Trelawney joined her amusement. Then he withdrew his hand and looked at his watch.
“Now, then; how about some chow?”
“Chow,” she carefully pronounced, “would be most acceptable.”
“I thought we might try a little place I know just the other side of the station. They do awfully good scampi.”
Deep frozen dogfish tails, Miss Teatime knowledgeably reflected, but she nodded and said: “Yes, let’s.”
Mr Trelawney stood up briskly and with a flourish offered his arm. They left the garden.
Seven hours later, Miss Teatime sighed and declared: “Such a pleasant day. You really have been very kind, Jack.”
They were in the booking hall of Flaxborough Station and Trelawney was hooking a return half ticket from his waistcoat pocket. “The pleasure has been all mine,” he assured her.
Miss Teatime still did not know where he lived. The point seemed to have been lost amidst the much more interesting matters that had cropped up during the afternoon and early evening. She had gathered, though, that it was somewhere within fairly easy reach by train and that the train, in fact, was Mr Trelawney’s habitual means of coming into Flaxborough whenever business (unspecified) or shopping required it.
They had made arrangements for their next meeting and Trelawney had insisted that she spare herself the chilly tedium of standing on the platform until the train pulled out. Station farewells, he had observed, were even worse than embarkations, which at least had the merit of affording a whiff of good sea air. So Miss Teatime gave him a smile and a little wave as he stepped, with naval smartness, past the barrier and disappeared round the corner of the bookstall; then she turned at once and made her way to East Street.
Entering the Roebuck lobby, she caught sight of the manager’s bald head bent over ledgers in the reception office.
“Mr Maddox...”
He looked up, saw her, and ran a great smile of the trade to his masthead (no, really, I must stop this nautical imagery nonsense, Miss Teatime snapped to herself).
“Mr Maddox, a word in private with you, if you would be so kind.”
Fussily he ushered her into the office.
“I am being followed by a police officer.”
“Surely not!”
“There is no doubt of it. Oh, but there is no need to look so concerned. I am quite accustomed to being, as they say, shadowed by the police.”
The manager’s frown of anxiety became a gape.
“I thought I’d better mention it,” Miss Teatime went on smoothly. “These dear people are not invariably as unobtrusive as they—and I—would wish, and if they were to excite a little curiosity it would be only natural.”
“Natural, yes,” echoed the bewildered Mr Maddox.
“I’m so glad you understand. Mind you, my own view is that I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, but you will never persuade police commissioners that in England a woman can be rich and safe at the same time.” She chuckled, as though at a sudden memory. “Poor old Sir Arthur...I really think he pictures me as carrying the entire capital assets of Teatime Engineering around in my handbag!”
At this so absurd delusion, Mr Maddox laughed outright. He looked decidedly relieved about something or other.
As soon as Miss Teatime had bidden him goodnight and gone in search of what she termed her “bedtime unwinder”, he took from beneath the blotter the bill he had intended to present to her the following morning. He looked at it, screwed it up and threw it into the wastepaper basket.
Chapter Eleven
Purbright received Love’s account of failure far more equably than the sergeant had hoped. Not that the inspector was a choleric man—most people, including the chief constable, thought him unnaturally meek for a policeman and one in authority at that. But his mild manner contained a seam of ironic shrewdness against which many a specious or blustering argument had splintered. It was Purbright’s “sarcasm”, as those who failed to impose upon him called it, that made stupid people nervous.
“There isn’t much you could have done about it, as far as I can see,” he told Love. “One doesn’t expect ladies of gentle breeding to go clambering about back stairs. But we shall have to remember that Miss Teatime has a much sharper eye than we had supposed.”
“She must have a guilty conscience, as well,” said Love, darkly.
“Not necessarily, Sid. None of us cares to be snooped after. Purely on principle, I’m very much against it myself. I think the better of the lady for giving you the slip.”
“Well, that’s not...”
The inspector waved aside Love’s indignation. “No, we’ll just have to be practical and decide how we can tighten things up.”
“I can’t watch both sides of that hotel at once.”
“Hardly.” Purbright turned and examined a town map that was pinned to the wall behind his desk. Having found the Roebuck, he kept a finger on the spot and studied the surrounding lanes. He shook his head.
“No...I had wondered if there might be a sort of common factor—some place from which she would have to be visible, whichever way she came out. There isn’t, though.”
“You could put someone else to watch the back,” Love suggested.
“Laying siege to the place, you mean?”
The sergeant looked blank.
“The trouble is,” said Purbright, “that there’s only Pook to spare.”
In the way the inspector said it, “only Pook” sounded like a formula in physics expressive of the nearest thing to non-existence.
“You could put him at the back. As a kind of stopper. I mean, if he looked obvious she might think he was the only one and nip back again to the front. So to speak,” Love concluded, doubtfully.
Purbright sighed. “We can but try. Mind you, there’s one bit of encouragement to be drawn. She must have had some good reason to dodge you on this particuar occasion. It does look as if somebody’s taken the bait.”
“I only hope he’s used to walking.”
There was a knock and the duty sergeant’s head appeared round the door.
“A lady’s asking if she can see someone about that Miss Reckitt. Will you have a word with her, sir?”
Love departed after holding the door for the entry of a very plump woman in a short yellow coat and thinking that she looked rather like a pot of mustard. Purbright rose and arranged a chair for her.
“You are...?”
“My name is Huddlestone. Miss Huddlestone. There was something in the paper about a friend...I thought you might tell me what they think has...I mean it’s something about being missing. Is that right?”