“Never mind the car. Tell Miss Rainbird about the man.”

  “He’s in uniform, Henry. A sort of darkish colour . . . chocolate like. And he’s got leggings. My, he looks smart. Not much over thirty. And the car’s white, all white . . .”

  “Ask Miss Rainbird what colour his hair is, Blanche. His cap’s off. You can see. Ask her.”

  With an asperity which came from memories of long past events, Miss Rainbird said, “If it’s who I think it must be, his hair should be jet black.”

  Madame Blanche with a note of anguish in her voice cried, “What’s happening, Henry? The picture’s gone and you’re going. Henry . . . Henry!”

  Almost in a whisper Henry’s voice answered, “As the thundercloud hides the sun and darkens the beauty of flowers and fields, so does anger in the human heart drive out love and understanding . . . Love, not anger, lights the road to true understanding. . . .” His voice faded and was gone.

  Miss Rainbird sat there knowing she had been sharply reprimanded and the injustice—as she felt it to be—primed the re-emergence of her own strong personality. Upper Brightness indeed! Well, if there were such a thing, she wasn’t surprised that Harriet—and particularly Sholto—hadn’t reached it yet. And not to be angry at the thought of that Shoebridge man was an impossibility. True, she did put flowers on the child’s grave sometimes. But that was because there was no one else in the village to do it. A simple act of tenderness when she did Sholto’s and Harriet’s. The whole thing was nonsense. This Madame Blanche, lying back now, eyes closed, pretending exhaustion, was simply a clever trickster. She simply couldn’t go on with this. It was an insult to her own intelligence. The woman was getting information somewhere and just feeding it to her. Harriet was dead. Whatever had happened in Harriet’s past was dead and there was nothing to be done about it.

  As the thought was still with her, Harriet’s voice came clearly to her, “Tippy, dear . . . you’re making me very unhappy . . .” But the words came through Madamt Blanche’s lips. “Unhappy for you, Tippy, dear. . . . Unhappy for you.” Miss Rainbird had a sense of extreme shock, of coldness striking at her. She stared at Madame Blanche’s face, large, and handsome in its vulgar way. It had been Harriet’s voice. Oh, God . . . was her hearing playing her tricks? Tippy . . . how could this woman know that that had been Harriet’s nickname for her?

  Blanche slowly opened her eyes, sat up in her chair and blew a little breath of relief as she smiled at Miss Rainbird.

  “Phew,” she said, “Henry’s knocked me about again. I’m exhausted.” Her eyes moved towards the sherry decanter.

  Miss Rainbird, ignoring the hint for the moment, said, “Do you remember it all?”

  “Yes, of course, this time.”

  “Do you remember the last thing which was said?”

  “Clearly. Henry got poetic again. ‘Love, not anger, lights the road to true understanding . . .’ And he’s right, Miss Rainbird. I know you can’t help little relapses now and then. It’s only human. But it’s hard for them always to be patient about it.”

  Miss Rainbird said nothing. She got up and went to pour sherry for them both. What was she to think of this woman, what was she to think?

  * * * *

  George and Blanche were drinking stout in the kitchen of her Salisbury house. Mrs. Tyler had long gone to bed. Albert was sleeping in George’s car parked outside. Blanche would not permit him in the house. Terrestrially and ethereally dogs did not rate very high with her. It was late at night and occasional buffets of wind shook the kitchen window. George had a big red-backed notebook on the table before him. He had bought it the day after his first visit to Mrs. Gradidge to keep all his notes in about Miss Rainbird and her affairs. Although his memory was reasonable he had long ago learnt that unless he made notes soon after any interview he was inclined to forget some small detail or other. And small details were often more important to Blanche than big ones.

  Referring to the notebook now and then, he was giving Blanche an outline of all the facts he had picked up in Chilbolton and more recently at Weston-super-Mare.

