‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Toomer – and two stout women who flanked Mrs Rideout nodded heads and bosoms in agreement. Human speech is at bottom no more than the individual’s demand for reassurance in a lonely world; the sophisticated contrive to extract comforting intimations of solidarity from disagreement, controversy and repartee; the uninstructed prefer much simpler forms of mutual support. When the ritual is in course of celebration – at such a party as was now gathered at Mrs Rideout’s – it is a solecism to break the grand affirmative flow of things. And indeed we none of us particularly care for the man who qualifies our suggestion that it is a fine day, or that it looks like rain, or that it is nice to see a little bit of sunshine.
All this the much-practised Hudspith knew. He nodded his head ponderously. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘something ought to be done. And I’m here to do it.’
‘That’s right,’ said one of the stout women. ‘That’s what I say.’
‘That’s right,’ said the other stout woman.
Mrs Rideout turned in triumph to Mrs Toomer. ‘That’s what Mrs Thorr and Mrs Fiddock say,’ she said.
Mrs Toomer, who had turned her head in quest of the teapot, nodded skilfully backwards. ‘That’s right,’ she agreed.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Fiddock and Mrs Thorr.
Hudspith cleared his throat, preparing cautiously to intrude upon the spell. ‘Acting,’ he said, ‘on instructions received–’ The ladies all laid down their teacups, instantly impressed by this wisp of official eloquence. Hudspith slowly produced a notebook. The investigation was launched.
Mrs Rideout called God to witness that she had been a good mother. Mrs Thorr, Mrs Toomer and Mrs Fiddock responded in a sort of trinitarian chorus. Hudspith said grimly that he was glad to hear it, as in most such cases it was not so; he appeared to make a jotting on Mrs Rideout’s maternal goodness as if for subsequent scrutiny. Mrs Rideout affirmed that Lucy had always been a good daughter. But everybody knew what girls were nowadays; there was no controlling them; out they would go when they pleased. Hudspith could have written down all this out of his head; he was able to spare considerable attention for a further study of the lost girl’s possessions.
He saw the cheap dance slippers; he saw on a nail the pathetic wisp of white rabbit that was some sort of cape. He saw the array of photographs pinned to the wall by the bed: the usual pictures, he wearily thought, cut from the usual cinema magazines. The heroes often wore bathing-trunks now; lying under beach umbrellas, they leered up at girls who sat with parted lips, entranced. Or in resplendent tails and hair grease they led their ladies through exotic restaurants while little tables crowded with ambassadors and duchesses made a modest background to the scene. Or momentarily disguised as common mortals they perched, millionaire play-boys though they were, on little stools in small-town drug-stores and scooped at sundaes nose to nose with the beloved. Hudspith ground his teeth as he looked at them. Not the celebrated William Prynne, who wrote some eight hundred thousand words on the theme that stage-plays are the very pomps of the devil, could have felt more ill disposed to this fantasy-world than did Superintendent Hudspith.
It was a gentleman who had lived in the house, Mrs Rideout thought. A foreigner, she thought. And for some time she had known Lucy was carrying on. Lucy had taken to coming home later than she should. Whereupon she – Mrs Rideout – had said – and Mrs Toomer would witness that she had said…
Hudspith’s pencil still traversed the paper. But his glance strayed now to the other walls. Over the fireplace hung Bubbles; that would be Mrs Rideout’s fancy. Midway between this and Lucy’s end of the room was one of those colour prints in which faintly draped figures are disposed pensively on marble terraces in a blaze of noon-tide light; behind them is a very blue lake, behind that very white mountains, with behind these again a sunset or sunrise thrown in for extra effect. Hudspith had failed to cultivate the plastic arts; nevertheless he recognized that this abomination and the magazine photographs belonged to one world. His glance ran on – and before another and smaller reproduction paused, perplexed. Momentarily disregarding Mrs Rideout’s monologue, he walked over to it. A line of print on the mount told him that this aloof and lovely person had been painted by a certain Piero della Francesca. He shook his head, obscurely disturbed.
But Lucy had just gone on going out. In all that blackout too. And then the night before last she had gone out and not come back again. But she had left a note in the cocoa jug saying…
Saying, thought Hudspith, that she was going to be happy and not to worry. He walked over to Lucy’s bed, where stood a little book-case. Three rows of books, all nearly new. He bent down.
Sesame and Lilies, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, After London, Cowper’s Letters, The Advancement of Learning, Madam Bovary
… Hudspith frowned and looked at the next shelf.
