The determined Laura had an interview with Mark before she set out for Torbury. She wanted an exact description of Miss Faintley down to the smallest detail that Mark could remember. Mark repeated the description he had already given to the inspector and went off to play tennis with his father. Laura boarded a bus and nearly two hours later was in conversation with the assistant in the bookshop which Miss Faintley had stated she would visit whilst Mark was buying his film. She bought one of the new Penguins to add to her collection, but obtained no other satisfaction. The assistant had not noticed the lady Laura described, and had told the police so already.
‘It’s all right,’ said Laura, with that air of frankness and innocent credulity which had got her out of many a tight place at school. ‘It’s really nothing on earth to do with me, but she was staying at my hotel, so naturally I’m rather interested. She seemed to be distinctly a bookworm, a quality to which I am partial. Are there any other bookshops in the town?’
She repeated her efforts at each of three more bookshops, received no help and went in search of some tea. Another thought struck her. Whatever else Miss Faintley had done she must have lunched somewhere. Laura wished she knew whether the woman was a restaurant, a good-pull-up or a pub-and-snack person. She might easily, of course, be a milk-bar devotee. In a city the size of Torbury it seemed hopeless to go to every place which offered rest and refreshment. There was one other possibility of tracing some of her movements, but, again, it offered only the remotest chance of success. If she were a smoker she might have gone into a tobacconist’s shop. Unfortunately, not only was Torbury supplied all too liberally with tobacconists’ shops but she had not thought of asking Mark whether Miss Faintley smoked. Possibly, however, he would not know.
It occurred to her that this could be remedied. She went into a public call-box and rang up the hotel. The call was answered from the office and she was told to hold on. The reply to her question came through quickly. The chambermaid on Miss Faintley’s floor had emptied an overflowing ashtray each time she tidied the room.
‘Eureka!’ said Laura, as she charged out of the telephone booth and returned to the bus station. From there she looked for the nearest tobacconist’s, and discovered one next door but three to the chemist’s at which Mark had purchased his film. The assistant recognized the description of Miss Faintley at once. She had bought a packet of twenty cigarettes, had paid with a pound note, and had asked the way to the railway station.
This was news indeed. Proud of her perspicacity, and the success which had at last attended it, Laura bought some cigarettes and went back to the bus stop. She boarded a bus which went to the station, and could not help wondering why Miss Faintley had not done the same thing. It seemed so very much more simple than asking the way in a shop. She knew, however, that she herself detested asking the way, and only did so as a last resort or if she happened to be badly pressed for time.
It took ten minutes for the bus to reach the station, and during that ten minutes Laura thought hard. There seemed no doubt that, if the tobacconist was right and it was Miss Faintley who had asked the way to the station, then the schoolmistress had abandoned Mark deliberately. The next question was whether she had formed this intention before or after leaving the boy at the chemist’s. If she had already decided to desert him when she issued the invitation at the hotel, then Mark (for all that it had seemed to Laura a highly unlikely theory at the time) might be right in supposing that he had been used as some kind of cover. Miss Faintley must have been interested that some person or persons should be misled into thinking that she intended to spend the day out with the boy, when, in reality, she proposed to travel by train to some destination at present unknown.
On the other hand, if the invitation had been given in good faith, then something must have happened in Torbury to make Miss Faintley change her plans. She could not have spoken to anybody on the bus; Mark would have mentioned that. She must have met somebody immediately the boy left her, and, in a very few minutes, rearranged her whole day without attempting to contact him and let him know.
Of the two theories, Laura much preferred the first. It was true that teachers, whichever their sex, were not apt to take children out for the day and then abandon them, but there was the practical question of time. Miss Faintley would have had to meet this acquaintance, buy the cigarettes, inquire the way to the station and receive (judging by the route Laura’s bus was taking) a complicated answer, if the second theory were to be tenable. Besides, Miss Faintley had been out of sight by the time Mark came by on that other bus on his way to the river, and all buses travelled up that straight long street from the bus station, past the chemist’s, the bookshop and the tobacconist’s, because there was no other way for them to go, so if Miss Faintley had been in the street Mark must have spotted her.
‘Unless she was still in the tobacconist’s when the kid came past on the bus… and, of course, most likely she was,’ thought Laura at this point. ‘And if she was, then the question of a time limit doesn’t seem quite so important. Yet she’d know… or, at least, she’d think . . . that Mark would come looking for her, and might try the tobacconist’s the moment he found she was not in the bookshop, so it wouldn’t make a very good hidey-hole. Besides, Mark couldn’t understand why Miss Faintley had offered to take him out. He was certain she couldn’t have wanted to. I think that the boy (and that includes me and my first theory) guessed right the very first time!’
Still feeling the flush of detective fever, Laura got off the bus and went to inquire at the station. She did not obtain any information there. A main-line West Country station in August was too busy a place for much notice to have been taken of anybody unless he or she had provoked a breach of the peace.
There was one thing more that Laura could do. She took the return route to the bus station, walked back to the tobacconist and asked whether the woman she had described had been alone. The tobacconist had no idea, and looked at Laura rather oddly.
‘I didn’t know they came in plain clothes,’ he said, not impudently but with a note of interrogation in his voice.
‘Who?’ Laura inquired.
‘Policewomen.’
‘Why shouldn’t they? It’s bound to be necessary sometimes.’
‘I suppose so, when you come to think of it. What’s she done, this woman?’
‘Absconded. I can’t tell you any more, you understand,’ said Laura, picking up her cue, ‘and she didn’t speak to anybody in the shop except to you?’
‘No. There wasn’t any other person here.’
Satisfied that there was no useful purpose to be served by remaining any longer in Torbury, and beginning to feel the need of her dinner, Laura caught the next bus back to Cromlech, and arrived at table to find Mrs Bradley just finishing her soup. Mrs Bradley ordered wine, and asked for an account of Laura’s adventures.
‘So I had better pass on to the police what I’ve found out,’ Laura concluded, ‘but it’s too late to bother about that to-night, unless I tell them over the telephone, and it doesn’t really seem to amount to all that much, does it?’
‘You will probably find that they know it already,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘therefore I should not allow it to trouble you until the morning. Enjoy your dinner, and afterwards we will join the revellers in the hotel ballroom.’
By the time they rose from table the dining-room had almost emptied. Laura was stopped on her way to the lounge by Mark, who had been waiting for her to come out.
‘Any luck?’ he asked in the tone of one conspirator to another.
‘A bit. Miss Faintley did mean to leave you on your own in Torbury. She went into a tobacconist’s and asked the way to the railway station.’