‘Oh, that would have been a fortnight ago.’
‘Do you know where she worked?’
‘Oh, yes, she worked at Trends in the West End.’
‘Did she ever have visitors?’
‘Not that I know of. I shouldn’t think her sort would have wanted them if the police wanted her. No wonder she left here, if you were on her track.’
‘Did she leave anything behind?’
‘Oh, no. We’re fully furnished, so she only took her clothes with her. There was nothing else. Look, we can’t help you, so you’ll keep us out of the papers, won’t you? This place is my livelihood, you see, mine and my daughter’s.’ She indicated the girl at the table.
‘We are very discreet,’ I said. ‘I shan’t need to trouble you again, I’m sure. Did this Miss Parkstone leave a forwarding address for letters?’
‘Oh, no, nothing of that sort. She would have left it with the post-office, I expect.’
I had no idea what to do next. I seemed to have come to a dead end almost as soon as I had started. I walked somewhat disconsolately to the bus stop, but while I stood there I thought of one more thing which I could do, although, in my chastened state of mind, I did not think anything would come of it. I left the bus stop and walked down a side street to the post-office, not really believing for a moment that Gloria would have left an address there if she was on the run, as now seemed more than likely.
It was one of those places which combines postal business with keeping a little shop. This one sold stationery, birthday cards, sello-tape, string, paperbacks, pencils and pencil-sharpeners, paperclips, india-rubbers and other oddments, so I made a few purchases and then went to the post-office counter and bought some stamps.
‘I want to send birthday cards to my nieces,’ I said, ‘but they seem to have moved from their hotel. Would you have a forwarding address for Parkstone, Mundy and Domremy?’
The name Mundy appeared to mean nothing to the elderly woman behind the wire mesh. Perhaps she did not read the papers.
‘We have one for Parkstone,’ she said. ‘Where did your niece live? We don’t usually give people’s addresses to strangers.’
‘Until fairly recently she was staying at the Clovelly Private Hotel near here.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then. You can’t be a stranger. I’ll write it down for you.’
I began to see how con-men make a living. I took the bit of paper she handed me, thanked her, bought a ball of string and some fancy wrapping paper from the girl who had already served me, added these to my other small purchases and then bought a carrier bag. My camouflage, I decided, had been foolproof. I tucked away the precious piece of paper and went back to the bus stop.
That evening I wrote to Dame Beatrice to tell her what McMaster had told me and to give her an account of my experiences in Culvert Green. I posted it so that it would go off by the first collection next morning. Then I looked at the piece of paper the woman at the post-office had given me. It bore the address of a house in the little town of Chaynorth in Sussex.
I knew Chaynorth pretty well. One of McMaster’s hotels was just outside it, so I had explored it and all the countryside round it when I was working on the brochures. I promised myself a pleasant day out when I went to make enquiries about the nomadic Parkstone, Domremy and Gloria Mundy.
14
Unexpected Developments
« ^ »
This time, of course, I took the car. It was an easy and pleasant run from London. I decided to have lunch in the town and then find the house I wanted.
There were two hotels, the White Hart, built on the foundations of an abbey guest-house, and a quiet Georgian building — quiet, that is to say, because it was in a side street and not on the main road through the town — called Bartlemy’s. I suppose I could have gone a little way out and got myself a free, and possibly a better, lunch at McMaster’s hotel, but this seemed rather like scrounging, so I resisted what, I will admit, was a temptation and settled for the White Hart.
The hotel was in the high street opposite the old court house where, as I had stated in the brochure, the assizes used to be held, so at one time the White Hart had been much patronised by lawyers. Inside the place one stepped straight into a story by Charles Dickens. There was a heavy, homely, slightly musty atmosphere, the bar was in the charge of a dragon who could have been Mrs Squeers in person, and the dining-room, into which I peeped before ordering a drink, was dim, dark-wainscoted and furnished with large mahogany tables and with chairs of the kind our great-grandfathers probably had in the dining-rooms of their gloomy Victorian homes. On the walls were heavily framed portraits of whiskered gentlemen in Dickensian collars and cravats, and over the mantelpiece, below which a coal fire was burning, hung a vast picture portraying a heavy-featured gentleman in the wig and robes of a judge.
I ordered a drink from the dragon. I would have liked a cocktail, but I met an eye which apparently dared me to ask for such a thing, so I ordered a dry sherry. It turned out to be about double the size served in other bars and no dearer.
‘You’ll be staying for lunch, I suppose,’ she said. Nervously I replied that I would like to have lunch. ‘Then make that drink last,’ she said. ‘One o’clock’s the time we serve. You’d better see the head waiter. He’ll book you if there’s room. It’s market day. He’ll be in the garden. Put your drink down. I’ll keep an eye on it.’
‘Which way is the garden?’
‘Through there.’ She pointed to an archway on my left. I abandoned the sherry to her guardianship, went through the archway and traversed a vast, panelled room hung with pictures of hunting scenes and decorated with post-horns, whips, deers’ heads, stuffed pheasants and a giant pike, the last two items in glass cases.
Passing through this mausoleum, I found another door, which opened on to a wooden balcony. From the balcony a long flight of wooden steps with a handrail led down into a long, narrow garden. This was given over mostly to fruit trees now denuded of their produce, but in a border on the right-hand side of a narrow path were some tatty, dreary-looking, bronze and yellow chrysanthemums, about the most uninspiring inflorescences I have ever seen, I think.
Near the end of the garden two elderly men were standing. The taller, whom I took to be one of the hotel guests, was wearing a smoking-jacket and black and grey plaid trousers; the other had on a winged collar and a black frock coat. The old gentleman in the smoking-jacket addressed me.
‘Too late for the plums, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘I didn’t come for plums,’ I said. ‘I wanted to book a table for lunch.’
‘Ah,’ said the other old man, ‘certainly, sir. Come along while I look at my list. I can’t promise you a table to yourself. Our tables are for six or eight persons, and our lunches are popular, sir, very popular.’
‘That’s all right. I’m a writer. I like company,’ I told him. ‘One listens and learns.’
‘We used to get the lawyers,’ he said, preceding me along the narrow path, ‘but not now. They’ve moved the assizes to Bigsey. A pity, sir. Oh, dear! The stories those lawyers could tell! Quite hair-raising, some of them. Other times it was as much as I could do to keep a straight face as a young waiter. Very hilarious, sir, lawyers, and very improper at times. Worse than doctors, I’d say. Will you mount the steps first, sir? I shall be slower than you. The gentleman you saw me with is the owner of this hotel. He misses the lawyers sadly.’
As we walked through the long lounge with its trophies, he went on, ‘A writer, did you say, sir? We have a lady of your calling lunching here for the next fortnight. Dinner, too, so I have managed to squeeze in a little table for her, as our regulars are mostly gentlemen, but there would be room for two if she gave permission.’