Dick Francis - Twice Shy

'Cassie, go to sleep.'

'Mm.'

She sounded infinitely drowsy. 'Goodbye,' I said, but I don't think she heard.

I telephoned next to her office, told her boss she'd fallen down the cellar steps and broken her arm, and that she'd probably be back at work sometime the next week.

'How irritating,' he said. 'Er… for her, of course.'

'Of course.'

Bananas came back as I was putting down the receiver and said that Angelo's car was parked harmlessly at the top of the lane where the hard surface petered out into muddy cart track. Angelo had left the keys in the ignition. Bananas dumped them on the table.

'Want anything, shout,' he said. I nodded gratefully and he padded off, a power-house in a suit of blubber.

I set about the task of finding Ted Pitts, telephoning first to Jonathan's old school, the East Middlesex Comprehensive. A female voice there crisply told me that no one of that name was presently on the staff, and that none of the present staff could help me as they were not there: the new term would not start for another week. The only master who had been teaching in the school fourteen years ago would be, she imagined, Mr Ralph Jenkins, assistant headmaster, but he had retired at the end of the summer term and in any case it would be unlikely that any of his past assistants would have kept in touch with him.

'Why not?' I asked curiously.

After the faintest of hesitations the voice said levelly, 'Mr Jenkins himself would have discouraged it.'

Or in other words, I thought, Mr Jenkins had been a cantankerous old bastard. I thanked her for as little as I had realistically expected and asked if she could tell me the address of the Schoolmasters Union.

'Do you want their number as well?'

'Yes please.'

She told me both, and I put through a call to their offices. Ted Pitts? Edward? I suppose so, I said. Could I wait? Yes, I could.

The answering voice, a man's this time, shortly told me that Edward Farley Pitts was no longer a member. He had resigned his membership five years previously. His last known address was still in Middlesex. Did I want it? Yes please, I said.

Again I was given a telephone number along with the address. Another female voice answered it, this time with music and children's voices loud in the background.

'What?' she said, 'I can't hear you.'

'Ted Pitts,' I shouted. 'Can you tell me where he lives?'

'You've got the wrong number.'

'He used to live in your house.'

'What? Wait a minute… shut up, you lousy kids. What did you say?'

Ted Pitts…'

Terry, shut off that bleeding stereo. Can't hear myself think. Shut if off. Go on, shut it off.'

The music suddenly stopped.

'What did you say?' she said again.

I explained that I wanted to find my lost friend, Ted Pitts.

'Guy with three daughters?'

That's right.'

'We bought this house off of him. Terry, you knock Michelle's head on that wall one more time and I'll rattle your teeth. Where was I? Oh yes, Ted Pitts. He gave us an address to send things on to but it's years ago and I don't know where my husband put it.'

It was really important, I said.

'Well if you hold on I'll look. Terry, Terry!' There was the sound of a slap and a child's wail. The joys of motherhood, I thought.

I held on for an age listening to the scrambled noise of the squabbling siblings, held on so long that I thought she had forgotten all about me and simply left me off the hook, but in the end she did come back.

'Sorry I've been so long, but you can't put your hand on a thing in this house. Anyway, I've found where he moved to.'

'You're a doll,' I said, writing it down.

She laughed in a pleased fashion. 'Want to call round? I'm fed up to the teeth with these bloody kids.'

'School starts next week.'

Thank the Lord.'

I disconnected and tried the number she had given me, but to this one there was no reply. Ten minutes later, again no reply.

I went to the kitchen. All quiet from the cellar. I ate some cornflakes, padded restlessly about and tried the number again.

Zilch.

There was something, I thought, looking at it, that I could immediately do about the front door. It wouldn't at the moment even fit into the frame, but given a chisel and some sandpaper… I fetched them from the tool-rack in the garage and reduced the sharply splintered patches to smooth edges, shutting the door finally by totally removing the broken lock. It looked all right from the outside but swung inward at a touch: and we had sweet but inquisitive neighbours who called sometimes to sell us honey.

I again dialled Ted Pitts's possible number. No reply.

Shrugging, I tugged a small chest of drawers across inside the front door and climbed out through the dining-room window. Drove down to the pub: told Bananas the way in.

'Do you expect me-?'

'Not really. Just in case.'

'Where are you going?' he asked.

I showed him the address. 'It's a chance.'

The address was in Mill Hill on the northern outskirts of London. I drove there with my mind resolutely on the traffic and not on Cassie, unconscious, and Angelo, captive. Crunching the car at that point could be the ultimate disaster.

The house, when I found it, proved to be a middle-sized detached affair in a street of trees and somnolence; and it was empty.

I went up the driveway and looked through the windows. Bare wall, bare floors, no curtains.

With sinking spirits I rang the bell of the house next door, and although it was clearly occupied there was no one in there either. I tried several more houses, but none of the people I spoke to knew anything more of Ted Pitts than yes, perhaps they had seen some girls going in and out, but of course with all the shrubs and trees one was shielded from one's neighbours, which meant, of course, that also one couldn't see them.

It was in one of the houses obliquely opposite, from where only a corner of the Pittses' front garden was visible, that in the end I found some help. The front door was opened a foot by a large woman in pink hair rollers with a pack of assorted small dogs roaming round her legs.

'If you're selling, I don't want it,' she said.

I exercised on her the story I had by then invented, saying that Ted Pitts was my brother, he'd sent me his new address but I'd lost it, and I wanted to get in touch with him urgently. After six repetitions, I almost believed it.

'I didn't know him,' she said, not opening the door any wider. 'He didn't live there long. I never even saw him, I don't think.'

'But, er, you noticed them move in… and out.'

'Walking the dogs, you see.' She looked fondly down at the pack. 'I go past there every day.'

'Do you remember how long ago they left?'

'It must be ages. Funny your brother didn't tell you. The house was for sale for weeks after they'd gone. It's only just been sold, as a matter of fact. I saw the agents taking the board down just last week.'

'You don't happen to remember,' I said carefully, 'the name of the agents?'

'Goodness,' she said. 'I must have walked past it a hundred times. Just let me think.' She stared at her pets, her brow wrinkled with concentration. I could still see only half of her body but I couldn't tell whether the forbidding angle of the door was designed to keep the dogs in or me out.

'Hunt bleach' she exclaimed.

'What?'

'Hunt comma BLEACH.' She spelled it out. 'The name of the agents. A yellow board with black lettering. You'll see it all over the place, if you look.'

I said fervently, 'Thank you very much.'

She nodded the pink rollers and shut herself in, and I drove around until I found a yellow board with Hunt, Bleach's local address: Broadway, Mill Hill.

The brother story brought its by now familiar crop of sympathetic and/or pitying looks, but finally gained results. A slightly sullen-looking girl said she thought, the house had been handled by their Mr Jackman who was now away on his holidays.