All the lights were on in the finger-print department although it was still daylight; and Cartwright was sitting just as he had last seen him—as he had always seen him—with a half-drunk cup of cold tea at his elbow, the saucer filled with cigarette butts.
‘Something I can do for you this beautiful spring afternoon?’ Cartwright said.
‘Yes. There is one thing I want very much to know. Have you ever drunk the second half of a cup of tea?’
Cartwright considered this. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t know that I ever have. Beryl usually takes my cup away and fills it up with fresh stuff. Something else off the cuff? Or is this just a social call?’
‘Yes, something else. But you’ll be working for me on Monday, so don’t let your sense of benevolence get out of hand.’ He put Charles Martin’s papers on the table. ‘When can you do these for me?’
‘What is this? French identity papers. What are you getting into—or do you want to keep it to yourself?’
‘I’m just having one last bet on a horse called Flair. If it comes off I’ll tell you about it. I’ll pick up the prints tomorrow morning.’
He looked at the clock and reckoned that if Tad Cullen was ‘dating’ Daphne, or any other female creature, tonight, he would at this moment be dolling himself up in his hotel room. He left Cartwright and went to a telephone where he could talk unheard.
‘We-e-ll!’ said Tad joyously, when he heard Grant’s voice. ‘Where are you talking from? Are you back?’
‘Yes, I’m back. I’m in London. Look, Tad, you say you’ve never known anyone called Charles Martin. But is it possible that you knew him under another name? Did you ever know a very good mechanic, very good with cars, who was French and looked a little like Bill?’
Tad thought this over.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever known any mechanic who was French. I’ve known a Swedish mechanic and a Greek mechanic, but neither of them was in the least like Bill. Why?’
‘Because Martin worked in the Middle East. And it is just possible that Bill got those papers from him before he ever came to Britain at all. Martin may have sold them to him. He was—is: he may be living—a lazy creature and probably very hard-up at intervals. Out there, where no one bothers very much about credentials, he might have tried to cash them.’
‘Yes; he might. Someone else’s papers are usually more valuable than your own out there. To have around, I mean. But why would Bill buy them? Bill never did anything on the side.’
‘Perhaps because he looked a little like Martin. I don’t know. Anyhow, you yourself have never run into anyone like Martin in the Middle East?’
‘Not anywhere, that I can think of. What did you get? Out of the Martins. Anything worth while?’
‘I’m afraid not. They showed me photographs; which made it clear how much he would look like Bill if he was not alive. Something that we knew already. And of course the fact that he had gone East to work. Any answers to the advertisement?’
‘Five.’
‘Five?’
‘All from fellows called Bill Kenrick.’
‘Oh. Asking what was in it for them?’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘Not a word from anyone who knew him?’
‘Not a peep. And nothing at the Charles Martin end either, it seems. We’re sunk, aren’t we?’
‘Well—waterlogged, shall we say. We have one remaining asset.’
‘We have? What is that?’
‘Time. We have forty-eight more hours.’
‘Mr Grant, you’re an optimist.’
‘You have to be in my business,’ Grant said, but he did not feel very optimistic. He felt flat and tired. He was within an ace of wishing that he had never heard of Bill Kenrick. Wishing that he had come down that corridor at Scoone just ten seconds later. In ten more seconds Yughourt would have realised that the man was dead and would have shut the door and gone for help; and he, Grant, would have walked down that empty corridor and stepped down on to the platform unaware that there had ever existed a young man called Bill Kenrick. He would never have known that anyone had died on the train. He would have driven away with Tommy to the hills, and no words about singing sands would have disturbed his holiday. He would have fished in peace, and finished his holiday in peace.
In too much peace—perhaps? With too much time to think about himself and his bondage to unreason. Too much time to take his own mental and spiritual pulse.
No, of course he was not sorry that he had heard of Bill Kenrick. He was Bill Kenrick’s debtor as long as he lived, and if it took him till the end of his days he would find out what had changed Bill Kenrick into Charles Martin. But if only he could clear up this thing before he was swamped by that demanding life that was waiting for him on Monday.
He asked how Daphne was, and Tad said that as a female companion she had one enormous advantage over everyone he had ever known: she was pleased with very little. If you gave her a bunch of violets she was as pleased as most girls are with orchids. It was Tad’s considered opinion that she had never heard of orchids, and he, personally, had no intention of bringing them to her notice.
‘She sounds the domestic type. You take care, Tad, or she’ll be going back to the Middle East with you.’
‘Not while I’m conscious,’ Tad said. ‘No female is going back East with me. I’m not having any little-woman-round-the-house cluttering up our bungalow. I mean, my bun—. I mean—’ His voice died away.
The conversation became suddenly broken-backed, and Grant rang off after promising to call him as soon as he had anything to report or an idea to share.
He went out into the wet haze, bought himself an evening paper, and found a taxi to take him home. The paper was a Signal, and the sight of the familiar heading took him back to that breakfast at Scoone four weeks ago. He thought again how constant in kind the headlines were. The Cabinet row, the dead body of the blonde in Maida Vale, the Customs prosecution, the hold-up, the arrival of an American actor, the street accident. Even ‘PLANE CRASH IN ALPS’ was common enough to rank as a constant.
‘Yesterday evening the dwellers in the high valleys of Chamonix saw a rose of flame break out on the icy summit of Mont Blanc—’
The Signal’s style was constant too.
The only thing waiting for him at 19 Tenby Court was a letter from Pat, which said:
Dear Alan, they say you must have marjuns but I think marjuns is havers. waste not want not. this is a fly I made for you. it was not done in time before you went. it may not be any good for those english rivers but you better have it anyway your affectionate cousin Patrick.
This production cheered Grant considerably, and while he ate his dinner he considered alternately the economy, in capitals as well as in margins, and the enclosed lure. The fly exceeded in originality even that remarkable affair which he had been lent at Clune. He decided to use it on the Severn on a day when they would ‘take’ a piece of red rubber hot-water-bottle, so that he could write honestly to Pat and report that the Rankin fly had landed a big one.
The typical Scots insularity in ‘those English rivers’ made him hope that Laura would not wait too long before sending Pat away to his English school. The quality of Scotchness was a highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia.
He stuck the fly above the calendar on his desk, so that he might go on being amused by its catholicity and warmed by his young cousin’s devotion, and got thankfully into pyjamas and a dressing-gown. There was at least one consolation for being in town when he might still be in the country: he could get into a dressing-gown and put his feet on the mantelpiece in the sure and certain knowledge that no telephone call from Whitehall 1212 would intrude on his leisure.