We had to cross the street at Church Street, to get to the American Express office and get a bunch of traveler’s checks changed into pounds. At approximately a dollar seventy to the pound, I made a mental note to be very careful in spending.
We crossed the street again, and on the south side of the street, identified by a large red circle bisected by a blue bar, was the tube station. The printing on this one said, in white letters, “Kensington High Street.”
I was expecting a train station, or a bus station, or something dedicated like that. But as we turned at the sign and entered a large open area, we were in something of a small shopping mall instead. More clothing stores and food outlets. Interesting.
“See that place,” said Jane, pointing to a small open shop to our left.
“That’s Benjy’s. Good cheap eating if you’re on the move. Wrapped sandwiches, salads and candy bars. They’re all over town, really.”
“Okay.” I glanced in as we passed. Bottled water, too. Excellent.
We made it past Benjy’s and found ourselves in the station proper.
Getting our passes wasn’t all that simple. I approached the window, with Jane hovering close by.
“I’d like to purchase a pass,” I said. That’s when it got complex.
First, we were advised to get them for a week at a time, because it was not only cheaper, it was much faster than buying one every day. I was good with that. Then we had to designate the furthest zone from the center of London we’d be traveling to. That beat the hell out of me, so Jane chimed in with “Zone Five!” So that’s what I did. Then, the ticket clerk asked me a question I didn’t get at first.
“Photo?”
“Pardon?”
“Photo,” he said. “I need a photo for identification.”
I thought he wanted a photo ID from me, so I showed him my driver’s license.
He shook his head. “No, I need it for your ticket.”
Well, that’s exactly why I thought I was showing it to him. “I don’t understand . . .”
This was the first time I got what was to be a familiar look of, “be patient, he’s an American.”
“No, sir, I need you to give me a photo. For me to put in your pass. If you don’t have one with you, you can use the booth over there,” and he gestured behind me.
I turned, and saw a standard photo booth near the entrance. Ah.
While Carson approached the ticket booth, I went to the photo kiosk and spent a couple of pounds on a strip of photos. When I got out, Carson was standing there waiting.
“I haven’t used one of these since college,” he said. “I suppose I gotta leave my clothes on this time . . .”
After that, it was a longer wait in the ticket line as more people had arrived. The ticket clerk smiled, cut off one of the photos from the strip, and viola! I had my first tube pass.
“You must carry this with you at all times,” he said, “and be prepared to present it upon request.” There were so many people behind me by now, that I just didn’t take the time to ask why.
Then it was just a matter of slipping the ticket into the slot, and walking through the turnstile.
Jane came through immediately behind me, and we waited for Carson and Vicky.
“Here’s a tube map,” said Jane. “Don’t lose it. It’s bigger than the one that you’ve got there, and you should be able to read it without your glasses.”
“Okay. . . .”
“Now, just watch what I do, and mind the gap.”
“The what?”
She laughed. “There’s a gap sometimes between the tube car and the station platform. Don’t step in it. You could break your leg.”
“Ah.”
I’ve always liked trains, and the London Underground was a real treat. It was kind of crowded, but that was part of the fun.
“There’s one of the big tube maps on the wall over there. . . . Let me show you how to get around. It’s really easy.”
“Okay.” I thought it was going to be.
“We want the tube to Highgate, Dad,” said Jane. “That’s the Northern line. The black one. Right now, we’re on the Circle line . . . that’s yellow.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, grinning.
“Look at the map,” she said. “We’re here. We want the Circle line to South Kensington. We get off there and transfer to the Piccadilly line to Leicester Square. That’s the dark blue one here . . . We get off there, and get on the Northern line going to High Barnett. We get off before High Barnett at Highgate.”
“Sure. Like I’m following that. . . .”
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “It really is easy. . . .”
I scrutinized my little map. It had occurred to me that we were gong to have to get back to our tube station at High Street, Kensington by ourselves.
Carson was being given the same briefing by Vicky. I hoped he was paying attention, but thought he was more interested in standing close to her. In contrast to Jane, who took after her mother, Sue, and was about five two; Vicky was five feet ten, and about 130 lbs., with big brown eyes and dark brown hair. From what Carson had been saying to me about tall women, she was pretty much his type. Well, not his type, maybe, but the type he was drawn to. I’d never been happier that Jane was five feet two.
The trip to Highgate was pretty much a blur, although I was paying as close attention as I could to the process. I did have time to be impressed by just how far underground the Underground really was in places, though. And how old the bricked tube walls were. I tired to imagine laying those by hand and gave up.
We got off at Highgate after about a twenty minute ride, as promised. We emerged from the station into a glazed area that was surrounded by trees. We followed the exit, and found ourselves on a street corner in what for the world looked like a small village.
“This is part of London?” I asked.
“You bet,” said Jane. “We’re pretty far from the center, though.”
“Must be,” I said.
“Close enough to get a few bombs during the Blitz, they tell me.”
There was a red building adjacent to us. “This our pub?”
“Oh, no,” said Jane. “Ours is that way,” and she pointed up a long hill toward some buildings.
