“How very odd,” he said, three minutes later.
Trelawney took back the letter and put it in his pocket. He continued to regard Mr Cambridge in grim silence.
“There obviously has been some misunderstanding, Mr Trelawney. To me, that letter is quite incomprehensible. I’m awfully sorry.”
“Then you don’t know this...this woman?”
“I have never even heard of her.”
Trelawney nodded. He looked very angry indeed.
When he had gone, Mr Cambridge sorted among the children until he found Evelyn, whom he led by the hand into the room with all the musical instruments.
“Tell me, Evelyn,” he said, “do you know a lady called Miss Lucilla Teatime?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn.
“And who is she?”
“I don’t know who she is, but I can tell you where she used to live.”
“All right.”
“Three doors up, on the other side. She was very nice.”
“But is she there now?”
“Not now. She went away. She said she was going to get married to Mr Jackman. He keeps that jeweller’s next to the paper shop at the top.”
“I see.”
“But I don’t think she ever did.”
Once the commander had been borne away on Flaxborough’s best train of the day to London, Miss Teatime quitted the platform and went at once to the Field Street branch of the Provinces and Maritime Bank.
As she entered, she received a nod of recognition from the clerk with whom she and Trelawney had arranged the opening of their joint account two days before. She smiled back at him and drew a chair to a small table set against the wall.
The clean, sharp-edged cheque book positively creaked with newness when she folded back its cover. Only one cheque had been used; it was now on its way to Twickenham. Little girls were lucky these days, Miss Teatime told herself. No one had travelled across half England with an order for her to be paid five hundred pounds when she was a child. The only bouncy thing she had ever been brought was a ball.
She dated the next cheque in the book and wrote “cash” in small, maidenly copperplate. Amount...now what should she put? To lift the full sum of dear Jack’s transfer of the previous day was feasible but crude. There were no grounds, of course, on which it could be challenged. The account was hers no less than his. And yet...No, taking the whole lump would be as bad as wiping up gravy with a piece of bread. There was too much wolfish behaviour in the world today.
She appended her neat signature, filled in the counterfoil and carefully tugged free the cheque.
“Good morning, Miss Teatime.”
(Her name remembered on only the second occasion? What a conscientious young man. What a nice bank.)
“Good morning, Mr Allen.” The name was engraved on a bronze plate set above the grille. (Bronze, not plastic: the employees of this bank were clearly no fly-by-night journeymen.)
Mr Alien picked up the cheque, glanced at it in the most cheerfully matter-of-fact way, and nodded. “Four ninety-seven, eighteen and six. Yes...I shan’t keep you a moment, Miss Teatime.”
He wheeled off his stool and disappeared through a door in the partition behind him.
Two minutes later, he was back, brisk and obliging as ever. But he was no longer holding the cheque.
He leaned forward, smiling. “If you will just go down to that end of the counter, Miss Teatime”—his head gave a slight tilt to his left—“Mr Beach will look after you.”
She looked in the direction indicated and saw a plump, friendly-seeming man standing twenty feet away. He beckoned her benignly, and showed her into an office. The office, with its orange carpet, glass and aluminium table, and long, bottle green velvet curtains, looked more like an advertising agent’s gin parlour.
Miss Teatime accepted the proffered chair. Mr Beach took his seat behind a desk of maple, inlaid with what appeared to be white porcelain lozenges, each initialled “P & M“.
He made of his fingers a prayer-pyramid and looked under it at Miss Teatime’s cheque, lying on a blotting pad.
“Now, Miss Teatime, I take it that you wish to withdraw a sum of four hundred and ninety seven pounds from the account which you have jointly with Mr Trelawney.”
“I do, yes.”
“You are aware, I expect, that a customer with a bank account—any kind of account—may not take out more money than there is credited to that account?”
There was a pause.
“Mr Beach, I really do not see any need for irony. It is pure coincidence that matters in connection with our business—Mr Trelawney’s and mine—have arisen which necessitate this withdrawal so soon after the money was deposited. But, after all, it is our money, Mr Beach, and...”
She stopped. Of course she knew what had happened. It was only some kind of professional reflex action that had made her pretend ignorance and indignation.
Mr Beach raised his eyes.
“How much did you suppose this account contained?” he asked.
Miss Teatime appeared to think for a moment.
“Five hundred and five pounds. Oh—less ten shillings for the cheque books, I suppose.”
“I regret to say that you are under some misapprehension, Miss Teatime. Deducting the cheque book charges—ten shillings, as you say—there remains of the original deposit exactly four pounds ten shillings.”
She stared.
“But...but Mr Trelawney called yesterday in order to transfer five hundred pounds from his personal account into this one.”
“If that was his intention, I’m afraid something must have prevented his coming in,” said Mr Beach. He sounded very sympathetic.
“Dear me...”
“Oh, you mustn’t worry about it, Miss Teatime. We are quite used to these small misunderstandings. They happen, you know, they happen. Even in the best regulated circles, I assure you...” (Oh, for crying out loud, thought Miss Teatime.) “The bank is not embarrassed. We are aware of how busy people are nowadays and how easily things slip their memories. In all probability—in all probability, I say—Mr Trelawney will be calling in some time today and then we can...”
She rose, ignoring the cheque that Mr Beach had begun to wave diffidently in her direction.
“All I can say about Mr Trelawney,” she interrupted firmly, before walking to the door, “is that he has a pretty piss-boiling way of going about things.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was the following morning that a letter with a Derby postmark and addressed to Inspector Purbright arrived at Flaxborough police station. He opened it eagerly.
About that little talk we had, [Miss Huddlestone had written], and the thing you asked me to try and remember—well I have puzzled it over and all of a sudden today it came to me what Martha (Miss Reckitt) meant by Catching a Crab.
When we were children and both living in Chalmsbury we went for walks a lot and often brought back fruit and things for our mothers to make jam. Well there was a cottage not far from my home, out towards Benstone Ferry, and it had a big, garden with fruit trees. An old lady lived in it then and we noticed that she didn’t pick the fruit much, so one day we knocked and asked if we could take some apples. She said Oh they are just crabs, you know, so we said we wouldn’t bother. Actually we thought she wasn’t quite right in the head and when we got home I told my mother that a funny old woman had made out that she had crabs in the garden, just as if it was the seaside. And mother said don’t be so silly, she just meant crab-apples and they were very good for jelly. Anyway we went back and got some, and the next year as well, but we often had a good laugh over getting that idea about crabs. Of course Martha would remember it straight away when this man took her to see it. It was called Brookside Cottage and the last time I saw it it had been done up a good deal and had a garage and that sort of thing. It stands on its own at the end of a lane—Mill Lane I think we used to call it—about two miles out of Chalmsbury on the Benstone Road. I do hope this is some use to you and that you soon find what has happened to poor Martha.