by Alys Clare
His knowledge of the town comes in handy now because he knows where the office of the largest-circulation local newspaper is located and walks straight to it.
A plump and harassed middle-aged woman with a pencil stuck in her tidy bun – ‘I’m Kitty, want some help?’ – sits him down in a corner of the outer office and sends a lad to fetch back numbers for the previous autumn. Such is Felix’s manner that she doesn’t seem to mind this interruption into her busy day and even offers him a cup of tea.
He consults his notes, verifying what he has already committed to memory. Miss Long said that the girl who ran away with the travelling salesman was in Brighton a few months ago, in the autumn, and so Felix commences his search in the previous September. He works steadily and patiently, and presently realizes he is into the third week of October. Then the article he is looking for jumps out at him from page five: Seaside Shenanigans cries the headline, expanded in the sub-heading by Haberdashery Salesman’s Saucy Jaunt Ends in Tears.
Felix reads the article.
A travelling haberdashery salesman was forced to leave his lodgings on Thursday morning because he was unable to pay his bill. Mr Wilfred Anderson, aged thirty-two and believed to hail from East Anglia, had been presented with the account for his first week in the lodging house in Everly Street by Mrs Ethel Shove, his landlady, she having become suspicious because, although claiming to be in the town to work, Mr Anderson rarely seemed to leave his room. Furthermore, Mrs Shove had begun to entertain grave suspicions that the young lady who accompanied Mr Anderson was not, as stated, his wife: ‘She was no more than sixteen or seventeen,’ Mrs Shove confided to our reporter, ‘and there was a good deal too much laughter and merriment coming from the room for them to be anything other than a honeymoon couple, if indeed they were wed, yet Mr Anderson had told me he was there on business.’
Felix reflects that Mrs Shove has a somewhat jaundiced view of marriage if she believes that laughter and merriment end with the termination of the honeymoon. Perhaps Mr Shove is a serious sort of fellow, he thinks.
He also wonders how much the unmarried state of her guests was bothering Mrs Shove before she began to entertain doubts as to Mr Anderson’s ability to pay the bill.
He reads on.
Mrs Shove was reported to be in some distress as she recalled how her attempts to extract payment from Mr Anderson resulted in a rapidly escalating argument:
‘There were words bandied about that I do not like to repeat,’ she said, ‘and the young lady joined in, calling me a word I never expected to hear from the mouth of a gently raised girl.’ Mr Anderson was finally obliged to admit that he could not pay his account in full, offering to give Mrs Shove all he had whilst only retaining sufficient to purchase his rail fare back to Norwich, upon which his female companion cried loudly, ‘And what about me?’ to which Mr Anderson allegedly replied, ‘I’m broke because of you and I have no more to spend on you.’
Mrs Shove related how the young lady asked if she could give her the money to return to the small village near Cambridge whence she had come; Mrs Shove gained the impression that she had been employed in a select girls’ school, perhaps as a maid or in the kitchen. Mrs Shove, reluctant to admit to her kind-hearted and charitable generosity, eventually said that she had acquiesced to the request.
Felix smiles to himself, reflecting that the price of a rail fare was little enough to pay in return for such a juicy story that she must have known would be much enjoyed by the inhabitants of Brighton and do a great deal to publicize her establishment.
He reads through the remainder of the article, making one or two brief notes, and is about to close the newspaper when the plump woman comes over to his corner and, with a smile, observes, ‘I see you’re reading the Saucy Salesman story. Headline catch your eye and distract you, did it?’
‘No,’ he replies. Instinct tells him that honesty will pay with this sturdy woman, whose expression suggests she has seen it all and is rarely surprised by anything. ‘It’s the very matter I came here to find out about.’
She perches a generous hip on the edge of his desk, gives him an assessing look and says, ‘Then you’re talking to the right person.’
He opens the paper again: the article is accredited to Our Reporter On the Spot, K. Kingston. K, he thinks. And her name is Kitty. ‘You?’