  Ronald Shoebridge had been the chauffeur to Sholto at Reed Court. He was also rather more than a chauffeur. When his master wanted drinking company Shoebridge often obliged him, and he obliged him in other ways, particularly when Sholto used the car for his amorous forays about the countryside. Shoebridge was not a local man. He had come from London, bringing his wife Martha with him. His closest confidant at Chilbolton had been Gradidge, who travelled in the car when Sholto went shooting and fishing. Two months— Mrs. Gradidge had actually given him the day and the hour— before Harriet’s child had been born, Mrs. Shoebridge had lost her own six-month-old child, a boy, named Edward. A week before Harriet’s child was born, Ronald Shoebridge had left the employment of Sholto Rainbird. To his friend Gradidge he had confided that he had had a little money left to him and was moving off to set up his own garage. He hadn’t said where. But a year later he had—prompted by vanity George imagined—written to Gradidge from Weston-super-Mare and said that he was in the garage business there and doing nicely and announced that his wife had had another baby. This last fact had intrigued the Gradidges because Mrs. Gradidge had been told by Martha Shoebridge—after the birth of her son, Edward—that there had been complications and the doctor had said that it was doubtful whether she could ever have another.

  The Gradidges, who always peered behind all facts, distrusting the appearance of truth, had arrived at the conclusion that Ronald Shoebridge had no more been left a little money than they had, but that Sholto Rainbird had set him up in business well away from Chilbolton on condition that he and his wife took over Harriet’s baby and presented it to the world as their own—and probably on condition that the boy was never to be told the truth of his parentage. Ronald Shoebridge was the kind of man who would honour any contract as long as he was paid enough.

  George said, “I found the garage, love. Just looked in the telephone book. Shoebridge Garages Ltd. The original one in Weston, another in Bridgwater and another in Wells. Shoebridge had to go in the army during the war, but his wife ran the original place with the help of a manager who was over army age. After the war he really got cracking and made a go of things. . . .” Just, he thought, as he would when all this sniffing around was done and he could get down to the gardening lark. “Eventually he sold out at a nice profit and went to Brighton. There was a nice old chap, storekeeper in the Weston garage, who’d worked there originally with Shoebridge. He hadn’t heard from Shoebridge for ages and fancied he must be dead because for years he’d always got a Christmas card at least. Anyway, he knew Shoebridge had gone co Brighton with some idea of starting a hotel, putting a manager in and taking things easy. I’ve got his last address in Brighton.”

  “What about the boy?” asked Blanche.

  “Just like you and the Gradidges thought. They called him Edward. Probably used the birth certificate of their own dead boy. There’d only be an age discrepancy of eight months. That wouldn’t show by the time he was ten or eleven. He went to a small private school where if he was a bit backward to begin with they wouldn’t worry. He was a bright boy, anyway. Good at sports, and mad about the countryside, birds and flowers and all that. The Shoebridges lived over the garage to begin with and then had a small house outside in the country.”

  He began to leaf through his notebook.

  “You’ll have to go to Brighton, George.”

  “I know, love. Tomorrow. I want to get this thing finished. Now, what else have I got in the book of words? Don’t want to slip anything that you could pass to dear Henry—”

  “George, that’s enough of that.”

  “Give us another stout and let me stay the night here and I’ll never mention his name again.” He winked at her as she began to pour him another drink. “Oh, yes. The boy. He had fair hair and blue eyes. Quick tempered at times. Touch of the old Irish, I’d say. He was fourteen when the Shoebridges left Weston and was away at school. Birth certificate fourteen that would be. Mrs. Shoebridge was ambitious for him. Devoted to him and so was Shoebridge. Martha Shoebridge when she was at Chilbolton used to do bits of needlework for the Rainbirds. Garage is near the seafront. What’s this? Oh, yes, that’s old stuff, about the girls’ nicknames.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I told you. The nicknames the two Miss Rainbirds had for one another. Old Mother Gradidge told me.”

  “You never told me. George, that’s the kind of thing I want. It helps so much in establishing a warm communication.”

  “I’m sure I told you. Your Miss Rainbird was Tippy, and Harriet was called Flappy.”

  “You certainly didn’t tell me. Now, make sure there’s nothing else. I want everything. What kind of needlework did Martha Shoebridge do for the Rainbirds?”

  “Helped in the linen room. Hell, fancy living in a house with a linen room. Used to hem and repair sheets. Gut ’em down the middle when they were worn and turn them. Old Sholto watched the household expenses.” He flicked more pages. “No, there’s nothing else that I haven’t told you. Except my expenses—but I’ll save those for when the whole thing’s done.” He raised his glass to her, drank and said, “Well, what about it? Do I stay the night and give the neighbours something to talk about?”

