Colin Watson: Lonelyheart 4122

“If you really feel that we have arrived at the exchange of compliments stage, I can only assure you that the choice between an hour of your company, Mr Trelawney, and being sewn for a week in a sack of discarded boil dressings would be by no means easy to make.”

“Cow!”

She shrugged and looked at her watch.

“I advise you not to waste further time on thinking up expletives. You lack the talent. If you will write me out that cheque at once, a great deal of trouble will be avoided—for you in particular.”

Watching her all the time, he moved his chair a little closer. There was menace now in his quietness, in the slow, deliberate manner of his watching and listening. With the tip of his tongue he felt his upper lip.

“Go on,” he said. “This trouble...Tell me.”

“The situation,” said Miss Teatime, “is not without a certain piquancy. I shall come to that aspect in a moment. First, though, let us acknowledge a few facts of which you imagine I am unaware.

“I have known for some little time that your intentions towards me are strictly dishonourable. You are doubtless vain enough to have supposed that I would not guess, but it really was not very difficult.

“I also happen to know—although I claim no personal credit for this—that you have already successfully imposed on the credulity of at least two other women. I know their names. One was called Reckitt, the other Bannister. And I know that the police are looking for the man who enginered their disappearance. For you, in fact.”

Trelawney, crouched on the edge of his chair as if in readiness to spring, was staring straight into her eyes. She looked back calmly.

“Now here is the amusing thing,” she went on. “Or at least I hope you will see the humour of it because then you might stop glaring quite so unpleasantly. The only reason why you have not been arrested is that I have personally vouched for your integrity. There, now—what do you think of that?”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Oh, dear, you are so curmudgeonly...”

“What did you tell them?”

“That you are a bluff and honest sea-dog, of course. A sincere suitor. A gentleman whose handwriting bears not the faintest resemblance to that of the villain whose letters to poor Mrs Bannister have been discovered by the police.”

After a long silence, Trelawney’s hunched frame relaxed. He leaned back into his chair.

“In other words, you thought you’d set up a nice little line in blackmail.”

“Your moral judgments are as odious as your maritime metaphors. Kindly keep both to yourself.”

“I don’t believe this nonsense about letters.”

Unhurriedly, Miss Teatime opened her bag. She handed the photograph to Trelawney without comment.

He looked at it, then raised his eyes. “You say you’ve told them this isn’t my writing?”

“Emphatically.”

“And that Commander Jack Trelawney’s a fine chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly?”

“By a great effort of will, yes.”

“So I am not suspected of the awful crimes the police imagine have been committed?”

“No.”

He smiled. It was like a crack running across ice.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Miss Teatime, “you are so woefully transparent, Jackie boy.”

“Am I?”

“You are saying to yourself: Knock this lady off as well and all will be hunky-dory.”

“It does seem a damn good idea. In fact, I’m sold on it.”

She shook her head. “No, I do not think you are, really. Already there has crept into that incommodious mind the realization that I should never have been fool enough to come here without taking some precaution.”

“Oh, and what precaution?”

“It is in the form of a time limit. If I am not back at my hotel by eight o’clock, the police at Flaxborough will receive a packet containing your letters.”

“And my name and address, no doubt,” added Trelawney carelessly.

“No—just the means of learning them with singularly little trouble.”

“How little?”

“Simply a peep into the files of that excellent matrimonial bureau, Jack dear. Or should I say Mr Four-one-double-two?”

For a moment, he looked genuinely puzzled. Then he smiled, grinned, began to laugh aloud.

Miss Teatime heard a door close behind her. She looked round quickly.

“But surely you didn’t imagine that my husband’s name would be on the files, Miss Teatime? There isn’t a four-one-double-two. I think a burglar must have lifted it.”

Donald Staunch rose and grasped his wife’s arm.

“The car,” he said. “Get it out of sight somewhere and come straight back. I’ll want you to stay with her while I...see to things.”

Inspector Purbright found Love at his lodgings, being dotingly administered a late high tea by his landlady, Mrs Cusson.

He plucked him from the scarcely begun feast of buttered haddock, wholemeal scones, tinned oranges, Carnation milk and Eccles cakes; bustled him past a tearfully protesting Mrs Cusson, enemy of malnutrition; and thrust him to the car.

“You drive, Sid. Hunger’s good for alertness.”

It seemed a pretty good propellant as well. They were passing through Benstone Ferry less than twenty minutes later.

“Up here and across the common,” Purbright directed.

Four minutes more.

“First turning off on the right, now. Mind, it’s sharp.”

The car crunched to a stop on the gravel before Brookside Cottage. Purbright reached the door first. He knocked sharply and repeatedly on the thick wood.

Pausing, he heard movement within the house. The sergeant was beside him now.

“They’re in,” said Purbright. Again he knocked. They heard footsteps inside. The steps receded. Purbright knocked even harder.

“Sid, you’d better go round to...No, wait a bit.” The footsteps were coming back. The door opened.

“Good evening, Mrs Staunch.” Without further preliminary, the inspector stepped past her, followed immediately by Love.

Sylvia Staunch turned from the door and stared at them furiously.

“Would you kindly explain what this is all about.”

“Where is Miss Teafime?”

“Miss Who ?” A perplexed glare.

“Your client. Miss Teatime. I have reason to believe she came here to see your husband.”

“Why on earth should she want to see my husband? He has nothing whatever to...”

“Is he in, Mrs Staunch?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

Love looked at the inspector. “Both cars are in the garage, sir.”

“Well, Mrs Staunch?”

“I think he’s gone to post a letter.”

Her composure was being re-established, her bewilderment more artistically controlled.

“But I am not going to stand here and have questions fired at me without knowing the reason for them. What authority have you got to come trampling in here, anyway?”

“We suspect felony, Mrs Staunch. That may be a somewhat stuffy answer, but it will serve at least until your husband returns.” He drew a curtain aside and peered out. “Which I trust will not be long. How far away is the post box?”

“At the end of the lane.”

“Odd that we did not see him.”

“There’s a path from the back. It’s quicker.”

Purbright nodded. He motioned Mrs Staunch to sit down.

“I might as well tell you now,” he said to her, “that we shall probably ask your husband to return to Flaxborough with us.”

“But what an earth for?”

“We think he may be able to help us to get at the truth about one or two matters.”

“You don’t have to use jargon with me, inspector. That just means you think he’s done something. What, though? Why can’t you say? And for God’s sake what’s all this about that Teatime woman?”