by Colin Watson
After a while, the street and the pavement widened and the congestion eased. There were space and time to stare around. Miss Teatime noticed a cinema and a Woolworth’s and a self service store plastered with the slogans of twopence-off evangelism. Not so different from Twickenham after all, she reflected. Then she looked up to the surmounting buildings and saw the dignified, gracious face of the eighteenth century. For the whole length of the street, these Georgian façades had survived and there was now an air of almost jaunty self-congratulation about their new coats and bright pastel colour-wash.
For some reason, the road was empty of traffic—it had probably coagulated at the scene of some particularly rash act of pedestrian provocation farther back. Miss Teatime crossed over. She had spotted a short row of market stalls. They proved disappointing. No piles of miraculously undervalued coach lamps, paper weights and copper kettles. Just garden plants, dress materials, cut-price sweets. Again her optimism sagged. But she was learning, she told herself; she’d soon have the measure of the place.
While standing still by the plant stall, she noticed a man cleaning a first floor window a few yards farther along. A bucket stood near the foot of the ladder. His barrow, on which rested another ladder, was in the gutter. She glanced at the barrow idly and again at the window cleaner. Then, incredulous, she stared at the barrow once more. In bold white letters along the side was proclaimed: THE QUEEN MUST MAKE WATER.
Miss Teatime looked covertly at passers-by to see if they, too, had seen the astounding message. None gave any sign of finding it unusual. Only one, a boy who had slipped from a group of companions, seemed at all concerned. Keeping one eye on the window cleaner, he walked warily past the ladder and let something fall from his hand into the bucket. Then he doubled back to his friends and stood with them, watching.
Soon afterwards, the man came down from the window. He had a pale, bird-like face and quick, worried eyes. He knelt by the bucket and plunged his leather into the water, swirling it about while he looked up and down the street like a nervous sentry. He withdrew the leather and with a single ferocious twist wrung it out.
The effect was horrible. From between his fingers there gushed and squirted blood.
Miss Teatime gave a little squeal. The man glared at her, then looked down. With a bellow of dread he sprang to his feet, dropped the encarmadined leather and staggered across the pavement.
“The grape!” he howled. “The accursed grape!”
Miss Teatime heard a tut of disapproval from the woman behind the stall. “It’s too bad of those boys. They’ll have him off his ladder one of these days.”
A packet of dye. Of course. She felt a bit cross at having squealed.
“They tease him, do they?” she said to the stallholder.
“Well, he’s got a thing about drink, you know,” the woman explained. “Religious.”
“Ah,” said Miss Teatime.
The man had recovered himself sufficiently to kick the bucket into the roadway. Muttering, he watched its contents drain away. Then he packed ladders and bucket on the barrow and swung it round in order to depart. Miss Teatime saw revealed on its other side the second half of his proclamation:...OUR ONLY DRINK BY LAW.
“I hope,” she said five minutes later to the girl in the reception office of the Roebuck, “that this is not a temperance hotel. The point hadn’t occurred to me when I booked.”
“Oh, no, madam. We’re fully licensed.”
“Excellent. In that case perhaps you would be good enough to have a little whisky sent to my room. Also a copy of the local paper, if you don’t mind.”
She went upstairs, accompanied by a chambermaid carrying her cases. The room, she saw with instant pleasure, overlooked the river. Through the net-curtained casement she glimpsed the tops of masts and the jib of a dock crane; it looked like the neck of an inquisitive dinosaur. The small bed had a frilled cover, white, with a wealth of fat pink roses. There was a matching armchair beside the gas fire. A pot of white cyclamen stood on a little table in the centre of the room. At the foot of the bed was one of those curious slatted stools, of uncertain purpose, that are found only in English hotel rooms, and in a corner was the inevitable plywood wardrobe that sways and emits the hollow rattle of hangers when one first tries to open the door but which, once broached, can never again be closed.
Miss Teatime had a brief, maidenly wash, changed her dress and shoes, and pulled the chair nearer the window. She had just sat down after looping back the curtain when the girl from the reception office arrived with a glass of whisky and a newspaper. Miss Teatime noted approvingly that the whisky was a double.
“Did you feel faint after the journey, madam?” The girl held the glass like a medicine measure.
“Not a bit of it. Cheers!”
The girl withdrew, looking slightly bewildered.
For a while, Miss Teatime watched the dark water of the river slipping by below. It flowed through a canyon of warehouse walls. They were of some kind of stone, pale cinnamon streaked with sage, and pierced high above the water line by dark apertures with gently rounded tops. From some of these jutted timber gallows. The ceaseless wheeling of gulls superimposed on the scene a fluid pattern of flashing white.
