“Is that Detective-Inspector Parker?—I’m so sorry to trouble you, but could you possibly give me Mr. Templeton’s address?”
“Templeton?” said Parker, momentarily puzzled.
“Wasn’t it Templeton—the gentleman who came with you to see me?”
“Oh, yes, of course—I beg your pardon—I—the matter had slipped my memory. Er—you want his address?”
“I have some information which I think he will be glad to hear.”
“Oh, yes. You can speak quite freely to me, you know, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Not quite freely,” purred the voice at the other end of the wire, “you are rather official, you know. I should prefer just to write to Mr. Templeton privately, and leave it to him to take up with you.”
“I see.” Parker’s brain worked briskly. It might be inconvenient to have Mrs. Forrest writing to Mr. Templeton at 110A, Piccadilly. The letter might not be delivered. Or, if the lady were to take it into her head to call and discovered that Mr. Templeton was not known to the porter, she might take alarm and bottle up her valuable information.
“I think,” said Parker, “I ought not, perhaps, to give you Mr. Templeton’s address without consulting him. But you could phone him—”
“Oh, yes, that would do. Is he in the book?”
“No—but I can give you his private number.”
“Thank you very much. You’ll forgive my bothering you.”
“No trouble at all.” And he named Lord Peter’s number. Having rung off, he waited a moment and then called the number himself.
“Look here, Wimsey,” he said, “I’ve had a call from Mrs. Forrest. She wants to write to you. I wouldn’t give the address, but I’ve given her your number, so if she calls and asks for Mr. Templeton, you will remember who you are, won’t you?”
“Righty-ho! Wonder what the fair lady wants.”
“It’s probably occurred to her that she might have told a better story, and she wants to work off a few additions and improvements on you.”
“Then she’ll probably give herself away. The rough sketch is frequently so much more convincing than the worked-up canvas.”
“Quite so. I couldn’t get anything out of her myself.”
“No. I expect she’s thought it over and decided that it’s rather unusual to employ Scotland Yard to ferret out the whereabouts of errant husbands. She fancies there’s something up, and that I’m a nice soft-headed imbecile whom she can easily pump in the absence of the official Cerberus.”
“Probably. Well, you’ll deal with the matter. I’m going to make a search for that solicitor.”
“Rather a vague sort of search, isn’t it?”
“Well, I’ve got an idea which may work out. I’ll let you know if I get any results.”
Mrs. Forrest’s call duly came through in about twenty minutes’ time. Mrs. Forrest had changed her mind. Would Mr. Templeton come round and see her that evening—about 9 o’clock, if that was convenient? She had thought the matter over and preferred not to put her information on paper.
Mr. Templeton would be very happy to come round. He had no other engagement. It was no inconvenience at all. He begged Mrs. Forrest not to mention it.
Would Mr. Templeton be so very good as not to tell anybody about his visit? Mr. Forrest and his sleuths were continually on the watch to get Mrs. Forrest into trouble, and the decree absolute was due to come up in a month’s time. Any trouble with the King’s Proctor would be positively disastrous. It would be better if Mr. Templeton would come by Underground to Bond Street, and proceed to the flats on foot, so as not to leave a car standing outside the door or put a taxi-driver into a position to give testimony against Mrs. Forrest.
Mr. Templeton chivalrously promised to obey these directions.
Mrs. Forrest was greatly obliged, and would expect him at nine o’clock.
“Bunter!”
“My lord.”
“I am going out tonight. I’ve been asked not to say where, so I won’t. On the other hand, I’ve got a kind of feelin’ that it’s unwise to disappear from mortal ken, so to speak. Anything might happen. One might have a stroke, don’t you know. So I’m going to leave the address in a sealed envelope. If I don’t turn up before tomorrow mornin’, I shall consider myself absolved from all promises, what?”
“Very good, my lord.”
“And if I’m not to be found at that address, there wouldn’t be any harm in tryin’—say Epping Forest, or Wimbledon Common.”
“Quite so, my lord.”
“By the way, you made the photographs of those fingerprints I brought you some time ago?”
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
“Because possibly Mr. Parker may be wanting them presently for some inquiries he will be making.”
“I quite understand, my lord.”
“Nothing whatever to do with my excursion tonight, you understand.”
“Certainly not, my lord.”
“And now you might bring me Christie’s catalogue. I shall be attending a sale there and lunching at the club.”
And, detaching his mind from crime, Lord Peter bent his intellectual and financial powers to outbidding and breaking a ring of dealers, an exercise very congenial to his mischievous spirit.
Lord Peter duly fulfilled the conditions imposed upon him, and arrived on foot at the block of flats in South Audley Street. Mrs. Forrest, as before, opened the door to him herself. It was surprising, he considered, that, situated as she was, she appeared to have neither maid nor companion. But then, he supposed, a chaperon, however disarming of suspicion in the eyes of the world, might prove venal. On the whole, Mrs. Forrest’s principle was a sound one: no accomplices. Many transgressors, he reflected, had
“died because they never knew
These simple little rules and few.”
Mrs. Forrest apologised prettily for the inconvenience to which she was putting Mr. Templeton.
“But I never know when I am not spied upon,” she said. “It is sheer spite, you know. Considering how my husband has behaved to me, I think it is monstrous—don’t you?”
Her guest agreed that Mr. Forrest must be a monster, Jesuitically, however, reserving the opinion that the monster might be a fabulous one.
“And now you will be wondering why I have brought you here,”
