinging down the telegram angrily. “You know perfectly well, Élise, that I am going to Chimneys. I told you so this morning.” “I thought madame had changed her mind. Sometimes that does happen, does it not, madame?” Virginia admitted the truth of the accusation with a half smile. She was busy trying to find a reason for this extraordinary practical joke. Élise cut forward a suggestion. “Mon Dieu!” she cried, clasping her hands. “If it should be the malefactors, the thieves! They send the bogus telegram and get the domestiques all out of the house, and then they rob it.” “I suppose that might be it,” said Virginia doubtfully. “Yes, yes, madame, that is it without a doubt. Every day you read in the papers of such things. Madame will ring up the police at once—at once—before they arrive and cut our throats.” “Don’t get so excited, Élise. They won’t come and cut our throats at six o’clock in the afternoon.” “Madame, I implore you, let me run out and fetch a policeman now, at once.” “What on earth for? Don’t be silly, Élise. Go up and pack my things for Chimneys if you haven’t already done it. The new Cailleuax evening dress, and the white crêpe marocain, and—yes, the black velvet—black velvet is so political, is it not?” “Madame looks ravishing in the eau de nil satin,” suggested Élise, her professional instincts reasserting themselves. “No, I won’t take that. Hurry up, Élise, there’s a good girl. We’ve got very little time. I’ll send a wire to Chilvers at Datchet, and I’ll speak to the policeman on the beat as we go out and tell him to keep an eye on the place. Don’t start rolling your eyes again, Élise—if you get so frightened before anything has happened, what would you do if a man jumped out from some dark corner and stuck a knife into you?” Élise gave vent to a shrill squeak, and beat a speedy retreat up the stairs, darting nervous glances over each shoulder as she went. Virginia made a face at her retreating back, and crossed the hall to the little study where the telephone was. Élise’s suggestion of ringing up the police station seemed to her a good one, and she intended to act upon it without any further delay. She opened the study door and crossed to the telephone. Then, with her hand on the receiver, she stopped. A man was sitting in the big arm-chair, sitting in a curious huddled position. In the stress of the moment, she had forgotten all about her expected visitor. Apparently he had fallen asleep whilst waiting for her. She came right up to the chair, a slightly mischievous smile upon her face. And then suddenly the smile faded. The man was not asleep. He was dead. She knew it at once, knew it instinctively even before her eyes had seen and noted the small shining pistol lying on the floor, the little-singed hole just above the heart with the dark stain round it, and the horrible dropped jaw. She stood quite still, her hands pressed to her sides. In the silence she heard Élise running down the stairs. “Madame! Madame!” “Well, what is it?” She moved quickly to the door. Her whole instinct was to conceal what had happened—for the moment anyway—from Élise. Élise would promptly go into hysterics, she knew that well enough, and she felt a great need for calm and quiet in which to think things out. “Madame, would it not be better if I should draw the chain across the door? These malefactors, at any minute they may arrive.” “Yes, if you like. Anything you like.” She heard the rattle of the chain, and then Élise running upstairs again, and drew a long breath of relief. She looked at the man in the chair and then at the telephone. Her course was quite clear, she must ring up the police at once. But still she did not do so. She stood quite still, paralysed with horror and with a host of conflicting ideas rushing through her brain. The bogus telegram. Had it something to do with this? Supposing Élise had not stayed behind? She would have let herself in—that is, presuming she had had her latchkey with her as usual, to find herself alone in the house with a murdered man—a man whom she had permitted to blackmail her on a former occasion. Of course she had an explanation of that; but thinking of that explanation she was not quite easy in her mind. She remembered how frankly incredible George had found it. Would other people think the same. Those letters now—of course she hadn’t written them, but would it be so easy to prove that? She put her hands on her forehead, squeezing them tight together. “I must think,” said Virginia. “I simply must think.” Who had let the man in? Surely not Élise. If she had done so, she would have been sure to have mentioned the fact at once. The whole thing seemed more and more mysterious as she thought about it. There was really only one thing to be done—ring up the police. She stretched out her hand to the telephone, and suddenly she thought of George. A man—that was what she wanted—an ordinary level-headed, unemotional man who would see things in their proper proportion and point out to her the best course to take. Then she shook her head. Not George. The first thing George would think of would be his own position. He would hate being mixed up in this kind of business. George wouldn’t do at all. Then her face softened. Bill, of course! Without more ado, she rang up Bill. She was informed that he had left half an hour ago for Chimneys. “Oh, damn!” cried Virginia, jamming down the receiver. It was horrible to be shut up with a dead body and to have no one to speak to. And at that minute the front-door bell rang. Virginia jumped. In a few minutes it rang again. Élise, she knew, was upstairs packing