On the ground floor at Trends I found a very nice set of apostle spoons and decided that this would be appropriate. The packaging of them was elegant and distinctive, so, armed with the box, I took the lift to the floor where the female fashions were displayed, dangled the package as a guarantee of my bona fides and was taken in charge by a young creature with almost silver hair. The package, however, had been spotted by McMaster’s magnificent blonde, who came swanning up and immediately superseded the youngster.
‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘whether I could have the young lady who served me the last time I was in here? She proved very helpful.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘She was a thin girl with black hair and a very white make-up. Green-eyed, I think, and full of helpful suggestions.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Could I have her again? I’m pretty hopeless at choosing things for my wife and this is to be a surprise.’
‘Oh, yes? Well, I am afraid the assistant you require is no longer with us.’
‘Oh, dear! I was relying on her as to size.’
‘Size?’
‘Well, you see, yes. She was just about the same height and size as my wife, so I thought I would get her to try on a few things, as it were, to give me some idea.’
‘I am sorry. That assistant left us the day before yesterday. Perhaps — ’ She made an imperious gesture and the silver-haired siren came up again. I smiled and shook my head.
‘Nothing for it but to bring my wife along,’ I said. ‘Rather does in the surprise aspect, but there it is.’
‘I am sorry we cannot help you.’
‘There is always a next time. Thanks very much. Hope I haven’t been a bother.’
‘Not at all. Good morning.’ She spotted a customer and glided away. I found myself left with Silverhair.
‘I’m looking for a girl named Gloria,’ I said. ‘I’m really a plain-clothes police officer and — ’
‘So that’s why she skipped! All I know is that she lived somewhere Culvert Green way. In a hostel of some sort, I think, but I never went there. Police! Coo! I should never have thought it. She seemed such a nice sort of girl. Domremy was her surname, very posh, and she was always ladylike, and never any nasty snide remarks about the other girls. We thought she left because she had an argument with Lady Muck. Police! Well, really!’
I took it that she referred to the magnificent blonde under the title of Lady Muck.
‘So Gloria had a dust-up with the supervisor or whatever she’s called,’ I said. ‘You are sure her name was Gloria?’
‘Of course I am. Sorry, a customer. Excuse me, please.’
The lead she had given me seemed too promising to ignore. I decided that I would try my luck at Culvert Green. It seemed certain now that Anthony and I had wrongly identified the corpse. My first thought was to telephone Dame Beatrice, but, although I hesitated outside the first public callbox I came to after I had left the shop, I changed my mind. It would be something really to report if I could say that I had actually tracked down Gloria and that she was alive after all.
It then occurred to me that the proper procedure would be to telephone the police, but I soon dismissed that idea, too. All that I could tell them was that an assistant saleswoman at Trends in London had been recognised as Gloria Mundy, that she had left in a hurry and that, although she had disguised herself to some extent, she had kept the name Gloria, had been of the required build and had been seen some weeks after her supposed death.
If I told the police all this, though, they would need to contact McMaster and, if he decided, after all, to stick to his ghost story, the police undoubtedly would ignore both of us — if, indeed, they did not doubt our sanity or decide that we were trying to perpetrate a hoax at their expense.
I had lunch at a restaurant and took a bus to Culvert Green. It is a pleasant suburb out on the Kent border not all that far from Blackheath. There were streets of small shops, but along the main road the houses had been built as large, middle-class, Victorian family dwellings with front gardens which were far enough from gate to doorway to give some privacy from the curiosity of passers-by.
Most of the houses had basements with their own steep, narrow steps leading to the servants’ entrances and flights of broad stone steps leading up to the front doors. Above the basements the houses rose in three storeys; they had large bay windows on the first floor, large Georgian-type windows on the floor above this, and much smaller, rather mean-looking windows on the top floor.
Some of the houses had been turned into flats, others had become business premises and their owners had taken down the street wall and gates (from which, in any case, the iron railings had been removed during the war) and had concreted what had been the front lawns and turned them into parking-spaces for the workers’ and management’s cars.
The other three houses past which I walked were a YWCA hostel, a hall of residence for college students and a more imposing mansion than either. This was a guest house called the Clovelly Private Hotel.
From what I had heard of Gloria I thought that this was more likely to be her choice than a YWCA hostel, so I mounted the steps and went in through an open front door which led into a small vestibule. Beyond this were swing doors. I pushed in and on my left there was the reception desk and behind it at a small table a woman and a girl of about nineteen were having a cup of tea.
They did not appear to have noticed my entrance, in spite of the fact that one of the swing doors had given a slight moan, so I coughed to attract attention. The older woman looked up.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘no vacancies. Residents only, and we’re full.’
‘I don’t need accommodation. I am looking for my sister and the place where she worked gave me this address. I am from the Argentine.’ (I suppose my subconscious mind brought this country uppermost, since I had been told that Coberley had had business interests there.) ‘So we have not met for years and she may be married by now. The name is M—’ I was about to say Mundy, but caught the word back and substituted ‘Malvern’.
‘No guest of that name here.’
‘She wrote to me that she was engaged to a man named Domremy. Would a Mrs Domremy mean anything to you? As I remember my sister, she was very slightly built and had red hair and a pale complexion. Sometimes she dyed part of her hair black, sometimes all of it was black.’
The woman shook her head, but the girl, who was still seated in the background, said, ‘It couldn’t be, could it?’
‘Couldn’t be what?’ asked the woman.
‘You know. That case in the papers. It said she had red hair one side of her head and black the other.’
‘Of course it couldn’t be her. We don’t get ourselves mixed up with murder and that kind of thing.’ She turned to me again. ‘We don’t know anything about a Miss Malvern or a Mrs Whatever name you said.’ She turned her back on me and went back to her cup of tea.
‘One moment,’ I said peremptorily.
‘Well?’
‘I am a police officer. If you know anything whatever about the woman with the red and black hair and do not disclose it, you will be hindering me in the execution of my duty, and that is an indictable offence.’
If either of them had asked me for my credentials at this point, I should have been stymied, but fortunately neither of them thought of it, any more than the girl in Trends had done. The older woman came back to the counter.
‘She was here, perhaps, if we’re talking about the same person,’ she said, ‘but please don’t ever mention it, us not wanting the reporters and the notoriety, and her hair was always dark while she was here. She called herself Parkstone and we never saw her with anything but dark-brown hair, not really black.’
‘Parkstone?’ What imp of mischief had been at work here, I wondered. ‘When did she leave?’