Faintley Speaking

‘She might have been in Norway,’ the inspector pointed out. ‘Now, one last question: has Miss Faintley any distinguishing mark? You see, she might lose her watch or this badge…’

‘Or even her wig!’ said Mark, by now at ease and beginning to giggle.

‘… but a scar or a mole or a birthmark isn’t so easy to lose,’ the inspector gravely concluded. Mark sobered down.

‘She hadn’t got a scar, exactly,’ he observed, ‘but she had a little bald patch at the left side of her head about an inch and a half square. It was rather noticeable. She told us once that it was done in an air-raid when she was on an ack-ack site in the blitz. It got burnt, and the hair would never grow there again. So we didn’t rot her about it, although Smalley told us afterwards that he betted Miss Faintley got it trying to rush into an air-raid shelter quicker than anyone else, and bumped her head.’

‘What little toads boys are,’ said the inspector, indulgently. ‘Well, thank you, son. No doubt Miss Faintley will turn up like a shining penny before the morning. We’re not really worried about her.’ He winked at Mr Street. ‘And if she had been a gentleman we shouldn’t worry at all.’

Mark did not see why they should worry about ladies. There was to him, at his age, one definitely redundant sex.

‘I’m sorry we lost each other,’ he blurted out, ‘but honestly, she wasn’t in the bookshop where she’d said she’d be.’

‘All right, sonny. We’ve got her home address. That’s in the hotel register. So we can soon get to work on her relations to find out whether she went back home or not.’

‘That is if anybody’s there,’ said Mark’s father. ‘So many of these single middle-aged women seem to live alone. But possibly she was in digs.’

‘We’ll soon know,’ said the inspector. ‘Meanwhile, don’t you worry, sir. It wasn’t the lad’s fault, and I expect she’ll turn up all right, although it was only correct of the manager here to let us know.’

Chapter Three

LAURA

‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging.

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.’

john donne – Song

« ^ »

Breakfast had been over for two hours and a half, and while the police officer had been questioning young Mark Street, Laura, and the sharp-eyed, yellow-skinned elderly lady with whom she had sat at table, had been for an exploratory walk along the cliffs and into the coves west of the bay where the two young people had bathed.

‘Mrs Bradley, I could do with my elevenses,’ observed Laura, when she and her employer came back to the eyrie of Cromlech village. ‘What about coffee and buns?’

‘Coffee for two, buns for one, and your valuable observations on the case of Street versus Faintley,’ said Mrs Bradley with a grim cackle.

‘That kid’s worried,’ said Laura. ‘I told him I’d go to Torbury myself and have a look round, but it didn’t really seem to ease his mind. I suppose that schoolmistress Faintley went off on a toot of some kind, but, if she did, it was hardly fair to take Mark along, do you think, to cover her questionable activities? Why will people try to remain respectable?’’

‘That question requires analysis, and, in any case, you mean respected, not respectable. Anyway, I have been talking to the boy’s father. He declares that Miss Faintley was the last kind of person to do anything rash or to prove herself unreliable. He pictures her as an essentially serious-minded woman, not popular with the boys, but extremely anxious to do her best for them, and, of course, for the girls, too.’

‘Parents often get weird ideas, though,’ said Laura, unimpressed. ‘I remember, when I was at school, we had a mistress whom everybody thought mousy and inoffensive in the extreme. There was an awful stink when it turned out that she had lifted all the school pots and shields and tried to pawn them. The pawnbroker brought them all back in a little handcart. She was found to be daffy, of course, but that only proves my point… that the parents and friends don’t know everything. Shall you accompany me to Torbury?’

‘No, child. The police will do everything in Torbury that is necessary. I shall take my knitting and sit on the cliff- top and enjoy the air.’

‘Not your knitting,’ said Laura. So Mrs Bradley went out for a walk, accompanied by a packet of chocolate, an ash-plant, and a Sealyham she did not know, but which elected to escort her on her way.

The determined Laura had an interview with Mark before she set out for Torbury. She wanted an exact description of Miss Faintley down to the smallest detail that Mark could remember. Mark repeated the description he had already given to the inspector and went off to play tennis with his father. Laura boarded a bus and nearly two hours later was in conversation with the assistant in the bookshop which Miss Faintley had stated she would visit whilst Mark was buying his film. She bought one of the new Penguins to add to her collection, but obtained no other satisfaction. The assistant had not noticed the lady Laura described, and had told the police so already.

‘It’s all right,’ said Laura, with that air of frankness and innocent credulity which had got her out of many a tight place at school. ‘It’s really nothing on earth to do with me, but she was staying at my hotel, so naturally I’m rather interested. She seemed to be distinctly a bookworm, a quality to which I am partial. Are there any other bookshops in the town?’