‘I don’t know. I keep wondering. She’s an awful ass, but… well, I mean, it isn’t the asses who disappear usually, is it? It’s people who are making a getaway. I’m sure Miss Faintley isn’t one of those. She wouldn’t have pluck enough, for one thing. I say, what’s your name?’
‘Laura Menzies. I know yours. I saw it in the visitors’ book when we arrived. You’re Mark Street, aren’t you? I’ll call you Mark and you’d better call me Laura.’
‘All right,’ agreed Mark. ‘Race you to the diving-raft!’
He gave himself a generous lead by setting off as the words left his mouth, but Laura Menzies beat him easily and had hoisted herself on to the raft by the time he had threshed his way to it and was holding on to the side.
‘Not bad,’ she said casually. ‘I expect you do most of your swimming in a public bath, don’t you?’
Mark admitted that he did, and clambered out to sit beside her.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘old Faintley, you know. What do you honestly think? I mean, if she’d been run over she’d have been taken to hospital, and what was funniest… only I haven’t told anybody yet… you know that bookshop she went to when I left her to buy my film? Well, she wasn’t there any more. I mean, she wasn’t inside, either, because I could see in from the top of the bus. At the time I thought what a bit of luck, but now I’m beginning to wonder whether she might have thought it wasn’t a bad idea to push off by herself after all.’
‘There’s something in that.’
‘I think so, too. After all, why did she want to take me out in the first place? It wasn’t as though I’d got nothing else to do. You don’t suppose…’ he hitched himself round to look at her instead of continuing to watch his own feet gently scuffling in the sea… ‘you don’t suppose she was using me for some kind of cover? I’ve read of things like that. Do you think she could have got mixed up with some sort of gang, and took me with her to put them off the scent?’
‘You said she wasn’t the type,’ Laura pointed out. ‘Look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll push over to Torbury myself after lunch and have a snoop round.’
‘The police will have done that already, I expect.’
‘Not until they’ve had a talk with you. You’re the only direct source of information.’
‘Oh, heck!’ said Mark, dismayed. Like many boys of his age, he was afraid of policemen. He always imagined they might pounce on him for something done in school in which he had had no hand, and that the usual code would oblige him to take the rap and tell no tales. ‘I can’t tell them a single thing except what I’ve told you and my father and the manager, and none of it helps at all. I don’t see,’ he added, voicing his chief grievance, ‘why it had to be me this happened to. We’ve always lost the teachers on school outings, and nothing has ever happened to any of them before, or to any of us, either!’
‘I know,’ said Laura sympathetically. ‘But life’s like that. You do a thing three hundred and ninety-nine times, and get away with it, and then, the four-hundredth time, you’re in the mud up to the neck. It was always like that at school with me, and there never seemed any real reason. Come on. Let’s get back. I want my elevenses. Besides, I can see a fair-weather crowd getting in, and I do hate sharing a raft with dozens of belly-flopping divers.’
The police interview, which was conducted by a quiet man in plain clothes, was not in the least distressing. Mark explained how he had been invited out by Miss Faintley and that he and his father had agreed (after some resistance on Mark’s part) that the invitation must be accepted. Asked whether he had been surprised when he received the invitation, Mark replied that he had, and he had not, and clarified this by adding:
‘I shouldn’t have thought a lady teacher would want to take boys out in the hols., although some decent masters take you to France and Switzerland and Iceland and all that, but I wasn’t much good at Miss Faintley’s subject and fooled about a bit in form, so I should think she’d rather go out by herself when she had the chance. All the same, she was sort of educational – always improving our minds and being cultural and a lot of rot – so perhaps, as we were fairly near Torbury, and it’s got a cathedral and some old city walls and a museum, she might have thought it a good thing to take me, although really I should have thought she’d rather have done some kind of a ramble and picked things for botany. That’s supposed to be her subject.’
‘In other words, you don’t really know why you were invited out, and you didn’t want to go.’
‘Fair enough,’ muttered Mark, shuffling a little and giving his father a half-glance.