and wouldn’t hear it. Virginia went out in the hall, drew back the chain, and undid all the bolts that Élise had fastened in her zeal. Then, with a long breath, she threw open the door. On the steps was the unemployed young man. Virginia plunged headlong with a relief born of overstrung nerves. “Come in,” she said. “I think that perhaps I’ve got a job for you.” She took him into the dining-room, pulled toward a chair for him, sat down herself facing him, and stared at him very attentively. “Excuse me,” she said, “but are you—I mean——” “Eton and Oxford,” said the young man. “That’s what you wanted to ask me, wasn’t it?” “Something of the kind,” admitted Virginia. “Come down in the world entirely through my own incapacity to stick to regular work. This isn’t regular work you’re offering me, I hope?” A smile hovered for a moment on her lips. “It’s very irregular.” “Good,” said the young man in a tone of satisfaction. Virginia noted his bronzed face and long lean body with approval. “You see,” she explained, “I’m in rather a hole, and most of my friends are—well, rather high up. They’ve all got something to lose.” “I’ve nothing whatever to lose. So go ahead. What’s the trouble?” “There’s a dead man in the next room,” said Virginia. “He’s been murdered, and I don’t know what to do about it.” She blurted out the words as simply as a child might have done. The young man went up enormously in her estimation by the way he accepted her statement. He might have been used to hearing a similar announcement made every day of his life. “Excellent,” he said, with a trace of enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to do a bit of amateur detective work. Shall we go and view the body, or will you give me the facts first?” “I think I’d better give you the facts.” She paused for a moment to consider how best to condense her story, and then began, speaking quietly and concisely. “This man came to the house for the first time yesterday and asked to see me. He had certain letters with him—love letters, signed with my name——” “But which weren’t written by you,” put in the young man quietly. Virginia looked at him in some astonishment “How did you know that?” “Oh, I deduced it. But go on.” “He wanted to blackmail me—and I—well, I don’t know if you’ll understand, but I—let him.” She looked at him appealingly, and he nodded his head reassuringly. “Of course I understand. You wanted to see what it felt like.” “How frightfully clever of you! That’s just what I did feel.” “I am clever,” said the young man modestly. “But, mind you, very few people would understand that point of view. Most people, you see, haven’t got any imagination.” “I suppose that’s so. I told this man to come back to-day—at six o’clock. I arrived home from Ranelagh to find that a bogus telegram had got all the servants except my maid out of the house. Then I walked into the study and found the man shot.” “Who let him in?” “I don’t know. I think if my maid had done so she would have told me.” “Does she know what has happened?” “I have told her nothing.” The young man nodded, and rose to his feet. “And now to view the body,” he said briskly. “But I’ll tell you this—on the whole it’s always best to tell the truth. One lie involves you in such a lot of lies—and continuous lying is so monotonous.” “Then you advise me to ring up the police?” “Probably. But we’ll just have a look at the fellow first.” Virginia led the way out the room. On the threshold she paused, looking back at him. “By the way,” she said, “you haven’t told me your name yet?” “My name? My name’s Anthony Cade.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (1998). The Secret of Chimneys. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65238/pg65238-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

A Dead Man

The Big Four by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . WE HEAR MORE ABOUT LI CHANG YEN III. WE HEAR MORE ABOUT LI CHANG YEN For a day or two after our visit from the fake Asylum attendant I was in some hopes that he might return, and I refused to leave the flat even for a moment. As far as I could see, he had no reason to suspect that we had penetrated his disguise. He might, I thought, return and try to remove the body, but Poirot scoffed at my reasoning. "Mon ami," he said, "if you wish you may wait in to put salt on the little bird's tail, but for me I do not waste my time so." "Well then, Poirot," I argued, "why did he run the risk of coming at all. If he intended to return later for the body, I can see some point in his visit. He would at least be removing the evidence against himself; as it is, he does not seem to have gained anything." Poirot shrugged his most Gallic shrug. "But you do not see with the eyes of Number Four, Hastings," he said. "You talk of evidence, but what evidence have we against him? True, we have a body, but we have no proof even that the man was murdered—prussic acid, when inhaled, leaves no trace. Again, we can find no one who saw any one enter the flat during our absence, and we have found out nothing about the movements of our late friend, Mayerling.... "No, Hastings, Number Four has left no trace, and he knows it. His visit we may call a reconnaissance. Perhaps he wanted to make quite sure that Mayerling was dead, but more likely, I think, he came to see Hercule Poirot, and to have speech with the adversary whom alone he must fear." Poirot's reasoning appeared to me typically egotistical, but I forbore to argue. "And what about the inquest?" I asked. "I suppose you will explain things clearly there, and let the police have a full description