The Complete Tommy & Tuppence Collection (110 page)

“What are you going to do now?” she said.

That at least was easy. Tommy had no difficulty in knowing what he was going to do now.

“I shall go home tonight—see if there is any news of my wife—any word from her. If not, tomorrow I shall go to this place,” he said. “Sutton Chancellor. I hope that I may find my wife there.”

“It would depend,” said Mrs. Boscowan.

“Depend on what?” said Tommy sharply.

Mrs. Boscowan frowned. Then she murmured, seemingly to herself, “I wonder where she is?”

“You wonder where who is?”

Mrs. Boscowan had turned her glance away from him. Now her eyes swept back.

“Oh,” she said. “I meant your wife.” Then she said, “I hope she is all right.”

“Why shouldn't she be all right? Tell me, Mrs. Boscowan, is there something wrong with that place—with Sutton Chancellor?”

“With Sutton Chancellor? With the place?” She reflected. “No, I don't think so. Not with the
place.
”

“I suppose I meant the house,” said Tommy. “This house by the canal. Not Sutton Chancellor village.”

“Oh, the house,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “It was a good house really. Meant for lovers, you know.”

“Did lovers live there?”

“Sometimes. Not often enough really. If a house is built for lovers, it ought to be lived in by lovers.”

“Not put to some other use by someone.”

“You're pretty quick,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “You saw what I meant, didn't you? You mustn't put a house that was meant for one thing to the wrong use. It won't like it if you do.”

“Do you know anything about the people who have lived there of late years?”

She shook her head. “No. No. I don't know anything about the house at all. It was never important to me, you see.”

“But you're thinking of something—no, someone?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “I suppose you're right about that. I was thinking of—someone.”

“Can't you tell me about the person you were thinking of?”

“There's really nothing to say,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “Sometimes, you know, one just wonders where a person is. What's happened to them or how they might have—developed. There's a sort of feeling—” She waved her hands—“Would you like a kipper?” she said unexpectedly.

“A kipper?” Tommy was startled.

“Well, I happen to have two or three kippers here. I thought perhaps you ought to have something to eat before you catch a train. Waterloo is the station,” she said. “For Sutton Chancellor, I mean. You used to have to change at Market Basing. I expect you still do.”

It was a dismissal. He accepted it.

Thirteen

A
LBERT
ON
C
LUES

T
uppence blinked her eyes. Vision seemed rather dim. She tried to lift her head from the pillow but winced as a sharp pain ran through it, and let it drop again on to the pillow. She closed her eyes. Presently she opened them again and blinked once more.

With a feeling of achievement she recognized her surroundings. “I'm in a hospital ward,” thought Tuppence. Satisfied with her mental progress so far, she attempted no more brainy deduction. She was in a hospital ward and her head ached. Why it ached, why she was in a hospital ward, she was not quite sure. “Accident?” thought Tuppence.

There were nurses moving around beds. That seemed natural enough. She closed her eyes and tried a little cautious thought. A faint vision of an elderly figure in clerical dress, passed across a mental screen. “Father?” said Tuppence doubtfully. “Is it Father?” She couldn't really remember. She supposed so.

“But what am I doing being ill in a hospital?” thought Tuppence. “I mean, I nurse in a hospital, so I ought to be in uniform. V.A.D. uniform. Oh dear,” said Tuppence.

Presently a nurse materialized near her bed.

“Feeling better now, dear?” said the nurse with a kind of false cheerfulness. “That's nice, isn't it?”

Tuppence wasn't quite sure whether it
was
nice. The nurse said something about a nice cup of tea.

“I seem to be a patient,” said Tuppence rather disapprovingly to herself. She lay still, resurrecting in her own mind various detached thoughts and words.

“Soldiers,” said Tuppence. “V.A.D.s. That's it, of course. I'm a V.A.D.”

The nurse brought her some tea in a kind of feeding cup and supported her whilst she sipped it. The pain went through her head again. “A V.A.D., that's what I am,” said Tuppence aloud.

