Trouble in the Town Hall (21 page)

And Jane would know.

I looked at Jane, unease beginning to stir, and Jane looked at me and came to a decision. She stood and whistled for the dogs.

“Probably nothing wrong, but can't hurt to find out. Come along, dogs, better walkies later.” They came, slowly, and allowed their leashes to be clipped on, voicing their disappointment and bewilderment all the way home.

Jane made one more attempt on the phone, letting it ring until it disconnected itself, and we sat there looking at each other.

“Jane, do you think . . .?”

“Yes. I'll drive.”

“Thank God,” I said fervently.

I had driven around, lost, for at least half an hour last night; Jane found the house in five minutes. It was the right house, the house I'd tried, but there was still no sign of life. No lights were on, though the day was dull enough to need them. No one answered the door.

“Do you suppose the neighbors—?” I asked very tentatively. If Barbara had simply gone away on short notice, she would not appreciate our making a fuss about it.

Jane was made of sterner stuff, and had the bit between her teeth. “Not like her at all,” she said stubbornly. “Something wrong. You take that side.”

She set out for the houses to the right while I went to the left. Some of the neighbors weren't home, but the ones immediately to either side, interrupted in the middle of their lunches, had no knowledge of Dean's being away, and expressed astonishment that she had failed to show up for a scheduled appointment. “But she'd never do such a thing!” was the universal opinion.

It was the man who lived directly across the street who was helpful. “You could check her car,” he suggested. “She garages it just round the corner, where I put mine, as well.” Certainly he would show us the way. He'd just tell his wife he'd be a moment—

“Each door has its own padlock, you see,” he explained as we walked to the corner. “But it's one big building, and the individual bays are divided only by partitions, half height, rather like horse stalls, eh? Mrs. Dean keeps her car just next to mine, so we can easily see—ah, here we are.”

The building was little more than a shed, flimsily built of wood, probably designed for some other purpose originally. But the enterprising owner, seeing profit in the ever-growing, desperate need for a place to park, had turned it into a five-bay garage with just enough space for the owner of each car to park it and squeeze out. The obliging neighbor pulled open the double doors of his bay and stepped inside. We didn't have to follow him; from the doorway we could see the car in the next bay.

Spotless, smug, uncommunicative, it sat there. Jane did manage to slide her bulk between the neighbor's car and the partition wall long enough to peer into Dean's car and then slide out again.

“Nothing,” she said briefly.

There, behind firmly padlocked doors, was Barbara Dean's car, cold and empty. Where, then, was Barbara Dean?

“A
LAN, I HAVE
to see you.”

I'd been doing a lot of serious worrying. It was clear that Barbara knew a lot more about the Sheffield end of this story than she had told anyone. What if she knew too much—knew for certain that the builder of those council flats was responsible for the fire? If the preservation people in Sheffield were her friends, as seemed likely, she'd be bitter about the deaths, particularly of the “old auntie.”

Or, the thought had suddenly hit me, what if she'd been involved herself, and it was
her
aunt who had been killed? She'd said something about painful memories. And suppose, just suppose, that the builder in question, George Crenshawe, was in Sherebury?

It had taken me ages to reach Alan. His regular secretary wasn't in, and the substitute answering his calls was new and extremely protective. When she finally gave him my message and he finally called me back, I'd been pacing the floor for nearly an hour.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice sharp. “Sergeant Rogers didn't say your message was urgent—are you in trouble? Why didn't you ring my private number?”

“Samantha ate it,” I said sourly. “She chewed off the whole bottom corner of my little address book. Look, there are a lot of things I don't want to discuss on the phone. Barbara Dean, and Clarice Pettifer, and the murder. And I do realize you're frantically busy, but this is important, Alan. Can't you take a break for tea?”

“Impossible. I'm off to London in an hour, with two hours' work to do before I go. If this is about the murder, I'll put you through to Morrison.” Without giving me a chance to reply, he put the phone down. There was a series of clicks and buzzes and then the officious secretary came on the line.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Martin, Inspector Morrison is not in the office. He'll ring you as soon as we can reach him.”