of Number Four." "And to what end? Can we produce anything to impress a coroner's jury of your solid Britishers? Is our description of Number Four of any value? No; we shall allow them to call it 'Accidental Death,' and may be, although I have not much hope, our clever murderer will pat himself on the back that he deceived Hercule Poirot in the first round." Poirot was right as usual. We saw no more of the man from the asylum, and the inquest, at which I gave evidence, but which Poirot did not even attend, aroused no public interest. As, in view of his intended trip to South America, Poirot had wound up his affairs before my arrival, he had at this time no cases on hand, but although he spent most of his time in the flat I could get little out of him. He remained buried in an arm-chair, and discouraged my attempts at conversation. And then one morning, about a week after the murder, he asked me if I would care to accompany him on a visit he wished to make. I was pleased, for I felt he was making a mistake in trying to work things out so entirely on his own, and I wished to discuss the case with him. But I found he was not communicative. Even when I asked where we were going, he would not answer. Poirot loves being mysterious. He will never part with a piece of information until the last possible moment. In this instance, having taken successively a 'bus and two trains, and arrived in the neighbourhood of one of London's most depressing southern suburbs, he consented at last to explain matters. "We go, Hastings, to see the one man in England who knows most of the underground life of China." "Indeed! Who is he?" "A man you have never heard of—a Mr. John Ingles. To all intents and purposes, he is a retired Civil Servant of mediocre intellect, with a house full of Chinese curios with which he bores his friends and acquaintances. Nevertheless, I am assured by those who should know that the only man capable of giving me the information I seek is this same John Ingles." A few moments more saw us ascending the steps of The Laurels, as Mr. Ingles's residence was called. Personally, I did not notice a laurel bush of any kind, so deduced that it had been named according to the usual obscure nomenclature of the suburbs. We were admitted by an impassive-faced Chinese servant and ushered into the presence of his master. Mr. Ingles was a squarely-built man, somewhat yellow of countenance, with deep-set eyes that were oddly reflective in character. He rose to greet us, setting aside an open letter which he had held in his hand. He referred to it after his greeting. "Sit down, won't you? Halsey tells me that you want some information and that I may be useful to you in the matter." "That is so, monsieur. I ask of you if you have any knowledge of a man named Li Chang Yen?" "That's rum—very rum indeed. How did you come to hear about the man?" "You know him, then?" "I've met him once. And I know something of him—not quite as much as I should like to. But it surprises me that any one else in England should even have heard of him. He's a great man in his way—mandarin class and all that, you know—but that's not the crux of the matter. There's good reason to suppose that he's the man behind it all." "Behind what?" "Everything. The world-wide unrest, the labour troubles that beset every nation, and the revolutions that break out in some. There are people, not scaremongers, who know what they are talking about, and they say that there is a force behind the scenes which aims at nothing less than the disintegration of civilisation. In Russia, you know, there were many signs that Lenin and Trotsky were mere puppets whose every action was dictated by another's brain. I have no definite proof that would count with you, but I am quite convinced that this brain was Li Chang Yen's." "Oh, come," I protested, "isn't that a bit farfetched? How would a Chinaman cut any ice in Russia?" Poirot frowned at me irritably. "For you, Hastings," he said, "everything is farfetched that comes not from your own imagination; for me, I agree with this gentleman. But continue, I pray, monsieur." "What exactly he hopes to get out of it all I cannot pretend to say for certain," went on Mr. Ingles; "but I assume his disease is one that has attacked great brains from the time of Akbar and Alexander to Napoleon—a lust for power and personal supremacy. Up to modern times armed force was necessary for conquest, but in this century of unrest a man like Li Chang Yen can use other means. I have evidence that he has unlimited money behind him for bribery and propaganda, and there are signs that he controls some scientific force more powerful than the world has dreamed of." Poirot was following Mr. Ingles's words with the closest attention. "And in China?" he asked. "He moves there too?" The other nodded in emphatic assent. "There," he said, "although I can produce no proof that would count in a court of law, I speak from my own knowledge. I know personally every man who counts for anything in China to-day, and this I can tell you: the men who loom most largely in the public eye are men of little or no personality. They are marionettes who dance to the wires pulled by a master hand, and that hand is Li Chang Yen's. His is the controlling brain of the East to-day. We don't understand the East—we never shall; but Li Chang Yen is its moving spirit. Not that he comes out into the limelight—oh, not at all; he never moves from his palace in Pekin. But he pulls strings—that's it, pulls strings—and things happen far away." "And is there no one to oppose him?" asked Poirot. Mr. Ingles