The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page A

interpretation.
    And then Bundle remembered something else. Seven Dials! When the dying man had said it, it had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she knew why. Gerald Wade had mentioned Seven Dials in that last letter of his written to his sister on the night before his death. And that again connected up with something else that escaped her.
    Thinking all these things over, Bundle had slowed down to such a sober pace that nobody would have recognised her. She drove the car round to the garage and went in search of her father.
    Lord Caterham was happily reading a catalogue of a forthcoming sale of rare editions and was immeasurably astonished to see Bundle.
    “Even you,” he said, “can't have been to London and back in this time.”
    “I haven't been to London,” said Bundle. “I ran over a man.”
    “What?”
    “Only I didn't really. He was shot.”
    “How could he have been?”
    “I don't know how he could have been, but he was.”
    “But why did you shoot him?”
    “I didn't shoot him.”
    “You shouldn't shoot people,” said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. “You shouldn't really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it - but all the same it will lead to trouble.”
    “I tell you I didn't shoot him.”
    “Well, who did?”
    “Nobody knows,” said Bundle.
    “Nonsense,” said Lord Caterham. “A man can't be shot and run over without anyone having done it.”
    “He wasn't run over,” said Bundle.
    “I thought you said he was.”
    “I said I thought I had.”
    “A tyre burst, I suppose,” said Lord Caterham. “That does sound like a shot. It says so in detective stories.”
    “You really are perfectly impossible, Father. You don't seem to have the brains of a rabbit.”
    “Not at all,” said Lord Caterham. “You come in with a wildly impossible tale about men being run over and shot and I don't know what, and then you expect me to know all about it by magic.”
    Bundle sighed wearily.
    “Just attend,” she said. “I'll tell you all about it in words of one syllable.”
    “There,” she said when she had concluded. “Now have you got it?”
    “Of course. I understand perfectly now. I can make allowances for your being a little upset, my dear. I was not far wrong when I remarked to you before starting out that people looking for trouble usually found it. I am thankful,” finished Lord Caterham with a slight shiver, “that I stayed quietly here.”
    He picked up the catalogue again.
    “Father, where is Seven Dials?”
    “In the East End somewhere, I fancy. I have frequently observed buses going there - or do I mean Seven Sisters? I have never been there myself, I'm thankful to say. Just as well, because I don't fancy it is the sort of spot I should like. And yet, curiously enough, I seem to have heard of it in some connection just lately.”
    “You don't know a Jimmy Thesiger, do you?”
    Lord Caterham was now engrossed in his catalogue once more. He had made an effort to be intelligent on the subject of Seven Dials. This time he made hardly any effort at all.
    “Thesiger,” he murmured vaguely. “Thesiger. One of the Yorkshire Thesigers?”
    “That's what I'm asking you. Do attend, Father. This is important.”
    Lord Caterham made a desperate effort to look intelligent without really having to give his mind to the matter.
    “There are some Yorkshire Thesigers,” he said earnestly. “And unless I am mistaken some Devonshire Thesigers also. Your Great Aunt Selina married a Thesiger.”
    “What good is that to me?” cried Bundle.
    Lord Caterham chuckled.
    “It was very little good to her, if I remember rightly.”
    “You're impossible,” said Bundle, rising. “I shall have to get hold of Bill.”
    “Do, dear,” said her father absently as he turned a page. “Certainly. By all means. Quite so.”
    Bundle rose to her feet with an impatient sigh.
    “I wish I could remember what that letter said,” she murmured, more to herself than aloud. “I didn't read it very