Then, almost at once, it moved on. She had not heard a single door slam. Moldham, apparently, had sent none of its sons and daughters to the big town that day.
Miss Teatime switched on the lamp behind the driving mirror and consulted her map.
Only Benstone Ferry now, then Chalmsbury Town. Its true that the train went on from Chalmsbury to Brocklestone, but that was nearly thirty miles farther on. Surely Trelawney did not come all that way to press his suit? No, at Chalmsbury she would call it a day.
Darkness steadily deepened as she drove the five miles to Benstone. It spread out from the hollows in the fields and gathered beneath hedges. The road, winding now, and with a disconcerting way of slipping suddenly away to right or left as if alarmed by her headlights, was of the greyness of grey cats. She could defeat it only by remaining constantly alert and using the lower gears to whip the car into pursuit of every advantage that its lights revealed. The Renault’s cornering, she told herself happily, was tight as a turd in a trumpet.
Even so, on such a road at this time of day there was no better than an even chance of reaching Benstone Ferry before the train. Would there still be a waterway between her and the line? She would need to have another look at the map as soon as she got to the village.
A long mass of darkness loomed up on her left. She was passing a plantation. A brown blob moved erratically from the side of the road ahead. It was in her path, creeping first one way and then another. She braked, dropped into second gear and skirted round it, smiling at the glimpse she had had of tiny eyes and a wet boot-button snout. Hedgehogs, she considered, were very endearing creatures.
Against the glimmering west, the black peaks of roadside cottages began to appear. An isolated street lamp’s yellow rays fell upon the signboard of an inn...George the Fourth, tight-collared and archly surprised, a great pale blue, bejewelled, silk-bound dropsy in the sky. Farther on were the lighted windows of four shops and a cabin in which a group of Benstone villagers stood waiting before a fish and chip range.
Miss Teatime pulled up and held the map in the light from the cabin. The station was about a quarter of a mile away, along the next road on the right. And this side, thank God, of the canal—here called the Benstone Eau apparently.
She made the turn and almost at once saw the train’s lights, a distant golden chain moving slowly to the left. From the station, just visible at the far end of her headlamps’ beam, four or five people were walking up the lane towards her. They drew to the side to let her pass and she scanned their faces. Strangers.
Then she spotted a figure on its own, moving past the corner of the station. She recognized Trelawney as he stooped to unlock the door of a car.
Miss Teatime drove straight past, continued for about a hundred yards, and stopped just beyond a gateway, into which she reversed. As soon as she saw Trelawney’s car emerge from the station yard and turn towards the village, she swung back on to the lane and followed it.
In Benstone, the other car crossed the main road and gained speed down a hill. Miss Teatime kept a fifty-yard distance from the two red tail lights. These flickered every now and then, presumably when the car went over one of the frequent patches of uneven surface.
The descent ended in a left turn, after which the road climbed steeply for a while before levelling off between what seemed to be stretches of common. Another turn led them past a grove of silver birch and down into the valley of a stream.
It was at the moment when the commander’s car reared to cross a hump-backed bridge over this stream that its tail lights winked twice and died. Miss Teatime accelerated to close the gap but by the time she reached the bridge the short stretch of road between it and the next corner was empty.
The rest of the climb from the valley was so tortuous that only an occasional white glow among the trees indicated that Trelawney, who obviously knew the road well, was still ahead.
At the top, Miss Teatime found herself in high, open country. Not far away, skeins of cold violet light evidenced the main streets of a town. Chalmsbury, no doubt. But where had dear Jack got to?
There...She saw the narrow, rather weak beams lift and fall, swing round, turn again...
Odd. They had gone out.
She drove on to where she thought Trelawney’s headlights had last been visible, but realized how difficult the darkness made her judgment. On her left was the opening to a little lane. Farther on was another turning. And on the opposite side of the road, a third. He could have gone up any of these.
Pulling up, she quickly switched off the engine and opened the window. She listened intently. A faint throbbing came to her for a few seconds only, but from what direction she could not be sure. Then, distantly, the sound of a closing door. Silence.
She put on the mirror light and traced on the map the journey she had made from Benstone Ferry. The common, the valley with the stream, the bridge...the route was quite easy to follow. And so—her ringer moved on—she must now be exactly...yes, here. She pencilled a ring round the three little side roads.
Miss Teatime leaned back in her seat and considered. She was certainly not going to traipse around on foot in the darkness. At least she knew now where to come. Ten minutes in daylight would be enough for finding out the rest. If that proved necessary. It might not, of course. She knew better than to be greedy. Particularly in this case. Goodness, yes. If all went as it should tomorrow, she would leave well alone. If not...well, a girl had to live and there was more than one way of skinning a cat.
Chapter Sixteen
Commander Trelawney leaned from the carriage window and blew a kiss to the receding figure of Lucy Teatime. Not until she was out of sight, lost in the straggle of hesitant, slightly embarrassed seers-off on the Flaxborough up platform, did he withdraw his head, close up the window and sit down.
The train was that recommended by Flaxborough booking clerks as “the best of the day”—a testimonial that might have had a brighter ring had it not sounded, in their mouths, synonymous with “the best of a bad lot“. In fact, it was quite reliably fast and comfortable and a good deal cleaner than expresses from more notable centres of population.
The commander had lunch “aboard”, as he would have said if Miss Teatime had been there, and filled in the rest of the time before the train’s arrival at Euston by reading a boat-builders’ catalogue which had arrived for him by that morning’s post.
He was surprised and more than a little gratified to learn how expensive a relatively humble river craft was. The more ambitious models were comparable in price with the best makes of motor car. As for the builder’s largest and most lavishly equipped offerings, these were illustrated without mention of such vulgar irrelevancies as cost, but it was obvious from the scale up to that point that the four thousand mark was by no means high water.
It was nearly two o’clock when Trelawney left the train and took a taxi to Waterloo. London was colder than he had expected. The sky was full of low, curd-like cloud, driven by a wind that swooped fitfully into the streets and set grit and bus tickets swirling in the shop doorways.