‘It’s all right, son. I’m as sick as you are that I made you go,’ said Mr Street. ‘Will that be all, Inspector?’
‘I’d just like a detailed description from Mark of how Miss Faintley was dressed, sir. He may have noticed some detail which I didn’t get from the hotel porter who saw them go out.’
‘Grey skirt, light-green blouse, dark-green cardigan, green-blue tweed jacket, no hat, dark-brown suede shoes, thick sort of stockings, gold wrist-watch on a thick gold bracelet thing… oh, and she’d put a ski-ing club badge in her lapel, two crossed skis and a circle of laurel leaves, but I don’t think she was really entitled to wear it.’
‘Why not?’ asked the inspector. ‘You’ve given me a first-rate description, and this bit about the badge and the wrist-watch may be extremely helpful. But why don’t you think she was entitled to this ski-ing badge?’
‘Well, Jenkins, who’s rather gifted at getting the teachers to talk about their holidays when we’re all getting browned-off in form, once asked Miss Faintley if she’d ever been in Switzerland, and Miss Faintley said she had never been nearer Switzerland than England.’
‘She might have been in Norway,’ the inspector pointed out. ‘Now, one last question: has Miss Faintley any distinguishing mark? You see, she might lose her watch or this badge…’
‘Or even her wig!’ said Mark, by now at ease and beginning to giggle.
‘… but a scar or a mole or a birthmark isn’t so easy to lose,’ the inspector gravely concluded. Mark sobered down.
‘She hadn’t got a scar, exactly,’ he observed, ‘but she had a little bald patch at the left side of her head about an inch and a half square. It was rather noticeable. She told us once that it was done in an air-raid when she was on an ack-ack site in the blitz. It got burnt, and the hair would never grow there again. So we didn’t rot her about it, although Smalley told us afterwards that he betted Miss Faintley got it trying to rush into an air-raid shelter quicker than anyone else, and bumped her head.’
‘What little toads boys are,’ said the inspector, indulgently. ‘Well, thank you, son. No doubt Miss Faintley will turn up like a shining penny before the morning. We’re not really worried about her.’ He winked at Mr Street. ‘And if she had been a gentleman we shouldn’t worry at all.’
Mark did not see why they should worry about ladies. There was to him, at his age, one definitely redundant sex.
‘I’m sorry we lost each other,’ he blurted out, ‘but honestly, she wasn’t in the bookshop where she’d said she’d be.’
‘All right, sonny. We’ve got her home address. That’s in the hotel register. So we can soon get to work on her relations to find out whether she went back home or not.’
‘That is if anybody’s there,’ said Mark’s father. ‘So many of these single middle-aged women seem to live alone. But possibly she was in digs.’
‘We’ll soon know,’ said the inspector. ‘Meanwhile, don’t you worry, sir. It wasn’t the lad’s fault, and I expect she’ll turn up all right, although it was only correct of the manager here to let us know.’
Chapter Three
LAURA
‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging.
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.’
john donne – Song
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nbsp; Breakfast had been over for two hours and a half, and while the police officer had been questioning young Mark Street, Laura, and the sharp-eyed, yellow-skinned elderly lady with whom she had sat at table, had been for an exploratory walk along the cliffs and into the coves west of the bay where the two young people had bathed.
‘Mrs Bradley, I could do with my elevenses,’ observed Laura, when she and her employer came back to the eyrie of Cromlech village. ‘What about coffee and buns?’
‘Coffee for two, buns for one, and your valuable observations on the case of Street versus Faintley,’ said Mrs Bradley with a grim cackle.
‘That kid’s worried,’ said Laura. ‘I told him I’d go to Torbury myself and have a look round, but it didn’t really seem to ease his mind. I suppose that schoolmistress Faintley went off on a toot of some kind, but, if she did, it was hardly fair to take Mark along, do you think, to cover her questionable activities? Why will people try to remain respectable?’’