“Hey,” said Vicky, “it’s getting late . . . why don’t we go to the Gatehouse first, before they get crowded, and then to our place.”
“The Gatehouse,” said Jane, “is only about two blocks from our place, on the other side of the hill.”
“I’m all for eating first,” said Carson.
So we did.
It was about a half mile to the Gatehouse, mostly up hill. The sidewalks were narrow, the streets the same, and it almost felt like home.
“This is a pretty time of year,” said Jane.
“Sure is,” I said. “Not to mix business with pleasure, but is this the route you always take? The three of you?”
“Usually, yes.”
“The night Emma disappeared, for instance. Would this have been the way you two walked to the pub?”
“Yes.”
There was very little traffic, either vehicular or foot. “It always this quiet?”
“Mostly.”
I was beginning to feel the climb, as we were walking pretty briskly and I was talking. “Doing this every day would keep you in shape. On the night Emma disappeared, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. Not a thing. We just walked up this way, and we were talking, and I was carrying my jacket because it was pretty nice out, and Emma didn’t even have one. We didn’t stop, and nobody was behind us.”
That last statement would have sounded unusual if I hadn’t been checking our rear frequently to make sure some faster walker didn’t need to get by us.
“Nobody just standing around?”
“Nobody I noticed,” said Jane.
“Hey, Vicky?” I said. She and Carson, who were ahead of us, stopped. “On the night Emma went missing, what
route did you take to get to the pub?”
“From our flat,” she said. “It’s on the border of the little park. Pond Square. Just down from the Gatehouse. Kind of from the opposite direction we’re taking now. The other side of the village.”
“Did you notice anybody or anything unusual? That night.”
“No. The detective called Trowbridge asked the same question. It was fresher then, but I still couldn’t think of anything unusual at all.”
I tapped my pocket. “I’ve got his report here. We’ll go over it when we get to the pub. . . .”
The Gatehouse turned out to be a three story building, white mostly, which had those neat exterior frames in the Tudor style. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, except maybe a dark, probably smoky, kind of bar with a dart board. It was far from that. The interior was very bright, with blond wood, and several older couples and foursomes sitting around at nice tables, some drinking, but most having supper. There were also some younger people in the place, more to the rear.
The whole pub was kind of muted, but there were conversations going on all over the place. A nice, peaceful place to relax at the end of the day.
We got a table near a window that looked out on the street, toward a corner where there was a flower stand. It seemed to be doing a brisk business, and the woman vendor appeared to know everyone who passed. I made a note of that.
The waitress came, welcomed Jane and Vicky back, identified herself to us as Mary, gave us menus and asked us what we wanted to drink. We ordered a beer, and scanned the menu.
“Dad,” said Jane, “I know it’s bad for you, but you might want to check out the bangers and mash.”
“What?”
“Just like it says. It’s the sort of thing you’d make for yourself, if we’d let you get away with it. Sausage, mashed potatoes, peas, and all cooked up in a thin pie crust with lots of gravy.”
Sold.
While we waited, I produced Trowbridge’s report. “You want to look that over, and see if there’s anything you can tell me that isn’t in there?”
Jane and Vicky read it together. “All the last names are inked out,” said Vicky. “That’s pretty shitty.”
“Well, they don’t want us interfering,” I said.
It turned out that the girls were going to be a big help in that department. Between them, they provided the last names for Hugh, Todd, Martin, Walter and Peter.
“That’d be Hugh Watson, and Peter’s last name is Sloane,” said Jane.
“And Todd and Martin are both named Granger, but I think they’re cousins and not brothers,” said Vicky. “Martin’s last name is Farmer.”
That was quick.
“How about the others?” I asked.
“Well,” said Jane, “Our advisor’s Robert Northwood. I can get you his office number, and his teaching schedule. And although I don’t know her last name, ‘subject Mary’ is our waitress tonight.”
“Okay,” I said, making the appropriate note in the report. “Robert Northwood. . . .”
“That should be Professor Robert Northwood,” said Vicky. “It’s his course we’re all three taking. In fact, it’s the only one the three of us are in together. Jane is one of the lucky ones. She got the professor himself for an advisor. My advisor is George Bennett, and he’s just a post-doc and a little dorky to boot.”
“I really was lucky,” said Jane. She told us how she’d gotten Prof. Northwood because Dr. Lymington, her original advisor, had been injured in a boating accident shortly after the semester began, and that Professor Northwood had taken on some of the advising tasks to help out. “He’s just fantastic,” she said.
“Pretty good looking, too,” said Vicky, wryly.
Jane actually colored a little at that. “I love him for his brain,” she said.
“Hey, nothing wrong with getting some if it helps your grades,” said Carson.
He flinched a bit, and I was pretty sure somebody had kicked him under the table. It wasn’t me, and I think if it had been Jane he would have left in an ambulance. Good for Vicky.
When our waitress Mary returned, I made sure she had all our orders before I said, “Excuse me. I’m Jane’s here father. Do you mind if we talk with you for a minute when you’re free?”
“I’m pretty busy right now,” she said. “But my shift ends in about an hour.” She smiled. “And, yes, I think I can spare you a few minutes.”
