The Franchise Affair (15 page)

“Lack of education,” old Mrs. Sharpe said thoughtfully, “is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive. They had no resources at all.”

“Neither have parrots,” Robert said. “But they can be provocative enough. We must see what police protection we can claim. Meanwhile I can tell you something pleasanter about that wall. I know how the girl saw over it.”

He told them about his visit to Mrs. Tilsit and his discovery that the girl amused herself by bus-riding (or said she did) and his subsequent visit to the Larborough and District Motor Services garage.

“In the fortnight that the girl was at Mainshill there were two breakdowns of single-deck buses due to go out on the Milford run; and each time a double-decker had to be substituted. There are only three services each way daily, you know. And each time the breakdown happened to the bus due to go out on the midday service. So there were at least two occasions in that fortnight when she could have seen the house, the courtyard, you two, and the car, all together.”

“But could anyone passing on top of a bus take in so much?”

“Have you ever travelled on the upper deck of a country bus? Even when the bus is going at a steady thirty-five, the pace seems funereal. What you can see is so much further away, and you can see it so much longer. Down below, the hedges brush the window and the pace seems good because things are closer. That is one thing. The other is that she has a photographic memory.” And he told them what Mrs. Wynn had said.

“Do we tell the police this?” Mrs. Sharpe asked.

“No. It doesn't prove anything; just solves the problem of how she knew about you. When she needed an alibi she remembered you, and risked your not being able to prove that you were somewhere else. When you bring your car to the door, by the way, which side of the car is nearest the door?”

“Whether I bring it round from the garage or in from the road the off side is next to the door, because it's easier to get out of.”

“Yes; so that the near side, with the darker paint on the front wheel, would be facing the gate,” Robert said conclusively. “That is the picture she saw. The grass and the divided path, the car at the door with the odd wheel, two women—both individual—the round attic window in the roof. She had only to look at the picture in her mind and describe it. The day she was using the picture for—the day she was supposed to have been kidnapped—was more than a month away and it was a thousand to one against your being able to say what you had done or where you had been on that day.”

“And I take it,” Mrs. Sharpe said, “that the odds are very much greater against our being able to say what she has done or where she has been in that month.”

“The odds are against us, yes. As my friend Kevin Macdermott pointed out last night, there is nothing to hinder her having been in Sydney, N.S.W. But somehow I am far more hopeful today than I was on Friday morning. We know so much more
about the girl now.” He told them of his interviews in Aylesbury and Mainshill.

“But if the police inquiries didn't unearth what she was doing that month—”

“The police inquiries were devoted to checking her statement. They didn't start, as we do, with the premise that her statement is untrue from beginning to end. They checked it and it checked. They had no particular reason to doubt it. She had a blameless reputation, and when they inquired from her aunt how she had spent her holiday time they found it had consisted of innocent visits to the cinema and country bus-rides.”

“And what do
you
think it consisted of?” Mrs. Sharpe asked.

“I think she met someone in Larborough. That, anyhow, is the obvious explanation. It's from that supposition that I think any inquiry of ours should start.”

“And what do we do about engaging an agent?” asked Mrs. Sharpe. “Do you know of one?”

“Well,” Robert said, hesitating, “it had crossed my mind that you might let me pursue my own inquiries a little further before we engage a professional. I know that—”

“Mr. Blair,” the old woman said, interrupting him, “you have been called into this unpleasant case without warning, and it cannot have been very willingly; and you have been very kind in doing your best for us. But we cannot expect you to turn yourself into a private inquiry agent on our behalf. We are not rich—indeed we have very little to live on—but as long as we have any money at all we shall pay for what services are proper. And it is not proper that you should turn yourself into a—what is it?—a Sexton Blake for our benefit.”

“It may not be proper but it is very much to my taste. Believe me, Mrs. Sharpe, I hadn't planned it with any conscious thought of saving your pocket. Coming home in the car last night, very pleased with what I had done so far, I realised how much I
should hate giving up the search to someone else. It had become a personal hunt. Please don't discourage me from—”

“If Mr. Blair is willing to carry on a little longer,” Marion interrupted, “I think we should thank him heartily and accept. I know just how he feels. I wish I could go hunting myself.”

“There will no doubt come a time when I shall have to turn it over to a proper inquiry agent whether I want to or not. If the trail leads far from Larborough, for instance. I have too many other commitments to follow it far. But as long as the search is on our doorsteps I do want to be the one to pursue it.”

“How had you planned to pursue it?” Marion asked, interested.

“Well, I had thought of beginning with the coffee-lunch places. In Larborough, I mean. For one thing, there can't be so very many of them. And for another, we do know that, at any rate at the beginning, that was the kind of lunch she had.”

“Why do you say ‘at the beginning'?” Marion asked.

“Once she had met the hypothetical X, she may have lunched anywhere. But up till then she paid for her own lunches, and they were ‘coffee' ones. A girl of that age prefers a bun lunch anyhow even if she has money for a two-course meal. So I concentrate on the coffee-places. I flourish the
Ack-Emma
at the waitresses and find out as tactfully as a country lawyer knows how whether they have ever seen the girl in their place. Does that sound like sense to you?”

“Very good sense,” Marion said.

Robert turned to Mrs. Sharpe. “But if you think you will be better served by a professional—and that is more than possible—then I shall bow out with—”

“I don't think we could be better served by anyone,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “I have expressed my appreciation already of the trouble you have gone to on our behalf. If it would really please you to run down this—this—”

“Moppet,” supplied Robert happily.

“Mopsy,” Mrs. Sharpe amended, “then we can only agree and be grateful. But it seems to me likely to be a very long run.”

“Why long?”

