It was the wardrobe that worried Canon Pennyfather. It worried him before he was quite awake.
Then he forgot it and he fell asleep again. But when his eyes opened once more, there the wardrobe still was in the wrong place. He was lying on his left side facing the window and the wardrobe ought to have been there between him and the window on the left wall. But it wasn’t. It was on the right. It worried him. It worried him so much that it made him feel tired. He was conscious of his head aching badly, and on top of that, to have the wardrobe in the wrong place. At this point once more his eyes closed.
There was rather more light in the room the next time he woke. It was not daylight yet. Only the faint light of dawn. “Dear me,” said Canon Pennyfather to himself, suddenly solving the problem of the wardrobe. “How stupid I am! Of course, I’m not at home.”
He moved gingerly. No, this wasn’t his own bed. He was away from home. He was—where was he? Oh, of course. He’d gone to London, hadn’t he? He was in Bertram’s Hotel and—but no, he wasn’t in Bertram’s Hotel. In Bertram’s Hotel his bed was facing the window. So that was wrong, too.
“Dear me, where can I be?” said Canon Pennyfather.
Then he remembered that he was going to Lucerne. “Of course,” he said to himself, “I’m in Lucerne.” He began thinking about the paper he was going to read. He didn’t think about it long. Thinking about his paper seemed to make his head ache so he went to sleep again.
The next time he woke his head was a great deal clearer. Also there was a good deal more light in the room. He was not at home, he was not at Bertram’s Hotel and he was fairly sure that he was not in Lucerne. This wasn’t a hotel bedroom at all. He studied it fairly closely. It was an entirely strange room with very little furniture in it. A kind of cupboard (what he’d taken for the wardrobe) and a window with flowered curtains through which the light came. A chair and a table and a chest of drawers. Really, that was about all.
“Dear me,” said Canon Pennyfather, “this is most odd. Where am I?”
He was thinking of getting up to investigate but when he sat up in bed his headache began again so he lay down.
“I must have been ill,” decided Canon Pennyfather. “Yes, definitely I must have been ill.” He thought a minute or two and then said to himself, “As a matter of fact, I think perhaps I’m still ill. Influenza, perhaps?” Influenza, people often said, came on very suddenly. Perhaps—perhaps it had come on at dinner at the Athenaeum. Yes, that was right. He remembered that he had dined at the Athenaeum.
There were sounds of moving about in the house. Perhaps they’d taken him to a nursing home. But no, he didn’t think this was a nursing home. With the increased light it showed itself as a rather shabby and ill-furnished small bedroom. Sounds of movement went on. From downstairs a voice called out, “Good-bye, ducks. Sausage and mash this evening.”
Canon Pennyfather considered this. Sausage and mash. The words had a faintly agreeable quality.
“I believe,” he said to himself, “I’m hungry.”
The door opened. A middle-aged woman came in, went across to the curtains, pulled them back a little and turned towards the bed.
“Ah, you’re awake now,” she said. “And how are you feeling?”
“Really,” said Canon Pennyfather, rather feebly, “I’m not quite sure.”
“Ah, I expect not. You’ve been quite bad, you know. Something hit you a nasty crack, so the doctor said. These motorists! Not even stopping after they’d knocked you down.”
“Have I had an accident?” said Canon Pennyfather. “A motor accident?”
“That’s right,” said the woman. “Found you by the side of the road when we come home. Thought you was drunk at first.” She chuckled pleasantly at the reminiscence. “Then my husband said he’d better take a look. It may have been an accident, he said. There wasn’t no smell of drink or anything. No blood or anything neither. Anyway, there you was, out like a log. So my husband said, ‘We can’t leave him here lying like that,’ and he carried you in here. See?”
“Ah,” said Canon Pennyfather, faintly, somewhat overcome by all these revelations. “A good Samaritan.”
“And he saw you were a clergyman so my husband said, ‘It’s all quite respectable.’ Then he said he’d better not call the police because being a clergyman and all that you mightn’t like it. That’s if you was drunk, in spite of there being no smell of drink. So then we hit upon getting Dr. Stokes to come and have a look at you. We still call him Dr. Stokes although he’s been struck off. A very nice man he is, embittered a bit, of course, by being struck off. It was only his kind heart really, helping a lot of girls who were no better than they should be. Anyway, he’s a good enough doctor and we got him to come and take a look at you. He says you’ve come to no real harm, says it’s mild concussion. All we’d got to do was to keep you lying flat and quiet in a dark room. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘I’m not giving an opinion or anything like that. This is unofficial. I’ve no right to prescribe or to say anything. By rights I dare say you ought to report it to the police, but if you don’t want to, why should you?’ Give the poor old geezer a chance, that’s what he said. Excuse me if I’m speaking disrespectful. He’s a rough and ready speaker, the doctor is. Now what about a drop of soup or some hot bread and milk?”
“Either,” said Canon Pennyfather faintly, “would be very welcome.”
He relapsed on to his pillows. An accident? So that was it. An accident, and he couldn’t remember a thing about it! A few minutes later the good woman returned bearing a tray with a steaming bowl on it.
“You’ll feel better after this,” she said. “I’d like to have put a drop of whisky or a drop of brandy in it but the doctor said you wasn’t to have nothing like that.”
“Certainly not,” said Canon Pennyfather, “not with concussion. No. It would have been unadvisable.”
“I’ll put another pillow behind your back, shall I, ducks? There, is that all right?”
Canon Pennyfather was a little startled by being addressed as “ducks.” He told himself that it was kindly meant.
“Upsydaisy,” said the woman, “there we are.”
“Yes, but where are we?” said Canon Pennyfather. “I mean, where am I? Where is this place?”
“Milton St. John,” said the woman. “Didn’t you know?”
“Milton St. John?” said Canon Pennyfather. He shook his head. “I never heard the name before.”
“Oh well, it’s not much of a place. Only a village.”
“You have been very kind,” said Canon Pennyfather. “May I ask your name?”
“Mrs. Wheeling. Emma Wheeling.”
“You are most kind,” said Canon Pennyfather again. “But this accident now. I simply cannot remember—”
“You put yourself outside that, luv, and you’ll feel better and up to remembering things.”
“Milton St. John,” said Canon Pennyfather to himself, in a tone of wonder. “The name means nothing to me at all. How very extraordinary!”
[At Bertram’s Hotel- Agatha Christie] Chapter Sixteen