Third Girl

CHAPTER 3

Mrs Oliver drove into the inner court of Borodene Mansions. There were six cars filling the parking space. As Mrs Oliver hesitated, one of the cars reversed out and drove away. Mrs Oliver hurried neatly into the vacant space.

She descended, banged the door and stood looking up to the sky. It was a recent block, occupying a space left by the havoc of a land mine in the last war. It might, Mrs Oliver thought, have been lifted en bloc from the Great West Road and, first deprived of some such legend as SKYLARK’S FEATHER RAZOR BLADES, have been deposited as a block of flats in situ. It looked extremely functional and whoever had built it had obviously scorned any ornamental additions.

It was a busy time. Cars and people were going in and out of the courtyard as the day’s work came to a close.

Mrs Oliver glanced down at her wrist. Ten minutes to seven. About the right time, as far as she could judge. The kind of time when girls in jobs might be presumed to have returned, either to renew their make up, change their clothes to tight exotic pants or whatever their particular addiction was, and go out again, or else to settle down to home life and wash their smalls and their stockings. Anyway, quite a sensible time to try. The block was exactly the same on the east and the west, with big swing doors set in the centre. Mrs Oliver chose the left hand side but immediately found that she was wrong. All this side was numbers from 100 to 200. She crossed over to the other side.

No. 67 was on the sixth floor. Mrs Oliver pressed the button of the lift. The doors opened like a yawning mouth with a menacing clash. Mrs Oliver hurried into the yawning cavern. She was always afraid of modern lifts.

Crash. The doors came to again. The lift went up. It stopped almost immediately (that was frightening too!). Mrs Oliver scuttled out like a frightened rabbit.

She looked up at the wall and went along the right hand passage. She came to a door marked 67 in metal numbers affixed to the centre of the door. The numeral 7 detached itself and fell on her feet as she arrived.

‘This place doesn’t like me,’ said Mrs Oliver to herself as she winced with pain and picked the number up gingerly and affixed it by its spike to the door again.

She pressed the bell. Perhaps everyone was out.

However, the door opened almost at once. A tall handsome girl stood in the doorway. She was wearing a dark well-cut suit with a very short skirt, a white silk shirt, and was very well shod. She had swept-up dark hair, good but discreet make up, and for some reason was slightly alarming to Mrs Oliver.

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Oliver, galvanizing herself to say the right thing. ‘Is Miss Restarick in, by any chance?’

‘No, I’m sorry, she’s out. Can I give her a message?’

Mrs Oliver said, ‘Oh’ again—before proceeding. She made a play of action by producing a parcel rather untidily done up in brown paper. ‘I promised her a book,’ she explained. ‘One of mine that she hadn’t read. I hope I’ve remembered actually which it was. She won’t be in soon, I suppose?’

‘I really couldn’t say. I don’t know what she is doing tonight.’

‘Oh. Are you Miss Reece-Holland?’

The girl looked slightly surprised.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I’ve met your father,’ said Mrs Oliver. She went on, ‘I’m Mrs Oliver. I write books,’ she added in the usual guilty style in which she invariably made such an announcement.

‘Won’t you come in?’

Mrs Oliver accepted the invitation, and Claudia Reece-Holland led her into a sitting-room. All the rooms of the flats were papered the same with an artificial raw wood pattern. Tenants could then display their modern pictures or apply any forms of decoration they fancied. There was a foundation of modern built-in furniture, cupboard, bookshelves and so on, a large settee and a pull-out type of table. Personal bits and pieces could be added by the tenants. There were also signs of individuality displayed here by a gigantic Harlequin pasted on one wall, and a stencil of a monkey swinging from branches of palm fronds on another wall.

‘I’m sure Norma will be thrilled to get your book, Mrs Oliver. Won’t you have a drink? Sherry? Gin?’

This girl had the brisk manner of a really good secretary. Mrs Oliver refused.

‘You’ve got a splendid view up here,’ she said, looking out of the window and blinking a little as she got the setting sun straight in her eyes.

‘Yes. Not so funny when the lift goes out of order.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought that lift would dare to go out of order. It’s so—so—robot-like.’

‘Recently installed, but none the better for that,’ said Claudia. ‘It needs frequent adjusting and all that.’

Another girl came in, talking as she entered.

‘Claudia, have you any idea where I put—’

She stopped, looking at Mrs Oliver.

Claudia made a quick introduction.

‘Frances Cary—Mrs Oliver. Mrs Ariadne Oliver.’

‘Oh, how exciting,’ said Frances.

She was a tall willowy girl, with long black hair, a heavily made up dead white face, and eyebrows and eyelashes slightly slanted upwards—the effect heightened by mascara. She wore tight velvet pants and a heavy sweater. She was a complete contrast to the brisk and efficient Claudia.

‘I brought a book I’d promised Norma Restarick,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Oh!—what a pity she’s still in the country.’

‘Hasn’t she come back?’

There was quite definitely a pause. Mrs Oliver thought the two girls exchanged a glance.

‘I thought she had a job in London,’ said Mrs Oliver, endeavouring to convey innocent surprise.

‘Oh yes,’ said Claudia. ‘She’s in an interior decorating place. She’s sent down with patterns occasionally to places in the country.’ She smiled. ‘We live rather separate lives here,’ she explained. ‘Come and go as we like—and don’t usually bother to leave messages. But I won’t forget to give her your book when she does get back.’

Nothing could have been easier than the casual explanation.

Mrs Oliver rose. ‘Well, thank you very much.’

Claudia accompanied her to the door. ‘I shall tell my father I’ve met you,’ she said. ‘He’s a great reader of detective stories.’

Closing the door she went back into the sitting-room.

The girl Frances was leaning against the window.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Did I boob?’

‘I’d just said that Norma was out.’

Frances shrugged her shoulders.

‘I couldn’t tell. Claudia, where is that girl? Why didn’t she come back on Monday? Where has she gone?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘She didn’t stay on down with her people? That’s where she went for the weekend.’

‘No. I rang up, actually, to find out.’

‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter… All the same, she is—well, there’s something queer about her.’

‘She’s not really queerer than anyone else.’ But the opinion sounded uncertain.

‘Oh yes, she is,’ said Frances. ‘Sometimes she gives me the shivers. She’s not normal, you know.’

She laughed suddenly.

‘Norma isn’t normal! You know she isn’t, Claudia, although you won’t admit it. Loyalty to your employer, I suppose.’