by Anne Morice
Ms. Hobbes shook her head, clenching the cigarette between tight lips during this reckless manoeuvre.
“Not as I can call to mind. Saturday, you say?”
“Yes, early afternoon it would have been. Roughly between two-thirty and four. I’m sorry you don’t remember her because she told me she’d done the whole trip in an hour and twelve minutes, but she may have forgotten to wind up her watch, or perhaps it got wet. Anyway, it had stopped by the time she got home, so it could have been running down gradually and she said I’d better check out the exact time with you. You know, that you’d have a record of what time the punt went out and so on. . . .”
I tailed off, aware that the story was probably sounding feebler with every word, but perhaps she was accustomed to inhabitants of the theatrical world behaving in an imbecilic fashion, almost expected it of them, for she replied quite seriously:
“Then your friend doesn’t know much about our business. We were rushed off our feet this time Saturday. They were queueing up halfway to the High Street. Not so many of them wanting punts these days, but you know what I mean?”
“All the same, I suppose you do keep records of how long each boat is out and so on?”
“Oh yes, we’d have to do that, wouldn’t we? So we’d know what to charge for excess and that. And then there’s the V.A.T. and all the rest of it. But we don’t keep a note of names, or whether they went in a group or on their own, see? Wouldn’t make any difference to the price, would it?”
“Yes, I do see that; and you don’t happen to have noticed anyone who was alone, who might have been my friend?”
“Sorry, dear, can’t say I do. Tell you what, though; I’ll have a bit of a think while you’re out and if anything clicks I’ll let you know.”
A party of people had come into the yard, carrying picnic baskets and fishing tackle, so I knew my time was up and allowed myself to be led away and handed over to a junior Hobbes, who was in charge of the embarkation arrangements. The time was then exactly twenty minutes to three which, by my reckoning, was the earliest that Vera could have started out on Saturday.
Forty minutes later I tied up by the Waterside boathouse. Allowing for the fact that I was probably slightly more expert with the paddle, I estimated that Vera could still have reached the same point by three-thirty, giving her a full hour, while Eddie and I were in the theatre, to walk up the steps, through the narrow passage past the kitchen to the art show, there to carry out her business, before returning to the punt.
It was true that the upstream return journey would have taken longer, how much longer still had to be verified, but at all events I did not regard that as any impediment. If, by ill-chance, Eddie had arrived back at the hotel ahead of her, it would have been easy to explain that she had been out for a stroll, hoping to clear her head and, furthermore, the short walk from the river bank to the stables would not have presented her with any serious hazards either. If she had met anyone on the way, she had only to say, or allow it to be assumed, that she was feeling better and was now on her way to the theatre. No explanations of any kind would have been needed for Hattie’s benefit, since she would doubtless have been unaware that Vera had ever left the premises.
Unarmed with such plausible excuses of my own for being found on them, I remained in the shadow of the boathouse, playing out the required time by mentally following Vera’s progress and allowing her an interval of up to ten minutes in which to conclude her business with Hattie. The reconstruction was almost complete and had become so vivid by this time that I half expected Vera to come trotting down the steps in person at the appointed moment, and so there was a special piquancy in the fact that, slap on cue, a woman actually did materialise at the top of them. The picture was slightly flawed, however, because she was not Vera, but my ex-best friend, Tina Blundell, who, as I soon realised, was behaving in a somewhat outlandish fashion.
For a while she remained at the top of the steps, slowly turning her head and casting her eyes around in a painstaking inspection of her surroundings. Fortunately for me, this did not involve so much as a flicker of a glance towards the river, but was confined to ground level. The operation appeared to be fruitless though, and she next turned her attention to the box hedge, which separated the steps from a rock garden, parting one or two of the branches and peering down into the gaps. Still no reward, and she then climbed over the hedge and extended the search to the rockery itself.
It was all quite mystifying and I longed to call out and ask what she was looking for, but unfortunately the essence of the expedition was to discover whether a punt could be moored on that spot for fifteen or twenty minutes, without exciting the attention of anyone at Waterside.
However, curiosity finally overcame discretion and I was telling myself that I could make an exception in Tina’s case, since anyway I intended to give her a full account of the afternoon’s excursion, when I saw that she had abandoned the search and was climbing diagonally away from me, up the bank and on to the levelled-out path at the top. A few seconds later she disappeared round the side of the house.
The boat hirer was in the act of lighting a fresh cigarette when I went into the office to settle my account and, as soon as it was firing away sufficiently to manage on its own, she inspected my ticket, saying:
“Let’s see now! Yes, I make that one hour, thirty-five minutes. Have to charge you the full two hours, of course. Still, you won’t mind that. How did it go?”
“Not so well as I’d hoped. I’m out of training.”
“Shame! And no news about your friend, I’m sorry to say.”
“Never mind. I’ll just have to give her the benefit of the doubt and declare her the winner. I’m sure she made faster time than me, anyway. Lugging children in trolleys round the supermarket probably does wonders for keeping the arm muscles toned up.”
