Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 5

Chief Inspector Lamb sat back in his office chair and allowed his frowning gaze to rest for so long upon Detective Inspector Frank Abbott that that promising young officer began to wonder which of the crimes regarded by his Chief with particular disfavour he had committed this time. Whichever it was, the appropriate homily would undoubtedly be forthcoming. Since he knew them all by heart, from Thinking oneself Better than one’s Superiors, Entertaining a quite False Impression that one’s Opinion had been Sought or was Desired, through a long list to, last and not by any means least, the Using of Foreign Words where Plain English ought to be Enough for Anyone, he awaited the breaking of the storm with resignation, and was surprised that it should be still delayed.

Lamb glowered. His big face was florid. The heavy thatch of black hair, irrepressibly determined to curl on the temples, showed only the slightest tendency to become thinner at the crown. His prominent brown eyes were fixed in an unwavering stare upon Frank’s tall elegance. The cut of his clothes, the harmony of socks, tie, and handkerchief, the shining perfection of the shoes, might individually or collectively provide the theme of a discourse. But it was not until a respectful “Yes, sir?” had been interjected that the Chief Inspector broke this menacing silence. On a deep growling note he produced these unexpected words,

“Didn’t you send me a picture-postcard from a place called Melbury sometime or other?”

Reflecting that it was rather long after the event for this to be brought up as a breach of discipline, and that to the best of his recollection the card itself had merely carried a photograph of the new Melbury housing estate, Frank replied,

“It would have been about this time last year. I had a weekend, and ran down to see a cousin.”

Lamb nodded, still frowning.

“Don’t know why you sent me the card.”

“People you mentioned-friends of one of your daughters who were moving to Melbury-I thought they might be interested in the housing estate.”

Lamb grunted. He and Mrs. Lamb had had a trying time last year with their daughter Violet. Why she couldn’t take a decent young fellow and marry him and have done with it, he didn’t know. This time it had been one of those long-haired cranks who want to do away with the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Police, and then everything would be quite convenient for everybody. The fellow had some sort of job at Melbury, and Violet had actually got to the point of saying she wanted to marry him. But thank goodness it was all over now, and she was going out with the son of one of their chapel members, a very steady young man, and with good prospects in his father’s business, which was wholesale groceries. Not desiring to enter upon these details, he cleared his throat and said in a dogmatic manner,

“Quite so, quite so. Melbury-exactly-about this time last year.”

“Yes, sir?”

Lamb leaned forward and picked up a pencil. He wrote the word Melbury upon a piece of paper, and then said in a slow and meditative manner,

“You were staying with cousins. What about staying with them again?”

One of Frank’s pale eyebrows rose.

“Oh, I don’t know them all that well,” he said. “They asked me down, and I went.” There was a faint gleam of humour in his eyes. “I have rather a lot of cousins.”

Lamb said heartily,

“A good thing family feeling. Pity there isn’t more of it these days. Plenty of people don’t know who their own greatgrandfather was.”

Inspector Abbott smoothed back the very fair hair which was already beyond criticism.

“My great-grandfather had twenty-seven children,” he remarked negligently. “One or two of his brothers and nephews also helped to keep up the average, which is why I can find a cousin in most places if I’m put to it. Sometimes it’s convenient.”

Lamb began to tear up the paper upon which he had written the word Melbury.

“Well, I was thinking of that,” he said. “And I was wondering how it would be if you were to look up these Melbury cousins of yours again.” He dropped the torn-up bits into a large waste-paper basket.

It was borne in upon a young man with an irreverent turn of humour that his respected Chief was giving an exhibition of tact. He was reminded of Dr. Johnson’s reply when invited by Boswell to give his opinion on the subject of a woman’s preaching. “Sir, it is like a dog walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” He said in a respectful manner,

“Very good of you, sir, but I hardly think-”

The Chief Inspector made the sound which may be written “Tchah!” and came into the open.

“As a matter of fact I wouldn’t mind having someone down in the neighbourhood without making an official matter of it. The whole thing may be a mare’s nest, or it may not, and whether it is or whether it isn’t is not properly our pigeon. But I had better begin at the beginning.”

Frank Abbott murmured that it might be as well. He continued to prop the mantelpiece.

Lamb pulled some notes out of a drawer, slapped them down on the desk in front of him, and looked up to ask a question.

