‘Today’s model suits me.’ I dropped my card in front of her.
She glanced at it and said, ‘I read about you once. In an old copy of London Life—a symposium on private-detective agencies in London. All the magazines I read are old, left behind in their rooms by transients and regulars. What’s that bastard Martin been up to and why has he left us?’
‘Is your heart broken?’
‘Chipped on one corner. I suppose he’s been pinching from that sister of his again.’ She held up a hand. ‘This ring belonged to her once. Still does, I suppose.’ It was a dress ring, a thin gold band with an oval-shaped piece of jade.
‘She’s cross with him this time. And he’s given up his job. She wants me to find him. Any ideas? For instance—’ I nodded at the small switchboard behind her—‘what about a list of phone numbers that he used to call?’
‘We don’t keep a record.’
Probably they didn’t.
‘Well, anything that could help me.’
‘Maybe—if you could help me. Summer’s just round the corner. I was looking at some super beach-wear in Harrods the other day . . . I don’t mean all the way, of course. But perhaps a contribution.’ I put two five-pound notes under the blotter on the counter. She stirred her coffee, looked up at me and I saw that she had gone glum. No smile. I slipped another fiver under the blotter. The smile came back.
‘Martin Freeman,’ she said, ‘is a charming man, but potentially as crooked as Hampton Court maze. He never gave it any publicity, and certainly Mr Addle doesn’t know about it, but he has a small place in the country.’ She picked up a pencil and began to scribble on a tear-off pad. ‘Don’t run away with the idea of anything worth writing home about when I say “place”. It’s a crummy little cottage. Oil lamps and a chemical closet. Those were the things that put me off after two visits.’
She tore off the sheet and handed it to me.
‘Thanks.’ I gave her a genuine smile. ‘One of these days I might get a small place of my own in the country.’
‘Let me know sometime.’
‘How long ago were you last at the cottage?’
She retrieved the fivers from under the blotter and began to put them in her handbag. ‘Relations between Martin and myself have been very correct for the last year. I’m engaged to a P.R. man from Shell-Mex, but it doesn’t inhibit either of us.’
‘Thank you for your co-operation.’
‘You should thank me. I refused it a couple of days ago to another man. He said he was from a hire-purchase company . . . something about a car Martin had bought. I didn’t care for his manner. And anyway, Martin hasn’t owned a car for all the years I’ve known him.’
‘What did this man look like?’
‘I kept on thinking of a well-beaten spaniel. Fifty-odd, shabby grey suit, mackintosh and well-rubbed suede shoes. Brown eyes, thin wispy brownish hair, London-Scottish regimental tie, white silk shirt with the collar frayed, and his heart not really in his job, whatever it was.’
‘You should have been in this business.’
‘Let me know if you ever have a vacancy.’
I went out, thinking about the London-Scottish, beaten-spaniel type. Given a change of tie there were a lot of them about, and one of their characteristics was that they would never get anywhere unless they really believed that it was important to girls like Jane Judd that summer was just around the corner and Harrods was full of super beach-wear.
The address on the sheet of paper read:
Ash Cottage, Crundale, near Wye, Kent.
Key under foot-scraper at back door.
Fire smokes when wind in north-east.
Drinks in cupboard under stairs.
Jane Judd was a girl after my own heart. There should be more of them around.
I phoned Mrs Stankowski and told her that I was doing some preliminary work on her brother and would call and see her the next day. She wanted to know what I had been doing, and what I still had in mind, so I pretended the line was bad and finally rang off. No matter how you get a quarter of a million, or a million, one of the things it does for you is to make you think that all your questions should be answered instanter. And let’s face it, they usually are.
I called in at the office and had a ten-minute but not unreasonably acrimonious chat with Wilkins to put her in the picture. As I was going out to get some lunch she said, ‘Well, at least this looks like a reasonably straightforward job.’
I said, ‘In this business there is no such thing. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any business. What about the chap with the London-Scottish tie? Debt-collector, or a divorce creep? Freeman been playing around? Or something really sinister?’
‘I know which you would prefer.’
‘Sinister? Why not? In my present condition any doctor would recommend it. Salt in the blood—’
‘Don’t start that.’
I had lunch in a pub, then went round to Miggs’s place and borrowed a Mini-Cooper. An hour later I was in the green leaf and bare hop-poles of springtime Kent, going like a bat out of hell round the Maidstone by-pass, and convinced that it was better to hire a car and charge it up to expenses than to own one and spend daily misery in worrying over London parking places. I found Wye all right, but Crundale was more elusive because I was three times given explicitly wrong directions. It was half past four and a strong slanting rain, with a lick of sleet in it, was coming down when I got to Ash Cottage. At least, as near as I could get with the car. It was in a little valley, served by a dirt road that
