— there's a new book I got out of the library just last week that says that. . . She was clever, I tell you.'
So it hadn't been just the see-through blouse with Gary after all — or the peroxide hair and the red nails. It had been General Custer and the Sioux (and Major Reno, whoever the hell he had been!). But —
'An' she knew about guns.' Another decisive nod, which brought a cow-lick of hair across the bright-eyes. 'Knew more than any girl I ever met — repeating rifles, an' double-action revolvers . . . An' we talked once about the SLRs what the army had. 'Fact, she said I ought to join the army — said I'd make a good soldier, knowing about guns like I did — ' Gary's gargoyle features twisted suddenly.
Clever little Marilyn, Ian had been thinking. Mrs Simmonds had said it, and Gary had said it — on that they were agreed.
And he was himself thinking it: clever, clever Miss Francis!
But Gary was staring up at him. 'You didn't join up, though
— ?'
Gary straightened up. 'Got flat feet — haven't I!' He scowled horribly. 'Went down to the Recruiting Office — went down the day it was in the paper . . . Flat bloody feet, is what I've got. Bloody stupid!'
Ian became aware that he was returning the scowl. 'What. . .
paper?'
'That one.' Gary gestured toward the Sun. 'In all of 'em —
about the IRA shooting her. Christ! I'd 'uv given 'em shooting dummy2
if I'd 'uv got into uniform, and got to Ireland, I tell you —
killing her like that, the bastards!'
Lucky Ulster! Ian's thoughts came away from clever Miss Francis momentarily. But now Gary would give him everything.
'She talked about Ireland once — funny, that.' Gary's eyes were still bright with Marilyn Francis' memories. 'It was when we were talking about the army — about my joining up, maybe . . . She said it was a better job than running messages, an' delivering the post an' that, in Brit-Am. "No future for you here, Gary," she says. "But you could be doing a good job in Ulster, keeping the peace, an' protecting people.
And they'll teach you a trade too, most like — an' you can practise your shooting for free!"' One broad shoulder lifted in resignation. 'She didn't know about my flat feet . . . But, then, she'd have been sorry — she was ... all right, I tell you — ' He stopped suddenly again. But by this time he had remembered Ian, not Miss Francis. 'What you on about, then — asking questions — ?'
Mills and Boon came to the rescue again, like the US cavalry in Gary's old West, trumpets blaring romantically: Gary, feeling as he did about Marilyn Francis, would not be able to resist Mills and Boon either.
'Well, Mr Redwood, it's like this — ' He looked around the empty timber-loft, and then advanced cautiously across the unstable planks so that he was able to lower his voice confidentially. ' — Miss Francis had a child — a little boy . . .
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And I'm trying to trace him, so that we can give him some money, which is due to him — his inheritance, from his uncle.'
'What?' Gary frowned. 'I didn't know about — ?'
Ian raised his hand. 'It was very secret — you mustn't tell anyone, Mr Redwood.' Actually, on reflection it was as much Charles Dickens as Mills and Boon. But Dickens would do just as well. 'There are those who would like me not to find Miss Francis's little boy, Mr Redwood. Because then they'd get the money, you see — eh?' He gave Gary a sly look.
'Yes — ?' Gary checked the timber-loft himself, but more carefully, before coming back to Ian. 'What d'you want to know?' Then he frowned. 'It was a long time ago ... But — ?'
'Did she have a boyfriend?' The trouble was, Gary was dead right: it was a long time ago, 1978. And it might all be a waste of time, anyway. But . . . somehow Marilyn Francis was alive again now, in her own right; and he wanted to know more about her, quite regardless of David Audley and Philip Masson and Jenny and Reg Buller and John Tully. 'Was there anyone who visited her — anyone you can remember
— ?'
'No . . . yes — ' Gary's brow furrowed with concentrated effort. ' — there was a bloke I saw her with once, one night, just down the road from Brit-Am ... I was just going past, an'
she didn't see me ... I thought he was chatting her up, at first.'
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'But he wasn't — ?'
'No. Because she gave him something — an envelope, or a package, or something.' The frown deepened. 'Good-looking bloke, in a Triumph . . . But she didn't like him — I could see that — ' He pre-empted the next question ' — because she gave him the brush-off, as well as the packet, whatever it was, an' walked straight on without turning round, an' just left him there — see?' He brightened at the memory. 'So he wasn't any boyfriend of hers, anyway.'
'No?' She must have been hard-pressed to have taken such a risk, so close to Brit-Am. 'But . . . didn't she have any friends, Gary?'
'Naow, she was just a temp. So she didn't know no-one, see?'
Gary shrugged. 'Each night ... she just went back to 'er digs.'
Ian controlled himself. 'Her . . . digs?'
'Yeah,' Gary dismissed the question. "Er digs. Old Mrs Smith.'
Old Mrs Smith! Ian warmed himself on the recollection of Gary's 'old Mrs Smith' as he came to the end of the low wall which separated the churchyard from Lower Buck-land Village Green.
He stopped in the shadow of the huge old yew tree at the corner and studied the scene. It was purely a precaution, and an unnecessary one at that: if there had been any car behind him earlier he had certainly lost it at one of the three dummy2
consecutive stretches of road works on the edge of Rickmansworth. And it still took an effort of will — almost a suspension of rational belief — to accept Reg Buller's warning. So now, when he was aware that he was basking in self-satisfied success, was the moment to guard against carelessness and over-confidence, and make doubly sure before he searched for a telephone —
'Mrs S—' In that instant, as he registered the tall, painted, blue-rinsed presence in the doorway, and married it with the legend on the painted sign (THE ELSTREE GUEST HOUSE
— Proprietress: Mrs Basil Champeney-Smythe), Ian amended the question ' — Mrs Champeney-Smythe?'
'Yahss.' The blue-rinsed presence looked down on him from the great height made up of two steps and her own extra inches. 'I am Mrs Basil Champeney-Smythe — yahss.'
'Robinson, Mrs Champeney-Smythe — ' He had somehow expected an unobtrusive lodging-house in a back-street, not this genteel four-storey Edwardian yellow-brick survival, with its ancient genteel landlady (Dame Edith Evans playing Lady Bracknell, to the life). But now plain Mr Robinson wasn't good enough, anyway ' — Ian Drury Robinson, of Fielding-ffulke, Robinson, Mrs Champeney-Smythe —
Fielding-ffulke, Robinson, of Chancery Lane — ?' He repeated the contents of his card as he offered it to her as though he expected everyone to recall it from the legal columns of The Times.
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Mrs Basil Champeney-Smythe (alias 'Old Mrs Smith') accepted the card with one skeletal hand while raising a monocle on a gold chain to her eye with her other claw.
And . . . this wasn't going to be so easy, thought Ian, considering his various scenarios: how the hell did Marilyn Francis, either as a blonde man-eater or an expert on General Custer's Last Stand, fit in with The Importance of Being Earnest?
'Yahss?' She returned the card, wrinkling her nose at the pronounced smell of curry which emanated from the Indian restaurant-cum-takeaway just across the road behind them.