A Prospect of Vengeance

Marilyn Francis might not have seemed quite so outrageous after all.

'Yahss — ' Other memories intruded: Mrs Champeney-Smythe had read her Daily Mail back in 1978, and the recollection of her reading, which she must have shared with her other lodgers with shock-horror all those years ago, showed in her face now. ' Yes, Mr Robertson. I remember Miss Francis.'

A gentle smile was called for. 'You wouldn't, by any chance, have any record of a forwarding address — if your records go so far back — ?'

'No, Mr Robertson.' She fingered the strings of costume jewellery which accompanied the monocle's gold chain, and waited for him to continue.

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She was time-biding, Ian decided. She must be all of seventy years old (with all that paint and powder, it was hard to say: she could be nearer eighty for all he could tell: a relic of the twenties, even!). But, just as with Gary, it would be a mistake to underrate her; and he'd already made the elementary mistake of combining two questions into one, so that he didn't know which one that 'no' applied to. 'Your records don't go back — ?'

'My records go back to June 1960, when my husband and I bought this property, on our retirement from the profession, Mr Robertson.'

'So she didn't leave any address?' He chose to interpret her answer. 'Isn't that unusual — not to have an address?'

'Not if you do not have an address. Miss Francis left one place, where she was lodging, and came to me. That is all.'

It wasn't all. She remembered Marilyn Francis very well — so well, that even with Marilyn nine years dead she wasn't going to give any Tom, Dick or Harry ... or Robertson, of Fielding-ffulke, Robertson . . . easy answers. 'Didn't she receive any mail?' He remembered Mrs Simmonds had let slip about Marilyn's hurried midweek departure, with ?5 out of the petty cash in her pocket. But perhaps she'd just been playing her part to the last. 'After she left, I mean — ?'

'Miss Francis did not receive any mail.'

Well, that rang true, however uninformatively. But at this rate he'd be here all day, and still not be much the wiser. So dummy2

he must push harder. 'But she did have callers, Mrs Champeney-Smythe.' He made this a statement, not a question. 'There was a boyfriend, I believe?'

'There was no boyfriend.' She rejected his ploy almost contemptuously. 'And there were no callers.'

They stared at each other like evenly-matched duellists.

'I find that hard to believe, Mrs Champeney-Smythe.' He allowed an edge of irritation into his voice.

'Then . . . you must believe what suits you, Mr Robertson.'

She parried the first thrust easily.

'But she was an attractive young woman.' In their different ways, Mrs Simmonds and Gary had both been agreed on that.

'She was, yahss.' A hint of distaste: Mrs Champeney-Smythe would incline more towards Mrs Simmonds there, having no interest in General Custer and firearms and recruitment to the British Army. But she still refused to be drawn any further.

Another thrust, then. 'She left you rather suddenly, I believe

— ?' Once on the attack, he had to go forward. 'Just before her very tragic death, that would have been, of course . . .

And you read about that, in the newspapers, naturally — ?'

The mask didn't crack. But this time he received only the slightest of nods, and no ' yahss' . Yet that concealed pain, he judged.

Suddenly he saw a gap in her defences — or, if not a gap, dummy2

then at least the faintest impossible hope of one. 'Did she come back to you, to say goodbye?'

No reaction at all.

Wait — or attack harder? The possible dividend of success was great, but so was the penalty of failure. Then, even though the mask still didn't crack, he knew that she was old and frail behind it, and he was young and strong. 'She didn't come back — did she?' And there had been no forwarding address: she had already admitted that! And how many suitcases, and other minor pathetic luggage, were up there in the attic — or down there in the cellar — belonging to other 'guests' who had made the proverbial 'midnight flit', rather than settle their accounts? Belongings which were either festooned with cobwebs up above, or mouldy-green with damp down below — ? 'So her things are still here, then?'

She looked away from him, towards one bric-a-brac-choked table over which Basil Champeney (without the plebeian

'Smythe') presided out of another silver frame.

But he could see nothing on it which was of the slightest interest — a wooden ashtray, with a mouse carved on it; a brass frog grinning foolishly; a crude rhomboid First World War tank in seaside souvenir china (which was probably worth a tidy sum in any auction!); a hideous piece of Venetian glass, from Murano Island . . . none of which had

'Marilyn Francis' imprinted on it. And then the washed out eyes (which, for a guess, had once been ingenue china-blue) dummy2

came back to him.