Perhaps the most intriguing suggestion was that offered by the Empire News, which argued from the presence in Flaxborough of a travelling fair that Julia Harton was likely to have become involved in “a raggle-taggle gypsy-type elopement situation”.
The Dispatch contented itself with an almost unexpanded version of the official police circular. And somehow it was more chilling to learn simply that Julia Harton, aged 31, married woman, was thought able to help the police in connection with the death of a young man on September 6th, than to be treated to the high-pitched speculation of more enterprising journals.
The paper which Hugo Rothermere succeeded in borrowing (“I’ve just flown in from Ankara—would you mind?”) from a fellow customer in a Camden Town coffee bar, happened to be the Dispatch. Mr Rothermere’s idle survey of the news pages was brought to a sudden halt by his catching sight of a youthful Julia, waxenly demure in bridal headdress, below the headline: “Missing After Fairground Death Mystery.”
He stared. The picture had the flat unreality, the curiously posthumous-seeming air of any studio portrait transferred to newsprint. It looked, he thought, sinister.
Mr Rothermere read and re-read the accompanying text. The owner of the paper got down from his stool and shuffled around a little to indicate his desire to depart. Wordlessly, Mr Rothermere handed back his property and stared past him at the wall.
For twenty minutes, Mr Rothermere morosely sipped at three consecutive cups of coffee. No one else entered the bar. The proprietor, a plump, bald-headed Lithuanian in shirt and trousers, whose main object in opening on a Sunday morning was to polish his urns in peace, glanced occasionally at the sad, preoccupied gentleman with the meticulously groomed whiskers and boulevardier’s hat, and wondered if he were an emigre nobleman, lamenting old days in Petersburg.
At last the nobleman roused himself and asked if he might use the establishment’s telephone. He had the look of one who had reached a difficult decision.
Sure, said the proprietor—right there at the end, by the pin table. He as nearly as dammit added “Your Excellency”.
Mr Rothermere dialled directory inquiries and requested the number of a Miss Lucilla Teatime, of Flaxborough. No, he did not remember the address, but he supposed that the duplication within one town of such a name as Teatime was very unlikely.
In less than a minute he was dialling again.
A woman’s voice answered. It was pleasant, carefully modulated, almost musical. Musical and, oddly enough, accompanied by harmonious sounds. Mr Rothermere listened intently for a moment before he spoke. Of course, bells. He remembered those Flaxborough bells.
“Lucy!” He made the word sound like a celebration.
“Who is that?”
“Oh, come now. Don’t you know?”
Recognition warmed the reply. “Good heavens...Mortimer!”
“Well, yes and no. Mortimer, yes. But this is one of my Rothermere periods.”
“I shall try and remember.”
“Lovely to hear you, Lucy.”
“You too, Mortimer.”
The exchange of pleasantries exhausted in a remarkably short time the first of the pair of tenpenny pieces that Mr Rothermere had set in readiness on the coin box. He inserted the second and swept straight to the point.
“My dear, I have been most shamefully betrayed by an organisation that hired my professional services. I cannot particularise at the moment, but you doubtless will be distressed to learn that a perfectly innocent young woman has been involved. If you will advise—nay, if you will help...”
Miss Teatime’s interruption was amiable, but firm. “You mean, I presume, that she is pregnant.”
“Pregnant? Who? Good God, no—nothing like that. Much, much more serious. I can’t tell you here. But it does all centre on Flaxborough and I’m sure you can help. Will you be at home this afternoon?”
Miss Teatime said that she would.
“You are near the church, I believe.”
“I am almost in it. The address is number five, the Close.”
“Good. I shall park unobstrusively amidst the vehicles of the faithful and come straight across. It will save awkwardness all round if my presence in the town is unremarked.”
Chapter Fourteen
Julia Harton went for a walk along the seafront. She thought about her husband and tried to imagine his increasing bewilderment and annoyance. David could never find even a handkerchief on his own initiative; what on earth would he make of a missing wife? All she could conjure, though, was the look of confident, spoiled-child amusement that he invariably assumed whenever she voiced an opinion divergent from his own. The more annoyed he was, the more case-hardened became that armour of charm. Sometimes, she thought, she had divined behind it something other than mere wilfulness and spite—something really dangerous.
Perhaps it was this reflection and not the cool off-sea wind that dissuaded Julia from walking as far as she had intended. She climbed up from the shore and entered the more sheltered streets of the town. Before returning to the hotel, she bought a Sunday Times; its bulkiness seemed somehow to justify her otherwise unsatisfactory excursion.
She went into the residents’ lounge. Mrs Cartwright abruptly deserted the elderly clergyman and asked her if she would like a nice cup of coffee. Yes, conceded Julia unthinkingly, she would. She began to turn the pages of the Sunday Times colour supplement. Five minutes passed.
“Made with all milk,” confided Mrs Cartwright, “and with just a pinch of salt to bring out the flavour. We don’t do it for everybody.”
Julia thanked her warmly; she had felt in need of a little friendliness. She tried not to look at the coffee. It was grey and had strands of boiled milk in it. She’s knitted it, Julia thought. The taste was terrible.
“All right?” asked Mrs Cartwright, looking eager to have her head patted.
“Out of this world!” declared Julia, with absolute sincerity.
She had finished the coffee and was feeling somewhat queasy by the time she came across her own name in the lower half of one of the news pages.
It was an unnerving discovery, not very different from one of the dreams she had from time to time in which she found herself strolling half naked through a crowded store, except that a dream—even the most strikingly circumstantial—always had a flicker of impending wakefulness round its edges. There was no chance of this being anything but what it appeared to be: a simple square of plain type announcing a plain fact.
Plain, certainly, but wrong. It was the wrongness that scared her, and much, much more than she had ever been scared by the chimerical predicament of semi-nudity in Woolworths.
Julia read the paragraph three times, slowly and with careful attention to every phrase. She could extract nothing to lessen her dismay.