Mr Hive sighed. “Just as you like.” With his foot he eased the door of the booth open a couple of inches to freshen the hot, spent air.
“You may as well return to London at once. I think, in fact, that it would be advisable. Do you think you could prepare your account before you leave?”
Hive said he thought he might manage that.
“Good. Well, leave it in a sealed envelope with my name on it at that little shop near the station, the one I told you about. And whatever you do, don’t post it. Oh, incidentally...”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t important in the least, but I just wondered if you happened to learn our friend Folkestone’s real name.”
“Oh, I...” Papers, a letter or two, an addressed packet, idly glimpsed in pale morning light on the seat of the car at Hambourne Dyke...his nap in said car...better not say. “I never actually heard anybody call him anything.”
“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all. I couldn’t care less now. Are you getting the car put right?”
“A garage is working on it.”
“That’s fine. Don’t forget to put it on the bill. And thanks a lot for everything.”
Hive thoughtfully replaced the receiver. So that was that. Odd bird. He came out of the booth and looked up at a blue sky dotted with harmless wisps of white. It was a perfect day for doing nothing in particular. Or—why not?—for paying a surprise call on an old friend. He smiled—and then remembered something and stopped smiling. His camera. He turned and stepped back into the telephone booth.
“Ah, Mr Hive...I am so glad you thought to get in touch.” What Mr Clay really meant was that he was relieved that Hive was only on the telephone and not physically present in the school. “We have come across something here which I believe belongs to you.”
“My purloined camera! Oh, joyful tidings!” Mr Hive felt entitled, in the circumstances, to a little skittishness.
“Purloined, I cannot say,” remarked the headmaster stiffly, “but camera it may well be. A large square leather case. I have recollection of your carrying something of the kind last night...”
“I shall come at once.”
“No, no,” Mr Clay said hastily, “I will not hear of it. It is now lunchtime and boys are roaming, replete and unoccupied. Tasks are good for them. Where may you be found, Mr Hive?”
“I can be at the Three Crowns in a very few minutes.”
“Ye-e-ess...Perhaps a rendezvous
“As you wish.”
“And, ah, if I might request that the boy be not given any opportunity to loiter...”
“Naturally.”
By the time Hive reached the Three Crowns, a very small boy with glasses and a rumpled grammar school cap was standing outside the entrance to the public bar. The camera case was on the ground beside him. Mr Hive hooked a penny from one of his waistcoat pockets and presented it to the boy with the air of conferring a golden guinea.
“Cut along, then, young shaver! You’ll just have time to catch the tuck-shop before Latin!”
The boy stared as if at the sudden materialization of a character out of science fiction.
Mr Hive picked up his case. “By the way, where did this turn up? Do you know?”
The boy went on staring a little longer. Then Hive’s switch to intelligible English registered. The boy swallowed, sullenly mumbled “Cupboard somewhere”, and departed.
The next hour or so Mr Hive spent very pleasantly in the devising of his account, inspired jointly by brandy and the now obvious approbation of the barmaid. Greeting him like an old friend, she had said that he might call her Helen and that she would call him Mort. She really was a splendid creature: he had not the heart to tell her that he would have preferred Mortimer (‘Mort’ sounded so unhappily like ‘wart’).
“What’s all that writing you’re doing, Mort? Do tell me.”
She was leaning forward across the bar, chin on hand, prettily amused by so much industry. Mr Hive’s table was only three feet away; there was no one else in the room and he had moved it boldly out of line.
“I am preparing an account of professional fees and outgoings.”
“You’re not! You’re writing a love letter!” She twisted her head a little, pretending to make out some of the words.
Hive smiled, not looking up. “Might I hope that you could be free for an hour or so this evening, Helen?”
“I dare say I could tell you—but only if you let me know what you’re really writing.”
“I’ve told you. I am making out an account.”
“Honest?” Without taking her chin from her cupped hand, she delicately inserted into one nostril the tip of her little finger. “You a commercial traveller, then?”
Mr Hive raised his head. “I am a private detective.”
He watched the girl’s bantering manner fade. Her eyes widened, but she kept in them enough of disbelief to proclaim that she, Helen Banion, had not been born yesterday.