‘Me,’ she agrees, ‘or, if we are to be as grammatically correct as our editor would like, I.’ He raises his eyebrows in silent query. ‘“Reporter on the Spot” is a little inaccurate,’ Kitty continues, ‘since the spot I habitually occupy is right here, but the editor usually asks me to write the piece when there is what he calls female interest. Which suits me well, actually, since I’m given the domestic crimes and the very occasional intra-familial murders, the salacious goings-on like this one’ – she indicates the article – ‘and the performances on the pier and in the music hall, whilst my male equivalents are dispatched to cover council meetings, planning issues, government directives and the rest of the dry-as-dust matters that fill our pages. They do the black and white,’ she concludes with a grin, ‘I do the colour.’
‘I’d say you had the better part of the deal,’ Felix remarks.
The grin widens. ‘Me too.’ She glances round, peering into the corridor outside the office. ‘Now I’ll call the boy to make you and me some more tea, and while we drink it you can tell me why you’ve sought out this story.’
‘So, with nothing for me to do on the case until I hear from other people,’ Felix concludes after a further cup and a half of very good tea and some ten minutes’ conversation, ‘I decided to investigate the one lead I do have.’
Kitty Kingston gives him a long, assessing look. They are now sitting in her office, the door closed, but Felix has not let the intimate setting, nor Kitty’s intelligent grey eyes, seduce him into giving away very much of the story. He has merely told her that the school from which the runaway girl fled is anxious for an explanation as to how she ended up in a Brighton boarding house with a haberdashery salesman. He is careful not to correct the misapprehension that she was a maid and not a pupil. What he says is true in essence, for hadn’t Georgiana Long said the girl was ‘unwilling to give a full account of how she got there’? It is a natural concomitant to conclude that Shardlowes would be keen to know.
Then abruptly Kitty begins to speak.
‘Apparently she was a very pretty girl,’ she said. ‘Good figure, wavy fair hair, deep blue eyes, with that look of demure docility that fools so many men who are too busy ogling the bosom, the tiny waist and the rounded hips and forget to look properly. She was astute, that young lady, knew full well how to employ her looks and her charms to achieve her own ends.’ Then, while Felix is digesting that, she adds, ‘Do you know her name? She called herself Mrs Anderson, and her salesman referred to her as Bonnie.’
Felix thinks quickly, working out whether there is any reason to withhold this fact. He shoots a glance at Kitty, who is looking straight at him.
He takes a gamble, acting largely on instinct. ‘Esme Sullivan.’
‘Thank you,’ Kitty murmurs. ‘I thought you’d be able to tell me. And while we, or rather you, are putting the cards on the table, I take it she was a pupil and not a maid?’ He hesitates. ‘Oh, come on, Mr Wilbraham!’ Kitty says impatiently. ‘Maids don’t talk as if they have a plum in their mouth and stare down their pretty little noses at ordinary mortals as if they are barely worthy of notice.’
‘She was a pupil,’ Felix confirms.
Kitty leans back in her chair. ‘In return for your frankness, I will tell you what I know. When the landlady made it clear that—’
‘Mrs Shove,’ Felix puts in, pronouncing it as if it were the synonym for push.
Kitty laughs. ‘Show-va,’ she corrects. ‘Apparently it’s of Dutch origin. Whether that’s true or not I wouldn’t like to say, but Mrs Shove is far too refined to let anyone get away with Shove.’ This time she repeats Felix’s version. ‘As I was saying, she chall
enged Wilfred Anderson regarding the bill, they began to argue, the girl joined in and Ethel Shove chucked them out. The girl widened her eyes and probably managed a tear or two and asked Mrs Shove for the fare back to East Anglia, and Mrs Shove eventually gave it to her.’
‘That would be her “kind-hearted and charitable generosity”,’ Felix supplies.
Kitty grins. ‘Well, it made a cosy end to the piece,’ she says. ‘In truth, Ethel Shove never gives anything to anybody unless she is somehow to profit by it, and in this instance, she wanted to make sure she emerged as not only the innocent victim but one with the decency and the Christian charity to help a young woman in distress. And if that young woman was indeed in distress,’ she adds softly, ‘then I’m the Queen’s granddaughter.’
‘And she – Esme Sullivan, also known as Bonnie Anderson – definitely asked for the fare back to Shardlowes?’
‘Not specifically. According to Mrs Shove, she said she’d have to go by train to Cambridge and the branch line out to the village where Shardlowes School is situated.’
Felix is surprised that Esme should have mentioned the school by name. ‘She definitely identified the school?’
Kitty looks at the large clock on the wall, then back at Felix. ‘Got an hour or so to spare?’