She turned at last from the window, finished her drink, and unfolded the Flaxborough Citizen.
It was a voluminous paper that tented the small woman in the armchair. She made a quick survey of its general contents, then folded it back at the second page of classified advertisements. This contained a Situations Vacant section and a Personal column.
With a pencil Miss Teatime ringed three advertisements under Situations. All were for companions.
Next she took from one of her cases the Flaxborough Street Directory and Gazetteer which she had received by post a fortnight before. She looked up three names and addresses and turned three times to the town map. What she inferred from these references did not, apparently, impress her. She scribbled through the pencilled rings and began to explore the Personal column.
It was not promising.
Most of the entries were purely commercial advertisements, couched in pert or whimsical terms. Thus: “A.D.—Meet me at the Flaxborough Pram Mart, Tuesday, and we’ll choose our Bargain together. They have fabulous easy terms.—Daisy.”
Or: “Don’t beef, come to Hambles, West Row, where they have the finest meat in town.”
The blandishments of money lenders were much in evidence. “From ten to ten thousand pounds” was to be had at the drop of a postcard, and with no security. Miss Teatime smiled to herself. She knew that the “no security” was intended to qualify the borrower’s legal position, not the loan.
Here, too, was the hunting ground of the hawkers of such curious boons as foolproof chimney cowls, denture fixatives (“spare yourself shame”), cures for stuttering and means to learn the mandolin in a week.
She was admonished in turn to learn the secrets of the Rosicrucians, provide herself with the powers of Joan the Wad and avoid furs got by torture.
Then came a wide selection of addresses from which, under plain cover, unspecificed artifacts in rubber would be promptly dispatched. “Good old thousand per cent and no overheads,” murmured Miss Teatime to herself.
Her eye travelled down.
“Unparalleled opportunity for lovers of unusual art...”
Good God! Maisie and Ted were still at it. The same, exactly. Real old troupers.
“A business opening exists...” Oh, no. Not that one.
“Gentleman who has written novel about exciting war experiences would appreciate advice as to having same published.” Better. But still only as a last resort. Alas, those gentlemen from the war...
Ah!
Right at the bottom of the column, it was. Something for which she had not dared to hope. Not in remote, prosperous, hard headed Flaxborough.
A matrimonial bureau.
Well, what else could be meant by “Handclasp House: Are you weary of the solitary path?”
&nbs
p; Miss Teatime read the whole advertisement through carefully. Clients from all walks of life...introductions arranged...view to permanent association...countless instances of happiness...small initial fee...There was no doubt about it.
She took from her handbag a little lavender-coloured memorandum book. As she jotted down the address of Handclasp House, a smile spread over her face, illuminating charmingly its lineaments of good breeding.
Then she put the book away, folded the Flaxborough Citizen and resumed her contemplation of the waterside and the circling gulls.
Chapter Four
“Teashops, Sid,” Inspector Purgright had said. “I’ve a feeling that Miss Reckitt and Mrs Bannister would have chosen to be courted in teashops. Try taking their pictures round.”
There were eight establishments in Flaxborough that the sergeant felt he could reasonably include in his list, although two were in fact self service cafeterias and a third brashly advertised itself as a “Shake ’n’ Donut Bar”. These three he was able to eliminate within half an hour, but as he began to slog round the others he saw that he was in for a long and daunting quest.
In “Penny’s Pantry”, next to the Guildhall, he waited for what seemed hours, wedged amidst elbows and enormous shopping baskets, while the sole attendant—Penny herself, he presumed—served customers who constantly replaced themselves like Hydra’s heads. Each of these women appeared to have been forewarned of a long siege: she indicated cake after cake, which Penny loaded with gloomy fastidiousness into cardboard boxes.
When at last Love found himself within gesturing distance of the woman behind the counter and had managed to catch her eye, he raised his brows invitingly and jabbed a finger in the direction of a doorway through which he had noticed a number of unoccupied tables.
Not open, the woman mimed. Eleven. She turned to forklift an Almond Dainty out of the window.
I want a word with you, Love silently but urgently mouthed as soon as she glanced again in his direction.
She frowned. What about? her mouth framed.
It was like a conversation between two acute laryngitis patients.
I’m a po-lice off-i-cer, went Love’s lips.
He saw the woman consider, nod brusquely, then disappear. He pushed his way to the side of the shop and went through into the tearoom. The woman was already there. She looked offended.
“We’re very busy, you know.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, but I’ll not keep you.” He took out his two photographs.
“I just want to know if you’ve seen either of these ladies here in the café at any time. In the last two or three months, anyway.”
She took a long, grave look.
“What have they done?”