“Oh, no, that's too much trouble, I don't want—”

“No trouble at all, Mrs. Martin.” She hung up.

The tears in my eyes were due entirely to frustration. I was still trying to convince myself of that when the phone rang. Well, apologies weren't going to get him anywhere this time. I'd teach him to toy with my affections, I'd—I picked up the phone.

“Yes?” I hissed, trying to sound like Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers.

“Mrs. Martin? This is Inspector Morrison. The chief constable just rang me up, said you had some important information for me. He's frightfully sorry he can't deal with it himself, of course, but he asked if I'd pop round to see you. Would now be convenient?”

“Oh.” I sounded as deflated as I felt. “Oh—uh—yes, that's fine. I live right next to the Cathedral Close, you know, at the end of Monkswell Street, you have to go up the High Street and turn left, and then—”

“I think I can find it, Mrs. Martin.” His tone was carefully not amused. “I'll be there in ten minutes, then.”

The interval was exactly long enough for me to set out tea, while feeling fifteen kinds of a fool. For calling a busy policeman out on what might well be a wild-goose chase, for venturing to give him directions, I, an American who had lived here for less than a year . . .

He was very nice about it.

“I hope you really don't mind my coming round on such short notice,” he began when I had established him in a comfortable chair, “but the chief was quite insistent. He said if you thought something was important, it was, and we must sort it out immediately. He did ask me to send his apologies, by the way.” He grinned in a friendly sort of way, becoming instantly much more human. “I was to tell you he's ready to do murder himself, either to a certain royal personage or to his staff—I quote verbatim—and he hopes you'll forgive him for being a trifle—er—preoccupied.”

Preoccupied wasn't quite the way I would have put it, but I wasn't going to carry on my quarrel with Alan through an intermediary. “It just means you'll get his tea, though perhaps he isn't missing much; it's all out of tins. I haven't had much time to bake.”

“I'm quite fond of chocolate biscuits, actually,” said the inspector, helping himself to four. “However, I mustn't waste your time. The chief said you mentioned Barbara Dean and Pettifer. Is there a connection there we've missed?”

“I don't know.” I poured him a cup of tea and adjusted my mind back to business, and suddenly felt much less apologetic. There really was something odd going on. “What I do know is this: There was a very messy affair in Sheffield some years ago.” I told him the story I had pieced together from what the Davises had told me and my own researches, including my suppositions about Barbara Dean.

“Now, obviously, there's no proven connection with Sherebury there, but I'm convinced Mrs. Dean knows quite a lot about it. She's been saying the oddest things. In fact, she said something to Clarice Pettifer on Monday that upset her almost to the point of a nervous breakdown. She—Mrs. Dean, I mean—said she told Clarice the key to the murder must lie in Sheffield. And that brings me to the real point. I'm sure you wondered if I was eventually going to have one.”

Morrison merely smiled.

“I've been trying for the best part of twenty-four hours now to reach Barbara Dean and ask her about all this. And—this is going to sound melodramatic, but I can't help it—she seems to be missing.”

The inspector put down his teacup and gave me his full attention. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘missing'?”

“Oh, not what the police mean officially, I suppose,” I said a little impatiently. “I know there's something about forty-eight hours before they—you—will do anything.”

“It depends upon the circumstances,” Morrison said grimly. “Please go on.”

“Well, she hasn't been seen, apparently, since yesterday around noon. There was a meeting of the Preservation Society—the
Preservation Society
, Inspector, she's the chairman, for heaven's sake—last night, and she neither showed up nor canceled. And she wasn't home sick, either, at least not around six, because I was at her house trying to find her. Anyway she was perfectly well when she left the bookshop just before lunch. A bit strange in manner, but in good health. And today she doesn't answer her phone, or her doorbell, but—and this is the worst part—her car is in the garage. Jane Langland and I checked. Now, doesn't that all sound to you like she's missing?”

“It warrants following up.” Morrison swallowed the last bite of biscuit and and took out his notebook. “Now, what do you mean exactly by saying Dean was ‘strange in manner' yesterday?”

