behind him, with short purposeful steps. As he heard her turn by the counter and pause, her wake of perfume eddied around him. That, too, he liked about her. Lots of scent—very feminine. Most of them scarcely smelled at all nowadays.
In the empty reference room, Mr Hive stooped and pulled out the book in the pale blue cover. It was one of a selection of operatic scores.
The scrap of paper was nearly at the end. He read its message without removing it, then closed and replaced the book. The whole operation had taken only twenty or thirty seconds. Mr Hive felt distinctly encouraged; this was one of his better days.
A middle-aged woman with a little girl stood outside the door. Mr Hive pulled it back and stood aside with a flourish to let them pass.
The, woman thanked him mournfully and began to advance into the reference room, ushering the child before her. Then, quite suddenly, she stopped and stared, first unbelievingly, then with disgust and horror, at Mr Hive.
Painfully disconcerted as he was, Mr Hive recognized in the silent convolutions of the woman’s mouth an opportunity for lip-reading practice. It gave him no trouble at all.
Clutching the child to her skirts, she gazed angrily about her as if in search of some strong-armed champion. Mr Hive saw that his wisest course was prompt disengagement. He strode towards the exit.
As he approached the counter, he noticed that the librarian who had hissed at him was now in anxious conference with a tall, angular, bald-headed man, doubtless a senior colleague well versed in the handling of filthy beasts.
Both looked up together. The man made a movement suggestive of challenge.
Mr Hive avoided looking at him and marched straight for the door. It would not have surprised him in the least to hear the clanging of an alarm bell and the rushing descent of steel shutters. But nothing happened and he was soon safely immersed in the throng of Market Street.
Was there any point in again picking up the trail of the Subject? He thought not. The message she had implanted in the third act of
Anyway, he wanted to get back as soon as possible to the privacy of his lodgings. The long bedroom mirror seemed to hold the best hope of his being able to solve the mystery of the outraged women in the library.
Had he unknowingly collected some horrid stigmata? A mark of plague? Delicately, Mr Hive ran fingertips over his cheeks. An intimation of evening stubble; nothing more. He thrust from his mind a certain ridiculous but disturbing suspicion dating from his boyhood reading of
Mr Hive eased the slim gold pocket watch from its fob and pressed the catch. The outer case sprang open to reveal the twin information that the time was a quarter to five and that the watch had been presented ‘To Mortimer Hive, In Appreciation—Roly’ over the arms of the Marquess of Grantham. It was the arms of the Marchioness, a muscular and predatory lady from Wisconsin, that Mr Hive had cause chiefly to remember (“It was like a night in the python house,” he had averred afterwards to the Granthams’ family solicitor) but he bore old Roly no illwill and still treasured the watch that had accompanied his fee.
A quarter to five was an ideal time, he reflected, to send in his report. He entered the next telephone booth he came to and dialled a local number.
“Dover?” inquired Mr Hive, guardedly.
“That’s right.”
“Hastings here. All right if I...?”
“Yes.”
“I commenced observation of Calais at ten-twenty hours when she left the house accompanied by a large dog. She went to a park near the river, apparently in order to let the dog have some exercise, which it did.”
“Liver and white markings?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The dog. Liver and white.”
“Ah...yes.” Mr Hive did not really remember.
“Fine animal, didn’t you think?”
“Most captivating.”
“All right. Carry on.”
“Calais remained in the park until...” Mr Hive consulted an envelope. “Until eleven-thirty hours. It was raining heavily for part of the time and...”
“She didn’t let the dog get wet, did she?”
“No, no; she took it into a shelter and sat there until the rain stopped. I was able to observe that no one made contact with the Subject while she was in the park. Afterwards she went into several shops and returned home at twelve-fifteen hours, when I took the opportunity of going back briefly to my lodg...my hotel, and changing into dry clothes.”
Mr Hive paused and made ready to wave aside his client’s expressions of sympathy, but none was offered.
He went on: “At fifteen hundred hours, Calais came out of the house and continued on foot into town. She entered a teashop called The Willow Plate and was joined almost immediately by a woman whom I suggest we codename Dieppe.”
