Colin Watson - Lonelyheart 4122

Purbright turned upwards an expression of pious resignation. “Yes, Sid. But might I offer a word of advice? Don’t assume that extreme old age necessarily brings deafness and failing eyesight. I’m asking you to follow this woman unobtrusively—not like a porter in a geriatric ward.”

“She’ll not spot me ,” declared Love, unabashed.

He thought a moment.

“But why do we have to follow her? Can’t you sort of confide in her and get her to let us know what happens? I mean, it would save a lot of...” he nearly said “buggering about” “...duplication.”

Purbright shook his head. “She’s probably a pretty timid soul, remember. We couldn’t say anything to her without letting on that it might be a crook she’s going to meet. Even if she agreed to help, she’d be too nervous to be of any use.”

The sergeant acknowledged the logic of this and set off at once for the Roebuck Hotel.

The manager, Mr Maddox, said he would be only too happy to assist in any way he could. He did hope, however, that Miss Teatime (who had impressed him as being a very respectable lady) was not, ah, not in any way, er...

No, said Love, she wasn’t. He had been told to keep an eye on her purely for her own good—that was all.

Mr Maddox was glad to hear it. One could so easily be deceived in people: one minute they were slipping sixpences into the blind stocking at the cocktail bar, the next they might be burning lavatory seats in a bedroom grate.

Love expressed awed appreciation of this hazard and asked if Miss Teatime was available at that time to be covertly observed.

Mr Maddox regretted that she was not; she had gone out, as was her morning custom. However, if the sergeant would come into the dining room and take lunch at one o’clock or thereabouts, he, Mr Maddox, would make a point of identifying her.

Love saw that his assignment promised to be a higher class and more elastic business than his usual routine of taking stolen property lists round the second hand shops, interviewing youths suspected of smashing wash basins at the Assembly Rooms and asking to produce their dog licences such of Mr Chubb’s neighbours whose pets happened to have fallen foul of his marauding Yorkshire terriers. Accordingly, he spent the next hour in the Roebuck Tap, on the other side of the yard, where two halves of bitter and as prolonged a view as he dared take of Miss Phyllis Blow’s mammary canyon left him feeling quite pleasantly raffish.

At ten past one, he wandered into the dining room. Mr Maddox was standing at the huge sideboard, mixing a salad dressing. He gave Love a knowing smile over the vinegar bottle and nodded to signify that the lady of whom he wotted was present already.

With the defensive instinct of those who rarely eat in restaurants, Love selected a table against the wall farthest from the door. He drew from his pocket the newspaper that he had remembered to buy especially for the occasion and bivouacked behind it.

Only half a dozen tables were occupied. He peeped over the top of the paper at each in turn. That, he decided, must be Miss Teatime—a woman sitting alone to whom a waitress was carrying soup.

The woman turned and smiled at the waitress. She looked rather pleasant, Love thought—almost attractive. No chicken, though; there was quite a bit of grey in her hair. Her pale blue costume, while not “gear”, was smart and she sat with the straight-backed dignity that Love tended to associate with aunts, librarians and other strictly a-sexual characters. It was a pity that she seemed so well preserved. Healthy women of that generation were confoundly keen on walking as a rule. Love’s toes curled apprehensively.

It was Mr Maddox who came to take his order.

“The lady in blue, on her own,” he whispered to the menu.

“That’s what I thought,” said Love.

“I take it you don’t want her to know that you’re...you know—bodyguarding?”

“Good lord, no!” Love breathed. “Braised steak,” he said aloud.

“Mum’s the word,” the manager hoarsely assured him, then “Soup, sir?” he boomed.

“No soup.” Love remembered that his quarry was one course ahead.

He hid behind his paper again and observed the delicate raising and lowering of Miss Teatime’s spoon. Her head was held gracefully, just a fraction forward, and had none of that curious motion—half butt, half scoop—that most soup drinkers find it necessary to adopt. She held the spoon at the very end of its handle and gave it the appropriate lateral twist with her wrist but with fine flexible fingers. Love found himself wondering if his young lady would prove amenable to instruction along similar lines; the effect really was dinky.

Thus preoccupied, the sergeant did not notice that Mr Maddox, having passed his order to the second waitress, was now stooped in guarded talk with another favoured customer. This was George Lintz, editor of the Flaxborough Citizen , a wiry man with a lean, mistrustful face bisected by a wide, apparently lipless mouth.

The manager was not actually imparting information. He repeated nothing of what Love had said. But he was a man within whom confidences lay like heavy, indigestible suppers. He would have burst if denied the relief of passing, with side-long glances and tucked-in chin, gusts of portentous innuendo. No great harm was done. All Mr Lintz gathered was that if everything were told about middle-aged ladies in blue costumes, an eye or two might be opened...that an hotel manager could write a book if so minded...that it took all sorts, and that, in a word, one never knew.

The editor, who was accustomed to this sort of importuning, bore it philosophically and forgot it as soon as Mr Maddox had sidled away.

There was someone else, however, who did not forget.

Miss Teatime had caught nothing of what the manager had been saying. But she did notice, without appearing to look in that direction, that some of Mr Maddox’s accompanying gestures were towards herself.

One didn’t mind being talked about, of course; it was nicer than being ignored all the time. The interesting thing was why one had been chosen as a topic.

Miss Teatime put down her soup spoon and looked around with an air of leisurely innocence. She gave an answering smile to one of the waitresses and to an elderly gentleman at another table. What she was really seeking was a sight of the person with whom the manager had been talking before he passed on to that rather common looking man with the thin mouth.

Just then, the waitress arrived at Love’s table with his braised steak. He lowered his newspaper, beamed at her, and pressed himself back into his chair while she arranged dishes.

Miss Teatime took the opportunity of scrutinizing him as thoroughly as a distance of twenty feet allowed.

She decided that he was young, florid, capable within certain rather narrow limits, persistent and basically good natured. Quite likeable, in fact...

Miss Teatime looked away again and mentally added the qualification:

...for a policeman.

Chapter Ten

Although Sergeant Love had been born and bred in Flaxborough and gravitated there once again after a few years’ service in other police divisions, he would not have claimed exhaustive knowledge of the town. Natives of any place have a tendency to take for granted those areas and features that lie outside the immediate orbit of home and work. Policing, of course, did make that orbit much wider in his case. Even so, there were lanes he had never entered, closes he had never explored, riverside walks that never had known his reluctant feet.

Miss Teatime was to be the instrument of the filling in of nearly all those gaps.

It seemed at first that she was a slow walker, much given to halting for the contemplation of such things as coping stones and door posts and coal hole covers and old fashioned street lamps. But Love soon learned how remorselessly she could clock on the mileage without any apparent effort. He had only to take his eyes off her slim, upright back for a few moments to find, on glancing again in her direction, that she had moved on and was rounding a corner a hundred yards away.