The Franchise Affair (16 page)

“Well, now that you are here and have so expertly rid us of the nuisance you must stay and drink a glass of sherry,” Mrs. Sharpe said.

“Could I come in and drink it on my way home in the evening?” Nevil said. “You see, I'm on my way to lunch with my prospective father-in-law and it being Sunday there is a ritual. One must be there for the warming-up exercises.”

“But of course come in on your way home,” Marion said. “We shall be delighted. How shall we know it is you? For the gate, I mean.” She was pouring sherry and handing it to Robert.

“Do you know morse?”

“Yes, but don't tell me you do.”

“Why not?”

“You look a most unlikely morse addict.”

“Oh, when I was fourteen I was going to sea, and I acquired in the heat of my ambition a lot of incidental idiocies. Morse was one of them. I shall hoot the initials of your beautiful name on the horn, when I come. Two longs and three shorts. I must fly. The thought of talking to you tonight will support me through luncheon at the Palace.”

“Won't Rosemary be any support?” Robert asked, overcome by his baser self.

“I shouldn't think so. On Sundays Rosemary is a daughter in her father's house. It is a role that does not become her.
Au revoir
, Mrs. Sharpe. Don't let Robert drink all the sherry.”

“And when,” Robert heard Marion ask as she went with him to the door, “did you decide not to go to sea?”

“When I was fifteen. I took up ballooning instead.”

“Theoretical, I suppose.”

“Well, I gassed about gases.”

Why did they sound so friendly, so at ease, Robert wondered. As if they had known each other a long time. Why did she like that light-weight Nevil?

“And when you were sixteen?”

If she knew how many things Nevil had taken up and dropped in his time she might not be so pleased to be the latest of them.

“Is the sherry too dry for you, Mr. Blair,” Mrs. Sharpe asked.

“No, oh no, thank you, it is excellent.” Was it possible that he had been looking sour? Perish the thought.

He stole a cautious glance at the old lady and thought that she was looking faintly amused. And old Mrs. Sharpe being amused was no comfortable sight.

“I think I had better go before Miss Sharpe bars the gate behind Nevil,” he said. “Otherwise she will have to come to the gate again with me.”

“But won't you stay and have lunch with us? There is no ritual about it at The Franchise.”

But Robert made his excuses. He didn't like the Robert Blair he was becoming. Petty and childish and inadequate. He would go back and have ordinary Sunday lunch with Aunt Lin and be again Robert Blair of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet, equable and tolerant and at peace with his world.

Nevil had gone by the time he reached the gate, in a flurry of sound that shattered the Sabbath quiet, and Marion was about to close the gate.

“I can't think that the Bishop approves of his future son-in-law's means of transport,” she said looking after the roaring object as it streaked down the road.

“Exhausting,” Robert said, still caustic.

She smiled at him. “I think that is the first witty pun I have ever heard anyone make,” she said. “I hoped you would stay for lunch, but in a way I'm rather relieved that you aren't.”

“Are you indeed?”

“I made a ‘shape' but it didn't stand up. I'm a very bad cook. I do faithfully what it says in the book but it hardly ever works out. Indeed I'm surprised to death when it does. So you will be better off with your Aunt Lin's apple tart.”

And Robert suddenly and illogically wished that he was staying,
to share the “shape” that had not stood up and to be gently mocked by her along with her cooking.

“I'll let you know tomorrow night how I get on in Larborough,” he said matter-of-factly. Since he was not on hens-and-Maupassant terms with her he would keep the conversation to practicalities. “And I'll ring up Inspector Hallam and see if one of their men can give a look round The Franchise once or twice a day; just to show the uniform, so to speak, and to discourage idlers.”

“You are very kind, Mr. Blair,” she said. “I can't imagine what it would be without you to lean on.”

Well, if he couldn't be young and a poet, he could be a crutch. A dull thing, a thing resorted to only in emergencies, but useful; useful.