Swiss Family Robinson, Little Women, Mopsie in the Fifth, Mopsie Captain of the School, Doctor Dolittle’s Voyages
… The books were equally new; Mopsie’s final adventures had been published in the present year. Hudspith turned round, aware that Mrs Rideout had said something out of the ordinary. ‘Cocoa jug?’ he said. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the teapot?’
Mrs Rideout was emphatic; so was Mrs Toomer, who had been present at the discovery.
‘It’s nearly always the teapot,’ Hudspith paused, suspicious and alert. ‘When do you drink cocoa, marm?’
In the Rideout ménage cocoa was drunk only at night. So that was it: not the breakfast teapot but the evening cocoa jug – in other words a good twenty-four hours’ start. The little piece of elementary contrivance – surprising though this may seem – placed Lucy Rideout at once among the intellectual élite of Hudspith’s young women. And yet he had been given to understand –
The third shelf was almost on the ground; Hudspith stooped to examine it and his brow darkened. He knew
those
books, and it had not been his fault if the Home Secretary did not know them too. His eye went doubtfully back to the picture by the man Piero della Francesca, and it was a moment before he was aware that Mrs Rideout had stopped talking and that now the person called Mrs Fiddock held the stage.
With an evident sense of drama Mrs Fiddock had set down her cup. ‘I seen them and I ’eard them!’ she said.
It was a sensation. Mrs Fiddock looked slowly round, enjoying her triumph. Then slowly she wagged a finger at the amorphously vehement Mrs Rideout.
‘I seen and I ’eard what it’s my duty to diwulge in the presence of this ’igh officer of the police.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Toomer and Mrs Thorr.
And Mrs Rideout nodded her own vaster acquiescence. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
Hudspith licked his pencil and congratulated himself on the irregularity of his own methods. It was contrary to correct procedure to slip in on Mrs Rideout’s tea party in this way, but what signifies a little latitude when it is Leviathan himself that one pursues? Hudspith took a final look at the very bad books on Lucy Rideout’s lowest shelf and turned expectantly to Mrs Fiddock. ‘Quite right, marm,’ he said. ‘You must out with anything you know about this poor girl.’
Mrs Rideout began to sob – energetically and very rapidly, as if bent on repairing an oversight which had only just occurred to her. Mrs Toomer, having looked round vainly for a handkerchief, handed a tea towel. Mrs Thorr said ‘There, there!’ and ‘There then!’ and ‘There now!’ to everybody in turn. The tempo of Mrs Rideout’s grief changed; she was really weeping; presently the discovery of this so surprised her that she fell abruptly silent. The room waited expectantly.
‘This,’ announced Mrs Fiddock, ‘is a very painful occasion for me.’
‘There now!’ said Mrs Thorr.
‘And I hope that none here will say I did anything I didn’t ought. For I only done my duty.’ Mrs Fiddock paused. ‘As a citizen.’ She paused again to admire this linguistic triumph. ‘It was in the lounge of the Crown.’
‘The lounge!’ said Mrs Thorr and Mrs Toomer and Mrs Rideout.
‘It was more than a week back,’ pursued Mrs Fiddock with dignity, ‘that I had occasion to enter the bottle and jug. Now as everyone knows – or everyone except this gentleman here – there’s an ’atch in the bottle and jug that gives on the private. And the private has a door into the lounge. And sometimes you sees right through.’
There was an interruption while the ladies went into committee to verify these topographical statements. Depraved old wretches, though Hudspith. Liquor, he thought. Come out on a case like this and always there’s liquor round the corner. But he nodded with a large and false approval at Mrs Fiddock. ‘Very observant, missus,’ he said; ‘very observant indeed.’
Mrs Fiddock gave a gratified bow. ‘And there, Mrs Rideout, was your Lucy with that flashy furrein-looking man that was in number nine. Bold as brass, he was, and I didn’t think there was any good in it.’ She hesitated, momentarily confused. ‘It seemed to me I had a duty to do.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Mrs Rideout suspiciously, ‘as how you ever said anything about it afterwards.’
‘I had my duty to do,’ reiterated Mrs Fiddock more firmly. ‘I walked round to the lounge, dispoged myself behind the haspidistra and ordered a glass of port.’
‘There then!’ said Mrs. Thorr. Her admiration might have been directed either to the shameless curiosity of Mrs Fiddock or to the financial solidity and social confidence which this proceeding revealed.
‘And I ’eard what I ’eard. “Did you ever ’ear,” ’e says, “of the isle of Capri? I got an island just like that.” That’s what I ’eard ’im say.’
Mrs Toomer raised her hands, instantly credulous. ‘Lord!’ she said; ‘fancy having an island all your own.’
