“It would be extremely helpful,” said Charles, who had just consulted his watch, “if one could have absolutely up-to-the-minute knowledge of what the police have found out. We don’t want to have to wait until the inquest is resumed.”
“Yes, but what can they have found out?”
“Oh David, don’t be so näive! For one thing, they can find what you and your resourceful girl friend and the cunning Rothermere all failed to find. Look, the train goes in quarter of an hour. If you can’t get any back door information out of the Flaxborough police, say so.”
“Very doubtful.”
“Fair enough, David. Let’s hope Rothermere delivers, that’s all.”
Harton drove them the short distance to the station. The London train was due. He did not wait to see them off.
A chill wind was blowing across the darkening and almost empty Station Square. Harton drove into East Street and headed the car for the Field Street crossing and Queen’s Road, where dwelt George and Gladys Lintz, their twenty-five-year-old unmarried daughter, and some fish in an illuminated tank.
Mrs Lintz answered Harton’s ring. She was a tubby, tightly permed woman with the habit of constantly checking by fingertip exploration that neck and hair were still within her franchise.
Harton received a smile of welcome. Then, turning her head aside, Mrs Lintz called loudly: “Bobby-May!” She waited, mouth slightly open, as if to catch an echo. The only sound that reached them was of some televised programme of raised voices, music and applause.
“We were just watching Guessalong,” Mrs Lintz explained. It sounded, in her mouth, an occupation as wholesome and universal as breathing. Again she called her daughter, more stridently than before. There came an answering squawk. A door opened and Bobby-May emerged into the lighted hall.
At that distance the girl looked much younger than 25. She was neither noticeably short nor tall, but her movements had an undisciplined, a capricious quality characteristic of a child. Her dress, of a striking emerald green and made of some silkily fluid material, was gathered by a sash and hung at a level just too low to be fashionable. It was the kind of dress that gets called a frock.
“It’s Mr Harton, dear.”
“I thought you might like half an hour along at the tennis club, Bobo.” Harton craned forward across the threshold.
“Oh, lovely!” Bobby-May clasped hands and made restless little shuffles. “Do you mind, Mummy?”
The wide eyes had whites like fresh milk. The irises were richly brown; they scintillated like seal fur.
“Mind? Why should I mind, baby? There’s plenty to occupy me. Anyway, Daddy will be back from his Lodge shortly.” Mrs Lintz made to depart, then paused and turned towards Harton. She looked very pleased with life. “We were just watching Guessalong,” she told him in a loud whisper, wrinkling her nose in intimation of the magnitude of the treat he was missing out there in the cold. Then she hurried away.
Bobby-May ran to Harton, pulled him inside by the arm and closed the door. She nuzzled against his chest. He bent and brushed his lips among her shiny, liquorice-black curls.
Suddenly she threw her head back. Harton had to jerk away his face to avoid a blow on the nose. When he looked at her again, her eyes were closed, her lips pursed imperiously. He kissed her, but she broke away almost at once. “Shan’t be a jiffy.”
Harton watched her race upstairs, green sash flying, three-inch heels tottering dangerously. Legs not as good as Julia’s. A harder, livelier bottom, though.
In less than a minute, she was back. She carried a pair of racquets and a small sports bag.
“What do you want those for?”
She stared. “The club, you said.”
“Yes, I said. For your dear mum’s consumption.”
“Half an hour’s prac, David. Go on. Please.” She ran a finger, plump and creamy white, along the line of the pattern of his shirt.
“All right. If the indoor court’s free.”
Her eyes flicked shut; the rosebud mouth was offered. He glanced down the hall to the door whence Guessalong noises issued, then chanced a man-of-the-world response with lips and tongue-tip. Bobby-May reacted with immediate rigidity and a vacuum lock that reeled his tongue into her mouth like a hose at fire practice.
The embrace lasted nearly two minutes, during which Bobby-May made little growling noises in the back of her throat. When Harton slid his hand over a breast, she grasped it at once and pulled it away, at the same time giving a prohibitory head-shake. The effect of this was to aggravate the ache he had begun to feel at the root of his tongue.
She disengaged without warning and ran to throw open the door through which her mother had passed. A racquet whirled in farewell. “ ’Bye, Mums. Off for an hour’s prac.”
In the car, the girl stretched, sighed happily and drew her legs beneath her in a sideways squatting posture.
“You don’t really want tennis practice tonight, do you?” he asked.
She was looking across at him speculatively. “Where’s Awful Julia?”
“Awful Julia’s out.”
“How do you know Awful Julia’s out? I thought you always worked late on Thursday nights.”
He started the engine. “I’ve not been home, if that’s what you mean. But I do happen to know that Awful Julia is not there, my sweet.”
For a little while, they drove in silence. Over the crossing. Right at the East Street junction and left into Corporation Street. Many of the shop windows were lighted still, but there was no one to look into them except an occasional group of teenagers, sauntering along, tugging at one another, breaking and re-forming, laughing, jeering, leaning against the wind, aimless.
“David...”
“Sweetheart?”
“What time will Awful Julia be back?”
“Why do you ask, lover?”
“I was just thinking. We could make do with twenty minutes’ prac. Well, I did have a knockabout this afternoon, actually, so.”
“So?”
“So we could go along to your place afterwards for a little while. If Awful Julia’s not there, I mean.”
“She won’t be.”
Bobby-May gazed dreamily through the windscreen into the middle distance. “When you’ve got your divorce, you know,” she said, “I shall let you possess me utterly.” The last word was delivered with an emphatic stiffening of her throat and chin. Then she relaxed, as if to mark a complete change of subject, and said: “If you like—and if Awful Julia doesn’t turn up—I may let you play our bagpipes-in-the-forest game.”
Harton gave her a fond glance and took his hand from the wheel to squeeze her thigh.