Edith was standing with her mouth open, and quite suddenly she began to cry. She cried not for Andrew’s, sake or Lucille’s, but from sheer exasperation, because two people in whom she had placed her trust had betrayed her by stepping out of character. She saw Andrew as a dear little boy who suddenly and incongruously grows a long gray beard.
She brushed away her tears with the back of her hand, angrily conscious that Martin was looking at her with dismay, and Andrew with a kind of detached interest.
She averted her face and said stiffly, “You’re implying that Lucille has gone crazy?”
“No,” Andrew said, his voice mild again, and a little tired. “No. I think she...”
“It would be far more to the point to investigate the man who brought the parcel to her. However dark a jungle my mind is, Andrew, I am still capable of logic. Whatever prompted Lucille to go away, the man with the parcel is connected with it. That’s the only out-of-the-ordinary thing that’s happened to her.”
“No,” Andrew said, “there’s one other, isn’t there? Giles Frome.”
“What on earth would Giles have to do with it?”
“Probably nothing. Like yourself I’m simply being logical.”
“Good Lord,” Martin said. “I haven’t been able to get a word in. I agree with Edith about the man with the parcel. The trouble is finding him.”
“What are the-police for?” Edith said.
“The police,” Martin said dryly, “are for finding people.”
Chapter 4
“My wife,” Andrew said, “has disappeared.”
“Ah,” Inspector Bascombe said, and folded his big square hands on the desk in front of him. He was a heavy, sour-looking man with bitter little eyes that seemed to fling acid on everyone they saw.
He was thinking, so your wife has disappeared. Yours and a couple of thousand others’. Including mine. With an electrician from Hull.
“The details, please,” he said without inflection.
“They’re rather peculiar.”
Why, sure they are. Bascombe thought. The details are always peculiar. What isn’t peculiar is how the wives turn up again when they’re left flat and broke. Except mine.
He said, “Sit down, Dr. Morrow, and make yourself comfortable. There’s rather a long form to be filled out, her description and so forth.”
Bascombe watched him as he sat down. He felt very glad that Morrow’s wife had disappeared because Morrow was the kind of man he hated most, next to electricians. Goddam whiskey ad, he thought. Men of achievement, men of tomorrow. Even the top drawer have women troubles, what a goddam shame.
Thinking of whiskey ads reminded him of the bottle of Scotch he had hidden in the files. He tried to forget it again by being extra crisp and businesslike.
“Name?”
“Lucille Alexandra Morrow.”
He wrote rapidly. Lucille Alexandra Morrow. Female. White. Age forty-five. Red-gold hair, long; blue eyes, fair skin, no distinguishing marks.
The red-gold hair reminded him of the Scotch again. His hand jerked across the paper leaving a spray of ink.
He looked up to see if Morrow had noticed, but Morrow wasn’t watching him. He had his eyes fixed on the lettering on the glass door — Department of Missing Persons.
“Kind of fascinates you, doesn’t it,” Bascombe laughed. “I read it a million times a day.”
Make it two million, and every time, I get a cold wet feeling in the gut. The Missing Persons. Some of them will never be found, some will come back by themselves, drunk or sick or broke or just tired. And some of them will come up from the mud at the bottom of the river in April or May, the ladies on their backs, and the gentlemen face down.
He got up abruptly, and the pen rolled across the desk. Muttering something under his breath he went into the next room and closed the door behind him.
Sergeant D’arcy, a small rosy-cheeked young man who looked a little too elegant in his uniform, glanced up from his desk.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
“Get the hell in there,” Bascombe said thickly. “Some guy’s lost his wife. Take it all down. I feel rotten.”
“Yes, sir,” D’arcy said, riffling some papers efficiently. “Is there anything I can do, sir?”
“What I’ve already told you to do.”
“I meant aside from...”
“Scram, lovely.”
When D’arcy had gone Bascombe removed the bottle of Scotch from the back of the Closed Cases M to N file. D’arcy, who was listening, heard the gurgle of liquid, and thought, poor Bascombe, he had a truly great brain but he was drinking on duty again and would have to be reported.
To Andrew, D’arcy presented his fine teeth, brushed for five minutes in the morning and five at night.
“Inspector Bascombe had a slight touch of indigestion. He asked me to continue for him.”
He picked up the form, noticing at once the spray of ink. Poor Bascombe.
“Now, of course,” he said, “we require a few more details. Has Mrs. Morrow ever gone away like this before?”
“Never.”
“There is no evidence of coercion?”
“None,” Andrew hesitated, “that I know of.”
“Did she have any reason for leaving, to your knowledge, any domestic upsets and the like?”
“None.”
“No other man involved, of course?”
Andrew looked at him with cold dislike. “There has never been any other man involved in her life except her first husband, George Lanvers. He’s been dead for nearly twenty years.”
“We have to ask certain questions,” D’arcy said, flushing. “We really do.”
“I understand that.”
“We...” D’arcy paused and looked hopefully toward the door.
He wished Bascombe would come back. He didn’t like asking people questions, he didn’t even like the Department. Or Bascombe.
He cocked his head, listening for sounds in the outer office. As soon as he heard one he excused himself and went out.
Bascombe had gone, but three people were waiting on the benches along the wall. One of them, an elderly well-dressed woman, D’arcy was able to dismiss immediately. She had come every day for nearly six months looking for her son.
“Sorry, Mrs. Granger,” D’arcy said.
She seemed quite cheerful. “No news from Barney yet? He’ll turn up. One of these days he’ll be turning up and surprising me.”
She went out briskly. The two men rose and came over to D’arcy. They were in the fur business and they had sold a mink coat to a man, named Wilson for cash. The cash had turned out to be counterfeit and Wilson and the coat were missing.
D’arcy referred them, with a superior smile, to another department. But he wasn’t feeling superior. He had the sinking sensation that he always got when he was required to do any thinking for himself.
The door opened and Bascombe came back in.
“The doctor still here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. It seems to be a very interesting case.”
“Aren’t they all.”
“I wish — I think you should talk to him personally.”
Bascombe’s face was flushed and his eyes were a little glassy.
“Thanks for the advice, D’arcy.”
“Well, but I really mean it, sir. Dr. Morrow looks as if he might have considerable influence.”