'Er...well...' he began but Miss Bogden was still between him and the door. This was no time for half-measures. Frensic took out his cheque book.
'I'll be with you in a moment, dear,' he called. 'You just go over the road and look at dresses.'
Cynthia Bogden obeyed her instincts and stayed where she was.
'You do have a cheque card, sir?' said the jeweller.
Frensic looked at him gratefully. 'As a matter of fact, I don't. Not on me.'
'Then I'm afraid it will have to be cash, sir.'
'Cash?' said Frensic. 'In that case...'
'We'll go to the bank,' said Miss Bogden firmly. They went to the bank in the High Street. Miss Bogden seated herself while Frensic conferred at the counter.
'Five hundred pounds?' said the teller. 'We'll have to have proof of identity and telephone your own branch.'
Frensic glanced at Miss Bogden and lowered his voice. 'Frensic,' he said nervously, 'Frederick Frensic, Glass Walk, Hampstead but my business account is with the branch in Covent Garden.'
'We'll call you when we have confirmation,' said the teller.
Frensic blanched. 'I'd be grateful if you didn't...' he began.
Didn't what?'
'Never mind,' said Frensic and went back to Miss Bogden. He had to get her out of the bank before that blasted teller started hollering for Mr Frensic.
'This is going to take some time, darling. Why don't you toddle back to...'
'But I've taken the day off and I thought...'
'Taken the day off?' said Frensic. If this sort of stress went on much longer it would take years off. 'But...'
'But what?' said Miss Bogden.
'But I'm supposed to be meeting an author for lunch. Professor Dubrowitz. From Warsaw. He's only over for the day and...' He hustled her out of the bank promising to come to the office just as soon as he could. Then with a sigh of relief he went back and collected five hundred pounds.
'Now for the nearest telephone,' he said to himself as he pocketed the money and descended the steps. Cynthia Bogden was still there.
'But...' Frensic began and gave up. With Miss Bogden there were no buts.
'I thought we'd just go and get the ring first,' she said taking his arm, 'then you can go and have lunch with your boring old professor.'
They went back to the jewellers and Frensic paid £500. Only then did Miss Bogden allow him to escape.
'Call me as soon as you've finished,' she said pecking his cheek. Frensic promised to and hurried off to the main post office. In a foul temper he dialled 23507.
'The Bombay Duck Restaurant,' said an Indian who was unlikely to have written Pause. Frensic slammed the phone down and tried another combination of the digits in the ring. This time he got MacLoughlin's Fish Emporium. Then he ran out of change. He went across to the main counter and handed over a five-pound note for a 6-1/2p stamp and returned with a pocketful of coins. The phone booth was occupied. Frensic stood beside it looking belligerent while an apparently sub-normal youth plighted his acned troth to a girl who giggled audibly. Frensic spent the time trying to remember the exact number and by the time the youth had finished he had got it. Frensic went in and dialled 20357. There was a long pause and the sound of the ringing tone before anyone answered. Frensic plunged a coin into the machine.
'Yes,' said a thin querulous voice, 'who is it?'
Frensic hesitated a moment and then coarsened his voice. 'This is the General Post Office, telephone faults department,' he said. 'We are trying to trace a crossed connection in a junction box. If you would just give me your name and address.'
'A fault?' said the voice. 'We haven't had any faults.'
'You soon will have. There's a burst water main and we need your name and address.'
'But I thought you said you had a crossed connection?' said the voice peevishly. 'Now you say there's a water main...'
'Madam,' said Frensic officiously, 'the burst water main is affecting the junction box and we need your help to locate it. Now if you will be so good as give me your name and address...' There was a long pause during which Frensic gnawed a nail.
'Oh well if you must,' said the voice at long last, 'the name is Dr Louth and the address is 44 Cowpasture Gardens...Hullo, are you there?'
But Frensic was miles away in a world of terrible conjecture. Without another word he replaced the receiver and staggered out into the street.
In Lanyard Lane Sonia sat at her typewriter and stared at the calendar. She had returned from Somerset, satisfied that Bernie the Beaver would use less forceful language in future, to find two messages for her. The first was from Frensic saying that he would be out of town on business for a few days and would she mind coping. That was queer enough. Frensic usually left fuller explanations and a telephone number where she could call him in case of emergencies. The second message was even more peculiar and in the shape of a long telegram from Hutchmeyer: POLICE ESTABLISHED DEATHS PIPER AND BABY ACCIDENTAL NO RESPONSIBILITY TERRORISTS RUNNING AWAY WITH EACH OTHER CRAZY ABOUT YOU ARRIVING THURSDAY ALL MY LOVE HUTCHMEYER.
Sonia studied the message and found it at first incomprehensible. Deaths accidental? No responsibility terrorists running away with each other? What on earth did it mean? For a moment she hesitated and then dialled International and was put through to New York and Hutchmeyer Press. She got MacMordie.
'He's in Brasilia right now,' he said.
'What's all this business about Piper's death being accidental?' she asked.
'That's the theory the police have come up with,' said MacMordie, 'like they were eloping some place with all that fuel on board when she blew.'
'Eloping? Piper and that bitch eloping? In the middle of the night with a cabin cruiser? Somebody's out of their mind.'
'I wouldn't know,' said MacMordie, 'all I'm saying is what the cops and the insurance company have come up with. And that Piper had this big thing for old women. I mean take his book. It shows.'
'Like hell it does,' said Sonia before recalling that MacMordie didn't know Piper hadn't written it.
'If you don't believe me, call the cops in Maine or the insurers. They'll tell you.'
Sonia called the insurers. They were more likely to come up with the truth. They had money at stake. She was put through to Mr Synstrom.
'And you really believe he was running off with Mrs Hutchmeyer and it was all an accident?' she said when he had given his version of the event. 'I mean you're not having me on?'
'This is the Claims Department,' said Mr Synstrom firmly. 'We don't have people on. It's not our line of business.'
'Well it sounds crazy to me,' said Sonia, 'she was old enough to be his mother.'
'If you want further delineation of the circumstances surrounding the accident I suggest you speak to the Maine State police,' said Mr Synstrom and ended the conversation.
Sonia sat stunned by this new development. That Peter had preferred that awful old hag...From being in love with his memory one minute she was out of it the next. Piper had betrayed her and with the knowledge there came a new sense of bitterness and reality. In life, now that she came to think about it, he had been a bit dreary and her love had been less for him as a man than for his aptitude as a husband. Given the chance she could have made something of him. Even before his death she had made him famous as an author and had he lived they would have gone on to greater things. It was not for nothing that Brahms was her favourite composer. There would have been little Pipers, each to be helped towards a suitable career by a woman who was at the same time a mother and a literary agent. That dream had ended. Piper had died with a surgically preserved bitch in a mink coat.
Sonia looked at the telegram again. It had a new message for her now. Piper was not the only man ever to have found her attractive. There was still Hutchmeyer, a widowed Hutchmeyer whose wife had stolen her darling from her. There was a fine irony in the thought that by her action, Baby had made it possible for Hutchmeyer to marry again. And marry her he would. It was marriage or nothing. There would be no messing.