“There is a big gap, it seems to me, between meeting a hypothetical X in Larborough, and walking into a house near Aylesbury wearing nothing but a frock and shoes and well and truly beaten. Marion, there is still some of the Amontillado, I think.”

In the silence that succeeded Marion's departure to fetch the sherry the quiet of the old house became apparent. There were no trees in the courtyard to make small noises in the wind and no birds to chatter. The silence was as absolute as the midnight silence of a small town. Was it peaceful, Robert wondered, after the crowded life of a boarding-house? Or was it lonely and a little frightening?

They had valued its privacy, old Mrs. Sharpe had said in his office on Friday morning. But was it a good life shut in behind the high walls in the perpetual silence?

“It seems to me,” Mrs. Sharpe said, “that the girl took a great risk in choosing The Franchise, knowing nothing of the household or its circumstances.”

“Of course she took a risk,” Robert said. “She had to. But I don't think it was as big a gamble as you think.”

“No?”

“No. What you are saying is that for all the girl knew there might be a large household of young people and three maidservants at The Franchise.”

“Yes.”

“But I think she knew quite well that there was no such thing.”

“How could she?”

“Either she gossiped with the bus-conductor, or—and I think this the more likely—she overheard comment from her fellow
passengers. You know the kind of thing: ‘There are the Sharpes. Fancy living alone in a big house like that, just the two of them. And no maids willing to stay in a lonely place so far from shops and the pictures—'and so on. It is very much a ‘local' bus, that Larborough-Milford one. And it is a lonely route, with no wayside cottages and no village other than Ham Green. The Franchise is the only spot of human interest for miles. It would be more than human nature is capable of to pass the combined interest of the house, the owners, and their car without comments of some kind.”

“I see. Yes, that makes sense.”

“I wish, in a way, it
had
been through chatting with the conductor that she learned about you. That way, he would be more likely to remember her. The girl says she was never in Milford and doesn't know where it is. If a conductor remembered her, we could at least shake her story to that extent.”

“If I know anything of the young person she would open those childlike eyes of hers and say: ‘Oh, was that Milford? I just got on a bus and went to the terminus and back.' ”

“Yes. It wouldn't take us very far. But if I fail to pick up the girl's trail in Larborough, I'll try her picture on the local conductors. I do wish she was a more memorable creature.”

The silence fell round them again while they contemplated the un-memorable nature of Betty Kane.

They were sitting in the drawing-room, facing the window, looking out on the green square of the courtyard and faded pink of the brick wall. And as they looked the gate was pushed open and a small group of seven or eight people appeared and stood at gaze. Entirely at their ease they were; pointing out to each other the salient points of interest—the favourite being apparently the round window in the roof. If last night The Franchise had provided the country youth with its Saturday evening entertainment it was now, so it would seem, providing Sunday morning
interest for Larborough. Certainly a couple of cars were waiting for them outside the gate, since the women of the party wore silly little shoes and indoor frocks.

Robert glanced across at Mrs. Sharpe, but except for a tightening of her always grim mouth she had not moved.

“Our public,” she said at last, witheringly.

“Shall I go and move them on?” Robert said. “It's my fault for not putting back the wooden bar you left off for me.”

“Let them be,” she said. “They will go presently. This is what royalty puts up with daily; we can support it for a few moments.”

But the visitors showed no sign of going. Indeed, one group moved round the house to inspect the out-buildings; and the rest were still there when Marion came back with the sherry. Robert apologised again for not having put up the bar. He was feeling small and inadequate. It went against the grain to stay there quietly and watch strangers prowling round as if they owned the place or were contemplating buying it. But if he went out and asked them to move on and they refused to, what power had he to make them go? And how would he look in the Sharpes' eyes if he had to beat a retreat to the house and leave these people in possession?

The group of explorers came back from their tour round the house and reported with laughter and gesticulation what they had seen. He heard Marion say something under her breath and wondered if she were cursing. She looked like a woman who would have a very fine line in curses. She had put down the sherry tray and had apparently forgotten about it; it was no moment for hospitality. He longed to do something decisive and spectacular to please her, just as he longed to rescue his lady-love from burning buildings when he was fifteen. But alas, there was no surmounting the fact that he was forty-odd and had learned that it is wiser to wait for the fire-escape.

And while he hesitated, angry with himself and with those
crude human creatures outside, the fire-escape arrived in the person of a tall young man in a regrettable tweed suit.

“Nevil,” breathed Marion, watching the picture.

Nevil surveyed the group with his most insufferable air of superiority, and it seemed that they wilted slightly, but they were evidently determined to stand their ground. Indeed, the male with the sports jacket and the pinstriped trousers was clearly preparing to make an issue of it.

Nevil looked at them silently for a further few seconds and then fished in his inner pocket for something. At the first movement of his hand a strange difference came over the group. The outer members of it detached themselves and faded unobtrusively through the gate; the nearer ones lost their air of bravado, and became placatory. Finally the sports-jacket made small rejecting movements of surrender and joined the retreat through the gate.

Nevil banged the gate to behind them, levered the wooden bar into place, and strolled up the path to the door wiping his hands fastidiously on a really shocking handkerchief. And Marion ran out to the door to meet him.

“Nevil!” Robert heard her say. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?” Nevil asked.

“Get rid of those creatures.”

“Oh. I just asked their names and addresses,” Nevil said. “You've no idea how discreet people become if you take out a notebook and ask for their name and address. It's the modern equivalent to: ‘Fly, all is discovered.' They don't wait to ask your credentials in case you may actually have some. Hello, Robert. Good morning, Mrs. Sharpe. I'm actually on my way to Larborough, but I saw the gate open and these two frightful cars outside so I stopped to investigate. I didn't know Robert was here.”

This quite innocent implication that of course Robert was capable of dealing equally well with the situation was the unkindest cut of all. Robert could have brained him.