“These cousins of yours-do they live right in Melbury?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. Did you want them to? They’re a mile or two out, on the Hazel Green side.”

Lamb nodded.

“You know Hazel Green?”

“I’ve passed through it. I was only down there for a weekend.”

“Well, not so long after you were there a woman called Maggie Bell disappeared from the village. She went out one night for a breath of air and never came back again. About a week later there were two cards with a London postmark… Yes-let me see-Paddington. One was to her employer and said, ‘Away temporary. M.B.’ And the other to her parents, ‘Coming back as soon as I can. Florrie will come in. Don’t worry. Maggie.’ The employer is a Miss Cunningham. Maggie worked there daily. The other members of the household are an elderly invalidish brother, Henry Cunningham, and a young chap, Nicholas Cunningham, who is a nephew. Now about half a mile out of Hazel Green and off the main road you have Dalling Grange which was taken over by the Air Ministry during the war and has been retained by them for experimental purposes. Nicholas Cunningham works there. The experiments are top secret, and the Security chaps get jumpy if anything happens within a hundred miles of the place. They got jumpy over Maggie Bell. She was forty years old and no looker. No one had ever seen her with a man. I know that’s what the friends and relations always say, but in this case it really seems to have been true. After those two postcards there has never been anything more, and she has never been traced.”

“What about the postcards-were they genuine?”

“I don’t know. The parents didn’t question them, nor did Miss Cunningham. Maggie was always at home, and the only specimen of her handwriting available was the signature on her identity card. The handwriting people wouldn’t commit themselves one way or the other. The fact is, she wrote a horrid scrawl, and the pen used on the identity card must have been just about through.”

“And where do we come in?”

“We don’t, properly speaking. We’re being dragged in-the Paddington postmarks-and if you ask me, a lot of fuss about nothing. To my mind the woman must have met with some accident. She had old parents, she was a good daughter, and she was the breadwinner. She wouldn’t have gone off and left the father and mother to fend for themselves. The question is, what took her to London and kept her there for a week? If the postcards are genuine, it wants explaining. And if they are not, then everybody would like to know who wrote them, and why.”

Frank Abbott said,

“A bit late in the day, isn’t it, sir? What exactly is the point of my going down to Melbury now?”

Lamb frowned heavily.

“The fact is, there’s been a leakage of information. We’re being asked to co-operate. We shouldn’t send anyone down there officially, but it was agreed that it might not be a bad plan if you were to take a spot of leave and pay a private visit to the neighbourhood. There seems to be an idea that it mightn’t be a bad plan to sift over the local gossip.” He cleared his throat and added, “On the social side, as it were.”

Frank Abbott straightened himself. A respectful and attentive expression gave way to an irrepressible gleam of humour as he murmured,

“What you really want is Miss Silver.”

The Chief Inspector’s colour deepened, his brows drew together. But there was no explosion. Instead, with merely the hint of a growl in his voice, he observed that it mightn’t be a bad thing. “One of those cases where I don’t say she wouldn’t be useful. The fact is, people like talking, but they don’t like talking to the police. That’s where Miss Silver comes in. The only thing that stops people talking is being afraid. Well, no one’s afraid of Miss Silver. She’s a good mixer-makes people feel she likes them-sits there with her knitting and makes herself pleasant. And mind you, it isn’t put on either. It wouldn’t go down like it does if it was. She likes people and she takes an interest in them, and they fairly tumble over themselves to tell her things. Whereas if it was you or one of the locals coming in with a notebook, you’d have them stiffening up and putting everything away under lock and key. There’s a lot goes on in a village that doesn’t get talked about-not to outsiders. It gets known all right, and it gets whispered from one to another, but it doesn’t get as far as the police, and if they come in and ask questions there isn’t anybody knows a thing. I grew up in a village and I know. They’ve changed a lot since I was a boy- motor buses, and cinemas, and the wireless, and the young people going away to the towns-but they haven’t changed all that underneath. You go and have a talk with Miss Silver and see if she hasn’t got some old crony she could run down and visit in the Melbury direction. Mind, it’s got to look accidental, or it won’t be any good. The fact is, everyone wants this job finished off good and quick. If there’s anything going on down there, they want to know what it is. And if there isn’t anything going on, they want to be sure that there isn’t before people get up asking questions in the House.”