He tried to look severe, but he couldn’t help responding to the happiness in her eyes. “How much?”
“Fifty guineas.”
He whistled. “You’ve got a hope!”
“I repeat — on your orders, Commander Shaw! Right?” She put her face up and he kissed it. He said indulgently, “Right! I’ll fix that somehow, even if you get me shot… which is quite likely. Latymer looks at all the expense accounts himself.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, he slewed her round and took her mackintosh and hung it up. “How about a drink?”
“Just what I need. Give me one, and I’ll tell you all about it.” She walked ahead of him into the sitting-room, and he studied her back view appreciatively. Going across to the cupboard he brought out the glasses. He poured the girl a gin, a whisky for himself. As she sipped, curled up in a big leather armchair, she told him.
She said, “I can’t tell you in detail how it happened, but these things do, between women. Just a little interest shown, and passing the time of day — you know? I found out that a young lady by the name of Gillian Ross had been upset yesterday over something she’d read in the papers, and she’d asked Mrs du Pont — that’s the madame — if she could go home. Which she did. And she hasn’t been in to-day. When madame rang Mrs Tait, who’s the young lady’s landlady, she was told the girl was ‘poorly’ and wouldn’t be in for a day or two. Does that help?”
“Yes, I think it fits, Deb. Sounds like the right girl… I take it there weren’t any others who’d been upset?”
She shook her head. “Only her.”
“Good. I suppose you didn’t get her address, did you?”
“No. Short of asking right out, there didn’t seem to be a way, and I knew you wouldn’t want me to show too much curiosity. But it shouldn’t take long to find out, should it?” She smiled up at him over the rim of the glass, provocatively. “Use that brain of yours, darling!”
He grinned. “All right, wonder-girl! I’ve ticked over. Mrs Tait’s on the phone, we know that, so she’ll be in the book. I don’t know what I’d do without you!”
He went into his bedroom, came back with the telephone directory, and thumbed through it. He murmured, “There’s quite an assortment of Mrs Taits. I suppose we’ll have to try them all.”
Debonnair said, “I’ll do it. May as well finish what I’ve begun.”
“Right, thanks.” He added warningly, “Be careful, though. Talk around the point when you get the right Mrs Tait. I don’t want the girl to know anyone’s on to her, just in case she decides to run.”
“Okay.” Debonnair went out of the room. She wasn’t away very long, and when she came back she said, “I followed a hunch and tried Chelsea first… just a wrong guess or two and then I got her. She lives in Oakley Street Mrs T. sounds rather an old dear, incidentally, but I didn’t get any fresh information except that Gillian’s not actually in bed.”
“I didn’t think you would, and I’m glad she’s not in bed, because we’re going round there.”
“Are we indeed? D’you really mean ‘we’?”
Shaw nodded. “Moral support — for me! She’s bound to be upset.”
“True enough. Well — when do we start?”
“Right now.” Shaw looked at his watch. “We’ll eat afterwards, somewhere in Chelsea.”
They rang one of the bells at the top of the steps in the Oakley Street house, the bell with a small white card alongside it with the name: Miss G. Ross. After a second ring, they heard footsteps, and the door was opened by *a tall, dark-haired girl of little more than twenty, dressed in a tightly moulded sweater and tartan trews whose folds left very little to the imagination. She was undoubtedly, as Jiddle had said, a ‘good-looker’; but she was showing the strain of recent events and she was pale and nervy-looking, with large dark rings under her eyes. Shaw introduced himself.
She was suspicious and wary at first, but when Shaw mentioned Patrick MacNamara and the fact that he had been on that train with him, she seemed to soften a little — she would, Shaw knew, have read all the papers. Glancing at Debonnair, she said, “Oh, all right then, come along up. The room’s a bit untidy.”
She turned away. An attractive perfume wafted back as they followed her in and up the stairs which rose steeply from the end of the hall. The long, trousered legs went up quickly, past the first landing and up to the next, beyond that again to the very top of the building, to where the stairs were even steeper and narrower and covered with lino instead of carpeting. She led them into a tiny, jazzily furnished apartment with a sloping, garret-like ceiling and an unmade divan bed in one corner. A door led off into a poky kitchen, like a cupboard. Gillian Ross jerked the door of the kitchen shut with her foot and then jabbed at some cushions in the chairs, pushing them straight.
She said abruptly, “Sit down, won’t you. I think I need a drink. What about you?”
Debonnair shook her head and Shaw said, “Not just now, thanks, but don’t let us stop you.”
“All right.” She picked up a bottle and splashed gin into a glass. Shaw watched her curiously. She was young to be starting this sort of carry-on, he thought, and she looked as though she had a decent background somewhere. She had an almost patrician air, with her straight brows and firm, determined chin, and this didn’t quite fit with the jazzy room, and the gin, with the whole untidy, slack bachelor-girl existence which, by first appearance anyhow, seemed to be her life.
When she’d poured the gin she lit a tipped cigarette, took a deep lungful of smoke, and said, “Well? You’d better explain, hadn’t you? How did you know my address — and how did you know about Pat and me, anyway?”
Shaw dodged those two direct questions, but apart from that he explained as fully as he could. He said, “I happen to be a — Government agent, Miss Ross, though nothing whatever to do with the police. We have reason to believe that MacNamara may be able to help us quite a lot in certain inquiries which we’re making. In turn, I’m quite sure we can help him. You see, I was a witness to some of what happened in the train.”
“D’you think he did it — that murder?” The girl’s voice was higher, brittle, and Shaw noted the way her fingers tightened round her glass.
He said, “For what my opinion’s worth — no, I don’t. That’s one of the reasons I want to help, to find out more than I know already. Only MacNamara can tell me anything.”
She nodded, seeming to consider what he had said. Then she asked, “Is Pat in danger? I mean, will some one try to get at him?”
Shaw studied her set, drawn face obliquely. “Not necessarily. It could be that he’s simply being hidden by some one. On the other hand — yes, he might be in danger. Can you tell me where I can find him?”
“No,” she said. “No, I can’t. I swear that. I just don’t know… I’ve not heard a word from him since — since that happened. You… don’t think something could have happened to him already?”
“That’s something I can’t possibly answer,” he said gravely. “Miss Ross — why do you think some one may try to get at him, anyway?”
She didn’t answer at first; then, hesitantly, she said, “I don’t really know. Only he’d got into a bad set, and there were things…” Her voice trailed away and she began to tremble a little. “I don’t know anything really, honestly I don’t.”
Shaw’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head slowly. He said seriously, “If you do, I hope you’ll trust me enough to tell me. I promise I’ll do all I can to help, but we don’t want to be too late.” Her head jerked a little at that and he went on, “I can tell you this — we believe that something very big is behind the killing the other night, and there are people who’ll go to any lengths to see that their plans aren’t messed up. It seems clear that MacNamara must have been pretty deeply involved himself, but it could be that he’s only an innocent dupe, just some one they’re making use of. I want to find him and talk to him — and I want to get to him before anyone else does… anyone who might think it advisable to prevent him giving away information if he’s arrested. Do you see?”