leant forward in his chair. "Four men have tried in the last four years," he said slowly; "men of character, and honesty, and brain power. Any one of them might in time have interfered with his plans." He paused. "Well?" I queried. "Well, they are dead. One wrote an article, and mentioned Li Chang Yen's name in connection with the riots in Pekin, and within two days he was stabbed in the street. His murderer was never caught. The offences of the other two were similar. In a speech or an article, or in conversation, each linked Li Chang Yen's name with rioting or revolution, and within a week of his indiscretion each was dead. One was poisoned; one died of cholera, an isolated case—not part of an epidemic; and one was found dead in his bed. The cause of the last death was never determined, but I was told by a doctor who saw the corpse that it was burnt and shrivelled as though a wave of electrical energy of incredible power had passed through it." "And Li Chang Yen?" inquired Poirot. "Naturally nothing is traced to him, but there are signs, eh?" Mr. Ingles shrugged. "Oh, signs—yes, certainly. And once I found a man who would talk, a brilliant young Chinese chemist who was a protégé of Li Chang Yen's. He came to me one day, this chemist, and I could see that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He hinted to me of experiments on which he'd been engaged in Li Chang Yen's palace under the mandarin's direction—experiments on coolies in which the most revolting disregard for human life and suffering had been shown. His nerve had completely broken, and he was in the most pitiable state of terror. I put him to bed in a top room of my own house, intending to question him the next day—and that, of course, was stupid of me." "How did they get him?" demanded Poirot. "That I shall never know. I woke that night to find my house in flames, and was lucky to escape with my life. Investigation showed that a fire of amazing intensity had broken out on the top floor, and the remains of my young chemist friend were charred to a cinder." I could see from the earnestness with which he had been speaking that Mr. Ingles was a man mounted on his hobby horse, and evidently he, too, realised that he had been carried away, for he laughed apologetically. "But, of course," he said, "I have no proofs, and you, like the others, will merely tell me that I have a bee in my bonnet." "On the contrary," said Poirot quietly, "we have every reason to believe your story. We ourselves are more than a little interested in Li Chang Yen." "Very odd your knowing about him. Didn't fancy a soul in England had ever heard of him. I'd rather like to know how you did come to hear of him—if it's not indiscreet." "Not in the least, monsieur. A man took refuge in my rooms. He was suffering badly from shock, but he managed to tell us enough to interest us in this Li Chang Yen. He described four people—the Big Four—an organisation hitherto undreamed of. Number One is Li Chang Yen, Number Two is an unknown American, Number Three an equally unknown Frenchwoman, Number Four may be called the executive of the organisation—the destroyer. My informant died. Tell me, monsieur, is that phrase known to you at all? The Big Four." "Not in connection with Li Chang Yen. No, I can't say it is. But I've heard it, or read it, just lately—and in some unusual connection too. Ah, I've got it." He rose and went across to an inlaid lacquer cabinet—an exquisite thing, as even I could see. He returned with a letter in his hand. "Here you are. Note from an old sea-faring man I ran against once in Shanghai. Hoary old reprobate—maudlin with drink by now, I should say. I took this to be the ravings of alcoholism." He read it aloud:— "Dear Sir,—You may not remember me, but you did me a good turn once in Shanghai. Do me another now. I must have money to get out of the country. I'm well hid here, I hope, but any day they may get me. The Big Four, I mean. It's life or death. I've plenty of money, but I daren't get at it, for fear of putting them wise. Send me a couple of hundred in notes. I'll repay it faithful—I swear to that.—Your servant, sir, "Jonathan Whalley." "Dated from Granite Bungalow, Hoppaton, Dartmoor. I'm afraid I regarded it as rather a crude method of relieving me of a couple of hundred which I can ill spare. If it's any use to you—" He held it out. "Je vous remercie, monsieur. I start for Hoppaton à l'heure même." "Dear me, this is very interesting. Supposing I come along too? Any objection?" "I should be charmed to have your company, but we must start at once. We shall not reach Dartmoor until close on nightfall, as it is." John Ingles did not delay us more than a couple of minutes, and soon we were in the train moving out of Paddington bound for the West Country. Hoppaton was a small village clustering in a hollow right on the fringe of the moorland. It was reached by a nine-mile drive from Moretonhamstead. It was about eight o'clock when we arrived; but as the month was July, the daylight was still abundant. We drove into the narrow street of the village and then stopped to ask our way of an old rustic. "Granite Bungalow," said the old man reflectively, "it be Granite Bungalow you do want? Eh?" We assured him that this was what we did want. The old man pointed to a small gray cottage at the end of the street. "There be t'Bungalow. Do yee want to see t'Inspector?" "What Inspector?" asked Poirot sharply; "what do you mean?" "Haven't yee heard about t'murder, then? A shocking business t'was seemingly. Pools of blood, they do say." "Mon Dieu!" murmured Poirot. "This Inspector