Shoebridge’s hotel was called the Argenta and Shoebridge had pulled it together and made a success of the place. Seven years later he had sold it and moved away from Brighton. Mr. Hanson had no idea where he had gone or what had happened to the family. Nobody at the Argenta would be able to help George either, because two years ago it had been pulled down and a block of flats built on the site. Shoebridge, he said, was a good businessman. He’d known him well. They were both members of the Conservative Club and both Rotarians. He’d clearly made a good profit out of the Weston-super-Mare garage sale, and, he guessed, an even better one out of the hotel sale. In addition he knew that Shoebridge had invested wisely in property in the district and had always been quick to take his profit when he felt there had been sufficient appreciation. He was not one to hang on to something too long and then find that he had missed the boat. Where they all were now he hadn’t the faintest idea. Probably dead, except the boy, of course. He’d be well into his thirties now.

  “What was the boy like?” asked George.

  “Oh, he was all right. Bit wild at times, I fancy. Living in a hotel when he was home from school wasn’t a good thing. You get some odd types in hotels down here, you know.”

  “What did he do when he left school?”

  “Worked for his father for a bit, learning the business. Then he went off to do the same sort of thing. First London, I think. And then abroad. I don’t really know. I found him a nice enough young chap. But there were others that said he was a bastard when the mood took him. He had an eye for the girls. There was trouble once or twice at the Argenta. I used to get it all, you know, back through the kitchen staff when I delivered. No matter what happens in a hotel, the news finishes up in the kitchens. I’ve an idea that he got a girl into trouble and married pretty young. Probably had to. Somebody from the Argenta—after Shoebridge sold it—met him once in London casually. I think that was it. I don’t know. My memory tricks me these days.”

  “Where did he go to school?”

  “Lancing College. That’s not far away. Along the coast. Old Shoebridge felt it was better for the boy to be a boarder and not kicking round the hotel all the time. They might be able to help you, of course.”

  “How?”

  “Well, don’t they have Old Boys’ Associations? Keep in touch and all that business. They could have his address.” George grinned. “You should have been a detective, Mr. Hanson.”

  The old man nodded. “Have been in my time. You give credit in a shop and you’ve got to be able to find the odd one or two that scarper leaving a fat bill. Some get away, of course, but that’s only because you don’t have the time or can’t afford it to go after ’em. Nobody can disappear like that!” He snapped his fingers. “Not in this day and age. Wherever you go you got to leave a mark of some kind. Oh, I could tell you some of the dodges that they used to get up to—all for the sake of a three-pound bill owing.”

  And he did, for the next half hour, over whisky and water which was brought in for the two of them by his daily woman who had answered the door. George stayed happily with him, out of charity, out of thanks for his help, and because of the whisky.

  Late that afternoon George and Albert drove to Lancing and George saw the school Bursar. He and Edward Shoebridge were much the same age. He explained that he was a friend of Shoebridge’s in the hotel business in the South of France, and over on holiday in Brighton. He’d lost trace of Shoebridge and wanted to look him up. The Bursar was helpful and, because of the information he gave, George decided that he had better spend the night in Brighton and pursue his enquiries the next day. He wasn’t keen about it, and neither was Albert, but there was no choice. He wanted to clear up this business for Blanche quickly and get on to his gardening lark. The van, he had decided, was to be green and painted on either side would be the head of an enormous yellow, black-centred sunflower with the firm’s name running around it—Lumley’s Sunshine Gardens Ltd. The notepaper he used would feature the same motif. He couldn’t wait.

  * * * *

  While George was looking for Edward Shoebridge, Bush was looking for the same man. Reports were beginning to come in from the local police throughout the designated area in the South of England and were being fed into Sangwill’s computer. Some of the local forces did their work conscientiously so far as the pressures of other work and manpower would allow them. Some did it less conscientiously. A few diehard Chief Constables blew their top and did nothing for the time being, content to wait for a sharp reminder from the Yard. Here and there a local constable, bicycle- or motor-bicycle-mounted, balking at the prospect of a wintry round, merely sat down and made some kind of list from memory of his area. The reports that had already arrived numbered hundreds. Their processing for the computer was a slow business, and the minor or major enquiries sparked by them even slower. Bush was looking for a needle in a haystack. He did the only thing that he could at the moment and that was to concentrate on the few names that had emerged from the two golf clubs. He did this out of sheer routine thoroughness and not because he felt that there was the slightest chance of a hard lead emerging.

  It was for this reason that while George was on his way to Brighton a member of the Wiltshire C.I.D. was detailed to take a look around George’s place.

