‘We’ve sent a description to Interpol,’ said Maisry, ‘and we’ve arrested James as an accessory after the fact, because, unless he tipped her off, it’s very odd that she should have slipped through our fingers like this. All the same, to hunt for a woman who must bear a resemblance to about half the West German housewives and who has the name Schumann, well, it’s probably like looking for a man over here who is wearing a raincoat and a trilby and whose name is Thompson or even Smith.’
‘We know she has a sister in Germany because she came over here to stay a week or two. I expect the son, Otto Schumann, knows the address,’ said Dame Beatrice. Otto, whose ship put into Southampton at the end of the following week, denied all knowledge of his aunt’s address.
‘I believe she did stay with my mother for a week or so,’ he said. ‘But I was at sea at the time and I’ve never even met my German relatives and haven’t the vaguest notion where they live, except that it must be in West Germany, because, if they were East Germans, I don’t suppose my aunt would have been allowed to come over here.’
As it was impossible to prove whether or not he did know his aunt’s address, his statement had to be accepted and the search for Mrs Schumann went on. The police watched the cottage for a full month and then, feeling that this was a waste of man-power, they called off the precaution and Laura and Dame Beatrice, briefed to report any suspicious occurrence, continued to feed the dogs every day.
This went on until Hamish, Laura’s son, was due to come home from school for his summer holiday. Laura, while fully appreciating that the teachers needed this break, felt, as she herself expressed it, sick and faint at the thought of having her son for the best part of nine weeks. As she had sent him to her parents for the Easter recess, she felt that something different must be done for him in the summer. A fortnight of the time would be accounted for by a school camp in the Dolomites, but that still left more than six weeks, two before the Continental holiday and four and a half after it was over, to be passed in some way or ways which would keep a lively boy from boredom and, consequently, out of mischief.
Gavin, at his son’s urgent request, picked Hamish up at school on breaking-up day.
‘For there’s not much point in having a father who is an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard if the chaps don’t get a good few looks at him, and quite often you can’t get along for school things – the sports and so on – like other fathers,’ wrote Hamish. ‘Can you come in a police car and have a policeman driver who will open the car door for you and give a crashing great salute when you get out? Canby’s father is a brigadier, but he only comes in a perfectly ordinary Bentley and not even a chauffeur to drive it, so if you can come in style it will be marvellous, and be no end of a credit to me.’
Gavin, however, turned up in a ‘perfectly ordinary’ Humber, self-driven and without a single uniformed constable on the horizon, and, having made arrangements to have the pony transferred from the riding-stables, where it was kept during term-time, to the Stone House, Wandles Parva, he drove his son home and stayed the night.
The news that Laura and Dame Beatrice were feeding five dogs, apart from Fergus and his now firmly-established pet, the Yorkshire terrier presented to him by his headmaster’s wife at Easter, reconciled Hamish to his father’s failure to provide pomp and circumstance, and he immediately offered to take the task of feeding Mrs Schumann’s dogs off their hands. To this Laura could not agree, neither was she prepared to disclose her reason for not accepting the proposal. She hedged by saying that she had become very much attached to Mrs Schumann’s dogs, but that he might accompany her each day if he so wished.
‘But where is Mrs Schumann?’ he asked.
‘Away from home for a bit,’ Laura replied. She did not add that, but for this fact, she would not have allowed Hamish to stay at the Stone House.
‘Oh, gone on holiday, you mean,’ said Hamish, accepting the situation as he saw it. ‘How long will she be away?’
‘We don’t know. She doesn’t know, either.’ This was the truth, so far as it went, for she would be away, presumably, until the police found her. ‘By the way, I don’t want you to go riding alone during these holidays.’
‘Why ever not, mamma? I shall be all right.’
‘All the same, I’d rather you didn’t.’ Wherever Mrs Schumann was, there was no excuse for failing to take precautions. ‘I’m in, well, rather a nervous state, and I should worry all the time.’
Hamish gazed at her with respect and awe.
‘I say, you’re not going to have a baby, are you?’ he demanded.
‘Stranger things than that have happened,’ said Laura.
‘Oh, then, of course you must have your own way! And in everything! Does my father know?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Does Mrs Dame know?’
‘I haven’t told her yet, either – well, not definitely.’
‘Then do you mean that I’m actually the first person – the very first – to be told? Oh, mamma, how absolutely great! But why haven’t you told people?’
‘Because I can’t be absolutely sure until I’ve seen the doctor again.’
‘But, mamma, it’s wizard! Do you want a boy or a girl?’
‘I don’t much mind. Which do you want?’
‘I don’t really mind, either.