of yours, I must see him at once." Five minutes later we were closeted with Inspector Meadows. The Inspector was inclined to be stiff at first, but at the magic name of Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, he unbent. "Yes, sir; murdered this morning. A shocking business. They 'phoned to Moreton, and I came out at once. Looked a mysterious thing to begin with. The old man—he was about seventy, you know, and fond of his glass, from all I hear—was lying on the floor of the living-room. There was a bruise on his head and his throat was cut from ear to ear. Blood all over the place, as you can understand. The woman who cooks for him, Betsy Andrews, she told us that her master had several little Chinese jade figures, that he'd told her were very valuable, and these had disappeared. That, of course, looked like assault and robbery; but there were all sorts of difficulties in the way of that solution. The old fellow had two people in the house; Betsy Andrews, who is a Hoppaton woman, and a rough kind of man-servant, Robert Grant. Grant had gone to the farm to fetch the milk, which he does every day, and Betsy had stepped out to have a chat with a neighbour. She was only away twenty minutes—between ten and half-past—and the crime must have been done then. Grant returned to the house first. He went in by the back door, which was open—no one locks up doors round here—not in broad daylight, at all events—put the milk in the larder, and went into his own room to read the paper and have a smoke. Had no idea anything unusual had occurred—at least, that's what he says. Then Betsy comes in, goes into the living-room, sees what's happened, and lets out a screech to wake the dead. That's all fair and square. Some one got in whilst those two were out, and did the poor old man in. But it struck me at once that he must be a pretty cool customer. He'd have to come right up the village street, or creep through some one's back yard. Granite Bungalow has got houses all round it, as you can see. How was it that no one had seen him?" The Inspector paused with a flourish. "Aha, I perceive your point," said Poirot. "To continue?" "Well, sir, fishy, I said to myself—fishy. And I began to look about me. Those jade figures, now. Would a common tramp ever suspect that they were valuable? Anyway, it was madness to try such a thing in broad daylight. Suppose the old man had yelled for help?" "I suppose, Inspector," said Mr. Ingles, "that the bruise on the head was inflicted before death?" "Quite right, sir. First knocked him silly, the murderer did, and then cut his throat. That's clear enough. But how the dickens did he come or go? They notice strangers quick enough in a little place like this. It came to me all at once—nobody did come. I took a good look round. It had rained the night before, and there were footprints clear enough going in and out of the kitchen. In the living-room there were two sets of footprints only (Betsy Andrews' stopped at the door)—-Mr. Whalley's (he was wearing carpet slippers) and another man's. The other man had stepped in the blood-stains, and I traced his bloody footprints—I beg your pardon, sir." "Not at all," said Mr. Ingles, with a faint smile; "the adjective is perfectly understood." "I traced them to the kitchen—but not beyond. Point Number One. On the lintel of Robert Grant's door was a faint smear—a smear of blood. That's point Number Two. Point Number Three was when I got hold of Grant's boots—which he had taken off—and fitted them to the marks. That settled it. It was an inside job. I warned Grant and took him into custody; and what do you think I found packed away in his portmanteau? The little jade figures and a ticket-of-leave. Robert Grant was also Abraham Biggs, convicted for felony and housebreaking five years ago." The Inspector paused triumphantly. "What do you think of that, gentlemen?" "I think," said Poirot, "that it appears a very clear case—of a surprising clearness, in fact. This Biggs, or Grant, he must be a man very foolish and uneducated, eh?" "Oh, he is that—a rough, common sort of fellow. No idea of what a footprint may mean." "Clearly he reads not the detective fiction! Well, Inspector, I congratulate you. We may look at the scene of the crime. Yes?" "I'll take you there myself this minute. I'd like you to see those footprints." "I, too, should like to see them. Yes, yes, very interesting, very ingenious." We set out forthwith. Mr. Ingles and the Inspector forged ahead. I drew Poirot back a little so as to be able to speak to him out of the Inspector's hearing. "What do you really think, Poirot. Is there more in this than meets the eye?" "That is just the question, mon ami. Whalley says plainly enough in his letter that the Big Four are on his track, and we know, you and I, that the Big Four is no bogey for the children. Yet everything seems to say that this man Grant committed the crime. Why did he do so? For the sake of the little jade figures? Or is he an agent of the Big Four? I confess that this last seems more likely. However valuable the jade, a man of that class was not likely to realise the fact—at any rate, not to the point of committing murder for them. (That, par exemple, ought to have struck the Inspector.) He could have stolen the jade and made off with it instead of committing a brutal and quite purposeless murder. Ah, yes; I fear our Devonshire friend has not used his little gray cells. He has measured footprints, and has omitted to reflect and arrange his ideas with the necessary order and method." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2023). The Big Four. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70114/pg70114-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

