N Or M? Part 18

Miss Minton said eagerly: "Oh, but surely - perhaps Mr Meadowes has met with an accident. In the blackout, you know."

"Good old blackout," said Major Bletchley. "Responsible for a lot. I can tell you, it's been an eye-opener being on patrol in the L.D.V. Stopping cars and all that. The amount of wives just 'seeing their husbands home.' And different names on their ident.i.ty cards! And the wife or the husband coming back the other way alone a few hours later. Ha ha!" He chuckled, then quickly composed his face as he received the full blast of Mrs Blenkensop's disapproving stare.

"Human nature - a bit humorous, eh?" he said appeasingly.

"Oh, but Mr Meadowes," bleated Miss Minton. "He may really have met with an accident. Been knocked down by a car."

"That'll be his story, I expect," said the Major. "Car hit him and knocked him out and he came to in the morning."

"He may have been taken to hospital."

"They'd have let us know. After all, he's carrying his ident.i.ty card, isn't he?"

"Oh, dear," said Mrs Cayley. "I wonder what Mr Cayley will say?"

This rhetorical question remained unanswered. Tuppence, rising with an a.s.sumption of affronted dignity, got up and left the room.

Major Bletchley chuckled when the door closed behind her.

"Poor old Meadowes," he said. "The fair widow's annoyed about it. Thought she'd got her hooks into him."

"Oh, Major Bletchley," bleated Miss Minton.

Major Bletchley winked.

"Remember your d.i.c.kens? Beware of widders, Sammy."

III.

Tuppence was a little upset by Tommy s unannounced absence, but she tried to rea.s.sure herself. He might possibly have struck some hot trail and gone off upon it. The difficulties of communication with each other under such circ.u.mstances had been foreseen by them both, and they had agreed that the other one was not to be unduly perturbed by unexplained absences. They had arranged certain contrivances between them for such emergencies.

Mrs Perenna had, according to Mrs Sprot, been out last night. The vehemence of her own denial of the fact only made that absence of hers more interesting to speculate upon.

It was possible that Tommy had trailed her on her secret errand and had found something worth following up.

Doubtless he would communicate with Tuppence in his special way, or else turn up, very shortly.

Nevertheless, Tuppence was unable to avoid a certain feeling of uneasiness. She decided that in her role of Mrs Blenkensop it would be perfectly natural to display some curiosity and even anxiety. She went without more, ado in search of Mrs Perenna.

Mrs Perenna was inclined to be short with her upon the subject. She made it clear that such conduct on the part of one of her lodgers was not to be condoned or glossed over.

Tuppence exclaimed breathlessly: "Oh, but he may have met with an accident. I'm sure he must have done. He's not at all that sort of man - not at all loose in his ideas, or anything of that kind. He must have been run down by a car or something."

"We shall probably soon hear one way or another," said Mrs Perenna.

But the day wore on and there was no sign of Mr Meadowes.

In the evening, Mrs Perenna, urged on by the pleas of her boarders, agreed extremely reluctantly to ring up the police.

A sergeant called at the house with a notebook and took particulars. Certain facts were then elicited. Mr Meadowes had left Commander Haydock's house at half past ten. From there he had walked with a Mr Walters and a Dr Curtis as far as the gate of Sans Souci, where he had said goodbye to them and turned into the drive.

From that moment, Mr Meadowes seemed to have disappeared into s.p.a.ce.

In Tuppence's mind, two possibilities emerged from this.

When walking up the drive. Tommy may have seen Mrs Perenna coming towards him, have slipped into the bushes and then have followed her. Having observed her rendezvous with some unknown person, he might then have followed the latter, whilst Mrs Perenna returned to Sans Souci. In that case, he was probably very much alive, and busy on a trail. In which case the well-meant endeavours of the police to find him might prove most embarra.s.sing.

The other possibility was not so pleasant. It resolved itself into two pictures - one that of Mrs Perenna returning "out of breath and dishevelled" - the other, one that would not be laid aside, a picture of Mrs O'Rourke standing smiling in the window, holding a heavy hammer.

That hammer had horrible possibilities.

For what should a hammer be doing lying outside?

As to who had wielded it, that was most difficult. A good deal depended on the exact time Mrs Perenna had re-entered the house. It was certainly somewhere in the neighbourhood of half past ten, but none of the bridge party happened to have noted the time exactly. Mrs Perenna had declared vehemently that she had not been out except just to look at the weather. But one does not get out of breath just looking at the weather. It was clearly extremely vexing to her to have been seen by Mrs Sprot. With ordinary luck the four ladies might have been safely accounted for as busy playing bridge.

What had the time been exactly?

Tuppence found everybody extremely vague on the subject.

If the time agreed, Mrs Perenna was clearly the most likely suspect. But there were other possibilities. Of the inhabitants of Sans Souci, three had been out at the time of Tommy's return. Major Bletchley had been out at the cinema - but he had been to it alone, and the way that he had insisted on retailing the whole picture so meticulously might suggest to a suspicious mind that he was deliberately establis.h.i.+ng an alibi.

Then there was the valetudinarian Mr Cayley who had gone for a walk all round the garden. But for the accident of Mrs Cayley's anxiety over her spouse, no one might have ever heard of that walk and might have imagined Mr Cayley to have remained securely encased in rugs like a mummy in his chair on the terrace. (Rather unlike him, really, to risk the contamination of the night air so long.) And there was Mrs O'Rourke herself, swinging the hammer, and smiling...

IV.

"What's the matter, Deb? You're looking worried, my sweet."

