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  Her voice died before Gerry’s stare and Richard also was struck by something very odd in his face. Just for a moment it became utterly blank, not merely without expression but deserted, as if there was no one behind it.

  The familiar rueful smile returned almost at once.

  “Gosh, I don’t remember anything about the place except that it smelled of jasmin and the river ran through the garden,” he said presently. “I remember we swam at night and there were glowworms on the other bank. You were quite different down there, Edna. Not so hard …”

  “Here, don’t!” she exclaimed in sudden pain, flinging Richard’s opinion of her to the winds. “Don’t, Gerry! What the hell’s the matter with you? Coming in here and talking like this after staying away silent until I’m absolutely crawling up the wall. Why remember the cottage suddenly?”

  He sat laughing at her gently, his charm a living thing and the intelligence, which was sorry like an ape’s, showing in his flat eyes.

  “Seeing you reminded me. It was terribly terribly sweet, somehow,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

  She made no reply but stood staring at him in a sort of helpless exasperation, her only real anger against herself.

  “Well, let’s see, half past four we expect Torrenden,” Gerry went on absently. “I’d better meet the chap since my name’s been mentioned. That sort of mistake can be awkward if it isn’t seen to. Then Richard and I have an appointment for five-thirty, but after that, about six, I don’t see why we shouldn’t come back to the Midget. Are you going to be here all the evening, or could you get away for an hour or two if we went on somewhere?”

  There was colour in her face. She looked ten years younger.

  “I don’t trust him across the street,” she said to Richard. “I’ve heard it so often.” Her glance at Gerry was almost shy. “Joannie is behind the bar, of course. She could manage if I looked in again before midnight. I’ll speak to her. You really have got to keep this appointment at half past five, have you? I’d believe you more easily if I wasn’t going to let you out of my sight.”

  “Darling, don’t be silly.” He took his hands off the piano and took hers in both of his. “We’re hardly going across the road. We’ll be back in no time at all.”

  “Just long enough for one drink, I suppose?”

  “No drink. Ten minutes’ conversation, and then an evening on the tiles, you and me together, and we’ll find a wench for Richard. It’s a bet.”

  He lifted his face to her and grudging, yet very grateful, she bent and kissed him on the mouth. It was done very lightly, very naturally, but the tension went out of her like the strain out of a taut wire. Her spirits began to mount and a new and gay personality whom Richard had not suspected suddenly emerged. She was amusing, slightly ribald, and a little malicious, but very good fun, a worldly, joyful animal, ecstatically happy.

  The dancing went on for half an hour or more and the fashionable semi-wisecracking was interspersed with gossip of mutual friends. Eventually Gerry glanced at his watch.

  “It’s a quarter to five,” he said. “If Torrenden is coming he ought to be in the next room. Run along and see, darling, and if he is bring him in here. It’ll be less embarrassing for him. Come on, give us the key. Through you go.”

  He got up, slid an arm round her, released the key from her fingers and led her over to the inner door which he unlocked for her. With his hand on the latch he paused, kissed her once more, slapped her gently behind, and pushed her through the door which he closed after her and locked again. Then, moving quietly, he walked across the room to the double doors, opened them and glanced back at Richard.

  “Sorry to let you in for this,” he said charmingly, “but it’ll save a dreary scene if we go out this way. She’s a dear gal but boringly possessive.”

  Chapter 8

  POLICE THEORY

  THE FAMOUS TEACHING hospital of St. Joan’s in the West stands almost next door to the new police station in the Barrow Road. Charlie Luke and Mr. Albert Campion went to the Institution together in a police car immediately after the call came through on the Superintendent’s newly installed private line from the Garden Green area.

  They were met in the vestibule by the man who had telephoned. This was Detective-Sergeant Picot, who was an old friend and colleague of Luke’s. He came forward as they entered, a square heavy man who, at the moment at any rate, seemed beset with the deepest misgivings. He forced a smile as they appeared and his handshakes were hearty, but he was not at all happy and as soon as he had edged them into a reasonably secluded corner he came out with an apology.

