Джозефина Тэй - To Love and Be Wise

‘No, he says he fell asleep, and though he woke in the night he took it for granted that Searle had come back and was sleeping; it was too dark to see anything. It was only when daylight came that he realized that Searle had not been to bed.’

‘The theory is that he fell into the river, I suppose.’

‘Yes. The Wickham people took charge and dragged for a body. But it’s a bad, muddy stream, there, between Capel and Salcott St. Mary, the Wickham people say, so they weren’t unbearably surprised not to find one.’

‘I don’t wonder they don’t want to touch the business,’ Grant said dryly.

‘No. It’s a delicate affair. No real suggestion of anything but accident. And yet – one big question mark.’

‘But – but Walter Whitmore !’ Grant said. ‘There is something inherently absurd about it, you know. What would that lover of little bunnies have to do with murder?’

‘You’ve been in the force long enough to know that it is just those lovers of little bunnies that commit murder,’ his chief said snappily. ‘Anyhow, it is going to be your business to sift this artistic thieves’ kitchen of yours through a fine-mesh riddle until you’re left with something that won’t go through the mesh. You had better take a car. Wickham say it is four miles from a station, with a change at Crome anyhow.’

‘Very good. Do you mind if I take Sergeant Williams with me?’

‘As chauffeur, or what?’

‘No,’ Grant said amiably. ‘Just so that he knows the lay-out. Then if you pull me off this for something more urgent – as you will at any moment – Williams can carry on.’

‘You do think up the most convincing excuses for snoozing in a car.’

Grant took this, rightly, as capitulation, and went away to collect Williams. He liked Williams and liked working with him. Williams was his opposite and his complement. He was large and pink and slow-moving, and he rarely read anything but an evening paper; but he had terrier qualities that were invaluable in a hunt. No terrier at a rat hole ever displayed more patience or more pertinacity than Williams did when introduced to a quarry. ‘I would hate to have you on my tail,’ Grant had said to him more than once in their years of working together.

To Williams, on the other hand, Grant was everything that was brilliant and spontaneous. He admired Grant with passion, and envied him without malice; Williams had no ambition, and coveted no man’s shoes. ‘You’ve no idea how lucky you are, sir,’ Williams would say, ‘not looking like a policeman. Me, I go into a pub, and they take one look at me and think: Copper! But with you, they just cast an eye over you and think: army in plain clothes; and they don’t think another thing about you. It’s a great advantage in a job like ours, sir.’

‘But you have advantages that I lack, Williams,’ Grant had once pointed out.

‘As what, for instance?’ Williams had said, unbelieving.

‘You have only to say: “Hop it!” and people just dissolve. When I say “Hop it!” to anyone, they are as likely as not to say: “Who do you think you’re talking to?”’

‘Lord love you, sir,’ Williams had said. ‘You don’t even have to say: “Hop it!” You just look at them, and they begin to recollect appointments.’

Grant had laughed and said: ‘I must try that sometime!’ But he enjoyed Williams’s mild hero-worship; and still more he enjoyed his reliability and his persistence.

‘Do you listen to Walter Whitmore, Williams?’ he asked, as Williams drove him down the unswerving road that the Legions had first surveyed two thousand years ago.

‘Can’t say I do, sir. I’m not one for the country, much. Being born and brought up in it is a drawback.’

‘A drawback?’

‘Yes. You know just how workaday it really is.’

‘More Silas Weekley than Walter Whitmore.’

‘I don’t know about the Silas bloke, but it certainly isn’t like anything Walter Whitmore makes of it.’ He thought of it for a little. ‘He’s a dresser-upper,’ he said. ‘Look at this Rushmere trip.’

‘I’m looking.’

‘I mean, there wasn’t anything to prevent him staying at home with his aunt and doing the river valley like a Christian, in a car. The Rushmere isn’t all that long. But no, he has to frill it up with a canoe and things.’

Mention of Walter’s aunt prompted Grant to another question.

‘I suppose you don’t read Lavinia Fitch?’

‘No, but Nora does.’

Nora was Mrs. Williams, and the mother of Angela and Leonard.

‘Does she like them?’

‘Loves them. She says three things make her feel cozy in advance. A hot-water bottle, a quarter-pound of chocolates, and a new Lavinia Fitch.’

‘If Miss Fitch did not exist, it seems, it would be necessary to invent her,’ Grant said.

‘Must make a fortune,’ said Williams. ‘Is Whitmore her heir?’

‘Her presumptive heir, at any rate. But it isn’t Lavinia who has disappeared.’

‘No. What could Whitmore have against this Searle chap?’

‘Perhaps he just objects to fauns on principle.’

‘To what, sir?’

‘I saw Searle once.’

‘You did!’

‘I spoke to him in passing at a party about a month ago.’

‘What was he like, sir?’

‘A very good-looking young man indeed.’

‘Oh,’ Williams said, in a thoughtful way.

‘No,’ said Grant.

‘No?’

‘American,’ Grant said irrelevantly. And then, remembering that party, added: ‘He seemed to be interested in Liz Garrowby, now that I remember.’

‘Who is Liz Garrowby?’

‘Walter Whitmore’s fiancée.’

‘He was? Well!’

‘But don’t go making five of it until we get some evidence. I can’t believe that Walter Whitmore ever had enough red blood in him to conk anyone on the head and push them into a river.’

‘No,’ Williams said, considering it. ‘Come to think of it, he’s more of a push-ee.’

Which put Grant in a good mood for the rest of the journey.

At Wickham they were welcomed by the local inspector, Rodgers; a thin, anxious individual who looked as though he slept badly. He was alert, however, and informative and full of forethought. He had even booked two rooms at the Swan in Salcott and two at the White Hart in Wickham, so that Grant could have his choice. He bore them off to lunch at the White Hart, where Grant confirmed the room-booking and caused the Salcott booking to be cancelled. There was to be no suggestion yet that Scotland Yard were interested in the matter of Leslie Searle’s disappearance; and it was not possible to conduct inquiries from the Swan without creating a sensation in Salcott.

‘I’d like to see Whitmore, though,’ Grant said. ‘I suppose he is back at – what do you call it: Miss Fitch’s place.’

‘Trimmings. But he’s up in town today giving his broadcast.’

‘In London?’ said Grant, a little surprised.

‘It was arranged like that before they set out on this trip. Mr. Whitmore’s contract calls for a month off in August, when broadcasting has its “off” season; so there was no question, it seems, of passing up this week’s broadcast just because he was canoeing on the Rushmere. They had arranged to be in Wickham today and to spend the night there. They had booked two rooms at the Angel. It’s the olde-worlde showplace in Wickham. Very photogenic. Then this happened. But since there was nothing Mr. Whitmore could do here, he went up to do his half-hour, just as he would have if they had reached Wickham.’

‘I see. And he is coming back tonight?’

‘If he doesn’t vanish into thin air.’

‘About this vanishing: did Whitmore agree that there had been disagreement between them?’