WE HEAR MORE ABOUT LI CHANG YEN

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . TUPPENCE ENTERS DOMESTIC SERVICE CHAPTER IX. TUPPENCE ENTERS DOMESTIC SERVICE When Tommy set forth on the trail of the two men, it took all Tuppence’s self-command to refrain from accompanying him. However, she contained herself as best she might, consoled by the reflection that her reasoning had been justified by events. The two men had undoubtedly come from the second floor flat, and that one slender thread of the name “Rita” had set the Young Adventurers once more upon the track of the abductors of Jane Finn. The question was what to do next? Tuppence hated letting the grass grow under her feet. Tommy was amply employed, and debarred from joining him in the chase, the girl felt at a loose end. She retraced her steps to the entrance hall of the mansions. It was now tenanted by a small lift-boy, who was polishing brass fittings, and whistling the latest air with a good deal of vigour and a reasonable amount of accuracy. He glanced round at Tuppence’s entry. There was a certain amount of the gamin element in the girl, at all events she invariably got on well with small boys. A sympathetic bond seemed instantly to be formed. She reflected that an ally in the enemy’s camp, so to speak, was not to be despised. “Well, William,” she remarked cheerfully, in the best approved hospital-early-morning style, “getting a good shine up?” The boy grinned responsively. “Albert, miss,” he corrected. “Albert be it,” said Tuppence. She glanced mysteriously round the hall. The effect was purposely a broad one in case Albert should miss it. She leaned towards the boy and dropped her voice: “I want a word with you, Albert.” Albert ceased operations on the fittings and opened his mouth slightly. “Look! Do you know what this is?” With a dramatic gesture she flung back the left side of her coat and exposed a small enamelled badge. It was extremely unlikely that Albert would have any knowledge of it—indeed, it would have been fatal for Tuppence’s plans, since the badge in question was the device of a local training corps originated by the archdeacon in the early days of the war. Its presence in Tuppence’s coat was due to the fact that she had used it for pinning in some flowers a day or two before. But Tuppence had sharp eyes, and had noted the corner of a threepenny detective novel protruding from Albert’s pocket, and the immediate enlargement of his eyes told her that her tactics were good, and that the fish would rise to the bait. “American Detective Force!” she hissed. Albert fell for it. “Lord!” he murmured ecstatically. Tuppence nodded at him with the air of one who has established a thorough understanding. “Know who I’m after?” she inquired genially. Albert, still round-eyed, demanded breathlessly: “One of the flats?” Tuppence nodded and jerked a thumb up the stairs. “No. 20. Calls herself Vandemeyer. Vandemeyer! Ha! ha!” Albert’s hand stole to his pocket. “A crook?” he queried eagerly. “A crook? I should say so. Ready Rita they call her in the States.” “Ready Rita,” repeated Albert deliriously. “Oh, ain’t it just like the pictures!” It was. Tuppence was a great frequenter of the cinema. “Annie always said as how she was a bad lot,” continued the boy. “Who’s Annie?” inquired Tuppence idly. “‘Ouse-parlourmaid. She’s leaving to-day. Many’s the time Annie’s said to me: ‘Mark my words, Albert, I wouldn’t wonder if the police was to come after her one of these days.’ Just like that. But she’s a stunner to look at, ain’t she?” “She’s some peach,” allowed Tuppence carelessly. “Finds it useful in her lay-out, you bet. Has she been wearing any of the emeralds, by the way?” “Emeralds? Them’s the green stones, isn’t they?” Tuppence nodded. “That’s what we’re after her for. You know old man Rysdale?” Albert shook his head. “Peter B. Rysdale, the oil king?” “It seems sort of familiar to me.” “The sparklers belonged to him. Finest collection of emeralds in the world. Worth a million dollars!” “Lumme!” came ecstatically from Albert. “It sounds more like the pictures every minute.” Tuppence smiled, gratified at the success of her efforts. “We haven’t exactly proved it yet. But we’re after her. And”—she produced a long-drawn-out wink—“I guess she won’t get away with the goods this time.” Albert uttered another ejaculation indicative of delight. “Mind you, sonny, not a word of this,” said Tuppence suddenly. “I guess I oughtn’t to have put you wise, but in the States we know a real smart lad when we see one.” “I’ll not breathe a word,” protested Albert eagerly. “Ain’t there anything I could do? A bit of shadowing, maybe, or such like?” Tuppence affected to consider, then shook her head. “Not at the moment, but I’ll bear you in mind, son. What’s this about the girl you say is leaving?” “Annie? Regular turn up, they ‘ad. As Annie said, servants is some one nowadays, and to be treated accordingly, and, what with her passing the word round, she won’t find it so easy to get another.” “Won’t she?” said Tuppence thoughtfully. “I wonder——” An idea was dawning in her brain. She thought a minute or two, then tapped Albert on the shoulder. “See here, son, my brain’s got busy. How would it be if you mentioned that you’d got a young cousin, or a friend of yours had, that might suit the place. You get me?” “I’m there,” said Albert instantly. “You leave it to me, miss, and I’ll fix the whole thing up in two ticks.” “Some lad!” commented Tuppence, with a