  “I don’t know quite how you’re going to take this, sir,” he said, “but I simply obeyed orders. You said quite definitely that you wanted to hear anything bearing on the Goff’s Place enquiry, however trivial.”

  Luke grinned. “And someone’s had a dream?” he suggested cheerfully.

  “You’re not too far out, that’s a fact.” Picot’s plump face coloured. “It’s a flimsy idea and it’s negative, so I thought you’d better hear it from the man who brought it in. That’s why I’ve troubled you to come out here to see him.”

  “The poor old boy stopped a barrel, you told me?” Luke glanced round the vast interior which looked so like a civic hall and shrugged. “Lousy luck, I hate these places. It was the usual story, I take it?”

  “It was, sir. A brewer’s dray was unloading outside the Bull and Mouth and a firkin of mild jumped the chute to the cellar and fell on the pavement. It rolled straight into the constable. He hadn’t an earthly.”

  “What was the damage?”

  “Left ‘Tib. Fib.’ fractured in two places. It might have been worse. But he’s no chicken. An elderly feller called Bullard. Been here years”

  “What, Harry?” Luke was genuinely grieved. “I remember him well. What sort of bee has he caught in his bonnet? He won’t have imagined much, that’s one thing.”

  “Quite.” Picot’s tone was flat. “I heard he was asking for me so I dropped in to see him this afternoon, and as soon as he’d told me what was on his mind I went in to the office and telephoned you. I’ve had him moved to a private ward so he can speak freely. He’s not long out of the anaesthetic, but he’s lucid. Will you come up?”

  Ten minutes later a pale wraith of Constable Bullard’s fatherly self was looking up at Luke from his high bed with the cradle in it. The Superintendent’s sympathy was genuine and the whole force of his personality seemed to have been translated into charm. He had listened to a full account of the accident once again and had registered surprise, regret, indignation, and congratulation at appropriate moments and was now preparing to extract the information for which he had come.

  As Mr. Campion watched Luke he reflected that it was easy to understand Yeo’s anxiety. Both Picot and Bullard were loth to tell him any unwelcome news.

  “Well now, Harry.” The Superintendent stood at the foot of the bed. “Just before the accident you came up the road from Garden Green where you had been talking to a couple of young people. They had asked you the way to a house where, you remembered, there is a little museum. Is that right?”

  “Yessir.” Bullard was bereft of his teeth and inclined to mumble, but his eyes showed bright against the linen. “I was walking along thinking about this ’ere museum and the oddities the youngsters were going to see there, and an idea came to me. I hope it won’t upset you.”

  “We’ll risk it.”

  “Well, sir, you’ll recall that last spring a witness came forward to depose that the two old people whom he saw inside the ’bus in Goff’s Place had also been seen by him in the window of a tea shop in this area?”

  “Yes.” Luke was frowning. His hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets and the skirts of his black overcoat fanned out behind him like the tail of a crow.

  “It was that fact which made you—that is to say all of us—feel sure that this was probably the district in which to look either for the old folk or else for the murderer. Er—nothi
ng else connects this area with the crime at all.”

  “Yes, that’s so.” Luke’s frown was growing blacker.

  “Well, I was one of the fellers specially briefed to keep my eyes open for the old couple, sir. I learned the descriptions by heart, like I always do, so I knew what they were like in words but not in pictures, if you see what I mean.”

  Luke nodded. “I follow that. Go on.”

  “Well …” Bullard indicated that he was coming to the difficult bit, “… this morning when I was recollecting one particular item in the museum I realised that when I recall a real thing I see it in pictures. See it all over again in my mind’s eye, so to speak. So I started putting my memory of this exhibit, which was two waxworks in a glass case, into words for a sort of an exercise. They was the same, Mr. Luke. They was identical. You couldn’t argue. What that witness saw in this area was not two people in a teashop but two wax figures in a glass case. I’ll take my dying oath on it.”