‘“Where is it?” says your Lucy – which was the first words I ’eard ’er say. “Where is it?” “It’s difficult to describe,” ’e says. “But you go to South America first.”
Hudspith’s pencil snapped at the point. Rage filled him – against these awful women, against the imbecile Lucy, against the unspeakably threadbare simplicity of this professional seducer’s patter. ‘Mrs Fiddock,’ he said benevolently, ‘this is very valuable information.’
‘And then neither of them said anythink, and I thought I’d best take a peep round the haspidistra. ’E was smiling at her confident like. And your Lucy she didn’t say nothink. She just ’itched her skirt another hinch above the knee.’
Hudspith compressed his lips. Mrs Toomer made a shocked noise on the front of her palate. Mrs Rideout again sobbed.
‘It was just then that the young fellow brought the port. “Well, ma,” ’e says, “picked a winner? And shall I bring the cigars?” “Young man,” I says, “I know my place, and ’opes that others does the same.” So ’e went away and I listens again.’ Mrs Fiddock paused. ‘But what I ’eard this time,’ she said dramatically, ‘I can scarcely bring myself to let pass these ’ere lips.’
Mrs Thorr leant forward on her chair; the half-obliterated features of Mrs Toomer sharpened themselves in expectation; the tea towel in Mrs Rideout’s grasp suspended itself in air.
‘’E leaned back and lit a cigarette. And then ’e said what made my very blood run cold. “I could do with two or three of you,” ’e said, – “and that’s what I’m going to get!” And then ’e gave an ’orrid laugh, like ’e might give to a bit of fun that was all his own.’
A moment’s profound silence greeted this appalling revelation. ‘A slaver – that’s what he is,’ said Mrs Toomer.
‘Or a regular Bluebeard,’ said Mrs Thorr.
Mrs Fiddock, her imagination fired by the literary success she had achieved, leant forward. ‘Do you think,’ she asked hoarsely, ‘he drowns them in a barf?’
Maternal solicitude is an awful power. Mrs Rideout, who had risen to her feet in agitation, took two sideways and three backward steps – and was thus able to fall upon her bed in a fit. Mrs Rideout roared; Mrs Thorr and Mrs Fiddock snivelled; Mrs Toomer gently beat her breast and uttered wheezy sighs. It is a dreadful thing to die – or even to conduct police investigations – ’mid women howling. The hardy Hudspith looked about him with some idea of throwing water or opening a window. What his eye immediately fell on was the dispassionate gaze of the Piero della Francesca – whence it travelled involuntarily to
Sesame and Lilies
and the historical labours of Edward Gibbon. Momentarily he felt like a man who sinks through deep waters. Then he stood up. ‘Be quiet!’ he shouted.
Mrs Rideout stopped roaring and snivelled. Whereupon Mrs Fiddock and Mrs Thorr, as if indignant at this trespass, took breath and yelled. Mrs Toomer continued her asthmatic exhibition undeterred. Hudspith banged the table with an open palm. ‘Silence!’ he bellowed. ‘Silence in the name of the law!’
There was instant quiet, as if the women were dispossessed of devils by the incantation. And Hudspith, learned in demonology went sternly on: ‘Anything that any of you says may be taken down and used as evidence in such proceedings as the magistrate may direct. We will now proceed to inquiries on the character and habits of the missing girl.’
The crisis was over. Even Mrs Toomer ceased knocking her breast. Instead, she took the lid from the teapot and peered hopefully inside.
Lucy Rideout was nineteen; so much could be gathered from her mother – who appeared to feel, however, that this represented her fair share of such information as the assembled party might provide. On her daughter’s interests and accomplishments she was vague; of her friends she knew little; among a number of photographs in a drawer she found one which, after some consultation with her friends, she was persuaded to assert was Lucy. Often, thought Hudspith, our claim upon the awareness of even close relations is surprisingly marginal and precarious. Nevertheless there was something almost pathological in this woman’s attitude to her daughter; it was almost as if the child had been an intellectual problem which Mrs Rideout had long since found it simplest to give up. He scrutinized the photograph with a professional eye. Lucy Rideout was not pretty. Nor, as far as he could discern, did she possess any of the specific types of plainness which have here and there a peculiar appeal. Why, then, Lucy? Presumably because she was half-witted and so particularly easy to spirit away. Only Hudspith thought that if this indifferent photograph revealed anything at all it was the appearance of considerable intelligence. And this by no means accorded with his brief. He turned to Mrs Rideout. “I understand,’ he said cautiously, ‘that your daughter was never very bright at her books?’