Three times she asked him if he were sure that they hadn’t met somewhere before and discussed possible places until George led her back to the matter in hand, wishing she would settle somewhere instead of moving up and down giving him generous exposures of broad, quivering thigh through the slit skirt. He decided she liked being on her feet so that it took less time to get to the sideboard—or to take advantage of more susceptible types than himself. If there were many like this when he started his Sunshine Gardens round he didn’t know if he would be able to take it. Perhaps he ought to think of something else.

  Actually, to let him into a secret, she hadn’t really liked or got on with Edward Shoebridge much. (Almost certainly she’d never been able to spur him into making a pass at her, decided George.) A funny sort of fellow. Kept things to himself. Oh, clever, brilliant. Made a lot of money. Well, enough. You know, very comfortably off and all that. Kind of icy, never got warmed up type. Really, sometimes, you just felt he was a million miles away in some dream world of his own. A cold fish . . . no fun in him. Wasn’t surprised his marriage had gone wrong. Someone in the hotel business, Andy had said. Receptionist or something. After the child was born—no, she couldn’t remember whether it was a boy or girl—she’d gone off the rails with other men. Didn’t do her much good. He just left her and took the child and Andy said that he’d heard she was killed in a car accident when the boy was about three. No, to be quite frank, she really hadn’t liked him at all. Not that she saw him much. Andy used to meet him in town after the house became theirs, and then he just faded out. Andy—what a pity he wasn’t here, one of the best—had been crazy about Shoebridge. Right from when they met at school. Hero-worship. Just a straight case of hero-worship.

  She headed for the sideboard, although her glass was half full, topped it up and then opened the cupboard door and pulled out a large tattered photograph album. She went back and sat on the settee.

  She patted the cushion at her side. “Come and look at these. Andy was mad about photography. Not now. No time.” She patted the cushion harder. “Come on. Plenty of Eddie Shoebridge in here.”

  Like a man going to the block, George removed himself to the settee, and said, looking at his wristwatch, “I mustn’t take up much more of your time. You’ve been too kind already and I’ve—”

  She patted him on the shoulder, smiling, wet-lipped, largeeyed, the nipples of her uncontained breasts showing clearly through the silk of her blouse. “No trouble at all. Always ready to help a friend find a friend. Don’t you think friendship is the most rewarding relationship in the world? I do. Not like love. That can be complicated. But pure friendship and understanding—” she put a hand on his knee, “—now that’s something that’s worth its weight in rubies.”

  In self-defence George nodded agreement and deliberately finished his gin quickly. She took his empty glass and went to refill it. When she returned George had the big album open and spread across his knees. Minor caresses he might have to and could endure, but his virtue at least had some meagre protection.

  She leaned across him a little and said, “Now let me pick out the ones of Eddie. I’m sure they’ll interest you.”

  With the warmth of her thigh pressed against his leg she began to show him the photographs, her voice now and then breaking into a gin-sparked giggle. George, hot and apprehensive—why was it always this kind of woman, slapping her wares in the shop front without any pretence at window dressing, that Blanche’s missions seemed to turn up for him?—tried to take in the Shoebridge pictures and her running commentary while he put up a polite system of defences against her flagrant onslaught. She leant and rubbed against him like a great gin-scented kitten while she talked and laughed her way through the album. That’s me. Yes, really. Would you believe it? God, look at that dress! You wouldn’t believe we wore such things. Ah, now—/ like this one. Andy and me were on the beach alone. A bit naughty of him to take it, don’t you think? And once or twice she lay back against the settee in her delight, her bosom heaving under a frothy meringue of ruching, her eyes swimming with invitation until she had George laying odds against himself that he would never be let out of the house without committing adultery. Not that he had anything against adultery in its right place. The last pages of the album were coming up and George thought enviously of Albert, sleeping peacefully in the back of the car. He could see it all. She would close the album, slide it to the ground, make some laughing remark and lie back on the settee, arms raised in welcome, her body slewing gently round with a full display of rich hospitality, her eyes melting with dreamy fervour, and nothing that a gentleman like himself could do about it without raising one hell of a row because a woman spurned is a—

  At that moment the telephone in the hall rang.

  “Now, who the hell’s that at this time of the morning?” said Mrs. Angers crossly. The bell rang insistently and, exasperated, she got up to answer it. Saved by the bell, thought George, and as he watched her sway into the hall he wondered what it was about a telephone bell that was so compulsive. Pavlovian. No matter what you were doing, you had to answer it. Thank God.

  From the doorway, she looked back at him, smiled and winked, and said, “Don’t be lonely, darling. Help yourself to another gin. Do one for me, too.” She gave a dramatic wave of her right arm and almost fell into the hall.

  George got to his feet, crossed to the sideboard, passed it and reached the window. As he released the catch he heard her cry, “Andy! Darling! How lovely to hear your voice. . . . Angel, I was just sitting here quietly, all on my lonely-ownely thinking about you. . . .”

  George stepped through the window and, without bothering to close it, ran for his car. He drove away quickly, but when he hit the main road slowed down, not because he feared pursuit but because he was full of gin and didn’t want any police trouble. A breathalyser test after Lydia Angers would top off a perfect morning.

