A Gun for Sale

       'Green says he came in at the front. Just opened the door of this room and then took the other fellow straight upstairs, into the best bedroom. The girl joined them there just as he was going to show the rest of the house. Then they all went straight down and out of the house except the girl went into the kitchen and picked up her suitcases. He'd left the front door open and thought she'd followed them in.'

       'She was in the kitchen all right. And in the bathroom.'

       'Where's that?'

       'Up the stairs and round to the left.' The two men, they were both large, nearly filled the cramped bathroom. 'Looks as if she heard them coming,' the detective said, 'and hid in here.'

       'What brought her up? If she was in the kitchen she had only to slip out at the back.' Mather stood in the tiny room between the bath and the lavatory seat and thought: she was here yesterday. It was incredible. It didn't fit in at any point with what he knew of her. They had been engaged for six months; she couldn't have disguised herself so completely: on the bus ride from Kew that evening, humming the song—what was it?—something about a snowflower; the night they sat two programmes round at the cinema because he'd spent his week's pay and hadn't been able to give her dinner. She never complained as the hard mechanized voices began all over again, 'A wise guy, huh?'

       'Baby, you're swell.'

       'Siddown, won't you?'

       'Thenks', at the edge of their consciousness. She was straight, she was loyal, he could swear that; but the alternative was a danger he hardly dared contemplate. Raven was desperate. He heard himself saying with harsh conviction, 'Raven was here. He drove her up at the point of his pistol. He was going to shut her in here—or maybe shoot her. Then he heard voices. He gave her the notes and told her to get rid of the other fellows. If she tried anything on, he'd have shot her. Damn it, isn't it plain?' but the detective only repeated the substance of the superintendent's criticism, 'She walked right out of the place alone with Green. There was nothing to prevent her going to the police station.'

       'He may have followed at a distance.'

       'It looks to me,' the detective said, 'as if you are taking the most unlikely theory,' and Mather could tell from his manner how puzzled he was at the Yard man's attitude: these Londoners were a little too ingenious: he believed in good sound Midland common sense. It angered Mather in his professional pride; he even felt a small chill of hatred against Anne for putting him in a position where his affection warped his judgement. He said, 'We've no proof that she didn't try to tell the police,' and he wondered: do I want her dead and innocent or alive and guilty? He began to examine the bathroom with meticulous care. He even pushed his finger up the taps in case... He had a wild idea that if it were really Anne who had stood here, she would have wanted to leave a message. He straightened himself impatiently. 'There's nothing here.' He remembered there was a test: she might have missed her train. 'I want a telephone,' he said.

       'There'll be one down the road at the agent's.'

       Mather rang up the theatre. There was no one there except a caretaker, but as it happened she could tell him that no one had been absent from rehearsal. The producer, Mr Collier, always posted absentees on the board inside the stage door. He was great on discipline, Mr Collier. Yes, and she remembered that there was a new girl. She happened to see her going out with a man at dinner-time after the rehearsal just as she came back to the theatre to tidy up a bit and thought: 'that's a new face'. She didn't know who the man was. He might be one of the backers. 'Wait a moment, wait a moment,' Mather said; he had to think what to do next; she was the girl who gave the agent the stolen notes; he had to forget that she was Anne who had so wildly wished that they could marry before Christmas, who had hated the promiscuity of her job, who had promised him that night on the bus from Kew that she would keep out of the way of all rich business backers and stage-door loungers. He said: 'Mr Collier? Where can I find him?'

       'He'll be at the theatre tonight. There's a rehearsal at eight.'

       'I want to see him at once.'

       'You can't. He's gone up to York with Mr Bleek.'

       'Where can I find any of the girls who were at the rehearsal?'

       'I dunno. I don't have the address book. They'll be all over town.'

       'There must be someone who was there last night—'

       'You could find Miss Maydew, of course.'

       'Where?'

       'I don't know where she's staying. But you've only got to look at the posters of the jumble.'

       'The jumble? What do you mean?'

       'She's opening the jumble up at St Luke's at two.'

       Through the window of the agent's office Mather saw Saunders coming up the frozen mud of the track between the Cozyholmes: He rang off and intercepted him. 'Any news come in?'

       'Yes,' Saunders said. The superintendent had told him everything, and he was deeply distressed. He liked Mather. He owed everything to Mather; it was Mather who had brought him up every stage of promotion in the police force, who had persuaded the authorities that a man who stammered could be as good a policeman as the champion reciter at police concerts. But he would have loved him anyway for a quality of idealism, for believing so implicitly in what he did. 'Well? Let's have it.'

       'It's about your g-girl. She's disappeared.' He took the news at a run, getting it out in one breath. 'Her landlady rang up the station, said she was out all night and never came back.'

       'Run away,' Mather said.

       Saunders said, 'D-don't you believe it. You t-t-t-told her to take that train. She wasn't going till the m-m-m-m-morning.'

       'You're right,' Mather said. 'I'd forgotten that. Meeting him must have been an accident. But it's a miserable choice, Saunders. She may be dead now.'

       'Why should he do that? We've only got a theft on him. What are you going to do next?'

       'Back to the station. And then at two,' he smiled miserably, 'a jumble sale.'

3

The vicar was worried. He wouldn't listen to what Mather had to say; he had too much to think about himself. It was the curate, the new bright broad-minded curate from a London east-end parish, who had suggested inviting Miss Maydew to open the jumble sale. He thought it would be a draw, but as the vicar explained to Mather, holding him pinned there in the pitch-pine ante-room of St Luke's Hall, a jumble was always a draw. There was a queue fifty yards long of women with baskets waiting for the door to open; they hadn't come to see Miss Maydew; they had come for bargains. St Luke's jumble sales were famous all over Nottwich.

       A dry perky woman with a cameo brooch put her head in at the door. 'Henry,' she said, 'the committee are rifling the stalls again. Can't you do something about it? There'll be nothing left when the sale starts.'

       'Where's Mander? It's his business,' the vicar said.

       'Mr Mander, of course, is off fetching Miss Maydew.' The perky woman blew her nose and crying 'Constance, Constance!' disappeared into the hall.

       'You can't really do anything about it,' the vicar said. 'It happens every year. These good women give their time voluntarily. The Altar Society would be in a very bad way without them. They expect to have first choice of everything that's sent in. Of course the trouble is: they fix the prices.'

       'Henry,' the perky woman said, appearing again in the doorway, 'you must interfere. Mrs Penny has priced that very good hat Lady Cundifer sent at eighteen pence and bought it herself.'