'Do you smell what I am cooking for you?
'Curry. But you can't be expected to feed the Department.
'Curry is what you need after a whole day of our English spring glories. You can, of course, go back to the White Hart and have the usual Sunday evening supper of cold tinned beef, two slices of tomato, three cubes of beetroot, and a wilting lettuce leaf.
Grant shivered unaffectedly. The thought of the White Hart on a Sunday evening was death.
'Besides, tomorrow I shan't be here to give you dinner. I am going back to town. I can't stand the Mill House any more at the moment. I'll stay in town till Faint Heart goes into rehearsal.
'Having you here has practically saved my life, Grant said. He pulled the American report from his pocket and said: 'Read that, would you, and tell me if anything rings a bell for you.
'No, she said, having read. 'No bells. Should it?
'I don't know. It seemed to me when I read it first that it rang a bell in my mind. He puzzled over it again for a moment and then put it away.
'When we are both back in town, Marta said, 'I want to be introduced to your Sergeant Williams. Perhaps you would bring him to dinner one night?
'But of course, Grant said, pleased and amused. 'Why this sudden passion for the unknown Williams?
'Well, I have actually two different reasons. The first is that anyone who has the mother-wit to see that Walter Whitmore is a «push-ee» is worth meeting. And the second is that the only time I have seen you look happy today was after talking to Sergeant Williams on the telephone.
'Oh, that! he said; and told her about Benny Skoll, and the Watchman, and Williams rebuking virtue. And so they were gay after all over their Sunday supper, with Marta supplying libellous stories of the Watchman's theatre critic. So that it was not until he was going that she asked what he was going to do now that the search for Searle had failed.
'I tidy up some ends here in Salcott tomorrow morning, he said, 'and then I go back to London to report to my chief.
'And what happens then?
'There is a conference to decide what action, if any, is to be taken.
'I understand. Well, when you have got things straightened out ring me up and tell me, won't you. And then we can arrange a night when Sergeant Williams is free.
How admirable, he thought as he drove away; how truly admirable. No questions, no hints, no little feminine probings. In her acceptance of a situation she was extraordinarily masculine. Perhaps it was this lack of dependence that men found intimidating.
He went back to the White Hart, called the police station to know if there were any messages, picked the menu off the dining-room sideboard to verify Marta's prognostication as to supper (she had forgotten the stewed rhubarb and custard, he must tell her) and for the last time went to bed in the little room under the roof. The text was no promise tonight. The Hour Cometh, indeed. What a lot of leisure women seemed to have had once. Now they had everything in cans and had no leisure at all.
But no, it wasn't that, of course. It was that they didn't spend their leisure making texts in coloured wools any more. They went to see Danny Minsky and laughed themselves sick for one-and-tuppence, and if you asked him it was a better way of recovering from the day's work than making meaningless patterns in purple cross-stitch. He glared at the text, tilted the lamp until the shadow blotted out his vision of it, and took his notebooks to bed with him.
In the morning he paid his bill, and pretended not to see the landlord's surprise. Everyone knew that the river-dragging had been unsuccessful, and everyone knew that a piece of clothing recovered from the river had caused that dragging (there, were various accounts of which particular piece of clothing), so the landlord hardly expected Scotland Yard to be taking its departure at this juncture. Unless there was a clue that no one knew about?
'Coming back, sir?
'Not immediately, Grant said, reading his mind like a book and not particularly liking the stigma of failure that was being tacked on to his name at this moment.
And he headed for Trimmings.
The morning had an air of bland apology. It was smiling wetly and the wind had died. The leaves glittered and the roads steamed in the sun. 'Just my fun, dears, the English spring was saying to the soaked and shivering mortals who had trusted her.
As the car purred along the slope, towards Trimmings, he looked down at Salcott St Mary in the valley, and thought how odd it was that three days ago it was just a name that Marta used occasionally in conversation. Now it was part of his mind.
And God send it wasn't going to be a burr stuck there for good!
At Trimmings he was received by the refayned Edith, who broke down enough to look humanly scared for a moment when she saw him, and asked to see Walter. She showed him into the fireless library; from which Walter rescued him.
'Come into the drawing-room, he said. 'We use it as a living-room and there is a fire there'; and Grant caught himself wondering ungratefully whether it was his own comfort that Walter was considering or his guest's. Walter did affect one that way, he observed.
'I am going back to town this morning, Grant said, 'and there are one or two small points I want to clear up before I make my report to my superiors.
'Yes? Walter was nervous and looked as if he had not slept.
'When I asked you about your journey down the Rushmere, you said that you had picked up mail at arranged post-offices.
'Yes.
'On Monday there would have been nothing to pick up, but on Tuesday and Wednesday you presumably picked up what there was. Did Searle have any letters on either of those two days, can you remember?
'There's no difficulty in remembering. Inspector, Searle never had any mail.
'Never? You mean Searle had no letters at all while he was at Trimmings?
'None that I ever knew about. But Liz would tell you. She deals with the post when it comes in.
How had he missed this small item of information, he wondered.
'Not even forwarded from his hotel or bank?
'Not that I know of. He may have been letting it mount up. Some people are constitutionally indifferent to letters.
That was true; and Grant left it there.
'Then about this daily telephoning, he said. 'You telephoned from Tunstall on Sunday night, from Capel on Monday night, from Friday Street on Tuesday, and from where on Wednesday?
'There's a call-box at Pett's Hatch. We had meant to camp actually at Pett's Hatch, but that ruined mill looked dreary somehow, and I remembered the sheltered bit farther on where the river turns south, so we went on to there.
'And you told Trimmings about this proposed camp.
'Yes, I told you already that we did.
'I know you did. I don't mean to badger you. What I want to know now is who talked to whom during that call from Pett's Hatch?
Walter thought for a moment. 'Well, I talked to Miss Fitch first because she was always waiting for the call, then Searle talked to her. Then Aunt Em came-Mrs Garrowby-and talked to Searle for a little and then I finished up by talking to Mrs Garrowby myself. Liz hadn't come in from an errand in the village, so neither of us talked to her on Wednesday.
'I see. Thank you. Grant waited, and then said: 'I suppose you don't feel able yet to tell me what the subject of your-disagreement was on Wednesday night? And as Walter hesitated: 'Is it because it was about Miss Garrowby that you are reluctant to discuss it?
'I don't want her dragged into this, Walter said, and Grant could not help feeling that this cliche was less the result of emotion than of a conviction that it was thus an Englishman behaved in the circumstances.
'I ask, as I said before, more as a way of obtaining enlightenment on the subject of Leslie Searle than of pinning you down to anything. Was there anything in that conversation, apart from Miss Garrowby's entry into it, that you would rather I didn't know?