B
y half-past ten on Monday morning he was sitting in front of a steaming cup of coffee in the Karena. He began with the Karena because when one thinks of coffee at all one thinks of a Karena, with the smell of the roasting coffee downstairs in the shop and the liquid version waiting upstairs among the little tables. And if he was going to have a surfeit of coffee he might as well have some good stuff while he could still taste it.

He was holding
the Ack-Emma
in his hand with the girl's photograph open to the gaze of the waitresses as they passed, hoping vaguely that his interest in it might cause one of them to say: “That girl used to come in here every morning.” To his surprise the paper was gently removed from his grasp, and he looked up to see his waitress regarding him with a kind smile. “That is last Friday's,” she said. “Here.” And she proffered that morning's
Ack-Emma
.

He thanked her and said that while he would be glad to see this morning's paper he would like to keep the Friday one. Did this girl, this girl on the front page of Friday's, ever come in there for coffee?

“Oh, no, we'd have remembered her if she did. We were all discussing that case on Friday. Imagine beating her half to death like that.”

“Then you think they did.”

She looked puzzled. “The paper says they did.”

“No, the paper reports what the girl said.”

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

“They wouldn't print a story like that if it wasn't true. It would be as much as their life's worth. You a detective?”

“Part time,” Robert said.

“How much do you get an hour for that?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“No, I suppose not. Haven't got a Union, I suppose. You don't get your rights in this world unless you have a Union.”

“Too true,” said Robert. “Let me have my bill, will you?”

“Your check, yes.”

At the Palace, the biggest and newest of the cinemas, the restaurant occupied the floor behind the balcony and had carpets so deep that one tripped on them, and lighting so subdued that all the cloths looked dirty. A bored houri with gilt hair, an uneven hem to her skirt, and a wad of chewing gum in her right jaw, took his order without ever glancing at him, and fifteen minutes later put down a cup of washy liquid in front of him without letting her eyes stray even approximately in his direction. Since in the fifteen minutes Robert had discovered that the never-look-at-the-customers technique was universal—presumably they were all going to be film stars the year after next and could not be expected to take any interest in a provincial clientèle—he paid for the untasted liquid and left.

At the Castle, the other big cinema, the restaurant did not open until afternoon.

At the Violet—royal purple everywhere and yellow curtains—no one had seen her. Robert, casting subtleties aside, asked them bluntly.

Upstairs at Grillon and Waldron's, the big store, it was rush hour and the waitress said: “Don't
bother
me!” The manageress,
looking at him with absent-minded suspicion, said: “We never give information about our customers.”

At the Old Oak—small and dark and friendly—the elderly waitresses discussed the case interestedly with him. “Poor love,” they said. “What an experience for her. Such a nice face, too. Just a baby. Poor love.”

At the Alençon—cream paint and old-rose couches against the walls—they made it plain that they had never heard of the
Ack-Emma
and could not possibly have a client whose photograph appeared in such a publication.

At the Heave Ho—marine frescos and waitresses in bell-bottomed trousers—the attendants gave it as their unanimous opinion that any girl who took a lift should expect to have to walk home.

At the Primrose—old polished tables with raffia mats and thin unprofessional waitresses in flowered smocks—they discussed the social implications of lack of domestic service and the vagaries of the adolescent mind.

At the Tea-Pot there was no table to be had, and no waitress willing to attend to him; but a second glance at the fly-blown place made him sure that, with the others to choose from, Betty Kane would not have come here.

At half-past twelve he staggered into the lounge of the Midland, and called for strong waters. As far as he knew he had covered all the likely eating-places in the centre of Larborough and in not one of them had anyone remembered seeing the girl. What was worse, everyone agreed that if she had been there they would have remembered her. They had pointed out, when Robert was sceptical of that, that a large proportion of their customers on any one day were regulars, so that the casuals stood out from the rest and were noted and remembered automatically.

As Albert, the tubby little lounge waiter, set his drink in front
of him, Robert asked, more out of habit than volition: “I suppose you've never seen this girl in your place, Albert?”

