He beckoned a porter who was loading a trolley with parcels.
“Is this Flaxborough?” Mr Tudor’s pronunciation of the name was not dissimilar from Sergeant Bast’s.
Assured that it was, he tried to find the door handle.
“How do you open this thing?”
The porter came to his aid, puzzled that a gentleman travelling first class in the kind of hat which clearly confirmed his entitlement to do so should be beaten by so simple a problem.
Mr Tudor did not thank him verbally but handed him three pound notes. With fractional hesitation, the porter accepted the money. Clearly, a foreign notable: there was a trace of European accent in his otherwise American manner of speaking.
“Do you think you can find me a taxi?”
“I’ll try, sir.” The porter, whose beard gave him the appearance more of an admiral than of a railwayman, went out into Station Square and hailed the cab of a cousin with whom he shared family loyalties and a small commission.
In the open space of the station booking hall, Mr Tudor seemed to diminish in height. It was his legs that lacked length; the body, though thickset, was powerful-looking and well proportioned.
As he emerged into the Square, he glanced to left and right with a swiftness that was almost lizard-like. He carried his suitcase in his left hand and kept the right in his raincoat pocket. Withered, perhaps, thought the porter, who had a gothic imagination; then he recalled the plump and hairy-backed but otherwise unexceptional fingers from which he had taken the £3.
“I want to go to a place called Church Close—Close?—is that right?” Mr Tudor held a scrap of paper for the driver to see.
“Put you down at the end, sir. Can’t take a cab round the Close, but I’ll get as near as I can.”
It occurred to the cab driver that his fare, being a foreigner, would appreciate seeing more of Flaxborough than St Anne’s Place and Spoongate, which formed the shortest route to the parish church and its Close. He therefore contrived to include in his itinerary not only the whole length of Southgate and a quarter mile of Harbour Road but the more picturesque alleys of the Sharms district. Then, after a ten minutes wait at the Beale Street level crossing, he navigated a traffic-glutted West Row and emerged into the Market Place with its view of the great church of St Lawrence as a grand finale.
“Here you are, sir. Not far to walk from here. Just round the back of the church.”
A pity, he reflected, that his fare had missed so much scenery because of his habit of constantly looking back through the rear window.
The meter registered seventy-five pence. Mr Tudor, his melancholy expression unchanged, fished some crumpled notes out of his jacket pocket. He looked at them vaguely and handed them over as if disposing of an empty paper bag. The driver smoothed then out. There were four. He offered to hand one back. Mr Tudor flicked his plump fingers dismissively and turned away. He said nothing. His free hand was back home in that raincoat pocket.
Church Close was a crescent-shaped terrace of tall, narrow Georgian houses that faced the parish church across what once had been a graveyard but now was a broad, finely-turfed lawn. Each house was colour-washed in its own pastel shade, but white was the standard paint on doors and window frames. The glint of old brass, scrupulously burnished, shone here and there along the row from a knocker or a letter box. In the bright small-paned windows, reflections of the church’s honey-coloured stone were rendered curiously twisted and globular by the irregularities of eighteenth-century glazing.
Mr Tudor stopped in front of the fifth door. He glanced back in the direction from which he had arrived, looked up sharply and briefly at the windows overhead, then knocked. While waiting, he stood at one side of the door, close to the wall, so that he could continue surveillance of the surrounding area.
The door was opened quietly but fully and with no hint of furtiveness.
“Good afternoon.”
The voice was gentle and precise, its note of interrogation unreservedly amiable.
Mr Tudor saw standing in the doorway a woman of still attractive middle age and recognised, although it was not until later that the resemblance was identified in his mind, one of those impeccably bred chatelaines he had seen from time to time in Hollywood films about the classier aspects of British life.
“Your name Lucia Teatime?”
“I am Miss Teatime. Lucilla, actually, but no matter.” No matter, either, she decided, that fate, through the agency of a romantically patriotic mother, had saddled her with Edith and Cavell as her middle names.
“Mack sent me. I’m Joe Tudor.”
“Mack,” she repeated delicately, half to herself. Then: “Of course! Uncle Macnamara. He telephoned me. I am so sorry, Mr Tudor. Please come in.”
She stepped back, smiling a welcome. Mr Tudor, she noticed, had a rather curious way of entering a house; he did so sideways, very quickly for so solidly built a man, and with a final glance up and down the Close as if he was anxious not to miss some delayed companion.
“I am afraid that I have already had luncheon. Uncle Macnamara gave me no indication of when I might expect you.”
Mr Tudor gave a grunt which Miss Teatime interpreted as a disavowal of interest in food. Perhaps he had eaten on the journey or even brought provisions of his own—hamburgers, or something of that nature, she surmised.
Miss Teatime led the way up the narrow staircase to her sitting-room on the first floor. Her guest was not the first visitor to observe on that brief but tortuous journey that time had dealt kindly (as one, a clergyman, had expressed it to himself) with her nether parts, but he certainly was the first to remark on the fact.
“You got good legs, Looce.”
It was a statement: flat, gruff, unmotivated. Miss Teatime felt like an aging car, that had just been issued with another twelve months’ roadworthiness certificate.
With one careful but unenthusiastic survey, Mr Tudor took in the details of the light and airy sitting-room, with its tall windows and its few choicely graceful pieces of furniture, and humped himself into an armchair. He had, Miss Teatime supposed, exhausted his compliments for that day.
“Would you care for a cup of coffee?” she asked, after giving him time to settle back, eyes half closed, in an attitude of stern introspection.
He considered, then nodded. “Yeah. OK.” It was a distinct concession.
When Miss Teatime returned with the coffee tray, she took a half bottle of whisky from a little hanging cupboard in the corner and set it by the cups.
Her glance of mute inquiry brought a “Sure—why not?” from Mr Tudor. She laced his coffee with spirit and handed him the cup, then laced her own drink with a little coffee.
Both sipped without speaking for two or three minutes. She watched him with as much attention as delicacy permitted. In spite of his age, his mouth was full-lipped and sharply moulded—the mouth of a precocious boy. It contrasted strangely with the fallen sallow cheeks and the whisker-shadowed jowls. She noticed his sniff.