Then she remembered the fashion show she had gone to with Peter. Had anything appeared? She had read only the stories about themselves. She opened the copy with the story on the front page, which had appeared after they had been interviewed at the hotel.
Inside was a double spread of photographs. Maggie looked at them. There was one dress, a Versace model. She studied it closely, something tugging at her memory. Then she went slowly up the stairs, holding the newspaper.
“Fell,” she said, going into his room, “there’s something odd here.”
“What?”
Maggie sat down on the bed. She opened the newspaper at the double spread of fashion photographs. “Do you see this dress?”
Fell sat down beside her. “Yes. Versace, it says. What about it?”
“I was looking at this photo and then I remembered I’d seen that dress recently.”
“Of course you had, silly. At the fashion show.”
“No, last night. Inspector Rudfern’s daughter was wearing one just like it. And another thing. I told you I have a bad memory for faces, but just before the lights went down at the fashion show, I saw her. I’m now sure it was her.”
“So, Maggie, what’s this got to do with anything?”
“Don’t you see?” said Maggie slowly. “It’s a bit odd if a retired police inspector’s daughter can afford a Versace dress.”
“Meaning Inspector Rudfern masterminded the robbery himself? Come on, Maggie. Him of all people.”
“But Fell, how could she afford a dress like that? It costs a few thousand. I’m sure.”
“As much as that!”
“For an original, yes.”
“Wait a bit, Maggie. I read somewhere that chain stores sometimes buy the pattern and run up something like it.”
“You’re probably right,” said Maggie with a sigh. “I’d better get back to work. Do you want to use these newspapers or keep them?”
“I’ll use them. I don’t want to be reminded of anything now to do with the robbery.”
“Right. I’ll get back to work as well.”
Fell began to paint again. Imagine if it were old Rudfern, he thought, amused. Imagine an old man like that creeping down the street at night to put Semtex in Maggie’s car. And then he remembered uneasily those men from the Special Branch saying there had been a raid on a house in Buss and among other things a quantity of Semtex had been seized. When had it been? Ten years ago, that was it. Of course it was all mad, but if Rudfern had still been in the police force, then he was ideally situated to get his hands on Semtex.
He smiled and shook his head and began to paint again.
But the thought of Rudfern nagged and nagged at his mind. At last he threw down the brush and called to Maggie, “Feel like taking a break and having a drink?”
Maggie’s voice came back to him. “Great idea. My arms are getting tired.”
When they were relaxing in the sitting room over glasses of gin and tonic, Fell swirled the ice cubes round in his glass and said cautiously, “You know, Maggie, I’ve been thinking.”
“What about?”
“About Rudfern.”
Maggie’s heart sank. She wished she had never mentioned anything. She wanted to forget about robbery and murder and mayhem for the rest of her life.
“I was just being silly. Of course she must have been wearing a cheap copy.”
“I mean, it was just a show for charity, wasn’t it? I mean, they weren’t taking orders, were they?”
“People could order things,” said Maggie reluctantly. “There’s a deadly expensive boutique in the Parade called Femme Fatale. You could order what you wanted from the show through them. I went into Femme Fatale. I took a look at some of their ready-to-wear stuff and was shocked at the prices.”
“There’s something else,” said Fell. “Semtex. Those men from London, they said a house in Buss had been raided ten years ago and the police had found Semtex then. Who better to get his hands on the stuff than someone in the police force?”
“I don’t think that can be the case,” said Maggie. “I mean, just suppose by the wildest flight of the imagination that it was Rudfern. Why would he suddenly decide to pinch some explosive like Semtex, thinking this might come in handy someday?”
Fell bit his lip. Drop it, pleaded Maggie’s mind. Let’s be safe. Let’s go back to playing house.
“We could start tomorrow by going to that boutique in Cheltenham and finding out if a Miss Rudfern…Is she married?”
“I don’t know,” said Maggie, “but I shouldn’t think so. She’s obviously living with her father. Of course there may be a husband somewhere in that villa, or there may be an ex.”
“I wish I knew where to start, apart from that boutique,” fretted Fell. “We can hardly watch their house.”
Maggie wanted to shout with frustration, “You said we should give up!” But instead she said, “We’ve got a new second-hand car. If they saw the old one, they won’t recognize the new one. But even if we watch, what are we going to see? The robbery was so long ago and the other people who were involved in it will either be dead or gone off somewhere.”
“True,” agreed Fell. “So we’ll go to Cheltenham in the morning.”
¦
The haze which had covered the sky above for the last week had thickened into a uniform grey as they drove over the Worcestershire border and into neighbouring Gloucestershire. “It might rain at last,” said Maggie.
Everything looked so still and parched. But the trees beside the road had a waiting air about their stillness, as if they somehow knew that an end to the heat of this dandelion summer was near.
Maggie found a parking place outside the town hall and together they walked around the corner and down into the Parade.
“How should we go about this?” asked Fell as they stood outside the shop. “I mean, we can’t just ask bluntly, ‘Did a woman called Miss Rudfern buy a Versace dress from you?’”
“We could say we worked for her. I could say I was her housekeeper,” said Maggie, “and that she had complained about there being a loose thread near the hem.”
“Won’t the assistant or manager or whoever recognize us from our photo in the newspaper?”
“It was just in the
“But we were on television on the night the car blew up.”
Maggie stood and thought hard. She now wanted to find out if Inspector Rudfern’s daughter had bought that expensive dress. With any luck, it would turn out she had not and then they could forget about the whole thing.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that no one is going to connect us with the couple on television, not if we say we’re working for the Rudferns. People don’t often recognize people if they’re not in the setting they expect them to be.”
“All right. We’ll try it.”
They both walked into the shop. A woman in a tailored black dress approached them. Maggie judged her to be French, because she had a hard middle-aged face and yet exuded an air of sexiness. Maggie had served French tourists when she had worked at the Palace and had noticed that even the plainest of the women managed to have an air of femininity, a certain allure.
“Can I help you?”
Yes, she did have a slight French accent.
“We are employed by a Miss Rudfern who lives in Buss,” began Maggie. “After the fashion show at the town hall, she ordered a gold faille Versace gown from you. She says the stitching at the hem is loose and when I said I was going to Cheltenham, she asked me to drop in and talk to you about it.”
“Rudfern? I do not recall the name. I’ll check the books.”
