'No, thank you. I'll confirm anything she says, later on, of course. But I think she is less likely to get flustered if you ask her a quite ordinary question than if she was brought to the telephone to be questioned by a stranger. I don't want her to be agitated into thinking about the question at all. I want her first natural reaction to the question. Were the shoes buckled or unbuckled when she cleaned them?
Mrs Brett understood, and would the Inspector hang on?
'No. I'm expecting an important call. But I shall call you back in a very short time.
Then London came on the wire, and Williams's not-too-pleased voice could be heard telling the Exchange: 'All right, all right, I've been ready any time this last five minutes.
'That you, Williams? This is Grant. Listen. I was coming up to town today to interview Leslie Searle's cousin. Yes, I found out where she lived. Her name is Searle. Miss Searle. And she lives at 9 Holly Pavement, in Hampstead. It's a sort of coagulation of artists. I talked to her last night on the telephone and I arranged to see her this afternoon about three. Now I can't. A boy has just fished a shoe belonging to Leslie Searle out of the river. Yes, all right, crow! So we have to start dragging all over again, and I have to be here. Are you free to go and see Miss Searle for me, or shall I get someone else from the Yard?
'No, I'll go, sir. What do you want me to ask her?
'Get everything she knows about Leslie Searle. When she saw him last. What friends he had in England. Everything she can give you about him.
'Very good. What time shall I call you back?
'Well, you ought to be there at a quarter to three, and leaving an hour clear-four o'clock, perhaps.
'At the Wickham station?
'Well, no, perhaps not. In view of the slowness of dragging, perhaps you had better call me at the Mill House at Salcott. It is Salcott 5.
It was only when he had hung up that he realised that he had not asked Williams how his mission to Benny Skoll had turned out.
Marta came in with his breakfast, and as she poured his coffee he talked to Trimmings again.
Mrs Brett had talked to Polly, and Polly had no doubt about the matter at all. The straps on Mr Searle's brown shoes had always been undone when he put them out for cleaning. She knew because she used to rebuckle them so as to keep the straps from banging about when she cleaned them. She buckled them to keep the straps still and unbuckled them when she had finished.
So that was that.
He began to eat his breakfast, and Marta poured out a cup of coffee for herself and sat sipping it. She looked cold and pale, but he could not resist the question:
'Did you notice anything odd about the shoe?
'Yes. It hadn't been unfastened.
A marvellous woman. He supposed that she must have vices to counterbalance so many excellences but he couldn't imagine what they could be.
15
It was very cold by the river. The willows shivered, and the water was pewter colour, its surface alternately wrinkled by the wind and pitted by the passing showers. As the slow hours went by Rodgers's normally anxious face slipped into a settled melancholy, and the tip of his nose peering out from the turned-up collar of his waterproof was pink and sad. So far no intruders had come to share their vigil. The Mill House had been sworn to secrecy and had not found the secrecy any strain; Mrs Thrupp had retired to bed, still 'heaving'; and Tommy, as police ally, was part of the dragging party. The wide sweep of the river across the alluvial land was far from road or path and devoid of dwellings, so there were no passers-by to stop and stare, to pause for a little and then go on to spread the news.
They were in a world by themselves down there by the river. A timeless world, and comfortless.
Grant and Rodgers had exhausted professional post-mortems long ago, and had got no further. Now they were just two men alone in a meadow on a chilly spring day. They sat together on the stump of a fallen willow, Grant watching the slow sweep of the questing drag, Rodgers looking out across the wide flats of the valley floor.
'This is all flooded in winter, he said. 'Looks quite lovely, too, if you could forget the damage it's doing.
'"Swift beauty come to pass
Has drowned the blades that strove",
Grant said.
'What is that?
'What an army friend of mine wrote about floods.
"Where once did wake and move
The slight and ardent grass.
Swift beauty come to pass
Has drowned the blades that strove."
'Nice, Rodgers said.
'Sadly old-fashioned, Grant said. 'It sounds like poetry. A fatal defect, I understand.
'Is it long?
'Just two verses and the moral.
'What is the moral?
'"O Final Beauty, found
In many a drowned place,
We love not less thy face
For lesser beauties drowned."
Rodgers thought it over. 'That's good, that is, he said. 'Your army friend knew what he was talking about. I was never one for reading poems in books-I mean collections, but magazines sometimes put verses in to fill up the space when a story doesn't come to the bottom of the page. You know?
'I know.
'I read a lot of these, and every now and then one of them rings a bell. I remember one of them to this day. It wasn't poetry properly speaking, I mean it didn't rhyme, but it got me where I lived. It said:
"My lot is cast in inland places,
Far from sounding beach
And crying gull,
And I
Who knew the sea's voice from my babyhood
Must listen to a river purling
Through green fields,
And small birds gossiping
Among the leaves."
'Now, you see, I was bred by the sea, over at Mere Harbour, and I've never quite got used to being away from it. You feel hedged in, suffocated. But I never found the words for it till I read that. I know exactly how that bloke felt. "Small birds gossiping!"
The scorn and exasperation in his voice amused Grant, but something amused him much more and he began to laugh.
'What's funny? Rodgers asked, a shade defensively.
'I was just thinking how shocked the writers of slick detective stories would be if they could witness two police inspectors sitting on a willow tree swapping poems.
'Oh, them! Rodgers said, in the tone that in lower circles is followed by a spit. 'Ever read any of these things?
'Oh, yes. Now and then.
'My sergeant makes a hobby of it. Collects the howlers. His record so far is ninety-two to a book. In a thing called Gods to the Rescue by some woman or other. He stopped to watch something and added: 'There's a woman coming now. Pushing a bike.
Grant took a look and said: 'That's not a woman. It's a goddess to the rescue.
It was the unconquerable Marta, with vacuum flasks of hot coffee and sandwiches for all.
'The bicycle was the only way I could think of for carrying them, she explained, 'but it is,
'How did you get through them, then?
'I unloaded the bicycle, lifted the thing over, and loaded it again the other side.
'The spirit that made the Empire.
'That's as may be, but Tommy must come with me on the way back, and help me.
'Sure I will, Miss Hallard, Tommy said, his mouth full of sandwich.
The men came up from the river and were presented to Marta. It amused Grant to notice the cameraderie of those who quite patently had never heard of her, and the awed good manners of those who had.
'I think the news has leaked out, Marta said. 'Toby rang me up and asked if it was true that the river was being dragged again.
'You didn't tell him why?
'No. Oh, no, she said, her face going a little bleak again at the memory of the shoe.