The nurse looked at her in an uncomprehending fashion.

“My head hurts,” said Tuppence, adding a statement of fact.

“It'll be better soon,” said the nurse.

She removed the feeding cup, reporting to a sister as she passed along. “Number 14's awake. She's a bit wonky, though, I think.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Said she was a V.I.P.,” said the nurse.

The ward sister gave a small snort indicating that that was how she felt towards unimportant patients who reported themselves to be V.I.P.s.

“We shall see about that,” said the sister. “Hurry up, Nurse, don't be all day with that feeding cup.”

Tuppence remained half drowsy on her pillows. She had not yet got beyond the stage of allowing thoughts to flit through her mind in a rather disorganized procession.

There was somebody who ought to be here, she felt, somebody she knew quite well. There was something very strange about this hospital. It wasn't the hospital she remembered. It wasn't the one she had nursed in. “All soldiers, that was,” said Tuppence to herself. “The surgical ward, I was on A and B rows.” She opened her eyelids and took another look round. She decided it was a hospital she had never seen before and that it had nothing to do with the nursing of surgical cases, military or otherwise.

“I wonder where this is,” said Tuppence. “What place?” She tried to think of the name of some place. The only places she could think of were London and Southampton.

The ward sister now made her appearance at the bedside.

“Feeling a little better, I hope,” she said.

“I'm all right,” said Tuppence. “What's the matter with me?”

“You hurt your head. I expect you find it rather painful, don't you?”

“It aches,” said Tuppence. “Where am I?”

“Market Basing Royal Hospital.”

Tuppence considered this information. It meant nothing to her at all.

“An old clergyman,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing particular. I—”

“We haven't been able to write your name on your diet sheet yet,” said the ward sister.

She held her Biro pen at the ready and looked inquiringly at Tuppence.

“My name?”

“Yes,” said the sister. “For the records,” she added helpfully.

Tuppence was silent, considering. Her name. What was her name? “How silly,” said Tuppence to herself, “I seem to have forgotten it. And yet I must have a name.” Suddenly a faint feeling of relief came to her. The elderly clergyman's face flashed suddenly across her mind and she said with decision,

“Of course. Prudence.”

“P-r-u-d-e-n-c-e?”

“That's right,” said Tuppence.

“That's your Christian name. The surname?”

“Cowley. C-o-w-l-e-y.”

“Glad to get that straight,” said the sister, and moved away again with the air of one whose records were no longer worrying her.

Tuppence felt faintly pleased with herself. Prudence Cowley. Prudence Cowley in the V.A.D. and her father was a clergyman at—at something vicarage and it was wartime and . . . “Funny,” said Tuppence to herself, “I seem to be getting this all wrong. It seems to me it all happened a long time ago.” She murmured to herself, “Was it your poor child?” She wondered. Was it she who had just said that or was it somebody else said it to her?

The sister was back again.

“Your address,” she said, “Miss—Miss Cowley, or is it Mrs. Cowley? Did you ask about a child?”

“Was it your poor child? Did somebody say that to me or am I saying it to them?”

“I think I should sleep a little if I were you now, dear,” said the sister.

She went away and took the information she had obtained to the proper place.

“She seems to have come to herself, Doctor,” she remarked, “and she says her name is Prudence Cowley. But she doesn't seem to remember her address. She said something about a child.”

“Oh well,” said the doctor, with his usual casual air, “we'll give her another twenty-four hours or so. She's coming round from the concussion quite nicely.”

II

Tommy fumbled with his latchkey. Before he could use it the door came open and Albert stood in the open aperture.

“Well,” said Tommy, “is she back?”

Albert slowly shook his head.

“No word from her, no telephone message, no letters waiting—no telegrams?”

“Nothing I tell you, sir. Nothing whatever. And nothing from anyone else either. They're lying low—but they've got her. That's what I think. They've got her.”

“What the devil do you mean—they've got her?” said Tommy. “The things you read. Who've got her?”

