and long, bottle green velvet curtains, looked more like an advertising agent’s gin parlour.
Miss Teatime accepted the proffered chair. Mr Beach took his seat behind a desk of maple, inlaid with what appeared to be white porcelain lozenges, each initialled “P & M“.
He made of his fingers a prayer-pyramid and looked under it at Miss Teatime’s cheque, lying on a blotting pad.
“Now, Miss Teatime, I take it that you wish to withdraw a sum of four hundred and ninety seven pounds from the account which you have jointly with Mr Trelawney.”
“I do, yes.”
“You are aware, I expect, that a customer with a bank account—any kind of account—may not take out more money than there is credited to that account?”
There was a pause.
“Mr Beach, I really do not see any need for irony. It is pure coincidence that matters in connection with our business—Mr Trelawney’s and mine—have arisen which necessitate this withdrawal so soon after the money was deposited. But, after all, it is
She stopped. Of course she knew what had happened. It was only some kind of professional reflex action that had made her pretend ignorance and indignation.
Mr Beach raised his eyes.
“How much did you suppose this account contained?” he asked.
Miss Teatime appeared to think for a moment.
“Five hundred and five pounds. Oh—less ten shillings for the cheque books, I suppose.”
“I regret to say that you are under some misapprehension, Miss Teatime. Deducting the cheque book charges—ten shillings, as you say—there remains of the original deposit exactly four pounds ten shillings.”
She stared.
“But...but Mr Trelawney called yesterday in order to transfer five hundred pounds from his personal account into this one.”
“If that was his intention, I’m afraid something must have prevented his coming in,” said Mr Beach. He sounded very sympathetic.
“Dear me...”
“Oh, you mustn’t worry about it, Miss Teatime. We are quite used to these small misunderstandings. They happen, you know, they happen. Even in the best regulated circles, I assure you...” (Oh, for crying out loud, thought Miss Teatime.) “The bank is not embarrassed. We are aware of how busy people are nowadays and how easily things slip their memories. In all probability—in all probability, I say—Mr Trelawney will be calling in some time today and then we can...”
She rose, ignoring the cheque that Mr Beach had begun to wave diffidently in her direction.
“All I can say about Mr Trelawney,” she interrupted firmly, before walking to the door, “is that he has a pretty piss-boiling way of going about things.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was the following morning that a letter with a Derby postmark and addressed to Inspector Purbright arrived at Flaxborough police station. He opened it eagerly.
About that little talk we had, [Miss Huddlestone had written], and the thing you asked me to try and remember—well I have puzzled it over and all of a sudden today it came to me what Martha (Miss Reckitt) meant by Catching a Crab.
When we were children and both living in Chalmsbury we went for walks a lot and often brought back fruit and things for our mothers to make jam. Well there was a cottage not far from my home, out towards Benstone Ferry, and it had a big, garden with fruit trees. An old lady lived in it then and we noticed that she didn’t pick the fruit much, so one day we knocked and asked if we could take some apples. She said Oh they are just crabs, you know, so we said we wouldn’t bother. Actually we thought she wasn’t quite right in the head and when we got home I told my mother that a funny old woman had made out that she had crabs in the garden, just as if it was the seaside. And mother said don’t be so silly, she just meant crab-apples and they were very good for jelly. Anyway we went back and got some, and the next year as well, but we often had a good laugh over getting that idea about crabs. Of course Martha would remember it straight away when this man took her to see it. It was called Brookside Cottage and the last time I saw it it had been done up a good deal and had a garage and that sort of thing. It stands on its own at the end of a lane—Mill Lane I think we used to call it—about two miles out of Chalmsbury on the Benstone Road. I do hope this is some use to you and that you soon find what has happened to poor Martha.
Purbright opened a drawer in his desk and took out a copy of the same ordnance survey section as Miss Teatime had bought on the station bookstall. The ring he pencilled on his, though, was smaller and more precise than Miss Teatime’s reference.
He went to the door and called in Sergeant Love.
“This”—he pointed to the ringed cottage—“is the place that Martha Reckitt’s intended said he was going to buy for her. He probably told the same story to Mrs Bannister. The address is Mill Lane, Low Benstone, and the cottage used to be called Brookside, although there’s no guarantee that it still is.
“There are two possibilities. Either the chap just picked the place at random as part of his scheme to string those women along, in which case he’s probably never even made an inquiry about it. Or it is genuinely for sale and he had some reason for knowing it. There’s just a chance of some connection. We’ll have to work on it.”
“You mean I will,” Love observed, without malice.
“For a start, yes. I’ve got this Teatime woman coming in this morning. You’d better try the estate agents first. Find out if the place is for sale, which agent is handling it, who the owners are and whether they are still living there.”
