No mistake about it, that fancy boarding school of hers had done pretty well by the tradesman’s daughter, even if she hadn’t distinguished herself in examination, like Felicity’s illustrious kin. No wonder Marshall looked at her with something like devotion.
“Mr. Felse and I have already recognised the need to put this matter on a proper footing. Obviously I hoped and believed we should have some word from Mr. Galt, or that he would turn up again with his own explanation, but after so many hours without news it becomes rather a different case. Yes, I think we should call Dr. Arundale.”
“I think perhaps I’d better do it,” said George, “if I may. Where will he be at this hour?”
The clock on the desk said ten-forty. “It’s a guild dinner,” said Audrey. “He’s staying overnight with the chairman afterwards, but they won’t be very early. I should think they’re still at the Metropole. I have the number here.”
George dialled and waited for his connection. It was very quiet in the room; even the clock was almost silent.
“Hotel Metropole? I believe you’ve got the Vintners’ annual dinner there to-night? Is the party still in session? Good! Would you ask Mr. Arundale to come to the phone? That’s right, Edward Arundale – he’s their speaker tonight.” He waited. Audrey felt behind for her for the arm of a chair, and sat down very slowly and silently, never taking her eyes from George’s face. It felt so still that she might have been holding her breath.
“Hullo, is that…? Oh, I see. No, I didn’t know that.” There was a long, curious pause while he listened, and the faint clacking of the distant voice that was, surprisingly, doing all the talking. “At what time was that?” And again: “You’re sure? You’d know the voice? No, that’s all right, I’m sorry to have disturbed you, I’ll contact him there. Thank you! Good-bye!”
He cradled the receiver and held it down in its rest, and over the hand that pinned it in position he looked up gently at Audrey.
“Mrs. Arundale, I’m afraid this is going to be a surprise to you. Even a shock. Mr. Arundale isn’t there. That was a man named Malcolmson speaking to me, the president of the Vintners’ Guild. Mr. Arundale cancelled his engagement, they had to whip up a substitute speaker at a minute’s notice.”
“But… that’s impossible!” she said in a soundless whisper. “Why should he cancel it? He said nothing to me. He took his notes… and the references he needed for tomorrow… everything. I didn’t know anything about this… I didn’t know…”
“All the same, he did it. There’s no doubt at all about this. He says Mr. Arundale rang up to explain and apologise, this afternoon, just about three o’clock. He says he’s known him for eight years, he knows his voice on the telephone too well for any possibility of mistake. It was your husband himself who called. An emergency, so he told him, here at Follymead, that made it impossible for him to leave as planned. Naturally Mr. Malcolmson didn’t question it, however inconvenient it might be for him.” He lifted the receiver again; distant and staccato, the dialling tone fired its dotted line of machine-gun bullets into the silence. “Can you give me the number of someone who’ll know about this conference to-morrow? The secretary?”
She got up from her chair and moved to the pedestal of the desk like a creature in a bad dream. Her fingers fumbled through the pages of a notebook, and found the entry. The secretary was the vicar of a suburban parish, and his voice, when he answered, sounded young and crisp and agile.
“I’m sorry to trouble you at this late hour, but I’m clearing up a few arrears of business for Mr. Arundale, and the notes he’s left me don’t make it clear whether he managed to call you about the conference to-morrow. Have you already heard from him to-day?” No need to sound the alarm yet; this would do better than candour.
“Yes, he telephoned this afternoon,” said the distant voice promptly. “We’re very sorry indeed that we shan’t have him with us to-morrow, after all, it’s a great disappointment. But I know he wouldn’t have called it off if he could possibly have avoided it.”
“No, of course not. About what time did he ring you?”
“Oh, I suppose shortly after three. It might even have been a little earlier.”
“Thank you,” said George, “that’s all I wanted to know.”
The telephone clashed softly in its cradle.
“He telephoned there, too, and cancelled his engagement. Wiped out all his arrangements for the week-end. And yet he took the car and left, at about the time he was expected to leave, and without mentioning to anyone that he’d changed his plans. So where has he gone? And why?”
Marshall let his hands fall empty before him; there was nowhere he could get a hold on this, and no way he could make sense of it. “I don’t know. I don’t understand anything about it.”
Audrey stood motionless, her eyes enormous in shock and bewilderment. In an arduous whisper she asked: “What must we do?”
“I don’t think we have any choice now. We still have no real evidence of anything either criminal or tragic, but we have two unexplained disappearances, occurring at much the same time, and we can’t ignore them, and we can’t afford to delay. Lectures had much better continue as though nothing’s happened. If we can get through the week-end without making this affair public, we’ll do it. There’ll be the least possible obtrusion. But I’ve no alternative now,” said George, “but to inform my chief. From now on, this becomes an official police matter.”
CHAPTER V
« ^ »
AS SOON as he was back in Edward Arundale’s office, with the door closed on the distant and cheerful din of the house-party and the close and fearful silence of the warden’s apartments, George telephoned his chief. Detective-Superintendent Duckett was Midshire born and bred, with all the advantages of having come up from the uniformed branch the hard way. It meant he not only knew his job and his own subordinates, but also all the complex social pressures of a conservative county; sometimes, in his less tolerant moments, he called it a feudal county, and nobody had a better right. The first thing he said was: “Thank God your boy was there!” And the second: “Can you still keep this dark?”
“Yes,” said George, with fair certainty that he was telling the truth. “We’ve no body, no proof of a crime, only a very, very fishy situation that still may confound us by coming out blameless. Let’s hope it does. In the mean-time, we’ve every right to behave as if nothing had happened, on the surface, provided we dig like moles underneath. Only seven people know anything about my being here to investigate Galt’s disappearance, though they must all