“Well, you know what I mean. The gang.”

“What gang?”

“One of those gangs with flick knives maybe. Or an international one.”

“Stop talking rubbish,” said Tommy. “D'you know what I think?”

Albert looked inquiringly at him.

“I think it's extremely inconsiderate of her not to send us word of some kind,” said Tommy.

“Oh,” said Albert, “well, I see what you mean. I suppose you
could
put it that way. If it makes you happier,” he added rather unfortunately. He removed the parcel from Tommy's arms. “I see you brought that picture back,” he said.

“Yes, I've brought the bloody picture back,” said Tommy. “A fat lot of use it's been.”

“You haven't learnt anything from it?”

“That's not quite true,” said Tommy. “I
have
learnt something from it but whether what I've learnt is going to be any use to me I don't know.” He added, “Dr. Murray didn't ring up, I suppose, or Miss Packard from Sunny Ridge Nursing Home? Nothing like that?”

“Nobody's rung up except the greengrocer to say he's got some nice aubergines. He knows the missus is fond of aubergines. He always lets her know. But I told him she wasn't available just now.” He added, “I've got a chicken for your dinner.”

“It's extraordinary that you can never think of anything but chickens,” said Tommy, unkindly.

“It's what they call a
poussin
this time,” said Albert. “Skinny,” he added.

“It'll do,” said Tommy.

The telephone rang. Tommy was out of his seat and had rushed to it in a moment.

“Hallo . . . hallo?”

A faint and faraway voice spoke. “Mr. Thomas Beresford? Can you accept a personal call from Invergashly?”

“Yes.”

“Hold the line, please.”

Tommy waited. His excitement was calming down. He had to wait some time. Then a voice he knew, crisp and capable, sounded. The voice of his daughter.

“Hallo, is that you, Pop?”

“Deborah!”

“Yes. Why are you sounding so breathless, have you been running?”

Daughters, Tommy thought, were always critical.

“I wheeze a bit in my old age,” he said. “How are you, Deborah?”

“Oh, I'm all right. Look here, Dad, I saw something in the paper. Perhaps you've seen it too. I wondered about it. Something about someone who had had an accident and was in hospital.”

“Well? I don't think I saw anything of that kind. I mean, not to notice it in any way. Why?”

“Well it—it didn't sound too bad. I supposed it was a car accident or something like that. It mentioned that the woman, whoever it was—an elderly woman—gave her name as Prudence Cowley but they were unable to find her address.”

“Prudence Cowley? You mean—”

“Well yes. I only—well—I only wondered. That
is
Mother's name, isn't it? I mean it was her name.”

“Of course.”

“I always forget about the Prudence. I mean we've never thought of her as Prudence, you and I, or Derek either.”

“No,” said Tommy. “No. It's not the kind of Christian name one would associate much with your mother.”

“No, I know it isn't. I just thought it was—rather odd. You don't think it might be some relation of hers?”

“I suppose it might be. Where was this?”

“Hospital at Market Basing, I think it said. They wanted to know more about her, I gather. I just wondered—well, I know it's awfully silly, there must be quantities of people called Cowley and quantities of people called Prudence. But I thought I'd just ring up and find out. Make sure, I mean, that Mother was at home and all right and all that.”

“I see,” said Tommy. “Yes, I see.”

“Well, go on, Pop, is she at home?”

“No,” said Tommy, “she isn't at home and I don't know either whether she is all right or not.”

“What do you mean?” said Deborah. “What's Mother been doing? I suppose you've been up in London with that hush-hush utterly secret idiotic survival from past days, jawing with all the old boys.”

“You're quite right,” said Tommy. “I got back from that yesterday evening.”

“And you found Mother away—or did you know she was away? Come on, Pop, tell me about it. You're worried. I know when you're worried well enough. What's Mother been doing? She's been up to something, hasn't she? I wish at her age she'd learn to sit quiet and not do things.”

“She's been worried,” said Tommy. “Worried about something that happened in connection with your Great-aunt Ada's death.”