Colin Watson: Lonelyheart 4122

But when she came back at nearly five o’clock, she saw that the big garage remained gaping, unoccupied.

She sat watching a trio of blackbirds chasing one another in and out of the hedge bottom near the gateway. They were angry and coquettish in turns. Every now and then, one would hop away from the others, stick tail and chest up in the air and stare at her officiously. She thought of that policeman waiting at the back of the Roebuck Hotel. Then, possibly by some chain of subconscious association, of window cleaners going up and down ladders in threes. Her eyes closed and the blackbirds were white, dive-bombing a bucket of blood...They strolled towards her in naval uniform, saluting in the most supercilious manner imaginable...

Miss Teatime fell more and more deeply asleep.

Sergeant Love put down the phone and wearily struck out the last name left on his list of estate agents, valuers and auctioneers in Chalmsbury, Flaxborough and district. All he had gained from his labours was a sore throat and the suspicion that somewhere along the line he had made an unwise joke to a freemason friend of the chief constable.

He went in to Purbright and reported that if Brookside Cottage were indeed for sale, no one in the property trade was aware of it.

“No, well we had to check,” said Purbright. He made it sound easy, trivial almost.

“Would you like me to walk out to Benstone and ask at the cottage?” Love inquired bitterly.

Purbright glanced at the clock.

“Oh, not now, Sid. Leave it till morning.”

He went on with what he had been doing, but looked up again as Love noisily opened the door.

“I tell you what you can do. Give the county boys a ring at Chalmsbury and see if old Larch is in a good enough mood to get you the name of the occupants. It’ll save you asking at the door when you go. You’d better say it’s for me.”

Love knew that he better had. Chief Inspector Larch was a fearsome misanthrope and disciplinarian who, while conscientious within those rules he could not ignore, would have regarded a request from a mere sergeant as impertinence.

Even the quoting of Purbright’s name produced nothing more helpful from Hector Larch than an impatient grunt and a half promise to see what he could do if ever he disposed of a mountain of much more important matters.

In fact, Larch obtained the information in less than five minutes, simply by demanding it of the front office clerk whom he knew to live at Benstone. But he saved it for a couple of hours more on principle.

Thus it was that Purbright was anxiously examining the contents of an envelope that had just been delivered to his home by a porter from the Roebuck Hotel when there came a ring on the extension line from the police station.

By the time he replaced the receiver, he was looking more anxious still.

Chapter Eighteen

Miss Teatime swam up out of sleep with the sense of a cold current dragging at her legs. Then it seemed to be a wind. She shivered and opened her eyes. The car door was open.

“Ahoy, there! Why don’t you come ashore?”

The big fleshy face, converging roundly to its prow-like nose, hung just below the car roof. Trelawney’s eyes peered down with a glint of calculating amusement. His broad, stooped shoulders shadowed her.

“Good evening,” said Miss Teatime steadily. She knew by the greyness of the light that she had slept for at least a couple of hours.

He stepped back and remained holding open the door.

Miss Teatime got out of the car.

He nodded towards the cottage. “So you found my little surprise all by yourself,” he said, then added, more harshly: “As I did yours.”

“I think we had better go inside, Mr Trelawney.”

He lingered a moment, his smile thin and fixed, then he turned and walked to the front door of the cottage.

They entered a long, low-beamed room, thickly carpeted in blue, with yellow cushioned light wood furniture, an enormous television set and, in the three deep window recesses, earthenware bowls of cactus and succulents. The walls were of pale grey rough cast plaster. On that facing the windows hung a Gauguin reproduction, its flowers and flesh glowing like a stove.

Miss Teatime sat primly on a chair near the centre of the room, her handbag on her knee.

Trelawney walked slowly to one of the windows, where he remained with his back towards her.

“As a preliminary to our discussion...” she began.

He spun round. “Oh, it’s to be a dicussion, is it? How nice. Will you begin, or shall I?”

“Please do not be childish. I was saying that as a preliminary I should like to ask you not to use any more of those jolly jack tar expressions. I have suffered a number of courtships in my life, but never before one which made me seasick.”

“You’ll have something worse than seasickness to worry about before I’ve finished with you, woman.” He had flushed, and yet he spoke quite calmly and deliberately.

“Threats will serve the interest of neither of us,” Miss Teatime replied. “They are ill mannered and unbusinesslike.”

“I suppose that as a professional swindler you are all for the smooth approach?”

Miss Teatime sighed. “There you go again, Mr Trelawney. Abuse will get us nowhere.”

“So you don’t deny being a swindler, then?”

“That is not what is worrying you. It was the word ‘professional’ on which you laid stress, I noticed. If the acquisition of smoothness will allay your jealousy and bad temper, do for goodness’ sake stop imagining that amateurism is a virtue.”

He leaned back against the wall and folded his hands. High in one cheek a nerve throbbed spasmodically.

“What did you come here for?”

“For compensation, Mr Trelawney. I do not consider that I have been fairly treated.”

“ You don’t cons...”

She raised a hand. “No, please let me finish. Your intention was to acquire a valuable motor boat by handing to a distressed family what you knew to be a worthless cheque. It was a very shabby design, which was thwarted thanks only to my having invented both the boat and the family’s distress.

“Thus your gain was an easy conscience, and it was I who accomplished it.

“But what did I receive in return?

“No one can compute the worth of an easy conscience; it is a priceless commodity. And so when I decided to draw a fee that would little more than cover my expenses, it hurt rather than embarrassed me to find that you had lied about putting five hundred pounds at my disposal.

“For that hurt, I believe I am fully entitled to recompense, and if you will now be good enough to write me a cheque—a genuine cheque this time—for five hundred pounds, I shall be much obliged, Mr Trelawney.”

Miss Teatime drew herself a little more erect in her chair, smoothed her skirt and stared solemnly out of the window.

Trelawney said nothing for several seconds. He was grinning as he explored one nostril with the tip of his middle finger. When he had finished, he looked at the finger and wiped it on the wall behind his back.

He walked across and sat in a chair facing her, three feet away. He leaned forward and nodded.

“All right. Joke over. Now just what is it you think you’re up to?”

She turned to him and raised her eyebrows. “This is not a joke, Mr Trelawney. I have told you quite simply what I require.”

“Do you mean to say,” he said slowly and with no trace now of amusement, “that you have the bloody neck to come out here and try and drag money out of me after what’s happened?”

“I do,” said Miss Teatime.

“You know what you are, don’t you? You’re a prissy-mouthed, four-eyed, chiselling bitch, and you can go to hell!”

She looked at him appraisingly.