Deborah Beresford started and then laughed, looking frankly into Tony Marsdon's sympathetic brown eyes. She liked Tony. He had brains - was one of the most brilliant beginners in the coding department - and was thought likely to go far.

Deborah enjoyed her job, though she found it made somewhat strenuous demands on her powers of concentration. It was tiring, but it was worth while and it gave her a pleasant feeling of importance. This was real work - not hanging about a hospital waiting for a chance to nurse.

She said: "Oh, nothing. Just family! You know."

"Families are a bit trying. What's yours been up to?"

"It's my mother. To tell the truth I'm just a bit worried about her."

"Why? What's happened?"

"Well, you see, she went down to Cornwall to a frightfully trying old aunt of mine. Seventy-eight and completely ga ga."

"Sounds grim," commented the young man sympathetically.

"Yes, it was really very n.o.ble of mother. But she was rather hipped anyway because n.o.body seemed to want her in this war. Of course, she nursed and did things in the last one - but it's all quite different now, and they don't want these middle-aged people. They want people who are young and on the spot. Well, as I say, mother got a bit hipped over it all, and so she went off down to Cornwall to stay with Aunt Gracie, and she's been doing a bit in the garden, extra vegetable growing and all that."

"Quite sound" commented Tony.

"Yes, much the best thing she could do. She's quite active still, you know," said Deborah kindly.

"Well, that sounds all right."

"Oh, yes, it isn't that. I was quite happy about her - had a letter only two days ago sounding quite cheerful."

"What's the trouble, then?"

"The trouble is that I told Charles, who was going down to see his people in that part of the world, to go and look her up. And he did. And she wasn't there."

"Wasn't there?"

"No. And she hadn't been there! Not at all apparently!"

Tony looked a little embarra.s.sed.

"Rather odd," he murmured. "Where's - I mean - your father?"

"Carrot Top? Oh, he's in Scotland somewhere. In one of those dreadful Ministries where they file papers in triplicate all day long."

"Your mother hasn't gone to join him perhaps?"

"She can't. He's in one of those area things where wives can't go."

"Oh - er - well, I suppose she's just sloped off somewhere."

Tony was decidedly embarra.s.sed now - especially with Deborah's large worried eyes fixed plaintively upon him.

"Yes, but why? It's so queer. All her letters - talking about Aunt Gracie and the garden and everything."

"I know, I know," said Tony hastily. "Of course, she'd want you to think - I mean - nowadays - well, people do slope off now and again, if you know what I mean -"

Deborah's gaze, from being plaintive, became suddenly wrathful.

"If you think mother's just gone off week-ending with someone you're absolutely wrong. Absolutely. Mother and father are devoted to each other - really devoted. It's quite a joke in the family. She'd never -"

Tony said hastily: "Of course not. Sorry. I really didn't mean -"

Deborah, her wrath appeased, creased her forehead.

"The odd thing is that someone the other day said they'd seen mother in Leahampton, of all places, and of course I said it couldn't be her because she was in Cornwall, but now I wonder -"

Tony, his match held to a cigarette, paused suddenly and the match went out.

"Leahampton?" he said sharply.

"Yes. Just the last place you could imagine mother going off to. Nothing to do and all old Colonels and maiden ladies."

"Doesn't sound a likely spot, certainly," said Tony.

He lit his cigarette and asked casually: "What did your mother do in the last war?"

Deborah answered mechanically: "Oh, nursed a bit and drove a General - army, I mean, not a bus. All the usual sort of things."

"Oh, I thought perhaps she'd been like you - in the Intelligence."

"Oh, mother would never have had the head for this sort of work. I believe, though, that after the war she and father did do something in the sleuthing line. Secret papers and master spies - that sort of thing. Of course, the darlings exaggerate it all a good deal and make it all sound as though it had been frightfully important. We don't really encourage them to talk about it much because you know what one's family is - the same old story over and over again."

"Oh, rather," said Tony Marsdon heartily. "I quite agree."

It was on the following day that Deborah, returning to her lodging house, was puzzled by something unfamiliar in the appearance of her room.

It took her a few minutes to fathom what it was. Then she rang the bell and demanded angrily of her landlady what had happened to the big photograph that always stood on the top of the chest of drawers.

Mrs Rowley was aggrieved and resentful.

She couldn't say, she was sure. She hadn't touched it herself. Maybe Gladys - But Gladys also denied having removed it. The man had been there about the gas, she said hopefully.

But Deborah declined to believe that an employee of the Gas Company would have taken a fancy to and removed the portrait of a middle-aged lady.

Far more likely, in Deborah's opinion, that Gladys had smashed the photograph frame and had hastily removed all traces of the crime to the dustbin.

Deborah didn't make a fuss about it. Sometime or other she'd get her mother to send her another photo.

She thought to herself with rising vexation: "What's the old darling up to? She might tell me. Of course, it's absolute nonsense to suggest, as Tony did, that she's gone off with someone, but all the same it's very queer..."

Chapter 11.

It was Tuppence's turn to talk to the fisherman on the end of the pier.

She had hoped against hope that Mr Grant might have some comfort for her. But her hopes were soon dashed. He stated definitely that no news of any kind had come from Tommy.

Tuppence said, trying her best to make her voice a.s.sured and businesslike: "There's no reason to suppose that anything has - happened to him?"

"None whatever. But let's suppose it has."

"What?"

"I'm saying - supposing it has. What about you?"

"Oh, I see - I - carry on, of course."

"That's the stuff. There is time to weep after the battle. We're in the thick of the battle now. And time is short. One piece of information you brought us has been proved correct. You overhead a reference to the fourth. The fourth referred to is the fourth of next month. It's the date fixed for the big attack on this country."

"You're sure?"