By the Pricking of My Thumbs

CHAPTER 6 Tuppence on the Trail

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Tuppence, ‘oh dear.’ She looked round her with gloomy eyes. Never, she said to herself, had she felt more miserable. Naturally she had known she would miss Tommy, but she had no idea how much she was going to miss him.

During the long course of their married life they had hardly ever been separated for any length of time. Starting before their marriage, they had called themselves a pair of ‘young adventurers’. They had been through various difficulties and dangers together, they had married, they had had two children and just as the world was seeming rather dull and middle-aged to them, the second war had come about and in what seemed an almost miraculous way they had been tangled up yet again on the outskirts of the British Intelligence. A somewhat unorthodox pair, they had been recruited by a quiet nondescript man who called himself ‘Mr Carter’, but to whose word everybody seemed to bow. They had had adventures, and once again they had had them together. This, by the way, had not been planned by Mr Carter. Tommy alone had been recruited. But Tuppence displaying all her natural ingenuity, had managed to eavesdrop in such a fashion that when Tommy had arrived at a guest house on the sea coast in the role of a certain Mr Meadowes, the first person he had seen there had been a middle-aged lady plying knitting needles, who had looked up at him with innocent eyes and whom he had been forced to greet as Mrs Blenkinsop. Thereafter they had worked as a pair.

‘However,’ thought Tuppence to herself, ‘I can’t do it this time.’ No amount of eavesdropping, of ingenuity, or anything else would take her to the recesses of Hush Hush Manor or to participation in the intricacies of I.U.A.S. Just an Old Boys Club, she thought resentfully. Without Tommy the flat was empty, the world was lonely, and ‘What on earth,’ thought Tuppence, ‘am I to do with myself?’

The question was really purely rhetorical for Tuppence had already started on the first steps of what she planned to do with herself. There was no question this time of intelligence work, of counter-espionage or anything of that kind. Nothing of an official nature. ‘Prudence Beresford, Private Investigator, that’s what I am,’ said Tuppence to herself.

After a scrappy lunch had been hastily cleared away, the dining-room table was strewn with railway timetables, guide-books, maps, and a few old diaries which Tuppence had managed to disinter.

Some time in the last three years (not longer, she was sure) she had taken a railway journey, and looking out of the carriage window, had noticed a house. But, what railway journey?

Like most people at the present time, the Beresfords travelled mainly by car. The railway journeys they took were few and far between.

Scotland, of course, when they went to stay with their married daughter Deborah—but that was a night journey.

Penzance—summer holidays—but Tuppence knew that line by heart.

No, this had been a much more casual journey.

With diligence and perseverance, Tuppence had made a meticulous list of all the possible journeys she had taken which might correspond to what she was looking for. One or two race meetings, a visit to Northumberland, two possible places in Wales, a christening, two weddings, a sale they had attended, some puppies she had once delivered for a friend who bred them and who had gone down with influenza. The meeting place had been an arid-looking country junction whose name she couldn’t remember.

Tuppence sighed. It seemed as though Tommy’s solution was the one she might have to adopt—Buy a kind of circular ticket and actually travel over the most likely stretches of railway line.

In a small notebook she had jotted down any snatches of extra memories—vague flashes—in case they might help.

A hat, for instance—Yes, a hat that she had thrown up on the rack. She had been wearing a hat—so—a wedding or the christening—certainly not puppies.

And—another flash—kicking off her shoes—because her feet hurt. Yes—that was definite—she had been actually looking at the House—and she had kicked off her shoes because her feet hurt.

So, then, it had definitely been a social function she had either been going to, or returning from—Returning from, of course—because of the painfulness of her feet from long standing about in her best shoes. And what kind of a hat? Because that would help—a flowery hat—a summer wedding—or a velvet winter one?

Tuppence was busy jotting down details from the Railway timetables of different lines when Albert came in to ask what she wanted for supper—and what she wanted ordered in from the butcher and the grocer.

‘I think I’m going to be away for the next few days,’ said Tuppence. ‘So you needn’t order in anything. I’m going to take some railway journeys.’

‘Will you be wanting some sandwiches?’

‘I might. Get some ham or something.’

‘Egg and cheese do you? Or there’s a tin of pâté in the larder—it’s been there a long while, time it was eaten.’ It was a somewhat sinister recommendation, but Tuppence said,

‘All right. That’ll do.’

‘Want letters forwarded?’

‘I don’t even know where I’m going yet,’ said Tuppence.

‘I see,’ said Albert.

The comfortable thing about Albert was that he always accepted everything. Nothing ever had to be explained to him.

He went away and Tuppence settled down to her planning—what she wanted was: a social engagement involving a hat and party shoes. Unfortunately the ones she had listed involved different railway lines—One wedding on the Southern Railway, the other in East Anglia. The christening north of Bedford.

If she could remember a little more about the scenery… She had been sitting on the right-hand side of the train. What had she been looking at before the canal—Woods? Trees? Farmland? A distant village?

Straining her brain, she looked up with a frown—Albert had come back. How far she was at that moment from knowing that Albert standing there waiting for attention was neither more nor less than an answer to prayer—

‘Well, what is it now, Albert?’

‘If it’s that you’re going to be away all day tomorrow—’

‘And the day after as well, probably—’

‘Would it be all right for me to have the day off?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘It’s Elizabeth—come out in spots she has. Milly thinks it’s measles—’

‘Oh dear.’ Milly was Albert’s wife and Elizabeth was the youngest of his children. ‘So Milly wants you at home, of course.’