‘I have.
‘Then come with me and we’ll go straight to the horse’s mouth.’
Ethel Shove’s guest house is in a narrow little back street quite a long way behind Madeira Square. The house, like its neighbours, has seen better days, although the step has been swept and the window glass is largely free of seagull splatter.
Kitty Kingston marches up to the maroon-painted door and bangs the glossy brass knocker a few times. The door is quickly opened, revealing a thin woman dressed in black who holds herself so erect that she gives the impression of a pencil. Her sparse silver hair is twisted into a tiny topknot and her light-brown eyes are suspicious. ‘Yes?’ she says curtly, then, recognizing Kitty, the frown turns into a rather artificial smile. ‘Oh, Miss Kingston!’ she says. ‘Have you come back for more details?’
‘Yes, Mrs Shove. Shall we come in?’ Kitty is doing so even as she says the words. ‘Better not to speak where the neighbours can hear us, eh?’
‘Yes, yes, of course …’ Ethel Shove indicates a door on the left of the hall, and Felix follows Kitty into a room so overfilled with furniture that weaving a way across the richly patterned carpet is something of a challenge. He knocks into a sideboard and a little table, and although ornaments tinkle alarmingly, nothing breaks or falls. He lurches towards an upright chair and gratefully sits down, Kitty settles herself on a chaise longue and Ethel Shove hovers just inside the door.
‘How did you know where the girl calling herself Mrs Anderson was bound?’ Kitty asks without preamble.
‘She was going back to the school,’ Mrs Shove says. ‘Shardlowes School.’
‘She told you that? She actually mentioned the name?’
Mrs Shove begins to nod in affirmation but then abruptly stops. ‘No!’ she says, eyes rounding in surprise. ‘No, now I come to think of it, she didn’t.’
‘So how did you know?’ Kitty persists.
‘I saw a luggage label,’ Mrs Shove says. ‘Isn’t that extraordinary? I had quite forgotten – it must be the drama of it all. No, she didn’t mention the actual place. When she asked me to give her the fare home, she just said she had to return to where she had come from and it was a village just outside Cambridge. But as he’ – she cannot bring herself to mention Wilfred Anderson by name – ‘was carrying her suitcase down the stairs, he banged it against my wallpaper and I told him to be more careful, and he sort of thrust it at me as if it was a weapon!’ She is affronted all over again, her sallow face reddening unattractively. ‘Nearly caused a mishap too, because she was just ahead of him on the stairs and the suitcase caught her shoulder and he had to grab her arm hard to stop her falling.’
‘And that was when you noticed the label?’ Kitty prompts.
‘Yes! Well, not a label, not exactly’ – she closes her eyes, the better to picture the memory – ‘a chalk mark, like something a porter or a luggage-van guard might make, and it said, For Shardlowes School. Just s, c, h and half an o, then a smudge,’ she elucidates, ‘but not many other words begin with scho, do they?’
‘Schloss?’ Felix supplies.
Both women give him a long-suffering look. ‘That’s s-c-h-l-o,’ Kitty says crushingly. Turning back to Mrs Shove, she says, ‘And you very generously gave her the sum she said she needed to return to this village?’
‘I did.’ Mrs Shove looks, if it is possible, even more self-congratulatory.
‘And you are sure that’s where she was going?’
‘Well, I didn’t follow her to the railway station and watch her purchase a ticket!’ Mrs Shove snaps. Then, her face falling in dismay, at last she says in a very different voice, ‘What’s the matter? Did she not arrive back at the school?’
And together Kitty and Felix say, ‘No.’
‘I think,’ Felix says when he and Kitty are once out on the street and walking briskly back towards the seafront, ‘that I shall see what I can find out at the station.’
‘After three months?’ Kitty says. ‘You’ll be lucky.’
‘Not quite three months,’ Felix says pedantically, ‘and railway stations are staffed by men, many of them young and all of them, probably, with an eye for a pretty girl travelling on her own.’
Kitty accedes to the wisdom of this. ‘Well, I wish you success,’ she says. They have come to the junction where the way back to the newspaper office branches off to the right. She stops and holds out her hand. Felix shakes it. Then, reaching inside his coat pocket, he extracts a business card and gives it to her.