  The man, with all the papers and documentation to prove that he was an insurance agent canvassing for new business, drove up to George’s cottage two hours after George had left for Brighton. Although he had noticed that the lean-to shed where George kept his car was empty, he rang the bell. There was no reply. He walked round the garden and the small paddock. George’s birds were in their long wire run. The food and water hoppers were full. A flight of budgerigars, pale blue, green and yellow, fluttered and perched among the dead branches which George had arranged as perches, and a moulting albino cock pheasant sat sulkily in one corner of the run ignoring the ceaseless up-and-down passage of a belligerent golden pheasant. The paddock was unkempt in places with nettle and dock patches. The small garden around the house clearly was never given more than minimal attention. The cottage was thatched—and would soon need rethatching. The structure itself was built of stone blocks, but whether the stone was limestone the man couldn’t tell. Part of the garden wall was made of the same material. He decided to take a piece of it back with him for the experts to decide. One thing was certain, however, the house could have no cellar. The river was less than a hundred yards away. Any digging below the house would hit the water table at once and the man could see that there would be trouble with drainage as there was almost no fallaway at all. For his money this place and its owner could not possibly fill whatever bill it was that had to be filled.

  He went back to the front door and rang the bell again. When there was still no reply, he tried the door latch and the door opened. He sighed. Despite all the police publicity people still did it. Walked out and left a house unlocked, wide open to any passing sneak-thief.

  He went into the cottage and made a quick examination of all the rooms and checked that indeed there was no cellar. His practised eyes told him a great deal about George Lumley. He already knew, from a chat with the local constable, of George’s association with Blanche Tyler. The Salisbury police knew, too, that George sometimes did ‘confidential’ work for her, but there had never been any complaints from Blanche’s clients. As he made his notes he was thinking of the Fraudulent Mediums Act, 1951, which had repealed the Witchcraft Act, 1735. Under it, any person who with intent to deceive purported to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers, or, in purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise such powers as aforesaid, used any fraudulent device, would be guilty of an offence. Trouble was, all proceedings had to be brought by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It was all small beer stuff generally and the police seldom bothered with it. Still . . . he’d been asked to get all he could and he felt he had better draw attention to it. The local constable had described Blanche as a ‘lively handful who’d keep any man busy and warm in bed’. If the need arose he’d give her the once over. Maybe she could tell him whether he would ever make Detective-Inspector.

  Going through the kitchen on his way out, he tried to turn off the dripping cold-water tap without success. It clearly needed a new washer. George Lumley, he thought, was no do-it-yourself handyman.

  * * * *

  That day, too, Edward Shoebridge drove by himself some fifty miles from Ills home, south-east to the small county town of Dorchester, the birthplace of Thomas Hardy. He took a stop-watch with him. He spent some time observing from a distance a country house that lay to the east of the town, and then even more time driving around the neighbouring roads and side lanes. It was the third of such visits he had made well spread out over the last two months. He made no notes of any kind. All that he needed to know he kept in his head. Already the films he had long ago made and recently run through were destroyed.

  Driving home he was content that all was now ready. There was no more to do but wait for the day to come when he could act. The next time there would be no publicity. Twice, by not attempting to prevent the news breaking, indeed promoting it, he had made the police look fools. Scotland Yard and the Home Office and many public personalities had all been subjected to heavy press criticism. This time he could safely insist on the whole affair being kept quiet, since he knew he would have the co-operation of the authorities. He would also have, he knew, their enmity and anger, and this would provoke an even greater effort to find him.

  The next time he or his wife walked into the hall at the Army Aviation Centre at Middle Wallop in Hampshire, the same people would be there. Grandison he knew by name. He was a publicly recognisable figure. The other two were faces; the man about his own age, plump-faced, mouth edged with a bitter inner anger, and the older man, glasses pushed up on his forehead like an eye-weary clerk. And there would be half a million lying in stones on the table. If they gave any trouble—then his captive would die. They knew that. They would have given their orders to all involved—but there could always be one man to break an order, to take a chance, some unthinking fool who wanted to be an hero. The odds against it were high, but he considered them, and all the way home his mind was exploring all the safeguards he might be able to take against a moment of individual foolishness. Every risk that he could foresee must be countered. In the fast-going light he saw a sparrow hawk swing round the edge of a clump of trees on the roadside ahead and wing low between the tree trunks, pirating for small birds. In the quick glance he recognised it as a female. He thought of his wife waiting for him. She wanted what he wanted, had nourished the want in him almost before he had known it for himself. She had gone to the first collection, not to prove to him there could be no failure—there could always by the turn of chance be that—but to put herself to that risk so that if she failed he would still be free to try again.

  * * * *

  George rose late and unrefreshed. He had got a room at a sea-front hotel in Brighton and a strong wind off the sea had smacked and rattled his window all night. Albert had objected to sleeping on a cushion in the small armchair and had twice jumped to the foot of the bed and been repulsed. The third time George let him stay. He was restless himself from a substantial dinner and lay awake for hours wishing he had brought some stomach powder with him and thinking of Lumley’s Sunshine Gardens. When he finally dropped off he overslept and woke to find that Albert had cocked a leg against the wardrobe. George before bathing cleaned up and told Albert exactly what he thought of him.