  Blanche, looking past him, shook her head and said, “You know what I think that boy was carrying? I think he was carrying a bird. Yes, he was. Some poor bird that he’d rescued.”

  “You’re way beyond me, Blanche. You mean you saw this lad?”

  “As clearly as I see you.”

  “Then he should have had a shotgun. Mad about hunting he was, according to the old storekeeper.”

  Blanche’s eyes came back to him. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Blimey, Blanche. I can’t remember everything. You any idea how some of these people talk? Once they begin you can’t stop them. Look, I’ve been thinking—there might be a quick way out of this. It’d suit you and me. The boy’s a man now. There’s no reason he’d change his name. If I don’t turn him up in Brighton tomorrow all we’ve got to do is put an advertisement in one of the papers. News of the World or something like that. Box Office number and will Edward Shoebridge, son of Ronald and Martha Shoebridge, last heard of in Brighton such and such a date, please communicate present whereabouts when he will hear of something to his advantage. Yes?”

  Very firmly Blanche said, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Use your head, George. To begin with Miss Rainbird might see. She realises by now unless she’s stupid—which she isn’t— that the child was farmed off to the Shoebridges.”

  “She isn’t the type to read the News of the World. A Sunday basinful of sex and sport.”

  “Somebody else might see it and mention it to her. One of her friends. ‘Shoebridge? Wasn’t that the name of the chauffeur Sholto used to have?’ Can you imagine? But it’s not just that—she wants me to find him without his knowing about it. Love, he could turn out to be the biggest non-starter for the Rainbird stakes in the world. In that case—and I know her— she’d quietly forget about the whole thing. All she wants at the moment is a good excuse for doing nothing about it. You may not believe it, but apart from the Temple of Astrodel angle, I’m becoming very fond of the old girl. I’m not having her life ruined. If Edward Shoebridge is a no-gooder, then she’s going to be told that he’s dead and she can live and sleep in peace.”

  George grinned. “You’re an artful number, aren’t you? Either way, you win. Whyn’t you take up real crime, Blanche? You could finish up with the Taj Mahal.”

  Blanche said stiffly, “George Lumley—I’ll put that down to four bottles of stout and all the other drinks you no doubt had before you got here. Now, you get off home. Brighton for you tomorrow. And if by any chance you do trace Edward Shoebridge there—you keep well clear of him until I tell you otherwise.”

  George shrugged his shoulders, “Okay, me old dear, you’re the boss.”

  * * * *

  Of the ten people who at some time or other had been members of both the Tiverton and Crowborough Beacon Golf Clubs, four of the men and two of the women had died. That left four men and two women. Of the two women, one was in Rhodesia where she had lived with her husband for the last two years, and the other—a spinster of fifty-four—lived at Crowborough still and was clearly from Bush’s angle a non-suspect the moment he had read the report on her. Of the four men, one lived at Tiverton still and was seventy-five and had been a Church of England minister, another was a man of forty who lived at Crowborough, was a member of the Stock Exchange, and was married and had four children all below the age of eighteen. (Bush, determined to leave no stone unturned, was having a survey made on him, but knew in his heart that nothing would come of it.) Another man was the master of an Esso oil tanker which at this moment was halfway between London and Bahrein and who had, during the periods of both kidnappings, also been at sea. The fourth was a man in his very late thirties, of slender but independent means, who lived by himself in a country cottage in Wiltshire where he kept a collection of foreign birds, mostly golden and oriental pheasants and budgerigars. His name was George Lumley.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MISS RAINBIRD WAS in her small private sitting-room thinking about Madame Blanche, who had just left, and the session they had had. It was a relief to her to find now that she could suspend belief or disbelief. She was content to sit and listen and, whenever it was demanded of her, give her responses and ask her questions. She could remain detached now, she knew, until the moment came when a choice between belief and disbelief would be made in her without volition in the same way as her present state had suddenly possessed her.

  While the session—she could not yet bring herself to describe her meetings with Madame Blanche as seances—had been a successful one, it had been a shade irritating to her that Sholto alone had appeared to Madame Blanche to talk to them through Henry. She wasn’t happy that Sholto was taking charge of things. Sholto had always been a highly disturbing element in her life. He had to be a long way from Upper Brightness yet, and she could not rule out the possibility that a fair streak of his original dissolute character must remain.

