Cherry Ames 24 Companion Nurse (13 page)

“And that’s not all!” Auntie Pru crowed, delighted by Cherry’s interest in her story. She pointed a stubby fi nger. “I want you to notice particularly that telephone!

And that writing desk!”

It was an ordinary telephone, and an old writing desk covered with a desk blotter. Beside the inn’s one telephone, the desk held an old fountain pen in a stand.

Auntie Pru confi dentially advised Cherry that the pen was leaky, then remembered her main point—the telephone.

“I can tell you it was quite an event, my dear! Lucky for me I was in this room at the time,” Auntie Pru said.

“It’s rarely enough anyone rings up here from the village or occasionally from Chester—hardly ever from London—and Meg Greene’s husband telephoned her here from
Edinburgh!”

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Why Edinburgh? He could be there on a business trip, Cherry told herself. And was the man who had telephoned the same man who drove the Bentley?

Since forty-fi ve minutes after getting into the car with him Meg Greene had posed as Lady Liddy, it seemed likely the short, portly man had assumed a white beard and the Shah’s personality. Was that short man really Meg Greene’s husband, or just a fellow thief ? Cherry wondered why he had telephoned the blond girl, and—Cherry asked Auntie Pru—when.

“Let me see, it was Saturday evening. Day before yesterday. And I’ll tell you something else interesting—

Meg Greene took no walks last Saturday. I fancy she was waiting in for her husband’s telephone call. Well!

The telephone rang, and as I was sitting nearby, naturally I ran and answered it. Operator said ‘A call for Mrs. Greene from Edinburgh!’ I fetched her, then I sat down and didn’t budge from this chair while she and her husband had a bit of visit. I was pretending to read, you see. Unfortunately,” Auntie Pru said in disappointment, “I couldn’t make out what
he
said, because what
she
said was awfully brief—rather tight-lipped, closemouthed, you know? If I had a husband, I would talk to him more nicely than that.” Cherry asked, “How do you know it was her husband?”

“Oh, she said as much to me and Mr. Munn and Agnes, after she hung up.” That proved nothing, Cherry thought. “She wrote down something he told her, too,” Auntie Pru recalled, and Cherry pricked up her ears.

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“First, she listened quite a long time, and said ‘Repeat that.’ Then she said ‘Righto. I’ll remember that.’ Then she listened again and said ‘Repeat that slowly, will you, while I write it down.’ So she took that leaky pen and wrote—”

“She did!” Cherry exclaimed. She sprang up to take a look at the desk blotter.

The blotter was fairly fresh, with here and there an ink blot, and snatches of reversed handwriting. By using her compact mirror, Cherry was able to make out a few words or parts of words, but they made no sense, and anyway, here the ink looked faded. The freshest, most recent-looking entry—and this was in a different hand from the other writing on the blotter—appeared to be an address. No, a telephone number—Muir 2361. Cherry wondered whether it was an Edinburgh number, since the call to Meg Greene had come from Edinburgh. Cherry copied the telephone number in a small shopping notebook in her purse. The attention of the police should be directed to this blotter.

“What are you doing?” Auntie Pru asked suspiciously.

“Just making a note of what Meg Greene wrote down.”

Cherry checked the blotter minutely. She recalled Auntie Pru’s report—Meg Greene saying “Righto. I’ll remember that.” Remember what? A street address?

If not, it was something simple enough or brief enough to remember without writing it down—perhaps a name?

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“Whatever do you want to do that for?” Auntie Pru persisted.

At that moment Martha Logan walked into the sitting room, looking refreshed. To her astonishment, Cherry gave her a vague “hello” from the writing desk, while bending over the desk and peering into the mirror of the open compact in her hand.

“What are you doing?” Martha asked.

Cherry turned around from the desk. “—uh—” She gulped apologetically. “Why don’t you talk with Miss Pru Heekins, here, while I—
Please,
Mrs. Logan!”

“Oh. Certainly.” Martha recognized Cherry’s urgency.

“May I sit with you, Miss Heekins? Have you been at The Cat and Fiddle long?”