  Albert moved to the front passenger seat from the back and pushed his nose against George’s arm in one of his rare caresses.

  George snarled. “For God’s sake don’t you start getting friendly, too, or I’ll sell you off to the first bloody ruby merchant I meet.”

  Albert settled to sleep and then jerked his head up as George suddenly shouted at the top of his voice, “Hell—I’ve left my hat on her bloody hall table!”

  * * * *

  At six o’clock that evening Bush in his room overlooking St. James’s Park read the report that had come in within the last hour on George Lumley. There were fifty others under it waiting to be read. The Wiltshire C.I.D. man had done a succinct, competent job. Lumley was thirty-nine, a bit of the black sheep of the family, remittance man, worked now and again but not recently. Five years previously he had been employed for a short period by a brewery in Tiverton as a sales representative. A year after that he had become a partner in a small and new coffee bar in Crowborough, but had pulled or been pushed out after six months. He was divorced. No children. Now and again he acted as a private enquiry agent for a medium, Madame Blanche Tyler of Salisbury. Lumley’s cottage was thatched, built of sandstone blocks, and had no cellar. In the garden was a wire aviary thirty feet by ten which contained budgerigars, various pheasants, two pinioned mallard ducks and three bantams, two hens and one cock.

  As he finished reading it and marked it for transmission to Sangwill and his computer, Bush heard the door open behind him. He turned to find Grandison in the room.

  Grandison nodded and moved up to the table. Without a word he picked up the report on George Lumley, glanced through it, and then dropped it.

  Bush said, “They’re all like that.”

  “Are you surprised? They’ve all got to be. We shan’t get it on a plate.”

  “Scotland Yard are laughing their heads off.”

  Grandison smiled. “That’s good. It relieves animosities. So, we look like a bunch of fools. But we’re not acting like fools. Catching at straws, maybe.” He let his monocle drop and rubbed at his beard. Then he smiled and said, “Have you ever thought of praying?”

  “Praying?”

  “Don’t deal in echoes, Bush. What’s wrong with prayer? A good fat prayer invoking God’s help in the overthrowing of evil. We don’t consider God enough in this department. You know which God I’m referring to of course?”

  “I can’t imagine it would be the Christian one.”

  “Indeed not. There’s only one god who understands and sympathises—sometimes—with our kind of problems. The god of chance, the disposer of coincidences, the manipulator of time, place and the sought one altogether. It happens sometimes. Statistically it hardly shows on the graph of crime solutions, but it’s there.”

  “I agree. But it’s something you can’t recognise until it actually happens.”

  “That’s just the point. So far we’ve got nothing at all of any significance. Now is the moment for serious prayer, because I have a strong feeling—which I would only admit to you— that we are not going to get anything except by chance. So pray for it. In the meantime you might go through this—” He dropped a sheet of paper in front of Bush, “—and together with the Home Office and police boys check the security arrangements for all the people listed. The next victim may not be on it. It depends whether our friend has his sights set for a million, a half million or something a little more modest.”

  Bush ran through the list when Grandison had gone. It contained over thirty names and many of them were of the highest rank in the order of precedence in England. The thought of a Royal Duke or Prince, or someone like the Lord High Chancellor or the Prime Minister, being kidnapped and the whole thing being hushed up while the country had to pay up secretly completely pushed out of Bush’s mind all thought of an insignificant figure like George Lumley, remittance man, and colleague of some small-time medium called Madame Blanche Tyler.

  * * * *

  When Blanche arrived at Reed Court that evening, Miss Rainbird was suffering from a bad migraine. It had come on just after lunch. At moments during the afternoon she had contemplated telephoning Madame Blanche and putting off her appointment. In the end she had decided not to do this. She had been brought up strictly to observe all appointments unless it was quite impossible to fulfil them.

  Blanche—who had been telephoned by George from his hotel in Brighton the previous evening, when he had given her the information he had collected so far—had telephoned his cottage before leaving Salisbury in the hope that he might be back and have more to tell her. But there had been no reply to her call. (George had stopped for lunch on the way home and later had pulled the car off the road to take a sleep for a couple of hours. He had arrived at his cottage ten minutes after Blanche had telephoned.)

  Syton took her coat in the hall. He was a tall, white-haired, solemn-faced man who had been in service all his life and could make very fine social distinctions instinctively. He had long ago naturally placed Blanche in a lower social order than his own. He quite liked her, having an eye—although he was almost as old as Miss Rainbird—for a fine figure of a woman. He also knew perfectly well what kind of appointments Blanche was keeping with Miss Rainbird, not by the crude method of listening at keyholes or of encouraging other house servants to gossip. Some things he sensed, some he deduced, a few he postulated and with all of them he made what positive checks he could. Madame Blanche Tyler’s profession was no secret to him since he had heard Mrs. Cookson talking openly about her in this house. Quite genuinely, too, he had a high regard and affection for Miss Rainbird.

  As he took Blanche’s coat, he cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps I should mention, Madame Blanche, that the mistress is not feeling very well today. It would be a kindness not to overtire her.”

