Miss O’Conlon presented a contrast as startling in its way as the disparity between the profession of her companion’s father and that of Mr O’Conlon, bookmaker. Mavis had a mouth wide enough to be kissed with moderate satisfaction by two men at a time, and, if Love was any judge, which at that moment he thought he was, hers was the disposition to let them. Generosity was implicit in brown, questing but not calculating eyes, a slightly side-tilted head and a throat, plump and uncreased by habitual affectation of modesty, that channelled regard at once to its confluence with breasts of astonishing amplitude. There, after some seconds, the sergeant discerned a little gold cross, suspended upon a fine chain.
“Got it for my first communion,” confided Miss O’Conlon in a deliciously husky voice, tinged with brogue.
Love gave a start and turned a brighter than usual pink. He went in search of an extra chair.
“Did the other young lady,” he asked when the two new arrivals were settled, “tell you what I wanted you for?”
They looked at each other doubtfully, then back at. the sergeant.
“Well, it’s about Edna, isn’t it?” said Mavis O’Conlon.
“Miss Hillyard,” her companion amplified.
“That’s right.” Love tried to keep his gaze away from the environment of Mavis’s crucifix (her “Christ of the Andes’, as Dr Cropper once had dubbed it). “You’re both friends of hers, I understand.”
“Sort of.” Violet did not sound eager to commit herself.
“Oh, but sure we’re friends,” said Mavis quickly and with emphasis, taking no notice of Violet’s nervous side glance.
Love went straight to the point. “Does either of you know where she is? Today, I mean. Right now at this moment.”
“No idea,” said Violet. Mavis, suddenly solemn, shook her head.
“This really could be important. I don’t want you to cover up for her because of her job. You’re not doing that, are you?”
This time it was Violet who shook her head. Mavis said Jesus no, she’d not dream of doing any such thing but what did the pollis think had happened to the poor woman for God’s sake?
Love hastily assured her that there was no reason so far to suspect that Miss Hillyard had come to harm. The fact remained that no one seemed to know where she was, so it was only right and sensible to make a few inquiries.
Yes, the girls agreed. So it was.
“That little car of hers, now. Does she normally use it a good deal?”
Every day, they said. Edna was very fond of driving around in her car.
“So you wouldn’t expect her to go off anywhere without it?”
They certainly wouldn’t. Not unless something had gone wrong with the works, of course.
“Laundry,” said Love. “Does either of you know what she does about laundry? Dresses, undies—that sort of thing.”
Mavis gave a good-natured shrug in acknowledgment of the sergeant’s innocence. “Washes them, darlin’—what else.” She was, Love noticed again as she made herself more comfortable in the chair, a well-nourished girl and she undulated very pleasingly within her own undies and that sort of thing.
“Washes them herself, you mean? At home?”
“That’s right,” said Violet. “She always does her ironing on Tuesday night. That I do know.”
“So you wouldn’t expect her to take a pile of clothes to a laundry in the town.”
“I’ve certainly never known her to do that. Have you, Mavis?”
“Not on our sort of money,” said Mavis.
Violet glanced at her with prim reproof. “It’s not a question of affording. One likes the fabric to be treated properly.”
“Has Miss Hillyard a lot of friends?”
Violet turned in consultation to Mavis. “Would you say that she’s a lot of friends? In numbers, perhaps. But not that many really staunch friends. Would you say she has many staunch friends?”
“She gets sniffed around after plenty.” Miss O’Conlon sounded amiably matter-of-fact.
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” exclaimed Miss Beach. “Not a bit nice.”
“It’s true. And it’s truth the pollis’ll be wanting, surely?”
Love confirmed this supposition. “You mean she has men friends—several men friends?”
“Jesus, she’s every right to have made a bit of a collection at her age. I mean, you get the liking. Y’know? You’d not be blaming her?”
“Not in the least,” declared Toleration Love. He pondered a moment. “It would help, though, if you could tell me if she has any particular preferences at the moment.”
“Particular’s not the word I’d have used meself, but maybe it’s special you mean. In the sense of extra keen, like. Hungry. Y’know? Now wait a bit. Do you know, Vi?”
Miss Beach, whose face clearly indicated that she found all such speculation offensive, gave a tight little headshake.
“Hey, that fellow from the garage—whatsisname—Blossom. Has she finished with that one?”
Miss Beach remained silent.
Miss O’Conlon snapped her fingers—an accomplishment that Love found endearingly raffish in so feminine a witness.
“Len Palgrove... Now she was having it with that one. That I do know. Definitely.”
“Don’t be horrible, Mavis. I don’t know how you could say that about Mr Palgrove so soon after his bereavement.”
“Bereaved, was it?” Miss O’Conlon’s eyes enlarged mightily for the benefit of the sergeant. “Listen, he wasn’t so eaten up with grief that he couldn’t lay twenty quid in cross doubles with my old man on the morning of the funeral. Da nearly refused it out of respect for the dead but he knew the bets wouldn’t have a snowflake in hell chance. Anyway...”
“The point is,” Love broke in, “that we’d like to know where Miss Hillyard is likely to be now. It’s at least two years since Mrs Palgrove was...since she died.2 Are you saying for certain that the friendship between Mr Palgrove and Miss Hillyard is something that’s going on at the moment?”
2 Reported in Charity Ends At Home
“You know very well it isn’t,” Miss Beach said reprovingly to Miss O’Conlon, who pursed her lips, reflected a little while, and then admitted that perhaps her information was out of date, but not by many weeks.
Further questions were put by Love, simply because the longer the interview went on, the longer he would be able to gaze with official justification at two good-looking girls. Their answers gave no lead at all to the person in whose company Edna Hillyard had been content—or obliged—to abandon her job, her lodgings and her car.