'We don't know that. We don't know anything about him before he walked into that party of Ross's. He is a photographer; that is all we know for certain. He says he has only a female cousin in England but he may have half a dozen homes and a dozen wives for all we know.
'Maybe, but why not go in a natural fashion when this trip was finished? After all, he would want to collect on that book they were doing, surely? Why all the mumbo-jumbo?
'To make things awkward for Walter, perhaps.
'Yes? You think that? Why?
'Perhaps because I wouldn't mind making things awkward for Walter myself, Grant said with a half smile. 'Perhaps after all it is just wishful-thinking on my part.
'It certainly is going to be very uncomfortable for Whitmore, Williams said, without any noticeable regret.
'Very. Shouldn't wonder if it leads to civil war.
'War?
'The Faithful Whitmorites versus the Doubters.
'Is he taking it hard?
'I don't think he quite realises yet what has hit him. He won't, I think, until he sees the daily Press tomorrow morning.
'Haven't the Press been at him already?
'They haven't had time. The Clarion arrived on the doorstep at five this afternoon, I understand, and went away to get information at the Swan when he failed to get it at Trimmings.
'Trust the Clarion to be first. Whitmore would have done better to see whoever it was. Why didn't he?
'Waiting for his lawyer to arrive from town, so he said.
'Who was it, do you know? The Clarion.
'Jammy Hopkins.
'Jammy! I'd as soon have a flame-thrower on my tail as Jammy Hopkins. He has no conscience whatever. He'll make up a story out of whole cloth if he doesn't get an interview. You know, I begin to be sorry for Walter Whitmore. He couldn't really have given a thought to Jammy, or he wouldn't have been so quick to shove Searle into the river.
'And who is being Die-Hard now? Grant said.
11
In the morning Grant telephoned to his chief, but he had no sooner begun his story than Bryce interrupted him.
'That you, Grant? You send back that Man Friday of yours straight away. Benny Skoll cleaned out Poppy Plumtre's bedroom safe last night.
'I thought all Poppy's valuables were with Uncle.
'Not since she got herself a new daddy.
'Are you sure that it's Benny?
'Quite sure. It has all his trade-marks. The telephone call to get the hall porter out of the way, the lack of fingerprints, the bread-and-jam and milk meal, the exit by the service entrance. Short of signing his name in the visitors' book, he couldn't have written his signature more clearly over it.
'Ah, well; the day criminals learn to vary their technique we go out of business.
'I need Williams to pick up Benny. Williams knows Benny like a book. So send him back. How are you doing?
'Not too well.
'No? How?
'We have no corpse. So we have two possibilities: Searle is dead, either by accident or by design; or he has just disappeared for ends of his own.
'What sort of ends?
'Practical joke, perhaps.
'He had better not try that stuff with us.
'It might, of course, be plain amnesia.
'It had better be.
'There are two things I need, sir. A radio S.O.S. is one. And the other is some information from the San Francisco police about Searle. We are working in the dark, knowing nothing about him. His only relation in England is a cousin; a woman artist, with whom he had no contact. Or says he hadn't. She will probably get in touch with us when she sees the papers this morning. But she will probably know very little about him.
'And you think the San Francisco police will know more?
'Well, San Francisco was his headquarters, I understand, when he spent the winter months on the Coast, and they can no doubt dig up something about him there. Let us know whether he ever was in any bother and if anyone was liable to kill him for any reason.
'A lot of people would like to kill a photographer, I should think. Yes, we'll do that.
'Thank you, sir. And about the S.O.S.?
'The B.B.C. don't like their nice little radio cluttered up with police messages. What did you want to say?
'I want to ask anyone who gave a lift to a young man between Wickham and Crome on Wednesday night to get in touch with us.
'Yes, I'll see to that. I suppose you have covered all the regular services?
'Everything, sir. Not a sign of him anywhere. And he is hardly inconspicuous. Short of his having a rendezvous with a waiting plane-which only happens in boys' stories, as far as I'm aware-the only way he could have got away from the district is by walking over the fields and getting a lift on the main road.
'No evidence of homicide?
'None so far. But I shall see what alibis the locals have, this morning.
'You push Williams off before you do anything else. I'll send the San Francisco information to the Wickham Station when it comes through.
'Very good, sir. Thank you.
Grant hung up and went to tell Williams.
'Damn Benny, Williams said. 'Just when I was beginning to like this bit of country. It's no day to wrestle with Benny anyhow.
'Is he tough?
'Benny? No! He's a horror. He'll cry and carry on and say that we are hounding him, and that he is no sooner out of stir and trying to make good-"make good"! Benny! — than we are down on him to come and be questioned, and what chance has he in the circs, and so on. He turns my stomach. If Benny saw an honest day's work coming his way he'd run for his life. He's a wonderful cryer, though. He once got a question asked in Parliament. You'd wonder how some of those M.P.s ever had brains enough to ask for a railway ticket from their home towns. Have I got to take a train to town?
'I expect Rodgers will give you a car to Crome and you can get a fast train there, Grant said, smiling at the horror on his colleague's face at the thought of train travel. He himself went back to the telephone and called Marta Hallard at the Mill House in Salcott St Mary.
'Alan! she said. 'How nice. Where are you?
'At the White Hart in Wickham.
'You poor dear!
'Oh, it isn't too bad.
'Don't be so noble. You know it is primitive to the point of being penitential. Have you heard about our latest sensation, by the way?
'I have. That is why I am in Wickham.
There was a complete silence at that.
Then Marta said: 'You mean the Yard are interested in Leslie Searle's drowning?
'In Searle's disappearance, let us say.
'You mean, that there is some truth in this rumour of a quarrel with Walter?
'I'm afraid I can't discuss it over the telephone. What I wanted to ask you was whether you would be at home this evening if I came along.
'But you must come and stay, of course. You can't stay at that dreary place. I'll tell Mrs —
'Thank you with all my heart, but I can't do that. I must be here in Wickham at the centre of things. But if you like to give me dinner —
'Of course I shall give you dinner. You shall have a beautiful meal, my dear. With one of my omelets and one of Mrs Thrupp's chickens, and a bottle from the cellar that will take the taste of the White Hart beer out of your mouth.
So, a little heartened at the prospect of civilisation at the end of the day, Grant went out on his day's task, and he began with Trimmings. If there was to be a reckoning of alibis it was fitting that the inhabitants of Trimmings should be the first to give an account of themselves.
It was a fine blue morning, growing soft after an early frost, and no day, as Williams had pointed out, to waste on the Bennys of this life; but the sight of Trimmings standing up unblushingly in the bright sunlight restored Grant's wavering good humour. Last night it had been a lighted doorway in the dark. Today it stood revealed, extravagantly monstrous, in all its smug detail, and Grant was so enraptured that his foot came down on the brake and he brought the car to a standstill at the curve of the drive, and sat there gazing.