“I asked Jim, my nephew, about it and, funnily enough, he does remember someone a bit like you described.”
“You don’t say?”
“Couldn’t be her, though. Not unless she was cheating.”
“Why’s that?”
“She took a rowing boat. That’s one reason why he remembered her. She’d got this camera, see, and she told him she just wanted to go a few hundred yards downstream till she found a spot where she could get some good pictures of the bridge, with the church in the background and all that. He thought she’d have been better off in a punt, instead of trying to do it rocking about in one of those rowing boats and anyway it was a daft thing to be doing on a Saturday, when you could hardly see the bridge with all that river traffic cluttering up the view. But he didn’t say anything and it wasn’t him brought her in when she got back, so that’s not much help, is it? And it doesn’t sound like it could have been your friend.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed, striving not to sound elated by the bad news. I had realised, naturally, that there were quicker ways of going by water than the one I had just put to the test, but had rejected the idea of a motor launch, on the grounds that in the quiet backwater where Waterside was situated the engine would have been audible from a quarter of a mile off and, although she could have glided in with the current, no such dodge could have been used for her departure. What I had completely overlooked, possibly because my own navigating experience had all been with the gentle, placid punt, was that an expert oarsman could probably have completed the round trip in approximately half the time it had taken me.
I might easily have kissed Ms. Hobbes, if her cigarette had not been in the way.
FIFTEEN
Considering a small contribution to the housekeeping to be now overdue, I called in at the butcher, greengrocer and wine merchant on my way back to Tina’s flat and found her already at home when I staggered in with my load. She also had a visitor.
This was Sergeant Dexter, who had called to restore my property and, evidently determined to do so in person, had been given a cup of tea while he waited.
Very stiff and ill-at-ease they both looke
d too and, seeing them together like this, I was immediately struck by another resemblance. Each had the same gangly build, the same narrow face and sallow complexion, and even their pessimistic expressions were remarkably alike. It started up a brand-new and pleasing train of thought, for one of the happiest marriages of my acquaintance is between two people who could easily be mistaken for brother and sister. There was no denying that the weekend at Waterside was turning out to be more exciting and eventful every minute.
Unfortunately, there was also no denying that, given the diffidence of one of the parties and the prickly manners of the other, much spade work would be needed to make this path run smooth. So I accepted a cup of tea and then embarked on some reminiscences about the dear old days in Storhampton, when Robin and I were first married and he and the Sergeant had got to know each other. I kept trying to drag Tina into the conversation, though with singularly little success until, turning to her and saying: “That must have been the time when you were with that ballet company in Milan, wasn’t it?” things began to look up.
“About then, I suppose,” she replied.
I drank my tea in silence, then noticing that the teapot needed refilling, took it out to the kitchen, from whose fastness I heard the Sergeant clear his throat:
“I was lucky enough to get to La Scala several times in my salad days. Did you ever perform there?”
Poetic licence or not, they were off at last.
He did not stay above ten minutes after that, but the start had been made and I could leave it to future inspiration to contrive another accidental meeting. Meanwhile, there were other matters needing attention.
“Now it can be told,” I said, removing ‘Judgement Day’ from its brown envelope. “What do you say to that?”
“Not bad. Pretty good of you, anyway.”
“Do you notice anything?” I asked, ignoring this comment.
“Yes, of course I notice something. What a fatuous question. I notice three heads which, reading from the top, are Vera’s, Eddie’s and yours.”
“I mean, anything apart from that?”
“Well, you’ve all got what might be called viewing aids floating about in front of you,” she replied, studying the drawing with more care, “and obviously they’re meant to describe the personalities of the subjects. Eddie’s monocle, for instance; he doesn’t actually use one, but it fits perfectly with the silly-ass type he projects. And you’ve got a magnifying-glass, which is rather a neat comment on your passion for subjecting everything and everyone to minute analytical scrutiny.”
“I don’t underestimate Hattie,” I said, “and it wouldn’t surprise me if she had hit on something a trifle more factual than that, the magnifying-glass being the conventional badge of the amateur detective, for instance. But you haven’t mentioned the most important one yet.”
“The most important one being Vera, I take it?”
“And what is that object dangling in front of her nose?”
“A miniature telescope, by the look of it. What’s that supposed to signify? That she’s a scientist, but only in a small way?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, but the point is, do you know another word for a tiny telescope?”
“Not off-hand.”
“Then I’ll tell you. The word is ‘spyglass’. I wasn’t sure till I looked it up in the dictionary, but it’s there all right. So what do you say to that?”
It was quite a triumph that for once I had succeeded in shaking her out of her mould of indifference, though also a relief that Sergeant Dexter was not present to see the terrible scowl which she turned on me. It would have spelt doom for all my romantic hopes.
“You mean,” she said, speaking very slowly, “you actually mean to suggest that Hattie thought Vera was a spy?”
