At ten past one, he wandered into the dining room. Mr Maddox was standing at the huge sideboard, mixing a salad dressing. He gave Love a knowing smile over the vinegar bottle and nodded to signify that the lady of whom he wotted was present already.
With the defensive instinct of those who rarely eat in restaurants, Love selected a table against the wall farthest from the door. He drew from his pocket the newspaper that he had remembered to buy especially for the occasion and bivouacked behind it.
Only half a dozen tables were occupied. He peeped over the top of the paper at each in turn. That, he decided, must be Miss Teatime—a woman sitting alone to whom a waitress was carrying soup.
The woman turned and smiled at the waitress. She looked rather pleasant, Love thought—almost attractive. No chicken, though; there was quite a bit of grey in her hair. Her pale blue costume, while not “gear”, was smart and she sat with the straight-backed dignity that Love tended to associate with aunts, librarians and other strictly a-sexual characters. It was a pity that she seemed so well preserved. Healthy women of that generation were confoundly keen on walking as a rule. Love’s toes curled apprehensively.
It was Mr Maddox who came to take his order.
“The lady in blue, on her own,” he whispered to the menu.
“That’s what I thought,” said Love.
“I take it you don’t want her to know that you’re...you know—bodyguarding?”
“Good lord, no!” Love breathed. “Braised steak,” he said aloud.
“Mum’s the word,” the manager hoarsely assured him, then “Soup, sir?” he boomed.
“No soup.” Love remembered that his quarry was one course ahead.
He hid behind his paper again and observed the delicate raising and lowering of Miss Teatime’s spoon. Her head was held gracefully, just a fraction forward, and had none of that curious motion—half butt, half scoop—that most soup drinkers find it necessary to adopt. She held the spoon at the very end of its handle and gave it the appropriate lateral twist with her wrist but with fine flexible fingers. Love found himself wondering if his young lady would prove amenable to instruction along similar lines; the effect really was dinky.
Thus preoccupied, the sergeant did not notice that Mr Maddox, having passed his order to the second waitress, was now stooped in guarded talk with another favoured customer. This was George Lintz, editor of the Flaxborough Citizen, a wiry man with a lean, mistrustful face bisected by a wide, apparently lipless mouth.
The manager was not actually imparting information. He repeated nothing of what Love had said. But he was a man within whom confidences lay like heavy, indigestible suppers. He would have burst if denied the relief of passing, with side-long glances and tucked-in chin, gusts of portentous innuendo. No great harm was done. All Mr Lintz gathered was that if everything were told about middle-aged ladies in blue costumes, an eye or two might be opened...that an hotel manager could write a book if so minded...that it took all sorts, and that, in a word, one never knew.
The editor, who was accustomed to this sort of importuning, bore it philosophically and forgot it as soon as Mr Maddox had sidled away.
There was someone else, however, who did not forget.
Miss Teatime had caught nothing of what the manager had been saying. But she did notice, without appearing to look in that direction, that some of Mr Maddox’s accompanying gestures were towards herself.
One didn’t mind being talked about, of course; it was nicer than being ignored all the time. The interesting thing was why one had been chosen as a topic.
Miss Teatime put down her soup spoon and looked around with an air of leisurely innocence. She gave an answering smile to one of the waitresses and to an elderly gentleman at another table. What she was really seeking was a sight of the person with whom the manager had been talking before he passed on to that rather common looking man with the thin mouth.
Just then, the waitress arrived at Love’s table with his braised steak. He lowered his newspaper, beamed at her, and pressed himself back into his chair while she arranged dishes.
Miss Teatime took the opportunity of scrutinizing him as thoroughly as a distance of twenty feet allowed.
She decided that he was young, florid, capable within certain rather narrow limits, persistent and basically good natured. Quite likeable, in fact...
Miss Teatime looked away again and mentally added the qualification:
...for a policeman.
Chapter Ten
Although Sergeant Love had been born and bred in Flaxborough and gravitated there once again after a few years’ service in other police divisions, he would not have claimed exhaustive knowledge of the town. Natives of any place have a tendency to take for granted those areas and features that lie outside the immediate orbit of home and work. Policing, of course, did make that orbit much wider in his case. Even so, there were lanes he had never entered, closes he had never explored, riverside walks that never had known his reluctant feet.
Miss Teatime was to be the instrument of the filling in of nearly all those gaps.
It seemed at first that she was a slow walker, much given to halting for the contemplation of such things as coping stones and door posts and coal hole covers and old fashioned street lamps. But Love soon learned how remorselessly she could clock on the mileage without any apparent effort. He had only to take his eyes off her slim, upright back for a few moments to find, on glancing again in her direction, that she had moved on and was rounding a corner a hundred yards away.
She led him, for two foot-stewing, thigh-racking days, past practically every name in the Flaxborough street directory and into parts of the outskirts that might, to his eyes, have been precincts of Kiev or Medicine Hat.
He slogged along wharves, banged his head in a tunnel under Barnet Street and trailed up a steep lane that led to what seemed to be a ruined keep. During other excursions, he found himself, for the very first time in his life, in the Grainger Museum and Art Gallery, a permanent exhibition of folk crafts in an annexe of the public library, and (very briefly) a ladies’ convenience in Brown and Derehams.
On the third day, the sergeant rested. But the circumstances were of Miss Teatime’s devising, not his own.
He had risen early and taken up his post in the diminutive room which Mr Maddox had put at his disposal and which commanded views of the hotel staircase and the doors of dining room and lounge. He could glimpse, just inside the dining room, Miss Teatime eating her breakfast.
Miss Teatime could not see the sergeant, but she guessed he was not far away; for forty-eight hours his face had bobbed in remote corners of her excellent vision like a pink lantern left burning in daylight. She was not unduly concerned, merely a little curious. And as she spread marmalade and began to read the letter lying by her plate, the thought of her rosy visaged familiar was for the moment dispelled altogether.
“4122 (R.N. retd.)” expressed delight at her having agreed to a meeting and would “weigh anchor” that very day in response to the signal he had so keenly awaited. Would she be in the Garden of Remembrance by St Laurence’s Church at eleven bells precisely...