‘World’s End Bureau, 3, Hob’s Court, Chelsea, private enquiry agency, proprietor L.G. Raynor,’ she reads aloud. She looks up, eyes narrowed. ‘Thought you said your name was Wilbraham?’
‘I did.’
She grins. ‘So allowing me to assume you were the boss of the outfit was misleading?’
He returns the smile, waving a vague hand in apology. ‘Yes.’
Then suddenly her face straightens. ‘World’s End Bureau,’ she whispers. ‘You solved the Albertina Stibbins case!’
‘Yes,’ Felix says again.
Kitty gives a low whistle. ‘Good grief,’ she mutters.
Then with a nod and an appreciative lift of the eyebrows, she turns and strides away.
Felix speaks to a number of the employees of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, including two ticket-office clerks, a junior station master and three porters, before he finds what he is looking for. An elderly man with a stoop leans on the handles of his porter’s barrow and, in answer to Felix’s question, says with a reminiscent smile and a gleam in his rheumy old eyes that yes, he does remember such a young lady.
‘Will you tell me about her?’ Felix asks urgently. He is amazed at his good fortune, secretly having been as sceptical as Kitty concerning his chances.
The old man glances over his shoulder at a station master with highly polished buttons and a look of self-importance and mutters, ‘Not now. I knock off at six. Buy me a pint of stout in the Buck and then I will.’
Felix agrees, slips sixpence into the old man’s hand as a gesture of good will and walks away. He checks the times of evening trains to London – there are several, which is welcome news as he will be able to return tonight – and looks around outside the station for a pub called the Buck. It is in a dirty little back street, and he memorizes the location.
He glances at his pocket watch. He has nearly four hours to fill. He hasn’t yet eaten and the sea air has made him ravenous, so he decides to spend at least two of them on a long lunch in a restaurant with a view over the promenade and the sea.
He has, he tells himself, earned it.
The late lunch, in the restaurant of a seafront hotel, is as fine as he anticipated except that he manages
to draw it out for even longer than two hours. Then he accepts the offer of a cup of coffee in the lounge with an attractive lady resident, although manages to resist her rather obvious unspoken invitation to continue their encounter upstairs in her room. The sea air, he thinks as finally he leaves, sharpens appetites other than for food.
He walks for a mile along the promenade, then back again. It is colder than ever, and as soon as he stops his fast pace he feels the rising wind trying to blast a way inside his layers of clothing. He has a cup of tea in a pleasant little cafe, then, ten minutes before the appointed time, returns to the Buck.
He is sitting at a small table with a pint of bitter before him when the elderly porter comes in. Felix rises, crosses to the bar and returns with a glass of almost black stout.
‘It was back in October, near the end of the month,’ the porter begins, a moustache of cream foam enlarging his own magnificent facial adornment, ‘and I know that for a fact because it was the wife’s birthday and I needed to get off sharpish as her sister was coming round. Anyway, this young girl – lovely she was, pretty as a picture – has a man with her – older, she’s maybe eighteen, maybe a bit younger, he’s in his thirties, I’ll wager – and they’re arguing, he’s trying to persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to and she says, No, no, I have to get back, I’ve got the money and I’m buying a ticket to London and I’m going on to Cambridge and you can’t stop me! Then he says something else, but he’s talking softly, see, and I can’t hear him, and she pushes him away and marches off to the ticket booth and leans in to mutter to the clerk, he hands her a ticket and she pays the money. Then the man says, At least let me see you to the platform and she says, No, go away, leave me, you’ve done enough, only she doesn’t say it like she’s grateful but like she’s bloody furious with him, pardon the language.’
‘Of course.’ Felix is agog. ‘Go on.’
‘Anyway, the man, he gives up and storms off, and after a moment she hurries after him and stands at the entrance peering out, and I’m thinking to myself she’s checking he’s really gone. Me, I’m feeling sorry for her by now, being as how she looks very young, and she’s alone, and it’s getting late, so I go up to her and says, “Porter, miss?” and she turns these beautiful big blue eyes on me and breathes, “Oh, thank you!”, like it’s a huge relief to have some help, which even at the time I think is a bit artificial since she’s just carried her own case to the entrance and back with no apparent effort, but anyway, like I said, I’m sorry for her, so I put her little case on my barrow and set off towards the platform for the London train.’ He leans closer, eyes narrowing, and, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, says, ‘But then guess what she says?’
