A little after two, accordingly, he was driving slowly along Burnside Avenue, looking for ‘ Aylwynstowe’. On doorways and gates of semi-detached houses in every style of speculative builder’s architecture of the 1930’s other and more preposterous names went by—Chatsworth, Audley End, Restdene, Dormycot, Number Seventeen, even, incredibly, Nid D’Amour. Mr. Tuke wondered what muddled aspirations inspired this nomenclature. Why did Number Seventeen, to say nothing of the rest, stamp its tenant as one quite apart from his fellows who lived in plain 17’s in Houndsditch or Knightsbridge? These sort of questions interested him. He was probably far less of a snob than most of the inhabitants of Burnside Avenue; but he was very much of a realist. Such social mysteries mattered. They might even have some bearing on the business in hand. His thoughts turned once more, as he studied Mortimer Shearsby’s background, to the latter’s marked divergence from the family level. The difference between the chemist and his cousins was unbridgeable and innate. Mortimer was pure Burnside Avenue. He must have been born like that. It was typical of him to speak of his wife as ‘Mrs. Shearsby’, and no doubt in his lighter moments (if he had any) he referred to her as ‘the wife’. Lilian Shearsby for that matter, was out of the same mould. It was all very odd and instructive.
‘Aylwynstowe’, standing with its other half midway down the Avenue, looked even more smugly pretentious than its neighbours. Its paint seemed fresh; its window curtains were adjusted to an inch. Those in the lower front room were of pink silk, tied with silk bows. Three revolting china animals stood on the window ledge. The strip of front garden was an epitome of Mortimer Shearsby’s peculiar ideas of landscape gardening. Little stone figures—an elf, a crane, a rabbit and a penguin—ornamented the corners of the tiny lawn. A sundial rose in the middle, and beneath the window with the pink silk curtains a stone seat bore inevitably but inexcusably the inscription ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot’. A path flagged with extremely crazy paving crossed this pleasaunce to the front door.
Slightly nauseated by this godwottery, as it has so happily been termed, Mr. Tuke advanced to a red-brick and timbered porch from which a sham antique lantern was suspended. He pulled cautiously at a sham antique bell-handle. But it worked better than the genuine museum piece at the Vicarage at Dry Stocking. No bit of mechanism was likely to be left unoiled in Mortimer Shearsby’s home.
Mr. Tuke had timed his arrival for this hour because he hoped the chemist would by now have returned to his laboratory and his wife would be at home. He was almost too late. When Mrs. Shearsby herself opened the front door, wearing the becoming costume of the W.V.S. (returned from the cleaners), she was also wearing hat and gloves, and her green and mauve uniform bag hung from her shoulder.
Mr. Tuke’s cap and her eyebrows were raised together.
“Oh!” she said. Then her rather startled stare, apparent through the pince-nez, gave way to a still slightly flustered air of welcome. “Quite a surprise, Mr. Tuke! Do come in.”
“Can you spare me a few minutes, Mrs. Shearsby?”
“Oh, but of course.” She was preceding him into the room with the pink silk curtains. It was the drawing-room, and was very much what Burnside Avenue had led him to expect— overfurnished and oppressively tidy. Everything was in its appointed place, and polished till it shone. No daily woman had lavished this care. True to her type, Mrs. Shearsby was house-proud. But to Mr. Tuke, who did not like rooms to look as though they were on show in the Tottenham Court Road, she seemed to carry this virtue to excess.
“I have to be my own maid in the afternoon,” she was saying. She had already recovered her poise. “Life is becoming very difficult, isn’t it? And I’m due at the W.V.S. headquarters at half-past two, though of course I’m not really tied to time there.” She gave her little giggle. “I’m afraid that sounds so like a voluntary worker. But really I am punctual as a rule. I think punctuality is an obligation, don’t you? Like princes, you know. I’m sorry you have missed Mr. Shearsby. He has gone back to the laboratory. Is there anything special you want to see him about? Or will I do?”
If there was a touch of archness in her tone, it seemed to be almost automatic. Behind the pince-nez, while she rattled on, her eyes were watchful, even wary. In her mind, no doubt, Mr. Tuke was part of the mysterious machinery of police. It has been pointed out