Auntie Pru at once loosed a torrent of talk at this newcomer. Martha Logan, taken by surprise, defense-less, looked in Cherry’s direction with an expression that asked, “Why did you do this to me?” Cherry signaled back, “Sorry—something urgent—” No, the blotter held no other entry in the same handwriting, and Agnes must have emptied the wastebasket.

Well, it was not up to her but to the police to search further.

Cherry rescued her patient from Auntie Pru, just as Mr. Munn came in to say that lunch was served.

“Sorry it took so long to prepare,” Mr. Munn said, leading the way to the dining room. “Where is Mrs. Greene, I wonder? Hasn’t she come in yet for lunch?” Meg Greene was never coming back to The Cat and Fiddle, Cherry thought, but said nothing. She did not

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want to unleash another deluge of talk from Auntie Pru, who sat down at a table with a little bunch of fl owers and a napkin ring—apparently her usual table.

Mr. Munn seated Martha and Cherry at the far end of the room.

Agnes served them a good meal. Martha ate well, and Cherry was relieved to see how a little sleep and food revived her. Only toward the end of lunch did Cherry tell her Auntie Pru’s story.

Martha at once saw the signifi cance. “I’m fascinated,” she said. “But how reliable are her ‘facts’?”

“Auntie isn’t the brightest person in the world,” Cherry admitted. “Still it’s possible she saw and heard pretty much what she insists she did. Allowing for certain inaccuracies—the police will know how to evalu-ate her story.”

Several detectives arrived as the three guests came out of the dining room. Auntie Pru was all a-twitter to see them, coquettishly adjusted her ancient hat, removed her glasses, then put them on again because she bumped into Mr. Spencer. He seemed to know Auntie Pru, or at least to know who she was. So did the inspector and the stout detective. Martha Logan whispered to Cherry that some additional men had joined them.

The detectives put most of their questions to Auntie Pru. They seemed inclined to discount her reliabil-ity as a source of information at fi rst, but Auntie Pru told the same consistent story she had told Cherry, then dramatically led them to the writing desk. The 118
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detectives were very much interested in the telltale blotter and removed it for laboratory examination. One man at once got to work on the phone to trace the call from Edinburgh.

The detectives made a systematic search of the room Meg Greene had occupied. She had left behind a cheap suitcase, a few inexpensive garments from which all labels had been carefully removed, and some toilet articles. The detectives impounded these for further study. They also examined the room for Meg Greene’s fi ngerprints, and examined the contents of her wastebasket, which Agnes had emptied that morning. Apparently none of these things provided clues.

While this was going on, other detectives questioned Mr. Munn and Agnes. The innkeeper said,

“Mrs. Greene told me she would leave sometime today, and she paid her bill this morning before starting out for her walk. I offered to drive her to the nearest bus stop or railroad station, since there is no taxi service here, but Mrs. Greene answered me in a vague way—

evasively, I see now.”

The quiet detective, Spencer, again talked with Cherry and Martha. “Your description of Lady Liddy tallies exactly with Mr. Munn’s description of Meg Greene, no doubt about that,” the detective said. “However, she’s evidently an assistant in a carefully planned scheme. The man who posed as the Shah—he’s probably the key man. He’s the man we want. Can you tell us something further about him?”

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Cherry hesitated. Had she any right to voice her suspicion that the impostor might be Archibald Hazard?

But it was only the slimmest of suspicions, based on a commonplace physical resemblance and a knowledge of art. Neither trait was unique to Mr. Hazard. Cherry kept quiet. She remarked only that the pretended

“Shah” was left-handed and had turned his
left
ankle in his haste at leaving. The detective already knew that.

Martha Logan could only repeat the same description of the thief. The detective said dryly that with the addition of disguising clothes and beard, he tallied with the description of the man whom Auntie Pru had seen driving the Bentley.

“He and Meg Greene must have changed into their disguises somewhere near here,” the detective said,

“between the time Auntie Pru saw them meet on the road and the time they arrived at the Carewe Museum.

Their chauffeur must have joined them somewhere nearby, too. About that chauffeur, Miss Ames—if you are able to remember where or when you may have seen him before, will you notify us?” Cherry said she would, and tried to think where she had seen that uniformed chauffeur before. It was hard to remember in the midst of today’s excitement.

