Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie Page B

force of contrasts, hot dishes on the sideboard animated the digestive juices.
    'I expect,' said Tuppence, 'it's what the Parkinsons used to have for breakfast here. Fried eggs or poached eggs and bacon and perhaps -' she threw her mind a good long way back to remembrances of old novels - 'perhaps yes, perhaps cold grouse on the sideboard, delicious! Oh yes, I remember, delicious it sounded. Of course, I suppose children were so unimportant that they only let them have the legs. Legs of game are very good because you can nibble at them.' She paused with the last piece of kidney in her mouth.
    Very strange noises seemed to be coming through the doorway.
    'I wonder,' said Tuppence. 'It sounds like a concert gone wrong somewhere.'
    She paused again, a piece of toast in her hand, and looked up as Albert entered the room.
    'What is going on, Albert?' demanded Tuppence. 'Don't tell me that's our workmen playing something? A harmonium or something like that?'
    'It's the gentleman what's come to do the piano,' said Albert.
    'Come to do what to the piano?'
    'To tune it. You said I'd have to get a piano tuner.'
    'Good gracious,' said Tuppence, 'you've done it already? How wonderful you are, Albert.'
    Albert looked pleased, though at the same time conscious of the fact that he was very wonderful in the speed with which he could usually supply the extraordinary demands made upon him sometimes by Tuppence and sometimes by Tommy.
    'He says it needs it very bad,' he said.
    'I expect it does,' said Tuppence.
    She drank half a cup of coffee, went out of the room and into the drawing-room. A young man was at work at the grand piano, which was revealing to the world large quantities of its inside.
    'Good morning, madam,' said the young man.
    'Good morning,' said Tuppence. 'I'm so glad you've managed to come.'
    'Ah, it needs tuning, it does.'
    'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'I know. You see, we've only just moved in and it's not very good for pianos, being moved into houses and things. And it hasn't been tuned for a long time.'
    'No, I can soon tell that,' said the young man.
    He pressed three different chords in turn, two cheerful ones in a major key, two very melancholy ones in A Minor.
    'A beautiful instrument, madam, if I may say so.'
    'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'It's an Erard.'
    'And a piano you wouldn't get so easily nowadays.'
    'It's been through a few troubles,' said Tuppence. 'It's been through bombing in London. Our house there was hit. Luckily we were away, but it was mostly outside that was damaged.'
    'Yes. Yes, the works are good. They don't need so very much doing to them.'
    Conversation continued pleasantly. The young man played the opening bars of a Chopin Prelude and passed from that to a rendering of 'The Blue Danube'. Presently he announced that his ministrations had finished.
    'I shouldn't leave it too long,' he warned her. 'I'd like the chance to come and try it again before too much time has gone by because you don't know quite when it might not - well, I don't know how I should put it - relapse a bit. You know, some little thing that you haven't noticed or haven't been able to get at.'
    They parted with mutually appreciative remarks on music in general and on piano music in particular, and with the polite salutations of two people who agreed very largely in their ideas as to the joys that music generally played in life.
    'Needs a lot doing to it, I expect, this house,' he said, looking round him.
    'Well, I think it had been empty some time when we came into it.'
    'Oh yes. It's changed hands a lot, you know.'
    'Got quite a history, hasn't it,' said Tuppence. 'I mean, the people who lived in it in the past and the sort of queer things that happened.'
    'Ah well, I expect you're talking of that time long ago. I don't know if it was the last war or the one before.'
    'Something to do with naval secrets or something,' said Tuppence hopefully.
    'Could be, I expect. There was a lot of talk, so they tell me, but of course I don't know anything