“Well, he’s got a thing about drink, you know,” the woman explained. “Religious.”
“Ah,” said Miss Teatime.
The man had recovered himself sufficiently to kick the bucket into the roadway. Muttering, he watched its contents drain away. Then he packed ladders and bucket on the barrow and swung it round in order to depart. Miss Teatime saw revealed on its other side the second half of his proclamation:...OUR ONLY DRINK BY LAW.
“I hope,” she said five minutes later to the girl in the reception office of the Roebuck, “that this is not a temperance hotel. The point hadn’t occurred to me when I booked.”
“Oh, no, madam. We’re fully licensed.”
“Excellent. In that case perhaps you would be good enough to have a little whisky sent to my room. Also a copy of the local paper, if you don’t mind.”
She went upstairs, accompanied by a chambermaid carrying her cases. The room, she saw with instant pleasure, overlooked the river. Through the net-curtained casement she glimpsed the tops of masts and the jib of a dock crane; it looked like the neck of an inquisitive dinosaur. The small bed had a frilled cover, white, with a wealth of fat pink roses. There was a matching armchair beside the gas fire. A pot of white cyclamen stood on a little table in the centre of the room. At the foot of the bed was one of those curious slatted stools, of uncertain purpose, that are found only in English hotel rooms, and in a corner was the inevitable plywood wardrobe that sways and emits the hollow rattle of hangers when one first tries to open the door but which, once broached, can never again be closed.
Miss Teatime had a brief, maidenly wash, changed her dress and shoes, and pulled the chair nearer the window. She had just sat down after looping back the curtain when the girl from the reception office arrived with a glass of whisky and a newspaper. Miss Teatime noted approvingly that the whisky was a double.
“Did you feel faint after the journey, madam?” The girl held the glass like a medicine measure.
“Not a bit of it. Cheers!”
The girl withdrew, looking slightly bewildered.
For a while, Miss Teatime watched the dark water of the river slipping by below. It flowed through a canyon of warehouse walls. They were of some kind of stone, pale cinnamon streaked with sage, and pierced high above the water line by dark apertures with gently rounded tops. From some of these jutted timber gallows. The ceaseless wheeling of gulls superimposed on the scene a fluid pattern of flashing white.
She turned at last from the window, finished her drink, and unfolded the Flaxborough Citizen.
It was a voluminous paper that tented the small woman in the armchair. She made a quick survey of its general contents, then folded it back at the second page of classified advertisements. This contained a Situations Vacant section and a Personal column.
With a pencil Miss Teatime ringed three advertisements under Situations. All were for companions.
Next she took from one of her cases the Flaxborough Street Directory and Gazetteer which she had received by post a fortnight before. She looked up three names and addresses and turned three times to the town map. What she inferred from these references did not, apparently, impress her. She scribbled through the pencilled rings and began to explore the Personal column.
It was not promising.
Most of the entries were purely commercial advertisements, couched in pert or whimsical terms. Thus: “A.D.—Meet me at the Flaxborough Pram Mart, Tuesday, and we’ll choose our Bargain together. They have fabulous easy terms.—Daisy.”
Or: “Don’t beef, come to Hambles, West Row, where they have the finest meat in town.”
The blandishments of money lenders were much in evidence. “From ten to ten thousand pounds” was to be had at the drop of a postcard, and with no security. Miss Teatime smiled to herself. She knew that the “no security” was intended to qualify the borrower’s legal position, not the loan.
Here, too, was the hunting ground of the hawkers of such curious boons as foolproof chimney cowls, denture fixatives (“spare yourself shame”), cures for stuttering and means to learn the mandolin in a week.
She was admonished in turn to learn the secrets of the Rosicrucians, provide herself with the powers of Joan the Wad and avoid furs got by torture.
Then came a wide selection of addresses from which, under plain cover, unspecificed artifacts in rubber would be promptly dispatched. “Good old thousand per cent and no overheads,” murmured Miss Teatime to herself.
Her eye travelled down.
“Unparalleled opportunity for lovers of unusual art...”
Good God! Maisie and Ted were still at it. The same, exactly. Real old troupers.
“A business opening exists...” Oh, no. Not that one.
“Gentleman who has written novel about exciting war experiences would appreciate advice as to having same published.” Better. But still only as a last resort. Alas, those gentlemen from the war...
Ah!
Right at the bottom of the column, it was. Something for which she had not dared to hope. Not in remote, prosperous, hard headed Flaxborough.
A matrimonial bureau.
Well, what else could be meant by “Handclasp House: Are you weary of the solitary path?”
Miss Teatime read the whole advertisement through carefully. Clients from all walks of life...introductions arranged...view to permanent association...countless instances of happiness...small initial fee...There was no doubt about it.
She took from her handbag a little lavender-coloured memorandum book. As she jotted down the address of Handclasp House, a smile spread over her face, illuminating charmingly its lineaments of good breeding.
Then she put the book away, folded the Flaxborough Citizen and resumed her contemplation of the waterside and the circling gulls.
Chapter Four
“Teashops, Sid,” Inspector Purgright had said. “I’ve a feeling that Miss Reckitt and Mrs Bannister would have chosen to be courted in teashops. Try taking their pictures round.”
There were eight establishments in Flaxborough that the sergeant felt he could reasonably include in his list, although two were in fact self service cafeterias and a third brashly advertised itself as a “Shake ’n’ Donut Bar”. These three he was able to eliminate within half an hour, but as he began to slog round the others he saw that he was in for a long and daunting quest.
In “Penny’s Pantry”, next to the Guildhall, he waited for what seemed hours, wedged amidst elbows and enormous shopping baskets, while the sole attendant—Penny herself, he presumed—served customers who constantly replaced themselves like Hydra’s heads. Each of these women appeared to have been forewarned of a long siege: she indicated cake after cake, which Penny loaded with gloomy fastidiousness into cardboard boxes.
When at last Love found himself within gesturing distance of the woman behind the counter and had managed to catch her eye, he raised his brows invitingly and jabbed a finger in the direction of a doorway through which he had noticed a number of unoccupied tables.