“Quite sure of it. What’s more, she was probably right. In addition, I’d like you to know that Robin is half inclined to take the idea seriously too, which is mainly what encouraged me to plod on. That, plus the fact that I really liked Hattie and admired her work. She may have had her malicious streak, with a dash of kleptomania thrown in, according to one, but I excuse a few weaknesses of that sort in people of exceptional talent. Whereas the assumption that she would commit suicide just because she was too fat is simply insulting.”
“Yes, okay, Tessa, but to get back to that other assumption, that Vera is a spy; if Robin does take it seriously, you must have something to back it up, but I do wish you’d explain how you arrived at such an extraordinary conclusion.”
“By degrees, naturally, as one always does in such cases.”
“But what first set you off on it?”
“I suppose there were several little piles of evidence building up and they all came together in a great big heap when Sergeant Dexter showed me the sketch of Vera with the spyglass. Isn’t he attractive, by the way?”
“Is he? Can’t say I noticed particularly. Do get on with it!”
“Well, here are some facts; not necessarily in the order I learnt them, but just the plain facts. The first being that Vera either is or, more likely, is posing as a refugee from behind the Iron Curtain.”
“That sounds like half fact and half conjecture.”
“Not entirely, because if you’d had the chance to observe her as I have, you’d know that posing is practically her métier. Another fact is that she went to the art exhibition before I did and therefore must have seen the ‘Judgement Day’ sketch and must have taken in the implications.”
“Why must she?”
“It was very prominently displayed and something had definitely upset her because she came bounding back into the ante-room and started up a conversation about obesity, which Hattie very civilly responded to. Now, there’s something wrong there, because if she was feeling well enough to sit down and chat with a girl she’d scarcely clapped eyes on before, how can she also, given her much vaunted sense of duty, have been too ill to take more than just a perfunctory glance at those pictures? You know yourself that most of them were Hattie’s work and they were arresting, to say the least. Not the kind of things one could dismiss with a single glance, unless one had more pressing matters to deal with. So it’s my belief that Vera realised Hattie has recognised her and was scared stiff that she’d pass on the news in less subtle terms than a drawing. However, her training would have taught her to use her wits to get out of tight corners and it’s quite conceivable that she set things up by introducing the topic of compulsive eating and then promised to let Hattie have some miraculous slimming pills, which had done the trick for her. Am I going too fast for you?”
“No, thank you very much.”
“Well, you’ll remember that they found some slimming pills tucked away in her paint box, but neither Patsy nor anyone else had the remotest idea that she was in the habit of taking them, and I bet you even money she wasn’t. She’d have thrown them away, as soon as she got the chance, only unfortunately she died before the chance came. However, all this is jumping ahead because we’re still some way from the point where Vera handed over the pills.”
“And in the meantime you haven’t bothered to explain how Hattie happened to recognise Vera and also happened to know that she was a spy.”
“Ah, but you see, another fact came my way this morning, relating to Hattie’s father. He’s a diplomat, as you know, and at various points in his career he’s served in Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Obviously, Hattie would have spent her school holidays wherever he happened to be, even if she hadn’t been with him continuously, and, being Hattie, her eagle-eyes would have picked out and retained everything she saw. You’d agree that Vera has a most striking appearance, wouldn’t you? And I dare say once seen by Hattie, never forgotten. But it’s the circumstances in which she saw her that are important, and let’s suppose that at the time Vera was working in some quite ordinary capacity, as a clerk or maybe interpreter in one of her own Government departments? Then five, six, maybe ten years later she turns up here as a persecuted refugee, with an En
glish husband. She would obviously have dyed her hair and possibly had a bit of plastic surgery done on her nose, but no one can do much about their eyes, the way they’re set and so on, and Vera’s eyes are her most outstanding feature. No doubt, Hattie recognised her on sight, asked herself the inevitable question and came up with the logical answer. How’s that?”
“All right, so far as it goes, I dare say,” Tina replied grudgingly, “though goodness knows what information Vera could pick up which would be the slightest use to a foreign government.”
“More than you think,” I told her, “which is where Eddie comes in, and probably why she nabbed him in the first place. He’s very susceptible, so he wouldn’t have been a hard nut to crack.”
“And what sort of access to top secrets is Eddie supposed to have, I’d like you to tell me.”
“Oh, he gets around. He mentioned himself, in a jokey way, that he moves in high circles and it happens to be true. The fact is, he’s about the most ancient and experienced sound broadcaster in the business. One of the few, incidentally, who have never moved over to television, so although his name is known to millions not many of them would recognise him. And he gets sent all over the world, you know, interviewing the biggest wigs there are; not to mention generals and cabinet ministers at home. When it’s somebody really grand they always give the job to Eddie. So he’s an old, familiar face and probably gets treated a bit like one of their own staff. I’m not suggesting that they strew secret information around like confetti, but just every now and then I expect a few crumbs come his way and a bagful of crumbs might add up to half a loaf.”
