touched her on a sore spot. “Why is Reggie away just now?” he asked abruptly.
“I told you. He’s having a holiday.”
“Didn’t he have any holiday this winter?”
“I told you that too. But even if he had, he can have one in the summer and the autumn if he wants it.” She was quite sharp.
“Do you know why he chose to go just now?”
“No.”
“When did you know he was going?”
“Only a day or two before he left. I don’t like this kind of cross-examination, Richard.”
“I don’t like people being beaten up,” Rollison said. “I don’t like policemen being attacked on their beat. I don’t like homes being wrecked—not even yours. I don’t like young girls being terrified by hooligans who cut off their hair.” He went to the corner of the little room, bent down and picked up the two bricks with the tresses of hair tied to them, and saw Ada’s eyes widen. Probably she had forgotten them, and had only just realised that he hadn’t told the police about them. “In fact I don’t like any part of this, Ada, and I want to know the truth. Why did Reggie go away?”
“He was tired, he needed a rest! Must you keep calling me a liar?”
“He’s thirty-one years old and fighting fit, he had a month away in January—”
“What business is that of yours?” Ada cried. “I’m trying to find out,” Rollison said. “Was he being menaced or frightened?”
“No!”
“Do you know that he wasn’t, or are you just guessing?”
“It’s a ridiculous suggestion! I know that I asked you to try to find out who did that beastly thing to Jimmy Jones, but if you’re going to make this kind of wild accusation, the quicker you withdraw from the case the better.”
“I’m in it too deep to back out now,” Rollison said, and his voice was sharp and his expression almost accusing. “Let’s have the truth, Ada. Why did Reggie run away?”
“He didn’t run away!”
“He ran away and left you holding the baby, and you came to me hoping I might be able to take it from you.”
“You’re just making it up.”
“I’m trying to make sense of the facts,” Rollison said. “And I’m trying to make you realise that it’s no use holding anything back. What’s Reggie done? What made him run? What are you covering up for?”
He thought she would fly at him.
Instead, she spoke in a very quiet voice, and with a dignity which sat surprisingly well upon her.
“You are quite mistaken, Richard, and I’m sorry that I can’t make you see it. My only purpose in asking you to find these men was to try to make sure that what had happened to Jimmy couldn’t happen to anyone else. This attack here is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. If you won’t believe that, there is nothing I can do about it. Now I hope you’ll go. I’m feeling very tired.”
That was dismissal with a vengeance.
“I’ll go,” Rollison said, and weighed the bricks in each hand, the raven black tress hanging from his left, the fair one from the right. The lights in that were like spun gold, and the feel of the hair was silky and soft, as if he were touching the hair upon a woman’s head. “Did you say that this forlorn love of Jimmy Jones’s was golden- haired?”
“Yes.”
“Her name is Evelyn Day, and she’s called Goldilocks. Do you know where she lives?”
“As it happens, I do,” said Ada, coolly. “She was sick a few weeks ago, and I always write a card to sick members of the staff—I do it from here. Her address will be in my book.” She went to a writing cabinet, opened it, looked at a leather-bound address book, and then said: “She lives at 88 Chester Street, Ealing.”
“Thanks,” said Rollison, more easily. “All right, Ada, I’ll tell you when there’s anything else to report.”
She didn’t answer.
“And I hope you’ll tell me when you realise that it isn’t any use dodging issues any longer,” Rollison went on. “It won’t be long before the police start asking these same questions. Once they begin to wonder what is worrying Reggie, and why this house was selected, they won’t be put off very easily.”
Ada said coldly: “There is nothing I can tell you, the police, or anyone.”
Rollison shrugged and nodded and turned away. Ada was still looking at him when he went out of the room, but not when he reached the front door. Forbes, with the precision of a good butler, was at the door to open it for him, to wish him a formal good night, and to watch him step into the lamplit square, into the fresh air, into the orbit of the two plainclothes men now watching the house. Rollison said good night to them as he went to his car. Opening the door, he wondered if this had been slashed, like the Rolls-Bentley.
It had not.
He let in the clutch and drove off, and was quite sure that no one followed him. It was early, but London seemed empty in these residential squares and also seemed ill-lit. Here were places for thieves to lurk, for wreckers to lie in wait, for vicious men to strike.
Where next?