“Nothing,” said Love, blandly. His blue eyes met her glance of disbelief and remained steady.
She held Mrs Bannister’s picture. “It might have been this one who was in the other week. I’m not sure, mind.”
“How long ago?”
“A fairish while. Two or three weeks. If it was her.” She started. “Look, I’ll have to get back to the shop.”
“All right. But can you remember who she was with?”
“Oh, but really...” She thrust the photograph back into his hand and turned.
“It’s important. Honestly.”
Relenting, she paused and stared at a table in the far corner. She seemed to seek there some left-behind impression. Love watched her face cloud with the effort of recollection, then saw a small smile.
“Dicky bow,” she said suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He was wearing one of those dicky bow ties. You don’t often see them nowadays. That’s all I remember, though.”
“Nothing else?”
She shook her head, but her gaze did not leave the corner table.
“How old was he?” Love asked.
“So-so. Middle aged, I suppose. Like her.”
“Hair?”
She shrugged.
“Dark? Fair?”
“Fair. He was...”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m not sure how to describe it. Rather gallant.” She stressed the second syllable. Purbright would have diagnosed from this slight flippancy a desire to be thought more level-headed than she really was. Love suffered from no such devious process of thought.
“What, a bit of a fancy lad, you mean?”
“Sort of,” she said, and departed.
The sergeant drew no results at all from “The Pewter Kettle”, a fearsomely hag-ridden chintzery in St Ann’s Place, or from the Church Tower Restaurant. At “The Honey Pot”, he had to contend with a good deal of indignation from a maiden proprietress who was unshakeably convinced that he had come to accuse her of peddling purple hearts. The Clock Tea Rooms, in Market Street, he found to be closed for redecoration.
It was his last call, at an unnamed first-floor café near the bus station, that produced the only response to the photograph of Martha Reckitt. A plump Italian girl, whose pneumatic occupancy of her waitress’s frock gave her the appearance of the maid in a stage farce, recognized the picture at once.
“She come the day I start. Maybe the first, second customer.”
“That’s why you remember her?”
“Sure.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“Yes. A man. I think a priest.”
Love looked surprised. “A priest?” In his limited religious experience the word had an exotic ring. He had a fleeting vision of a figure in voluminous robes pouring tea like sacrificial wine.
“I think so. Very dark clothes and hands like so.” She joined the tips of her fingers. “And all the time he is looking very sad at my legs.”
“Oh, you mean a clergyman,” Love said.
“I think. Yes.”
“Can you describe him?”
The girl pouted doubtfully. Oo, you little smasher, said the sergeant to himself.
“A man,” she said. “Not young. Not as young as you.” Love glowed. “But with a...a something—you know?” Had he a something, the sergeant wondered, hoping very much that he had.
“Is there anything else you can think of? Colour of eyes or hair?”
“Oh, yes. Not dark hair. Colour like...” She rippled fingers in the air, seeking a comparison within what vocabulary she had acquired, then brightened. “Like chips!”
Purbright seemed quite pleased with his sergeant’s report.
“You’ve gathered more than I expected, Sid. I wish I had your way with women.”
“I wouldn’t have thought the descriptions were much help.”
“They seldom are, unless they include six-inch scars or a club foot. The point is that we now have a much clearer idea of the kind of man we’re looking for—his line of business.”
“A clergyman who writes books, you mean?”
“Not at all. What we have to find is a non-clergyman who doesn’t write books.”
“That ought to be easy,” said Love, hoping he was keeping his end up in the matter of trading ironies.
“Not easy,” Purbright qualified, “but less difficult in the context of Flaxborough society than looking for, say, an embezzler or a fornicator. A needle is much simpler to find in a haystack than in a bin of other needles.
“Now then, whoever won the affections of Miss Reckitt and Mrs Bannister is obviously a professional or semi-professional con man. Among these people there is quite narrow specialization. The bogus charity collector does not cross into the territory of the encyclopaedia salesman. Nor does the inventor in need of capital to market his everlasting petrol capsule work overtime as a spirit guide.”
“Remember that bloke,” Love interrupted, “who was supposed to have put old Alderman Wherry in touch with Edward the Seventh?”
“Just so,” said the inspector. “A full-timer. They hung eighty-three taken-into-considerations on him.
“But to get back to the business in hand. Here we have another kind of full-timer. The con ma
n who’s forever pointed towards an altar. He’s probably the hardest worker of them all. Think of a life that is perpetual courtship of the last woman on earth you’d care to marry. That’s real graft, Sid.”
Sergeant Love, who was finding even his own restricted and unambitious wooing a bit of a strain from time to time, looked suitably awed.