‘That question requires analysis, and, in any case, you mean respected, not respectable. Anyway, I have been talking to the boy’s father. He declares that Miss Faintley was the last kind of person to do anything rash or to prove herself unreliable. He pictures her as an essentially serious-minded woman, not popular with the boys, but extremely anxious to do her best for them, and, of course, for the girls, too.’
‘Parents often get weird ideas, though,’ said Laura, unimpressed. ‘I remember, when I was at school, we had a mistress whom everybody thought mousy and inoffensive in the extreme. There was an awful stink when it turned out that she had lifted all the school pots and shields and tried to pawn them. The pawnbroker brought them all back in a little handcart. She was found to be daffy, of course, but that only proves my point… that the parents and friends don’t know everything. Shall you accompany me to Torbury?’
‘No, child. The police will do everything in Torbury that is necessary. I shall take my knitting and sit on the cliff-top and enjoy the air.’
‘Not your knitting,’ said Laura. So Mrs Bradley went out for a walk, accompanied by a packet of chocolate, an ash-plant, and a Sealyham she did not know, but which elected to escort her on her way.
The determined Laura had an interview with Mark before she set out for Torbury. She wanted an exact description of Miss Faintley down to the smallest detail that Mark could remember. Mark repeated the description he had already given to the inspector and went off to play tennis with his father. Laura boarded a bus and nearly two hours later was in conversation with the assistant in the bookshop which Miss Faintley had stated she would visit whilst Mark was buying his film. She bought one of the new Penguins to add to her collection, but obtained no other satisfaction. The assistant had not noticed the lady Laura described, and had told the police so already.
‘It’s all right,’ said Laura, with that air of frankness and innocent credulity which had got her out of many a tight place at school. ‘It’s really nothing on earth to do with me, but she was staying at my hotel, so naturally I’m rather interested. She seemed to be distinctly a bookworm, a quality to which I am partial. Are there any other bookshops in the town?’
She repeated her efforts at each of three more bookshops, received no help and went in search of some tea. Another thought struck her. Whatever else Miss Faintley had done she must have lunched somewhere. Laura wished she knew whether the woman was a restaurant, a good-pull-up or a pub-and-snack person. She might easily, of course, be a milk-bar devotee. In a city the size of Torbury it seemed hopeless to go to every place which offered rest and refreshment. There was one other possibility of tracing some of her movements, but, again, it offered only the remotest chance of success. If she were a smoker she might have gone into a tobacconist’s shop. Unfortunately, not only was Torbury supplied all too liberally with tobacconists’ shops but she had not thought of asking Mark whether Miss Faintley smoked. Possibly, however, he would not know.
It occurred to her that this could be remedied. She went into a public call-box and rang up the hotel. The call was answered from the office and she was told to hold on. The reply to her question came through quickly. The chambermaid on Miss Faintley’s floor had emptied an overflowing ashtray each time she tidied the room.
‘Eureka!’ said Laura, as she charged out of the telephone booth and returned to the bus station. From there she looked for the nearest tobacconist’s, and discovered one next door but three to the chemist’s at which Mark had purchased his film. The assistant recognized the description of Miss Faintley at once. She had bought a packet of twenty cigarettes, had paid with a pound note, and had asked the way to the railway station.
This was news indeed. Proud of her perspicacity, and the success which had at last attended it, Laura bought some cigarettes and went back to the bus stop. She boarded a bus which went to the station, and could not help wondering why Miss Faintley had not done the same thing. It seemed so very much more simple than asking the way in a shop. She knew, however, that she herself detested asking the way, and only did so as a last resort or if she happened to be badly pressed for time.
It took ten minutes for the bus to reach the station, and during that ten minutes Laura thought hard. There seemed no doubt that, if the tobacconist was right and it was Miss Faintley who had asked the way to the station, then the schoolmistress had abandoned Mark deliberately. The next question was whether she had formed this intention before or after leaving the boy at the chemist’s. If she had already decided to desert him when she issued the invitation at the hotel, then Mark (for all that it had seemed to Laura a highly unlikely theory at the time) might be right in supposing that he had been used as some kind of cover. Miss Faintley must have been interested that some person or persons should be misled into thinking that she intended to spend the day out with the boy, when, in reality, she proposed to travel by train to some destination at present unknown.