nod of approval. “You might say that the young woman could come in right away. You let me know, and if it’s O.K. I’ll be round to-morrow at eleven o’clock.” “Where am I to let you know to?” “Ritz,” replied Tuppence laconically. “Name of Cowley.” Albert eyed her enviously. “It must be a good job, this tec business.” “It sure is,” drawled Tuppence, “especially when old man Rysdale backs the bill. But don’t fret, son. If this goes well, you shall come in on the ground floor.” With which promise she took leave of her new ally, and walked briskly away from South Audley Mansions, well pleased with her morning’s work. But there was no time to be lost. She went straight back to the Ritz and wrote a few brief words to Mr. Carter. Having dispatched this, and Tommy not having yet returned—which did not surprise her—she started off on a shopping expedition which, with an interval for tea and assorted creamy cakes, occupied her until well after six o’clock, and she returned to the hotel jaded, but satisfied with her purchases. Starting with a cheap clothing store, and passing through one or two second-hand establishments, she had finished the day at a well-known hairdresser’s. Now, in the seclusion of her bedroom, she unwrapped that final purchase. Five minutes later she smiled contentedly at her reflection in the glass. With an actress’s pencil she had slightly altered the line of her eyebrows, and that, taken in conjunction with the new luxuriant growth of fair hair above, so changed her appearance that she felt confident that even if she came face to face with Whittington he would not recognize her. She would wear elevators in her shoes, and the cap and apron would be an even more valuable disguise. From hospital experience she knew only too well that a nurse out of uniform is frequently unrecognized by her patients. “Yes,” said Tuppence aloud, nodding at the pert reflection in the glass, “you’ll do.” She then resumed her normal appearance. Dinner was a solitary meal. Tuppence was rather surprised at Tommy’s non-return. Julius, too, was absent—but that to the girl’s mind was more easily explained. His “hustling” activities were not confined to London, and his abrupt appearances and disappearances were fully accepted by the Young Adventurers as part of the day’s work. It was quite on the cards that Julius P. Hersheimmer had left for Constantinople at a moment’s notice if he fancied that a clue to his cousin’s disappearance was to be found there. The energetic young man had succeeded in making the lives of several Scotland Yard men unbearable to them, and the telephone girls at the Admiralty had learned to know and dread the familiar “Hullo!” He had spent three hours in Paris hustling the Prefecture, and had returned from there imbued with the idea, possibly inspired by a weary French official, that the true clue to the mystery was to be found in Ireland. “I dare say he’s dashed off there now,” thought Tuppence. “All very well, but this is very dull for me! Here I am bursting with news, and absolutely no one to tell it to! Tommy might have wired, or something. I wonder where he is. Anyway, he can’t have ‘lost the trail’ as they say. That reminds me——” And Miss Cowley broke off in her meditations, and summoned a small boy. Ten minutes later the lady was ensconced comfortably on her bed, smoking cigarettes and deep in the perusal of Garnaby Williams, the Boy Detective, which, with other threepenny works of lurid fiction, she had sent out to purchase. She felt, and rightly, that before the strain of attempting further intercourse with Albert, it would be as well to fortify herself with a good supply of local colour. The morning brought a note from Mr. Carter: “DEAR MISS TUPPENCE, “You have made a splendid start, and I congratulate you. I feel, though, that I should like to point out to you once more the risks you are running, especially if you pursue the course you indicate. Those people are absolutely desperate and incapable of either mercy or pity. I feel that you probably underestimate the danger, and therefore warn you again that I can promise you no protection. You have given us valuable information, and if you choose to withdraw now no one could blame you. At any rate, think the matter over well before you decide. “If, in spite of my warnings, you make up your mind to go through with it, you will find everything arranged. You have lived for two years with Miss Dufferin, The Parsonage, Llanelly, and Mrs. Vandemeyer can apply to her for a reference. “May I be permitted a word or two of advice? Stick as near to the truth as possible—it minimizes the danger of ‘slips.’ I suggest that you should represent yourself to be what you are, a former V.A.D., who has chosen domestic service as a profession. There are many such at the present time. That explains away any incongruities of voice or manner which otherwise might awaken suspicion. “Whichever way you decide, good luck to you. “Your sincere friend, “MR. CARTER.” Tuppence’s spirits rose mercurially. Mr. Carter’s warnings passed unheeded. The young lady had far too much confidence in herself to pay any heed to them. With some reluctance she abandoned the interesting part she had sketched out for herself. Although she had no doubts of her own powers to sustain a role indefinitely, she had too much common sense not to recognize the force of Mr. Carter’s arguments. There was still no word or message from Tommy, but the morning post brought a somewhat dirty postcard with the words: “It’s O.K.” scrawled upon it. At ten-thirty Tuppence surveyed with pride a slightly battered tin trunk