'My dear, how can I say anything? They'd never volunteer again. You must remember they've given time and trouble...' but he was addressing a closed door. 'What worries me,' he said to Mather,' is that this young lady will expect an ovation. She won't understand that nobody's interested in who opens a jumble sale. Things are so different in London.'
'She's late,' Mather said.
'They are quite capable of storming the doors,' the vicar said with a nervous glance through the window at the lengthening queue. 'I must confess to a little stratagem. After all she is our guest. She is giving time and trouble.' Time and trouble were the gifts of which the vicar was always most conscious. They were given more readily than coppers in the collection. He went on, 'Did you see any young boys outside?'
'Only women,' Mather said.
'Oh dear, oh dear. I told Troop Leader Lance. You see, I thought if one or two Scouts, in plain clothes, of course, brought up autograph books, it would please Miss Maydew, seem to show we appreciated... the time and trouble.' He said miserably, 'The St Luke's troop is always the least trustworthy...'
A grey-haired man with a carpet bag put his head in at the door. He said,' Mrs 'Arris said as there was something wrong with the toilet.'
'Ah, Mr Bacon,' the vicar said, 'so kind of you. Step into the hall. You'll find Mrs Harris there. A little stoppage, so I understand.'
Mather looked at his watch. He said, 'I must speak to Miss Maydew directly—' A young man entered at a rush; he said to the vicar, 'Excuse me, Mr Harris, but will Miss Maydew be speaking?'
'I hope not. I profoundly hope not,' the vicar said. 'It's hard enough as it is to keep the women from the stalls till after I've said a prayer. Where's my prayer book? Who's seen my prayer book?'
'Because I'm covering it for the Journal, and if she's not, you see, I can get away—'
Mather wanted to say: Listen to me. Your damned jumble is of no importance. My girl's in danger. She may be dead. He wanted to do things to people, but he stood there heavy, immobile, patient, even his private passion and fear subdued by his training. One didn't give way to anger, one plodded on calmly, adding fact to fact; if one's girl was killed, one had the satisfaction of knowing one had done one's best according to the standards of the best police force in the world. He wondered bitterly, as he watched the vicar search for his prayer book, whether that would be any comfort.
Mr Bacon came back and said, 'She'll pull now,' and disappeared with a clank of metal. A boisterous voice said, 'Upstage a little, upstage, Miss Maydew,' and the curate entered. He wore suede shoes, he had a shiny face and plastered hair and he carried an umbrella under his arm like a cricket bat; he might have been returning to the pavilion after scoring a duck in a friendly, taking his failure noisily as a good sportsman should. 'Here is my C. O., Miss Maydew, on the O. P. side.' He said to the vicar, 'I've been telling Miss Maydew about our dramatics.'
Mather said,' May I speak to you a moment privately, Miss Maydew?'
But the vicar swept her away. 'A moment, a moment, first our little ceremony. Constance! Constance!' and almost immediately the ante-room was empty except for Mather and the journalist, who sat on the table swinging his legs, biting his nails. An extraordinary noise came from the next room: it was like the trampling of a herd of animals, a trampling suddenly brought to a standstill at a fence; in the sudden silence one could hear the vicar hastily finishing off the Lord's Prayer, and then Miss Maydew's clear immature principal boy's voice saying, 'I declare this jumble well and truly—' and then the trampling again. She had got her words wrong—it had always been foundation stones her mother laid; but no one noticed. Everyone was relieved because she hadn't made a speech. Mather went to the door; half a dozen boys were queued up in front of Miss Maydew with autograph albums; the St Luke's troop hadn't failed after all. A hard astute woman in a toque said to Mather, 'This stall will interest you. It's a Man's Stall,' and Mather looked down at a dingy array of pen-wipers and pipe-cleaners and hand-embroidered tobacco pouches. Somebody had even presented a lot of old pipes. He lied quickly, 'I don't smoke.'
The astute woman said, 'You've come here to spend money, haven't you, as a duty? You may as well take something that will be of use. You won't find anything on any of the other stalls,' and between the women's shoulders, as he craned to follow the movements of Miss Maydew and the St Luke's troop, he caught a few grim glimpses of discarded vases, chipped fruit stands, yellowing piles of babies' napkins. 'I've got several pairs of braces. You may just as well take a pair of braces.'
Mather, to his own astonishment and distress, said, 'She may be dead.'
The woman said, 'Who dead?' and bristled over a pair of mauve suspenders.
'I'm sorry,' Mather said. 'I wasn't thinking.' He was horrified with himself for losing grip. He thought: I ought to have let them exchange me. It's going to be too much. He said, 'Excuse me,' seeing the last Scout shut his album.
He led Miss Maydew into the ante-room. The journalist had gone. He said, 'I'm trying to trace a girl in your company called Anne Crowder.'
'Don't know her,' Miss Maydew said.
'She only joined the cast yesterday.'
'They all look alike,' Miss Maydew said, 'like Chinamen. I never can learn their names.'
'This one's fair. Green eyes. She has a good voice.'
'Not in this company,' Miss Maydew said, 'not in this company. I can't listen to them. It sets my teeth on edge.'
'You don't remember her going out last night with a man, at the end of rehearsal?'
'Why should I? Don't be so sordid.'
'He invited you out too.'
'The fat fool,' Miss Maydew said.
'Who was he?'
'I don't know. Davenant, I think Collier said, or did he say Davis? Never saw him before. I suppose he's the man Cohen quarrelled with. Though somebody said something about Callitrope.'
'This is important, Miss Maydew. The girl's disappeared.'
'It's always happening on these tours. If you go into their dressing-rooms it's always Men they are talking about. How can they ever hope to act? So sordid.'
'You can't help me at all? You've no idea where I can find this man Davenant?'
'Collier will know. He'll be back tonight. Or perhaps he won't. I don't think he knew him from Adam. It's coming back to me now. Collier called him Davis and he said, No, he was Davenant. He'd bought out Davis.'
Mather went sadly away. Some instinct that always made him go where people were, because clues were more likely to be found among a crowd of strangers than in empty rooms or deserted streets, drove him through the hall. You wouldn't have known among these avid women that England was on the edge of war. 'I said to Mrs 'Opkinson, if you are addressing me, I said.'
'That'll look tasty on Dora.' A very old woman said across a pile of artificial silk knickers, "E lay for five hours with 'is knees drawn up.' A girl giggled and said in a hoarse whisper, 'Awful. I'd say so. 'E put 'is fingers right down.' Why should these people worry about war? They moved from stall to stall in an air thick with their own deaths and sicknesses and loves. A woman with a hard driven face touched Mather's arm; she must have been about sixty years old; she had a way of ducking her head when she spoke as if she expected a blow, but up her head would come again with a sour unconquerable malice. He had watched her, without really knowing it, as he walked down the stalls. Now she plucked at him; he could smell fish on her fingers. 'Reach me that bit of stuff, dear,' she said. 'You've got long arms. No, not that. The pink,' and began to fumble for money—in Anne's bag.