  “Waxworks figures.” Whatever Charlie Luke had expected it was not this. He put back his head and laughed aloud. “Have you seen these things?” he enquired of Picot.

  “Not yet, sir. The collection is shut in the afternoons and I thought I wouldn’t disturb the old lady who runs the show until I heard if you wanted to go down there yourself.”

  Luke glanced at Campion who was on the far side of the room.

  “How does it strike you, Guv’nor?” he enquired.

  Mr. Campion hesitated. “Of course, witnesses sometimes do try too hard,” he said. “There was only one man who could describe the two in detail, the waiter, and he produced rather a lot of detail, don’t you think? After all, he only saw them once through the windows of a ’bus on a wet night and once through what he thought was the window of a shop as he passed by. The only thing definite is that he saw them through glass on each occasion. I’m afraid he’s been overanxious to help.”

  The Superintendent drew a long breath. His shoulders were hunched.

  “That means there’s nothing to connect them with the area at all,” he said.

  “The images are wonderfully lifelike, sir,” Bullard murmured from the bed.

  “I daresay they are, old boy.” Luke spoke sadly. “All the same, I reckon the witness has invented the likeness. He saw the two old people in a ’bus and they reminded him of the two waxworks in a case. That’s all there is to it. That’s torn it.”

  It was a great blow to him. Every man in the room was aware of it.

  “I’ll have the waiter taken down there in the morning to confirm it,” he said. “He’ll realise his mistake as soon as he gets back to the place. Who owns it, did you say? Some old highbrow woman?”

  “No, sir, just a widder.” Bullard smiled. “The exhibits belonged to her husband and she keeps the show going in his memory. You’d like her. She’s pleasant, normal, if you know what I mean.”

  “I suppose I do, just,” said Luke and his white teeth appeared briefly. “So long, Harry, get well.”

  All three visitors had reached the windswept forecourt which faces on to the Barrow Road before the Superintendent paused in his stride.

  “That’s the area which interests me,” he remarked to Campion, nodding towards the mouth of the passage on the opposite side of the way. “If we went down there and turned right we’d be in Garden Green. This bit of news is a set-back. It interferes with all my calculations. And yet you know I still feel this is the stamping ground of the man I’m after.”

  Picot said nothing but looked at Mr. Campion.

  “He’s somewhere there,” Luke went on. “I know it, I feel it. I’ve half a mind to go down and see that museum while I’m here.” He put a hand in his pocket and drew out a coin. “Heads I do, tails I don’t,” he said and spun it in the air.

  Meanwhile at Number Seven, Garden Green, Polly Tassie was giving her mind to Annabelle. They were in the small sitting-room at the back of the house which was her own special apartment. It was set half a storey higher than the two rooms which flanked the front door and was more pleasant than either, with a lower ceiling, flower-spattered walls, and a single long window which looked over the garden and was set so low that a small wrought iron balcony had been constructed outside it for safety’s sake.

  There was nothing very fashionable about the decoration, although it was apparent that it had been the subject of a great deal of thought. The effect was cluttered but comfortable and there was a note of gaiety in it which Annabelle found enchanting and slightly funny.

  The loose cover of the couch on which she sat was scarlet and white calico, like the handkerchiefs of workmen long ago. The rug before the modern gas fire was a rag one, beautifully made but unexpected, and along the chimney-piece there was a row of exquisite china ladies with tables by their sides and dogs in their laps, and a small china clock in the centre.

  Polly, who had changed into a plain black dress for her luncheon with Matt Phillipson, had cheered it up now with a black silk apron trimmed with coloured flowers and white muslin embroidery which someone had brought her from Switzerland. She had also put on a red jersey coat against the cool of the evening, and the effect was slightly fancy-dress, a fact of which she appeared sublimely unconscious. She sat upright in her highbacked chair at the side of the hearth. She was pouring tea from a silver pot and looked as if she had been doing it for ever.

