“I am sure I can rely upon you, Mr Maddox.”
“You most certainly can.” He peered at her, suddenly anxious. “I hope there’s nothing, ah...”
“Purely precautionary,” said Miss Teatime. “As I believe you know, I am being well looked after.”
At the door she gave him a reassuring wave. Mr Maddox stared after her, his hand feeling for the edge of the envelope in his pocket.
The journey to Benstone, this time without incidental vigils at railway stations, was much more quickly accomplished than she had expected. It was not yet twelve when she halted the Renault just short of the series of lane turnings where she had lost Trelawney’s car two nights before.
She took out the map. Three buildings were marked at distances from the road that could reasonably be supposed to be within earshot. There was one along each lane.
She started off again and took the left turn. About fifty yards from the road, a big, sombre farmhouse loomed behind an overgrown hedge. Miss Teatime did not need to get out of the car to see that no one had occupied it for many years. Through one of the glassless windows she caught a brief glimpse of sky as she drove by; part of the roof at the back had collapsed.
After returning to the main road, she made her way up the second lane—that on the right. She saw first a chimney stack and then thatch appear in a cleft in the lane’s banking.
Soon she drew level with a broad gateway. Beyond it was a gravelled enclosure in front of a long, low, white-walled cottage.
A garage large enough for two cars had been built against the right hand gable and painted white. It was open and empty.
Miss Teatime drove into the enclosure, made a half-circle turn, and got out of the car. She knocked on the front door of the cottage. After a minute, she knocked again, more insistently. There was no response. The door was locked.
She explored, going from window to window.
The interior had every sign of expensive conversion. There was central heating and a wealth of good, modern furniture. The kitchen was generously, almost lavishly, equipped.
It was not until she looked into the glass-paned annexe at the back of the cottage, however, that she found a clue of the kind she was seeking.
Thrown across a bench was the suede leather driving jacket with fur collar and curiously pink-tinged octagonal buttons that Trelawney had been wearing when he took her to the Riverside Rest.
So far, so good.
Sensibly interpreting the empty feeling induced by the sight of the jacket as an indication that she needed lunch, Miss Teatime got into the car once more and drove the rest of the way into Chalmsbury.
She had a meal at an inn called—irresistibly, she thought—the Nelson and Emma, wandered for half an hour around the shops in St Luke’s Square, and sat long enough on a bench outside the General Post Office to savour fully the grotesquerie of the town’s war memorial opposite.
Then she returned to Low Benstone.
The cottage was still empty.
She sat in the car and smoked a cheroot.
A full hour went by.
Miss Teatime jerked upright in her seat, realizing that she had been about to doze off. She started the engine. A drive around the byways would be as pleasant a means as any of killing time.
But when she came back at nearly five o’clock, she saw that the big garage remained gaping, unoccupied.
She sat watching a trio of blackbirds chasing one another in and out of the hedge bottom near the gateway. They were angry and coquettish in turns. Every now and then, one would hop away from the others, stick tail and chest up in the air and stare at her officiously. She thought of that policeman waiting at the back of the Roebuck Hotel. Then, possibly by some chain of subconscious association, of window cleaners going up and down ladders in threes. Her eyes closed and the blackbirds were white, dive-bombing a bucket of blood...They strolled towards her in naval uniform, saluting in the most supercilious manner imaginable...
Miss Teatime fell more and more deeply asleep.
Sergeant Love put down the phone and wearily struck out the last name left on his list of estate agents, valuers and auctioneers in Chalmsbury, Flaxborough and district. All he had gained from his labours was a sore throat and the suspicion that somewhere along the line he had made an unwise joke to a freemason friend of the chief constable.
He went in to Purbright and reported that if Brookside Cottage were indeed for sale, no one in the property trade was aware of it.
“No, well we had to check,” said Purbright. He made it sound easy, trivial almost.
“Would you like me to walk out to Benstone and ask at the cottage?” Love inquired bitterly.
Purbright glanced at the clock.
“Oh, not now, Sid. Leave it till morning.”
He went on with what he had been doing, but looked up again as Love noisily opened the door.
“I tell you what you can do. Give the county boys a ring at Chalmsbury and see if old Larch is in a good enough mood to get you the name of the occupants. It’ll save you asking at the door when you go. You’d better say it’s for me.”
Love knew that he better had. Chief Inspector Larch was a fearsome misanthrope and disciplinarian who, while conscientious within those rules he could not ignore, would have regarded a request from a mere sergeant as
