LITMIR.BIZ

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any folks here. ’Cept Mr. Stannaway, that is.”

      “No one!”

      “Not a one. Once—it was when I was showing her the trick of flushing the W.C.; you have to pull hard and then let go smart-like—once she said: ‘Do you ever, Mrs. Pitts,’ she said, ‘get sick of the sight of people’s faces?’ I said I got a bit tired of some. She said: ‘Not some, Mrs. Pitts. All of them. Just sick of people.’ I said when I felt like that I took a dose of castor oil. She laughed and said it wasn’t a bad idea. Only everyone should have one and what a good new world it would be in two days. ‘Mussolini never thought of that one,’ she said.”

      “Was it London she came from?”

      “Yes. She went up just once or twice in the three weeks she’s been here. Last time was last week-end, when she brought Mr. Stannaway back.” Again her glance dismissed Tisdall as something less than human. “Doesn’t he know her address?” she asked.

      “No one does,” the sergeant said. “I’ll look through her papers and see what I can find.”

      Mrs. Pitts led the way into the living-room; cool, low-beamed, and smelling of sweetpeas.

      “What have you done with her—with the body, I mean?” she asked.

      “At the mortuary.”

      This seemed to bring home tragedy for the first time.

      “Oh, deary me.” She moved the end of her apron over a polished table, slowly. “And me making griddle cakes.”

      This was not a lament for wasted griddle cakes, but her salute to the strangeness of life.

      “I expect you’ll need breakfast,” she said to Tisdall, softened by her unconscious recognition of the fact that the best are but puppets.

      But Tisdall wanted no breakfast. He shook his head and turned away to the window, while the sergeant searched in the desk.

      “I wouldn’t mind one of those griddle cakes,” the sergeant said, turning over papers.

      “You won’t get better in Kent, though it’s me that’s saying it. And perhaps Mr. Stannaway will swallow some tea.”

      She went away to the kitchen.

      “So you didn’t know her name was Robinson?” said the sergeant, glancing up.

      “Mrs. Pitts always addressed her as ‘miss.’ And anyhow, did she look as if her name was Robinson?”

      The sergeant, too, did not believe for a moment that her name was Robinson, so he let the subject drop.

      Presently Tisdall said: “If you don’t need me, I think I’ll go into the garden. It—it’s stuffy in here.”

      “All right. You won’t forget I need the car to get back to Westover.”

      “I’ve told you. It was a sudden impulse. Anyhow, I couldn’t very well steal it now and hope to get away with it.”

      Not so dumb, decided the sergeant. Quite a bit of temper, too. Not just a nonentity, by any means.

      The desk was littered with magazines, newspapers, half finished cartons of cigarettes, bits of a jigsaw puzzle, a nail file and polish, patterns of silk, and a dozen more odds and ends; everything, in fact, except note paper. The only documents were bills from the local tradesmen, most of them receipted. If the woman had been untidy and unmethodical, she had at least had a streak of caution. The receipts might be crumpled and difficult to find if wanted, but they had never been thrown away.

      The sergeant, soothed by the quiet of the early morning, the cheerful sounds of Mrs. Pitts making tea in the kitchen, and the prospect of griddle cakes to come, began as he worked at the desk to indulge in his one vice. He whistled. Very low and round and sweet, the sergeant’s whistling was, but, still—whistling. “Sing to me sometimes” he warbled, not forgetting the grace notes, and his subconscious derived great satisfaction from the performance. His wife had once shown him a bit in the Mail that said that whistling was the sign of an empty mind. But it hadn’t cured him.

      And then, abruptly, the even tenor of the moment was shattered. Without warning there came a mock tattoo on the half open sitting-room door—tum-te-ta-tum-tumta-TA! A man’s voice said, “So this is where you’re hiding out!” The door was flung wide with a flourish and in the opening stood a short dark stranger.

      “We-e-ell,” he said, making several syllables of it. He stood staring at the sergeant, amused and smiling broadly. “I thought you were Chris! What is the Force doing here? Been a burglary?”

      “No, no burglary.” The sergeant was trying to collect his thoughts.

      “Don’t tell me Chris has been throwing a wild party! I thought she gave that up years ago. They don’t go with all those high-brow rôles.”

      “No, as a matter of fact, there’s—”

      “Where is she, anyway?” He raised his voice in a cheerful shout directed at the upper storey. “Yo-hoo! Chris. Come on down, you old so-and-so! Hiding out on me!” To the sergeant: “Gave us all the slip for nearly three weeks now. Too much Kleig, I guess. Gives them all the jitters sooner or later. But then, the last one was such a success they naturally want to cash in on it.” He hummed a bar of “Sing to me sometimes,” with mock solemnity. “That’s why I thought you were Chris: you were whistling her song. Whistling darned good, too.”

      “Her—her song?” Presently, the sergeant hoped, a gleam of light would be vouchsafed him.

      “Yes, her song. Who else’s? You didn’t think it was mine, my dear good chap, did you? Not on your life. I wrote the thing, sure. But that doesn’t count. It’s her song. And perhaps she didn’t put it across! Eh? Wasn’t that a performance?”

      “I couldn’t really say.” If the man would stop talking, he might sort things out.

      “Perhaps you haven’t seen Bars of Iron yet?”

      “No, I can’t say I have.”

      “That’s the worst of wireless and gramophone records and what not: they take all the pep out of a film. Probably by the time you hear Chris sing that song you’ll be so sick of the sound of it that you’ll retch at the ad lib. It’s not fair to a film. All right for songwriters and that sort of cattle, but rough on a film, very rough. There ought to be some sort of agreement. Hey, Chris! Isn’t she here, after all my trouble in catching up on her?” His face drooped like a disappointed baby’s. “Having her walk in and find me isn’t half such a good one as walking in on her. Do you think—”

      “Just a minute, Mr.—er—I don’t know your name.”

      “I’m Jay Harmer. Jason on the birth certificate. I wrote ‘If it can’t be in June.’ You probably whistle that as—”

      “Mr. Harmer. Do I understand that the lady who is—was— staying here is a film actress?”

      “Is she a film actress!” Slow amazement deprived Mr. Harmer for once of speech. Then it began to dawn on him that he must have made a mistake. “Say, Chris is staying here, isn’t she?”

      “The lady’s name is Chris, yes. But—well, perhaps you’ll be able to help us. There’s been some trouble—very unfortunate—and apparently she said her name was Robinson.”

      The man laughed in rich amusement. “Robinson! That’s a good one. I always said she had no imagination. Couldn’t write a gag. Did you believe she was a Robinson?”

      “Well, no; it seemed unlikely.”

      “What did I tell you! Well, just to pay her out for treating me like bits on the cutting-room floor, I’m going to split on her. She’ll probably put me in the ice-box for twenty-four hours, but it’ll be worth it. I’m no gentleman, anyhow, so I won’t damage myself in the telling. The lady’s name, Sergeant, is Christine Clay.”

      “Christine

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