  “That’s nice of you to tell me that, Syton.”

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  He moved away with her coat, not relishing being called Syton by someone who, he was sure, had gypsy blood in her.

  Even if Syton had not told her, thought Blanche, she could have sensed and seen that the old girl had a very bad headache. Without the darkness under the eyes, the slight extra wrinkling at their corners and along the brow, she could have known because pain in others came over to her very often. She could pass a man or woman in the street, see their faces and know that there was a disturbance of their health or spirit at once.

  She passed a few words of greeting with Miss Rainbird and then moved to her and said, “Lie back in your chair more and we’ll get rid of that headache before we begin, shall we?” She smiled warmly as she saw Miss Rainbird’s surprise. “The body and the human spirit have many voices, you know, to tell us their feelings.”

  “You could tell just by seeing me?” asked Miss Rainbird.

  Blanche laughed. “Yes, your pain is a purple and green halo. And anyway—” she knew that this was a good point to score— “if I couldn’t tell, I would have known because your butler out of consideration for you mentioned that he thought you were not quite yourself today. Rest your head against the back of the chair.”

  Miss Rainbird dropped her head back and Blanche stood behind her and began to move her fingertips slowly across her forehead. After four or five passes Miss Rainbird felt the pain begin to go and, as it died away, she lay there thinking what an extraordinary woman this Madame Blanche was. There had been no need to mention Syton’s comment. Surely, if she were even only partly a fraud, she would have been tempted to hide that fact. And she certainly had some power in her. It was almost as though she were drawing out the pain with her fingertips. It was a wonderfully soothing feeling.

  When she had finished Blanche went back to her chair and said, “You’ve never had that done to you before, Miss Rainbird?”

  “No, I haven’t. It’s a wonderful gift.”

  “It is—if people want me to use it.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?”

  “Because some people are in love with their pain. They won’t let it go. I can’t do anything with that kind. They are poor, twisted souls whose happiness lies in their own afflictions. It takes a long, long time to do anything for them.” She gave one of her deep, bosomy laughs. “I’ll tell you something which I’d be crazy to do if I were charging you five guineas a cure. The next time you have a headache or migraine—just lie back in that chair, shut your eyes, and imagine that I am stroking your forehead. If you give yourself to the illusion with complete faith you will find yourself cured. Now—” a brisk note came to her voice, “—let’s see what Henry and your dear ones on the far side have to say to us today.”

  Miss Rainbird watched as Madame Blanche went into her routine. It was familiar now, giving her no apprehension. She could watch without concern for the strains that seemed to take Madame Blanche’s body and—she had to admit this to herself—look forward to the communications from Henry, Harriet and Sholto without any disrupting critical or sceptical overtones of thought. Belief or disbelief played no part now, she acknowledged, in the response of her intellect to this demonstration. Although she could be irritated now and then at some of the turns of the seance, the havering and lack of definition which seized one or other of the communicators at times, she knew that she had come to a point when she really quietly enjoyed it. Like a small girl, she told herself, enjoying a secret and satisfying dream world. And she knew herself to be grateful to Madame Blanche, if for nothing else than giving her a new experience at an age when she had thought the world had little new to offer her in personal novelties.

  In a few moments Henry was through. His voice, coming from Madame Blanche, was bouncing and full of vigour and happily—Miss Rainbird realised—free of any of his usual poetic imagery.

  “Tell your friend,” he said, “that her brother and sister can’t come just yet. In a little while they will, maybe.”

  “Why can’t they come?” asked Miss Rainbird. She was well used now, and not at all nervous about it, to putting questions to Henry.

  “There is a matter of. . . well, I suppose you would call it principle to be resolved. Up here we call it the Double Strand of Kindness.”

  Madame Blanche said, “That doesn’t help us much, Henry.”

  Henry said, “You will have to be content for a little while. The Court of Higher Kindness will decide soon. But your friend must not be unhappy. There are some messages for her and some answers to the questions which she has in her mind at the moment.”

  Madame Blanche, body limp and relaxed in her chair, her eyes shut and her mouth now drooping in its familiar almost bucolic gape, said, “You have questions, Miss Rainbird?”

  “Yes, I have. We know the Shoebridge man—”

  “Speak not without charity,” said Henry sharply.

  “I’m sorry,” said Miss Rainbird. “We know that Mr. Ronald Shoebridge adopted the boy, and that he lived in Weston-super-Mare and became a successful garage owner. But where did the family go from there?”

  To Miss Rainbird’s surprise, Henry said, “To a place I knew well. Sammy and I spent a holiday there once.”

  “Sammy?” asked Madame Blanche.

  “Brunei. Isambard Kingdom Brunei. I always call him Sammy. Yes, they went to Brighton. Looking back through the veils of the past I can see it. First as Sammy and I knew it, and then as it was when the Shoebridge family arrived. I see a large building on the seafront. A hotel. And in great silver letters I see the name across the front. Argenta.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Miss Rainbird.

  A little stiffly Henry said, “There is no question of sureness. What I say is or was. Was in this case. The hotel is no longer there.”

 

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