Albert looked at the front page of the
Ack-Emma
and shook his head. “No sir. Not that I recollect. Looks a little young, sir, if I may say so, for the lounge of the Midland.”

“She mightn't look so young with a hat on,” Robert said, considering it.

“A hat.” Albert paused. “Now, wait a minute. A
hat.”
Albert laid his little tray down and picked up the paper to consider it. “Yes, of course; that's the girl in the green hat!”

“You mean she came in here for coffee?”

“No, for tea.”

“Tea!”

“Yes, of course, that's the girl. Fancy me not seeing that, and we had that paper in the pantry last Friday and chewed the rag over it for hours! Of course it's some time ago now, isn't it. About six weeks or so, it must be. She always came early; just about three, when we start serving teas.”

So that is what she did. Fool that he was not to have seen that. She went into the morning round at the cinema in time to pay the cheaper price—just before noon, that was—and came out about three, and had tea, not coffee. But why the Midland, where the tea was the usual dowdy and expensive hotel exhibit, when she could wallow in cakes elsewhere?

“I noticed her because she always came alone. The first time she came I thought she was waiting for relations. That's the kind of kid she looked. You know: nice plain clothes and no airs.”

“Can you remember what she wore?”

“Oh, yes. She always wore the same things. A green hat and a frock to match it under a pale grey coat. But she never met anyone. And then one day she picked up the man at the next table. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“You mean: he picked her up.”

“Don't you believe it! He hadn't even thought of her when he sat down there. I tell you, sir, she didn't look that sort. You'd expect an aunt or a mother to appear at any moment and say: ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, darling.' She just wouldn't occur to any man as a possible. Oh, no; it was the kid's doing. And as neat a piece of business, let me tell you, sir, as if she had spent a lifetime at it. Goodness, and to think that I didn't spot her again without her hat!” He gazed in wonder at the pictured face.

“What was the man like? Did you know him?”

“No, he wasn't one of our regulars. Dark. Youngish. Business gent, I should say. I remember being a little surprised at her taste, so I don't think he could have been up to much, now I come to think of it.”

“You wouldn't know him again, then.”

“I might, sir, I might. But not to swear to. You—er—planning any swearing to, sir?”

Robert had known Albert for nearly twenty years and had always found him of an excellent discretion. “It's like this, Albert,” he said. “These people are my clients.” He tapped the photograph of The Franchise, and Albert gave vent to a low whistle.

“A tough spot for you, Mr. Blair.”

“Yes, as you say: a tough spot. But mostly for them. It is quite unbelievably tough for them. The girl comes out of the blue one day accompanied by the police, to whom she has told this fantastic story. Until then neither of the two women has ever set eyes on her. The police are very discreet, and decide that they haven't enough evidence to make it a good case. Then the
Ack-Emma
hears about it and makes capital out of it, and the story is all over Britain. The Franchise is wide open, of course. The police can't spare men to afford constant protection, so you can imagine the lives these women are leading. My young cousin, who looked in before dinner last night, says that from lunch-time on crowds of cars arrived from Larborough, and people stood on the roofs or
hoisted themselves up on the wall to stare or take photographs. Nevil got in because he arrived at the same time as the policeman on the evening beat, but as soon as they left the cars were swarming again. The telephone went continually until they asked the Exchange not to put through any more calls.”

“Have the police dropped it for good, then?”

“No, but they can't do anything to help
us
. What they are looking for is corroboration of the girl's story.”

“Well, that's not likely is it? For them to get, I mean.”

“No. But you see the spot we are in. Unless we can find out where the girl was during the weeks she says she was at The Franchise, the Sharpes will be in the position of being permanently convicted of a thing they haven't even been accused of!”

“Well, if it's the girl in the green hat—and I'm sure it is, sir—I'd say she was what is known as ‘out on the tiles,' sir. A very cool customer she was for a girl that age. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.”