  The morning continued to go wrong. At breakfast he ordered coffee and got tea. His eggs were beautifully cooked but he didn’t care for them because he liked the yolks hard fried. The bacon wasn’t fat enough and all the Daily Mails had gone and he had to make do with the Daily Express which made him feel like a lost man. He took Albert to the kitchen for a plate of breakfast scraps and a kitchen boy said, “What kind of dog’s that, then?” George, normally the first to admit or even point out that Albert was of no beauty and no pedigree, resented this. He thought of answering that Albert was a truffle-hound, one of only five in England and worth a couple of hundred quid, but the effort was beyond him. It was one of those days, he recognised, when he was not going to be at his sparkling best until he had had a couple of pints of Guinness or two large gins. There were days like that. Even the thought of Lumley’s Sunshine Gardens held little comfort as he drove off to find the address that the Bursar of Lancing College had given him.

  Edward Shoebridge had long lapsed as a member of the Old Boys’ Association. All the Bursar could do was to give the address which Shoebridge had acknowledged up until seven years after leaving the college—Green Posts, Smallfield, near Glyndebourne. George found Glyndebourne easily enough—it was less than a half-hour run north from Brighton. It took him another half-hour to find Smallfield, and then fifteen minutes to find Green Posts. It was a smallish, red-tiled, red-bricked house in a side lane. A holly hedge ran round the garden which was quite large and well-kept.

  The moment the door was opened to his knock, George knew that the morning was going to live up to its shabby start. One look at the woman facing him told George what to expect. He knew the kind. At eleven o’clock in the morning he could catch the sweet smell of gin on her breath. If Blanche knew, he thought, some of the things he did for her! And, if he knew his women, there were things that might be offered here which he would be wise to refuse. Not that the prospect of a large gin was unpleasing. But no more.

  She was an ample, dark-haired, slack-faced, loosely built woman in her early forties. She was wearing a white silk blouse, ruched at the sleeves and down the front, and a black skirt that was taking considerable strain over her hips which a small slit up one side did nothing to ease, though every time she moved it showed a substantial slice of thigh and stocking top. She was the perfect finale, George thought, to tea instead of coffee, the Daily Express instead of the Daily Mail and eggs that ran all over your plate instead of staying put when you cut them. He should have brought Albert in from the car, he at least could have left a visiting card in self-defence. In no time at all she had given George her name and he was invited inside.

  Mrs. Angers, Lydia Angers. Practically every pub in the world, he told himself, had a Lydia Angers type of regular customer. In a moment she would laugh and it would be a laugh he had heard in a hundred saloon bars. He’d hardly got started on his story that he was looking for an old chum he’d known in the hotel business, one Edward Shoebridge, when a large, beringed hand took his hat. He was drawn inside the hall which was decorated with unevenly hung pictures of different roses. A grandfather clock had one of its corners propped up with three copies of the National Geographical Magazine. With little time to observe more, he was shepherded into the lounge with its chintz armchairs, a large settee, a pink carpet very worn near the door and the fireplace, and a television set with three brass monkeys on top of it. A small desk was overflowing with papers, and there was a vase of half-dead chrysanthemums on a large sideboard that was crowded with bottles, decanters and glasses, not all of them clean.

  George just avoided being steered on to the settee and settled himself in an armchair, a deep and uncomfortable pit of broken springs.

  Yes, she and her husband had known Edward Shoebridge well. Her husband better than she had, of course, since they were at school together, and would he like a drink, or a cup of coffee or tea? When he said coffee Mrs. Angers made no move to do anything about it. She poured herself a glass of gin and water at the sideboard and, without appearing to hear anything George said, mixed one for him, too.

  George held the glass and sighed inwardly. He had got one of the lonely ones again, another of the great Gradidge clan, better educated, better fixed, but still the same loneliness. She lit herself a menthol-flavoured cigarette and George realised what it was that he had smelled the moment he came into the room. There was no need for him to do more than throw in an occasional quick question, smile when she made some flirtatious move or remark, and dig himself deeper into the safety of the armchair.

  Her husband was in the hotel fittings and fixtures trade in London. Worth and Freen Ltd. Terribly busy. Seldom got down to the country and had a small flat in town. (George didn’t need to be told anything about Mr. Angers. He could imagine the whole situation.) Wild horses wouldn’t drag her to London. She adored the country . . . the garden and the house and masses of friends around. Edward Shoebridge? Well, that was curious. His father and mother had owned this house once. Moved here from Brighton. Andy—(George marked him correctly as her husband)—had often visited him here. He and Edward were great friends. No, she was sure he didn’t know where he was now. In fact, he’d like to know himself. Always talking about the good times he and Edward used to have. They’d been in the hotel business together for a while. Paris, she thought. Or was it Stuttgart? When the old Shoebridges had died (she went within a year of him. Heartbroken. And both buried in the local churchyard) Edward had kept the place going for a few years. Sometimes let it. She and Andy had had it for a year once. That’s why Andy had bought it from him ten years ago. Thought it would be a good place for her since she didn’t like town and he had to be away so much. . . . It was a big house, much bigger than it looked from the outside. She’d show him round in a minute. Did he really want coffee? She helped herself to another gin and George had his glass taken from him and refilled, to which he did not entirely object, but he swore to himself that he was going on no conducted tour of the house. Once upstairs she was the kind, when she fancied a man, who would have no qualms about using force.