Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise

'Exhibitionist! said the driver, and chugged away to the Embankment.

But Grant did not hear him. His mind was busy on the old sucked-dry problem that suddenly seemed so new and exciting now that he had taken it out again. At the Yard he looked for Williams and when he had found him he said: 'Williams, remember saying on the telephone that all your Wickham notes were good for was the wastepaper basket? And I said never to destroy notes.

'I remember, Williams said. 'When I was in town picking up Benny Skoll and you were at Salcott dragging the river.

'You didn't by any chance take my advice, did you?

'Of course I took your advice, sir. I always take your advice.

'You have those notes somewhere?

'I have them right here in my desk.

'May I see them?

'Certainly, sir. Though I don't know if you can read them.

It was certainly not easy. When Williams wrote a report it was in a faultless schoolboy script, but when making notes for his own use he indulged in a hieroglyphic shorthand of his own.

Grant flipped over the pages looking for what he wanted.

'"The 9.30 Wickham to Crome", he murmured. "The 10.5 Crome to Wickham. The 10.15 Wickham to Crome." 'M. 'M. "Farm lane: old" — old what and child?

'Old labourer and child. I didn't detail what they had in the buses to start with. Just what they picked up on the road.

'Yes, yes; I know; I understand. "Long Leat crossroads." Where is that?

'It's a «green» place, a sort of common, on the outskirts of Wickham, where there's a collection of Fair stuff. A merry-go-round and things.

'I remember. "Two roundabout men, known." Is it "known"?

'Yes; known to the conductor personally from other journeys.

'"Woman going to Warren Farm, known." What comes after that, Williams?

Williams translated to him what came after that.

Grant wondered what Williams would think if he flung his arms round him and embraced him, after the fashion of Association Footballers to successful goal shooters.

'May I keep this for the moment? he asked.

He could keep it for good, Williams said. It wasn't likely to be much good now. Unless-unless, of course —

Grant could see the dawning realisation that this sudden interest in his notes must come from more than academic curiosity on Grant's part; but he did not wait to answer the coming question. He went to see Bryce.

'It's my belief, Bryce said, glaring at him, 'that the lower ranks in this institution prolong hotel cases so that they can sit in the back room with the manager and be given drinks on the house.

Grant ignored his libellous pleasantry.

'Is this a routine report before you sit down to a nice leisurely lunch, or have you something to tell me?

'I think I've got something that will please you, sir.

'It will have to be very good to please me today, as perhaps you've noticed.

'I've discovered that he had a passion for cherry brandy.

' Very interesting, I must say. Fascinatingly interesting! And what good do you think — A wonderful thought suddenly brightened the bleak small eye. He looked at Grant, as one colleague to another. No he said. Not Hamburg Willy!

'Looks like it, sir. It has all the earmarks; and he'd make a very good Arab with that Jewish profile of his.

'Hamburg! Well, well! What did he get out of it that was worth the risk?

'Soft living for a fortnight; and some fun.

'It's going to be expensive fun. I suppose you've no idea where he can have skipped to?

'Well, I remembered that he has been living with Mabs Hankey, and Mabs is doing a turn at the Acacias in Nice this spring; so I spent most of the morning on the telephone and I find that our Willy, or what I take to be our Willy, is staying there as Monsieur Goujon. What I came to ask, sir, was if, now that it is routine, someone else could take over the extradition and all that and leave me free for a day or two to do something else.

'What do you want to do?

'I've got a new idea about the Searle case.

'Now, Grant! Bryce said, in warning.

'It's too new'-'and too silly, he added to himself-'to talk about, but I would very much like to spend a little time on it and see if it works out, sir.

'Well, I suppose, after the cherry brandy, you think I can't very well refuse you.

'Thank you, sir.

'But if it doesn't look like panning out, I hope you'll drop it. There's plenty of work right here without you running after rainbows and pots of gold.

So Grant walked out of the Superintendent's room in pursuit of his pot of gold, and the first thing he did was to go to his own room and take out the report that the San Francisco police had sent them about Searle. He studied it for a long time, and then sent a polite request to the police of Jobling, Conn.

Then he remembered that he had not yet had lunch. He wanted quiet in which to think, so he put the precious sheet of paper into his wallet and went out to his favourite pub, where the rush would be over and they would manage to scrape up something for him. He still did not know what in that account of Searle's life in America had rung a bell in his mind when he had first read it. But he was beginning to have an idea as to what kind of thing it was that had rung that bell.

As he was walking out of the pub after lunch he knew what it might have been.

He went back to the Yard and consulted a reference book.

Yes, it was that.

He took out the San Francisco report and compared it with the entry in the reference book.

He was jubilant.

He had the important thing. The thing he needed to stand on. He had the connection between Searle and Walter Whitmore.

He rang up Marta Hallard, and was told that she was rehearsing for Faint Heart . She would be at the Criterion this afternoon.

Feeling ridiculously like a bubble-so help me, you could bounce me like a ball, he thought-he floated up to Piccadilly Circus. I feel just the way Tommy Thrupp looked last Sunday morning, he thought. Twice as large as life, with lightning shooting out of my head like toasting-forks.

But the Criterion in the throes of a rehearsal afternoon soon reduced him to life-size and brought his feet back on to the ground.

He walked in through the foyer, stepped over the symbolical barrier of a draped cord, and went down the stairs into the earth without interference from anyone. Perhaps they think I look like an author, he thought, and wondered who had written Faint Heart . No one ever did know who had written a play. Playwrights must lead blighted lives. Fifty to one, on an actuary's reckoning, against their play running more than three weeks; and then no one even noticed their name on the programme.

And something like a thousand to one against any play ever getting as far as rehearsals even. He wondered whether the author of Faint Heart was aware that he was one in a thousand, or whether he was just sure of it.

Somewhere in the bowels of the earth he came on the elegant little box that was the Criterion's auditorium; a little ghostly in the cold light of unshaded electrics, but reticent and well-bred. Various dim shapes lay about in the stalls, and no one made any move to ask his business.

Marta, alone on the stage with a horse-hair sofa and a scared-looking young man, was saying: 'But I must lie on the sofa, Bobby darling. It's a waste of my legs if I just sit. Everyone looks the same from the knees down.

'Yes, Marta, you are right, of course, said Bobby, who was the dim figure prowling up and down in front of the orchestra pit.

'I don't want to alter your conception in any way, Bobby, but I do think —

'Yes, Marta dear, you are right, of course, so right. No, of course it won't make any difference. No, I assure you. It really is all right. It'll look grand.