“That’s fine. No pressure, but I’m interested in Emma Schiller, you know, the girl who’s missing. I’m going to be talking with her mother when I get back to the States, and I’d like to be able to tell her as much as I can.”
“Oh, right, certainly, oh her poor mum, what a worry and all.” She seemed genuinely concerned.
When she left, Jane said, with a pretty heavy note of sarcasm in her voice, “That was pretty slick, not letting on you were a cop.”
“I’m not, strictly speaking. I don’t think I could get any further out of my jurisdiction if I went to Mars. I’m just a tourist who happens to be a cop in another country.” I grinned. “Does it really bother you?”
“No. Not really. But I want to be there when you tell you what you do for a living.”
The manager came over when we were about half finished with our meal, and sat down. He thrust out his hand. “Ned Bunting. I’m running the establishment while the owner’s on vacation. Mary tells me you’re interested in the missing girl?”
“I sure am,” I said.
“All the way from America . . . and friend of the family, then?”
I gestured toward Jane. “I’m her father, in fact.”
“I don’t know we can be of much help,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d try,” I said. “Maybe I can help focus things a bit. I’m a cop back in the US, so I’m familiar with how to try to sort this type of thing out.”
“So she’s dead, then?” he half asked, half stated. “Is that why you’ve come?”
I thought he assumed that pretty fast. Well, what the hell, most of us probably thought she was dead by now. “I hope not,” I said, and gave him my very best and truthful explanation as to why Carson and I had come over to London. It took a minute.
“Politics?”
“Pretty much what actually got us here,” I said. “But the root of the matter is that the whole town of Maitland is pretty worried about her. Especially her mother and the rest of her family.”
“How big is this Maitland,” he asked. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.”
“About fifteen hundred,” I said.
“A hamlet then?”
“Pretty close,” said Carson. “More like a big room.”
“Are you a police officer, too?” he asked Carson.
“No, I’m an att . . . ah, barrister,” he said. “He’s the Sheriff.”
“And you’re a Sheriff? With fast draws, and cowboys and all that?” He was kidding, of course.
“Some days, the cowboys seem like they’re winning,” I said. “But I’ve never been on a horse in my whole life, and the holsters we wear have safety things . . . you couldn’t fast draw if you wanted to.”
“You do wear guns, then?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re even required to wear ’em off duty. And just for the record,” I said, probably from habit because Lamar is known to have spies everywhere, “I’m a Deputy Sheriff. The Sheriff is elected. We’re hired.”
“I see. One of those ‘don’t call me sir, I’m a sergeant, not an officer. I work for a living,’ bits from the army.”
“Exactly.” He was giving my hip a very curious look, and it took me a second. “Oh! No, I don’t have one on now. Didn’t even bring one. That’d be illegal over here.”
“Just curious, there, mate,” he said. “If things slow down a bit, I’ll see if I can let Mary have a sit at your table for a few minutes.”
Before Mary got to our table, Jane said, “So you let him tell her . . .”
“Sure. Just happened that w
ay, though.” I smiled. “Pure luck. But it’s better because she trusts him and he’s talked to us. Just let me do most of the talking, okay? At this first interview, anyway.”
“Right,” said Jane, giving me a look that would have done her mother justice.
Mary came over and sat down, but kept looking toward the door and around the pub, keeping tabs on the customers, apparently only too anxious to jump up and go back to work.
We talked for about five minutes. She hadn’t noticed anyone leave with Emma, she was absolutely certain of that. She told me the same thing she’d told Trowbridge, including the remarks made by Emma concerning Martin’s character.
“You didn’t notice anyone leave within a couple of minutes after Emma went out, did you?”
Mary thought for a second. “No, I don’t think so . . .”
“Or make a phone call, maybe?” I asked.
“No . . . but one could take a mobile into the loo,” she said. “Then I’d not notice at all.”
“Sure.” I looked back at Trowbridge’s report, and asked the time honored question cops always use to wind up an interview. “Can you think of anything I haven’t asked? Anything at all?”
She couldn’t. Well, she said she couldn’t. I didn’t know her anywhere well enough to say if she was telling the truth or not. I just took a shot.
“Have you overheard anything? You know, things people say about others behind their back. I’d think you might be in a position to overhear things.” All I was doing was giving her a chance to vent her own opinion without having it attributed to her.
“Well,” she said. “I might have. Yes. I can’t remember who, but just the other night somebody was saying that he thought she was a little too involved with the native population.”
“Really?” I shot Jane a glance, because her face was starting to flush and I was afraid she was going to say something to defend Emma. “You mean like Martin?”
“That could have been,” she said. “You know about Martin, then?”
“Just that they were seeing each other, sort of.” It’s always a good idea to hide a detail or two.
“Oh, right, were they,” she said. “I don’t mean to speak ill of . . .” The pause was significant. “. . . of the absent,” she finished, lamely. Just somebody else who thought Emma was dead. “But she did tend to be . . . I must say, she was quite a bit of the busy one, you know.” The last came out with a rush.
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