containing her new possessions. It was artistically corded. It was with a slight blush that she rang the bell and ordered it to be placed in a taxi. She drove to Paddington, and left the box in the cloak room. She then repaired with a handbag to the fastnesses of the ladies’ waiting-room. Ten minutes later a metamorphosed Tuppence walked demurely out of the station and entered a bus. It was a few minutes past eleven when Tuppence again entered the hall of South Audley Mansions. Albert was on the look-out, attending to his duties in a somewhat desultory fashion. He did not immediately recognize Tuppence. When he did, his admiration was unbounded. “Blest if I’d have known you! That rig-out’s top-hole.” “Glad you like it, Albert,” replied Tuppence modestly. “By the way, am I your cousin, or am I not?” “Your voice too,” cried the delighted boy. “It’s as English as anything! No, I said as a friend of mine knew a young gal. Annie wasn’t best pleased. She’s stopped on till to-day—to oblige, she said, but really it’s so as to put you against the place.” “Nice girl,” said Tuppence. Albert suspected no irony. “She’s style about her, and keeps her silver a treat—but, my word, ain’t she got a temper. Are you going up now, miss? Step inside the lift. No. 20 did you say?” And he winked. Tuppence quelled him with a stern glance, and stepped inside. As she rang the bell of No. 20 she was conscious of Albert’s eyes slowly descending beneath the level of the floor. A smart young woman opened the door. “I’ve come about the place,” said Tuppence. “It’s a rotten place,” said the young woman without hesitation. “Regular old cat—always interfering. Accused me of tampering with her letters. Me! The flap was half undone anyway. There’s never anything in the waste-paper basket—she burns everything. She’s a wrong ‘un, that’s what she is. Swell clothes, but no class. Cook knows something about her—but she won’t tell—scared to death of her. And suspicious! She’s on to you in a minute if you as much as speak to a fellow. I can tell you——” But what more Annie could tell, Tuppence was never destined to learn, for at that moment a clear voice with a peculiarly steely ring to it called: “Annie!” The smart young woman jumped as if she had been shot. “Yes, ma’am.” “Who are you talking to?” “It’s a young woman about the situation, ma’am.” “Show her in then. At once.” “Yes, ma’am.” Tuppence was ushered into a room on the right of the long passage. A woman was standing by the fireplace. She was no longer in her first youth, and the beauty she undeniably possessed was hardened and coarsened. In her youth she must have been dazzling. Her pale gold hair, owing a slight assistance to art, was coiled low on her neck, her eyes, of a piercing electric blue, seemed to possess a faculty of boring into the very soul of the person she was looking at. Her exquisite figure was enhanced by a wonderful gown of indigo charmeuse. And yet, despite her swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in that gimlet-like quality of her eyes. For the first time Tuppence felt afraid. She had not feared Whittington, but this woman was different. As if fascinated, she watched the long cruel line of the red curving mouth, and again she felt that sensation of panic pass over her. Her usual self-confidence deserted her. Vaguely she felt that deceiving this woman would be very different to deceiving Whittington. Mr. Carter’s warning recurred to her mind. Here, indeed, she might expect no mercy. Fighting down that instinct of panic which urged her to turn tail and run without further delay, Tuppence returned the lady’s gaze firmly and respectfully. As though that first scrutiny had been satisfactory, Mrs. Vandemeyer motioned to a chair. “You can sit down. How did you hear I wanted a house-parlourmaid?” “Through a friend who knows the lift boy here. He thought the place might suit me.” Again that basilisk glance seemed to pierce her through. “You speak like an educated girl?” Glibly enough, Tuppence ran through her imaginary career on the lines suggested by Mr. Carter. It seemed to her, as she did so, that the tension of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s attitude relaxed. “I see,” she remarked at length. “Is there anyone I can write to for a reference?” “I lived last with a Miss Dufferin, The Parsonage, Llanelly. I was with her two years.” “And then you thought you would get more money by coming to London, I suppose? Well, it doesn’t matter to me. I will give you £50—£60—whatever you want. You can come in at once?” “Yes, ma’am. To-day, if you like. My box is at Paddington.” “Go and fetch it in a taxi, then. It’s an easy place. I am out a good deal. By the way, what’s your name?” “Prudence Cooper, ma’am.” “Very well, Prudence. Go away and fetch your box. I shall be out to lunch. The cook will show you where everything is.” “Thank you, ma’am.” Tuppence withdrew. The smart Annie was not in evidence. In the hall below a magnificent hall porter had relegated Albert to the background. Tuppence did not even glance at him as she passed meekly out. The adventure had begun, but she felt less elated than she had done earlier in the morning. It crossed her mind that if the unknown Jane Finn had fallen into the hands of Mrs. Vandemeyer, it was likely to have gone hard with her. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (1998). The Secret Adversary. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1155/pg1155-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Stories, News & Mentions about PARTINGTON

Partington’s Stories on HackerNoon

Partington's News & Mentions