Where else had she seen a dark man in chauffeur’s uniform and cap? . . . Martha Logan gave the detective the name of the hotel where they would stay in Edinburgh, on the slight chance they might be needed. Mr. Spencer then said that they and their driver, Edwin, were free to leave.

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Auntie Pru rushed over to say goodbye to Cherry, shaking her hand and holding up a magnifying glass that she had importantly produced.

“It’s my embroidery magnifying glass,’’ Auntie Pru said breathlessly. “Perhaps I can be of further aid to the authorities, seeing as I’ve been of outstanding aid already—the sergeant said so!”

“Well, congratulations—and goodbye, Auntie Pru,” said Cherry, trying to pull her hand free.

“Goodbye, goodbye, Miss Nurse! I fancy you’ll be reading about me in the newspapers. Oh, I say, if you ladies ever come by here again—” They might never have escaped, except that another group of detectives came in and distracted Auntie’s attention. One reported to the sergeant:

“I’ve found the rented black Bentley, sir. It was abandoned in a meadow out of sight behind a hedge, over near the woods. Three of our men are hunting through the woods.”

The sergeant said, “Either those three are hiding in the woods—or more likely, since they shrewdly abandoned the Bentley, they are using other means of transportation to get away.” He said this so calmly that Cherry realized the police, on a national alert, must already be watching all roads, buses, trains, and planes. The sergeant added, “A pity they had a little additional time to get away while we checked on the whereabouts of the true Shah Liddy. But, of course, as I told Mr. Carewe on the telephone, that had to be done.”

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Cherry would not let Martha stay to listen to any more. “We can hear about any developments on the radio or television,” Cherry said. “Now you must go back to our hotel and really rest.” Edwin drove them quietly along the almost empty roads. Martha Logan murmured that this had been an extraordinary experience.

“I could mention something still more extraordinary,” Cherry said. “Did it occur to you, as it did to me, that our friend in the beard and mackintosh may have been Mr. Hazard?” And she gave her reasons.

Martha Logan considered this, then shook her head. “You could be right, but I just can’t believe it.” Cherry did not discuss the theft any further, in the interests of her patient’s peace of mind and health.

For the balance of that afternoon they rested. That evening they packed. Next morning at nine they boarded another big tour bus for the all-day drive north to Edinburgh, Scotland. As the bus started off, Cherry was thinking: Muir 2361.

c h a p t e r v i i i

Muir 2361

there was peter! he was hurrying down the lobby as Cherry and Mrs. Logan entered the Edinburgh hotel. It was fi ve o’clock. They had enjoyed the drive through steadily higher and wilder hills, crossing the border at Gretna Green for their fi rst look at a Scottish village, then north, into this ancient, gray-stone city of battlements, castle, and churches. By now Martha looked very tired, and Cherry wished Peter could have bumped into them at a better moment.

“Hello, hello!” he said joyfully. “It’s wonderful to see you both! How are you?” He shifted his armful of books in order to shake hands with them.

“How was the bicycle tour?” Martha Logan asked.

“Terrifi c! My students are enthusiastic. I’m just on my way to meet them to hear a lecture about Sir Wal-ter Scott,” Peter said. He exuded such good health and high spirits that Cherry beamed at him.

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“How was your visit to the Carewe Museum?” he asked.

“A great treat,” Martha said, “but we were there when that terrible robbery took place.” Peter frowned. “I heard about that—the press and radio are full of it.”

“We
didn’t do it,” Cherry said, to make him smile again. What was Peter looking so serious about?

“The darndest thing happened this morning—this noon,” he started to say, then changed his mind.

“Cherry, I must talk to you, but I see you and Mrs. Logan haven’t even registered yet. Can you meet me here tomorrow, for lunch about twelve thirty?” They agreed on that. Peter went off to the lecture.

Cherry had Mrs. Logan sit down and ordered hot tea for her while she herself took care of registering. One of the hotel clerks gave Cherry their mail. It included letters from Cherry’s family, letters from Martha Logan’s children, and a telephone message from the Edinburgh police. It asked the two American ladies to telephone Inspector Forbes at a given number as soon as they arrived.