  She reached for her telephone and dialled the number for Directory Enquiries. Sholto had said that the child had been adopted by the Shoebridge couple, and that he had given the Shoebridge man—she’d never liked him, there was always something reptilian, she thought, about his eyes and look—a substantial sum to take himself off and establish a business. Sholto said he thought the man had set his heart on a garage business, but he wasn’t sure because once the transaction had been made and the cash paid he wanted to know no more of the Shoebridges’ existence. And at this point Sholto had signed off, sliding back down his long, glowing vista and out of reach even of Henry. Typical Sholto, washing his hands of the whole thing. But fortunately Harriet had come through. Not in any ethereal form, but handing out the pictures from her album as before. There had been pictures of a garage, of a seaside town, a length of pier, and then others of a small boy and a cottage in the country. Nice pictures, as described by Madame Blanche, Miss Rainbird had to admit. (In Heaven’s name why did it take so long always to get Enquiries? That stupid buzzing note boring into one’s eardrum!) A boy swimming in a river, bird-nesting, playing with a dog, and finally one of the whole family group standing on a railway platform, luggage around them, obviously going off for a holiday, and in the background the large name-plate of the station. Blanche’s voice came back to her. ‘I can’t see it clearly. It’s Weston-something. . . . Oh, dear so many people crowding around. Ah . . . now I see it. The man has bent to pick up a case. It’s Weston-super-Mare.” The ringing tone stopped and an operator’s voice said, “Directory Enquiries. Can I help you?”

  Miss Rainbird asked to be given the number of Shoebridge Garages Ltd. in Weston-super-Mare. The album picture Blanche had described had shown a modern garage.

  A few minutes later, Miss Rainbird was given the number. She wrote it down on her telephone pad, looked at it and wondered what on earth she was going to do about it, if in fact she had to do-anything. The trail had gone cold at Weston. . . . The pictures had faded, Harriet had decamped and Blanche had come round, remembering everything and saying that they could only hope there would be more information next time. At the moment, Miss Rainbird decided, she would be wiser to do nothing. A wait-and-see policy was not ordinarily to her liking, but for the time being she would be content with it.

  * * * *

  George’s enquiries that day in Brighton took him a long time and produced a little more information, but nothing like enough, he knew, for Blanche’s purposes. He had started with a piece of luck and then had run up against a seemingly blank wall. The Shoebridge address given him in Brighton was a modest terrace house set in a small road that lay about two hundred yards back from the seafront out on the Hove side of the town. It was a tall, narrow-fronted house of three storeys, well kept, its green paintwork quite fresh, and the brass fittings on the front door well polished. A woman answered the door and George asked to see the owner or occupier. It took him a few minutes of his charm and blarney to get co-operation, but in the end he was shown into a sitting-room.

  Sitting in a chair by the fireplace was the owner, an old gentleman well into his seventies. He had a book on his lap and there was a scattering of daily newspapers about his chair. On a small table at his side was a telephone and on the other side of the fireplace was a large television set. He was a Mr. Hanson, a retired butcher, who had once had a small business in the town. He was the thinnest butcher George had ever seen and—the information was soon readily offered— suffered badly from rheumatism and spent most of his days reading, watching television and studying racing form in order to make his daily telephone bets. George told him that he was working for a firm of Salisbury solicitors who were trying to trace the Shoebridge family in connection with a small legacy that had arisen on the death of a distant relative. Mr. Hanson, who was lonely and welcomed company, made no attempt to check George’s credentials. He told him that he had known the Shoebridge family quite well. After their arrival from Weston-super-Mare, they had lived in the house—which Shoebridge had bought—for two years while Shoebridge was looking for a suitable hotel to buy. Shoebridge had eventually bought a fair-sized hotel on the seafront and he and his family had lived in a suite at the top of the hotel. All the time they had been there he, Mr. Hanson, had served the place with its meat and had come to know them well. In fact, when Shoebridge had put up the house for sale, he had bought it and converted the top two floors into a flat which he had let off, and lived himself on the bottom floor.