“Well—preoccupied. She got that look on her face, as if she'd suddenly seen something in her mind. In cartoons they put a lightbulb over the head. You know, ‘Eureka'?”

He nodded, with a small grin.

“Only this didn't seem to be a very pleasant thing, because I remember thinking she looked for a moment as if she'd been turned to stone. And then she put the book back on the shelf and just left, without a word of explanation or good-bye or anything.”

“What book?”

“Oh, sorry. Just a book of poems. By George Herbert. I remember that because it seemed so dull and harmless.”

The inspector stood up. “I'm very much obliged to you, Mrs. Martin, for letting us know about this right away. I'll set the machinery in motion, and let you know what progress we make in locating Mrs. Dean.”

“Wait, there's more! I'll try not to take any more time than I have to, but you should know what Mr. Benson said to me last night about Mr. Pettifer.”

“Ah, yes, Pettifer.” The inspector sat down again.

“I had dinner with Benson last night, you see. Quite by accident; the King's Head was crowded and we had to share a table. I was tired, so he did most of the talking—and he said a lot, one way and another.

“I wish I could remember his exact words, because none of this was what you could call a definite statement; it was all in the way he looked and sounded. Innuendo, you know, nudges and winks and knowing looks. I hate that sort of thing, and I may have inferred all the wrong meanings. And to be honest, he'd had quite a lot too much to drink, so none of it may be very reliable. But what it boiled down to, if not in so many words, was a strong hint that Jack Jenkins was Mr. Pettifer's illegitimate son. He as much as said that the two of them looked alike, and that Mr. Pettifer had some dire secrets in his past.”

“Really.” The inspector tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips.

“I thought that might interest you. And what may be of even more interest, although this was when he was really under the weather, was that he almost admitted he was lying about Pettifer being with him the night of the murder.”

The inspector whistled softly.

“Now I could be all wet, as I said. And you won't forget he was drunk, will you? I don't pretend I have any fondness for Benson, but I'd hate for a man's ramblings to be held against him. I just thought you might want to talk to Benson yourself. You see, I can't help wondering if Pettifer might have had something to do with the fire in the Sheffield council flats.”

“Perhaps. At any rate, yes, we'd like a little chat with Mr. Benson. If you're even close to the right interpretation, he has some explaining to do. Why didn't he come to us with all this?”

“He said he didn't like the police. He seems to be something of a—free spirit, wants to be unfettered by the law—that sort of thing.”

“There are fetters,” said the inspector darkly, “and then there are fetters. He'd best go carefully, or he may get a taste of the real thing. But go on.”

“That really is all, I think, Inspector. I'm sorry if it turns out to be nothing, but I thought someone should know. I'm really concerned about Barbara Dean.”

“I'll see to it that someone lets you know as soon as we learn anything, Mrs. Martin, and thank you.”

I fell into a troubled nap that afternoon, full of the kind of dream you'd rather not remember when you wake. This time I was driving my car down a steep hill into the river, over and over, jerking partly awake just as the water threatened to close over my face, and then starting the whole terrifying sequence over again. It was a relief when the phone by the bed roused me.

“Mrs. Martin? Morrison here. I've only negative news, I'm afraid, but I thought you'd want to know. We searched Mrs. Dean's house—a neighbor had a key—and there's no sign of her, nor clue to her whereabouts. Her handbag is gone, but her clothing and luggage seem to be in place, so far as we can tell. There's no convenient telephone number scribbled on a pad, no lovely railway guide left open to a particular page—nothing. It seems she simply left on a normal errand—though how, with her car in the garage?—and didn't return. We're trying to trace her earlier movements, where her car was seen, that sort of thing.”

I absorbed that for a moment. “You might check with Mrs. Williamson at the bookshop,” I offered. “I didn't see her speak to Barbara when she left so abruptly yesterday, but I suppose they might have talked earlier in the morning about Barbara's plans for the rest of the day.” Actually, I doubted it; Barbara wasn't the type to confide in anyone else. But I was trying desperately to be useful.