On the other hand, if the invitation had been given in good faith, then something must have happened in Torbury to make Miss Faintley change her plans. She could not have spoken to anybody on the bus; Mark would have mentioned that. She must have met somebody immediately the boy left her, and, in a very few minutes, rearranged her whole day without attempting to contact him and let him know.
Of the two theories, Laura much preferred the first. It was true that teachers, whichever their sex, were not apt to take children out for the day and then abandon them, but there was the practical question of time. Miss Faintley would have had to meet this acquaintance, buy the cigarettes, inquire the way to the station and receive (judging by the route Laura’s bus was taking) a complicated answer, if the second theory were to be tenable. Besides, Miss Faintley had been out of sight by the time Mark came by on that other bus on his way to the river, and all buses travelled up that straight long street from the bus station, past the chemist’s, the bookshop and the tobacconist’s, because there was no other way for them to go, so if Miss Faintley had been in the street Mark must have spotted her.
‘Unless she was still in the tobacconist’s when the kid came past on the bus… and, of course, most likely she was,’ thought Laura at this point. ‘And if she was, then the question of a time limit doesn’t seem quite so important. Yet she’d know… or, at least, she’d think . . . that Mark would come looking for her, and might try the tobacconist’s the moment he found she was not in the bookshop, so it wouldn’t make a very good hidey-hole. Besides, Mark couldn’t understand why Miss Faintley had offered to take him out. He was certain she couldn’t have wanted to. I think that the boy (and that includes me and my first theory) guessed right the very first time!’
Still feeling the flush of detective fever, Laura got off the bus and went to inquire at the station. She did not obtain any information there. A main-line West Country station in August was too busy a place for much notice to have been taken of anybody unless he or she had provoked a breach of the peace.
There was one thing more that Laura could do. She took the return route to
the bus station, walked back to the tobacconist and asked whether the woman she had described had been alone. The tobacconist had no idea, and looked at Laura rather oddly.
‘I didn’t know they came in plain clothes,’ he said, not impudently but with a note of interrogation in his voice.
‘Who?’ Laura inquired.
‘Policewomen.’
‘Why shouldn’t they? It’s bound to be necessary sometimes.’
‘I suppose so, when you come to think of it. What’s she done, this woman?’
‘Absconded. I can’t tell you any more, you understand,’ said Laura, picking up her cue, ‘and she didn’t speak to anybody in the shop except to you?’
‘No. There wasn’t any other person here.’
Satisfied that there was no useful purpose to be served by remaining any longer in Torbury, and beginning to feel the need of her dinner, Laura caught the next bus back to Cromlech, and arrived at table to find Mrs Bradley just finishing her soup. Mrs Bradley ordered wine, and asked for an account of Laura’s adventures.
‘So I had better pass on to the police what I’ve found out,’ Laura concluded, ‘but it’s too late to bother about that to-night, unless I tell them over the telephone, and it doesn’t really seem to amount to all that much, does it?’
‘You will probably find that they know it already,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘therefore I should not allow it to trouble you until the morning. Enjoy your dinner, and afterwards we will join the revellers in the hotel ballroom.’
By the time they rose from table the dining-room had almost emptied. Laura was stopped on her way to the lounge by Mark, who had been waiting for her to come out.
‘Any luck?’ he asked in the tone of one conspirator to another.
‘A bit. Miss Faintley did mean to leave you on your own in Torbury. She went into a tobacconist’s and asked the way to the railway station.’
‘Oh, that’s old stuff! The police know that already. I never thought of looking in the tobacco shop. I didn’t know she smoked. They can’t find out where she went, though, or even whether she took a ticket. If that’s all you found out I’m rather glad I didn’t go with you. It was much better fun staying here.’
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