The scullery was thick with bluebottles, most of them crawling in and out of the blood-filled basins. In one of the basins there was a soup ladle. I could only guess that Duca had fed before he left.
I went through to the living room, just as Tim was coming back into the house.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized. “Thought I had a strong stomach.”
“Don’t worry about it. I think Keston had the right idea, staying outside.”
I looked around the living room. It would take a police forensics team to work out exactly what had happened here, but I could guess. Duca had forced Terence to drive him here to his mother’s house — the last place that we would have thought of looking for him. Then it had probably questioned him about our investigation — who I was, how much we knew, what we were going to do to hunt it down. After that, it had murdered both Terence and his mother and had fastened their bodies to the scullery wall in a deliberate mockery of Christ and Christianity.
While I waited for George Goodhew to arrive from MI6, I made a systematic search of the living room. I even got down on my knees and looked underneath the sofa, where I found dozens of dog-eared knitting patterns and three crumpled Mars Bars wrappers.
I opened drawers crammed with cut-out recipes from, Woman’s Weekly and stray buttons and cotton reels. In the right-hand corner of the room stood a semicircular telephone table, with a crochet tablecloth on it, and a framed photograph of Terence’s mother on her wedding day. The telephone receiver was off the hook. I picked it up and listened but it was dead. I jiggled the cradle a few times but it stayed dead. In those days, if you left your phone off the hook for long enough, they cut you off.
On the carpet underneath the table I found a crumpled piece of notepaper. Somebody had written on it SOTON QE = 1200, in blunt pencil, in shaky, childlike letters. On one side of the piece of paper there was a dark brown oval which looked very much like blood.
“Tim,” I said. “What do you make of this?”
Tim peered at it, and then handed it back. “Soton. that’s short for Southampton.”
“What about the rest of it?”
“Well. QE could mean the Queen Elizabeth, I suppose. She docks at Southampton. Twelve. I don’t know, that could mean a twelve o’clock sailing.”
“You mean Terence could have made a reservation to cross the Atlantic?”
“Yes, I suppose it could.”
I jiggled the cradle a few times and eventually an impatient voice said, “Operator?”
“Oh, yes. Hi. I was wondering if you could tell me the last number dialed on this phone.”
“Wait a minute, sir. I’ll have to check.”
A minute became two minutes and then five. At last the operator came back on the line and said, “Southampton seven-two-two-seven.”
“Can you tell me whose number that is?”
“It’s the new twenty-four-hour reservations office for the Cunard Shipping Line, sir.”
“And what time was that call made?”
“Seven minutes past two this morning, sir.”
Tim looked at his watch. “I really think Keston is going to need a bit of a walk now, sir. He’s had his breakfast, he always has to stretch his legs afterward, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you think he’s going to be OK? I really need a dog right now.”
“To be honest with you, sir, he’s looking a bit dicky.”
“This thing I’m after — I think it’s trying to leave the country.”
“Sorry, sir. Thing?”
“The thing that killed those two people in there.”
Tim looked perplexed. “Whatever it is, sir, I don’t think that Keston will go after it. I’ve never seen him like this before. Well, only once. Out in Suez, somebody put him off the scent with lion manure.”
I rang the Cunard Line reservations number. After another lengthy wait, I was answered by a chippy young girl. “Somebody made a reservation on a Cunard ship at about ten after two this morning,” I told her. “This is an urgent security matter. I need to know who it was, and what ship they’re booked on.”
She wouldn’t tell me, of course, so in the end I had to talk to her supervisor, and her supervisor had to call MI6 to verify my credentials. This wasted another fifteen minutes, and meanwhile Duca was putting ever-increasing miles between it and me.
At last, the supervisor came back to tell me that Mr. Terence Mitchell had telephoned to book a cabin on the Queen Elizabeth bound for New York via Cherbourg, sailing at noon today.
In Pursuit
George Goodhew arrived just as I was leaving the house. His gray Rover was closely followed by three other cars and a plain navy-blue van. A dozen young men in suits climbed out of the cars, and two Home Office pathologists climbed out of the van.
“I think that Duca’s trying to get out of the country,” I said. “It forced Terence to make a booking for it on the Queen Elizabeth.”
“Yes, but hold on. Duca hasn’t got a passport, has he — or it, I mean. They won’t let it on board without a passport.”
“It won’t need a passport, George. It can move so fast they won’t even see it. It can slide through a gap that’s half an inch wide.”
“All the same, I can alert the police and customs at Southampton. And we can hold the sailing if necessary.”
“Well, OK. But tell the police, don’t try to detain it. It can rip them apart as soon as look at them, and we don’t want any more casualties. I have to get down there, with my Kit.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“That’s great, thanks.”
Tim came up, with Keston trotting behind him on his leash. “How is he?” I asked him. “That Queen Elizabeth’s a hell of a big boat. I could really use a good dog.”
“I’m sorry sir. I don’t think he’s going to be up to it.”
I looked down at Keston and I had to admit to myself that I had never seen a dog look so cowed. His head was lowered and he couldn’t stop trembling, as if he was suffering from hypothermia. “All right, Tim,” I told him. “I’ll just have to find another man-trailer, that’s all.”
I picked up my Kit and put it on the backseat of George’s Rover. We left Terence’s mother’s house just as the Home Office pathologists were walking in with their brown overalls and their cameras and their forensic equipment, and headed south through Croydon town center. George managed to change gear and smoke and talk on his radio-telephone all at the same time, blasting his horn impatiently at anybody who slowed him down.
“Cunard won’t postpone the sailing,” he said, as we came closer to Purley. “Charles Frith doesn’t want to postpone it, either. It’ll attract too much publicity. The Foreign Secretary’s on board, as well as Loretta Young, and some Russian bigwigs, too.”
“In that case, we’ll have to make sure we get to Southampton before she sails.”
I directed him to the Foxleys’ house. He parked in the driveway with the engine running while I went to the front door and rang the doorbell.
Mya Foxley answered, almost at once. Her hair was fraying and she looked as if she hadn’t slept.
“Mrs. Foxley, I know Jill isn’t feeling too good, but I really have to talk to her.”
“I’m sorry, she isn’t here.”
“she’s not here? She hasn’t had to go to hospital?”
“No, no. A man came round to call for her, about two hours ago. She said that he was something to do with the police, and she would have to go with him. She even packed an overnight bag.”
At that moment, Bullet appeared, his crimson tongue hanging out in the heat. He looked up at me and wuffed.