  “We’ll go to the pictures,” she said, “and as my old Mrs. Morris doesn’t come today we’ll have some food out. You can’t go dancing because I’ve not got anyone to take you yet, and you haven’t got a dress either, but we’ll see to that in the morning. The first thing to do is to write to your sister and see how long you can stay.”

  Annabelle, who looked like a spoilt kitten curled luxuriously on the red couch, grinned disarmingly.

  “I can stay until you get tired of me,” she said frankly. “Forgive me, but don’t you think the less fuss you make the longer it will last?”

  Polly laughed. “Do you like homes?” she enquired unexpectedly.

  “Do it yourself, and how to make a spare bed for yourself out of old wine boxes?” Annabelle sounded dubious.

  Polly was amused but her enquiry had been genuine. “No. I wondered, are you terribly interested in where you live? I’m too much that way. Whenever I go into any sort of building, church, cinema, anywhere, after a bit I always find I’m worrying how I could fix it up if something happened and Freddy and I had to live there.”

  “Where the furniture would go?” Annabelle was delighted by the fantasy.

  “Where the sink would have to go,” said Polly solemnly. “How the drains run and so on. I remember having to meet your Uncle on Euston Station once. They had open fires in those days, but even so the main waiting room was very bleak. It was enormous and such an uncosy shape. By the time he arrived I was in quite a state and like a mug I told him about it. He laughed all the way home. He said I was a monstrous fool, but he saw why I made him comfortable.”

  Annabelle rocked on the couch in joyful superiority.

  “No, I’m not like that,” she said. “I like this room, darling, and I have got a nesting instinct, but I should never feel I must make something of Euston. I love these cups, by the way. They’re old, aren’t they?”

  “Early Victorian. My great granddad bought seven services all alike.” Polly was very happy. “He had seven ugly daughters, which was a calamity at that time of day.”

  “A bit of a facer at any time,” murmured her visitor.

  “Ah no, but this was awful.” Polly spoke with feeling. “It wasn’t considered the thing to send them out to work, so he had either got to get them all married or sit and listen to them lamenting. If he’d only had the one he could have given her a nice fat dowry, but since there were seven he did the right thing and divided the fortune equally. He let it be known locally that each girl would have a tea-set too, and then he sat back and took what came. My grandmother got the proprietor of the inn, who was a fine-looking man, and this is the tea-s
et.”

  “Did your mother worry where the furniture was to go?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised.” Polly was content. Her blue eyes were lazy and the room was warm with security. “Mother was a great housekeeper. When I was a girl we still made beds from our own goose down. You’ll sleep on one tonight. There’s nothing like it. Beds haven’t improved in my time. Draughts have.”

  “Draughts?”

  “Currents of air, usually freezing.” Polly was laughing deep in her throat. “I’ve stopped them here all right and overdone things as usual. There’s a patent outfit on that window and another on the door, and now I have to leave one or other open or the gas fire goes out. What are you laughing at, you wretched child? You think I’m an old fool, don’t you?”

  “I don’t.” Annabelle was pink with amusement. “I think you’re wonderful. I only wish you’d come and stop the draughts in our house…. Oh, am I what you had in mind, Aunt Polly?”

  The spontaneous question, premature, naïve and over-eager, touched the old woman to the heart.

  “Better,” she said swiftly. “Much better. I think you’ve got the character, I think you’ve got the brains, and I think you’ve got your feet on the ground.” Then she added for prudence’ sake, “You’ll never be more clever than you are now, you know that I hope? That’s the mistake most young people make. They think they’re clever for their age, my God!”

  Annabelle looked scared. “The mind ceases to develop before one is twenty, is that what you mean?” she said.

  “Twenty?” Polly was greatly entertained. “You’ll be lucky if you get to twenty undisturbed. My father didn’t hold with educating girls so I’m not very up in these things, but I always understood that the idea of education was to get one’s mind as sharp as it will come before the party starts. Once the heart gets going you need all the wits you’ve got, my goodness.”