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Had it not been for my inability to mash potatoes on Thursday, June 10th, I think it quite possible that I might never have embarked on this third case of mine.

I had intended to dine alone in my flat that evening, but through a muddle on my part, my housekeeper failed to come in and cook my dinner, and I was faced unexpectedly with the task of preparing my own meal or going to my club or a restaurant. My first impulse was to go out, but a visit to my larderette, which was well stocked, made me feel ashamed. I reminded myself of friends who could preside gracefully over a four-course dinner party, cooked and served by themselves. I had long toyed with the idea of learning a little cookery, and this evening seemed designed for my first attempt. I found two cutlets, some bread, some butter, a pot of cream, a tin of peas and some potatoes. The crockery and cutlery were clean, and waiting for me. I hadn’t even to wash up afterwards. Mrs. Rhodes would do that when she came the next day.

It was the sight of the pot of cream which decided me. Why not mash myself some potatoes, using cream in a way which would astonish Mrs. Rhodes?

I set to work with a cookery book open on the small kitchen table. First soak the potatoes. I did. Then peel them. This took me a long time. They were full of distasteful impurities which I chipped out extravagantly. Boil the potatoes. I boiled them. Meanwhile the cutlets were in the oven taking their chance. Next mash the potatoes vigorously, till a creamy consistency is reached. I mashed for a few minutes, with little result. Then I poured in some cream. Perhaps, I thought, the cream would soften them and do my mashing for me. It didn’t. Instead, there was a dubious smell, and, on opening the oven, found that my cutlets were not all they should be. I took them out for an airing, and mashed again, with growing despair, until the telephone bell rang. ‘If only,’ I thought, ‘it could be someone who would ask me out to dinner!’

It was.

‘Can I speak to Mr. Malcolm Warren, please?’

‘Yes. Speaking. Who is that?’

‘This is Dick Findlay. Don’t you recognise me?’

‘Oh, Dick! This is a surprise.’

‘I rang up your office this afternoon, about five, but they said you had left.’

‘Yes, I went to get my hair cut.’

‘Oh, you needn’t excuse yourself. Stockbrokers have their hair cut every day.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m telephoning from a call-box off Piccadilly. I was hoping to get hold of you to come and dine to-night, if you’ve nothing better to do.’

I reflected hurriedly. I was never very eager to dine tête-à-tête with Dick Findlay. He was excellent as a fourth at bridge, or as a stop-gap invitee for a theatre party, when someone has let you down, but alone, unleavened by company, he was apt to be tedious. No, ‘tedious’ is quite the wrong word. I really meant that when I was alone with him I felt I was playing a permanent second fiddle. Just that touch of the bully about him, despite all his charm, whimsicality, wit and fitful generosity.

All this flashed through my head, while he said persuasively:

‘Aux Trois Pommes.’

The Trois Pommes is a restaurant, which gives one the very best French food. Perfect food, perfect wine, perfect service, an agreeable décor and no band. Set against this my messy mashed potatoes.

‘When?’ I asked.

‘As soon as you can get round. Don’t bother to make yourself smart. I’ll go round myself at once, and drink a cocktail till you arrive. Don’t be long.’

I said I should be with him in twenty minutes, and he rang off.

I had first met Dick Findlay at Oxford. A year my junior, he made a reputation for brilliance almost in his first term. He excelled, superficially, at everything. He was a scholar, but bore his scholarship lightly, even contemptuously. He was said to be a fine tennis player, and when he first came up, he played for his college at football. He joined the O.U.D.S., and was given some good parts in their plays. He could outdo the aesthetes at their own game, burnt incense in his room, had bowls filled with oranges (for decorative purposes only) and collected Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings. And all the time, you felt he had his eye on a sports car or a private aeroplane. A dazzling creature—apparently without a background. One hardly heard of his public school. He had a father who lived vaguely abroad. How unlike me, I felt, with my background of a Somersetshire vicarage, my amiable step-father, my dear domesticated mother, my two sisters, my circle of uncles, aunts and cousins, from which it seemed impossible that I should ever emancipate myself.

I wonder if Oxford still breeds these versatile butterflies. Probably not. Nowadays, the young are so serious. They seem to think it a sin to be comfortable, either physically or mentally. A self-tormenting impulse. Is it because they were all born during the war?

I think I have made it plain that I really never liked Dick very much. Jealousy, on my part, no doubt. He achieved the limelight too easily, and all the time I had the feeling that he was a second-rate person with a second-rate brain. And I had a specific grudge against him, which I may as well disclose, even if it shows the pettiness of my own character.

During my undergraduate days, I had one humble parlour trick. I could improvise on the piano in the styles of the great composers. I was pedantic in my method and heavy in my touch, but my musical friends—those who were really musical and not only interested in light luncheon music—seemed to enjoy my little performances, and gave them perhaps too much encouragement. ‘This,’ I would say, after suitable pressure, ‘is a Beethoven Air with Variations. This is a César Franck Choral Prelude. This is a Brahms Intermezzo’; and though I must admit that one day, when my hostess had asked me to ‘try some Bach,’ an American, perhaps misunderstanding the situation, said, ‘Waal, if that’s Bach, it’s the poorest Bach I’ve ever heard,’ I usually had a mild success and was asked to play again.

Dick also played the piano. He had a velvety touch, a sense of syncopation, knowledge of half-a-dozen modern harmonies and considerable technique, provided he was allowed to bring it out in little bursts. The first time I heard him was after I had held the stage for twenty minutes with a free fugue in Beethoven’s last manner. He was gracefully reluctant to go to the piano, and urged that his music was lamentably low-brow and that he couldn’t stand comparison with a serious performer. Eventually, of course, he allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat down.

‘I should like,’ he said, ‘if I may, to parody Warren parodying Beethoven.’ And he did, introducing deliberately one or two gross mistakes such as I was only too prone to make, and later some ingenious little runs, which, though they were not Beethoven, were obviously beyond the scope of my fingers. Then suddenly he turned the whole piece into a sophisticated jazz. A triumph—but too much at my expense.

Of course we came to terms. I couldn’t afford not to come to terms with him. He knew far too many of my friends, about whom he said witty things to me, just as he said witty things about me to them—things that were often a little too true to be funny. He would also disarm criticism by saying witty things about himself. He used people as stepping-stones, and seemed to go from strength to strength, though he was too wise to injure those whom he had out-distanced. To do him justice, I don’t think he wished to injure anyone. He simply liked being liked, and, if possible, admired. It may have come home to him as a shock, after a time, that people found it easier to admire him than to like him.

Then when he was talked of as a possible President of the Union, came eclipse—or, at any rate, decline. His mysterious father, who lived abroad, died suddenly, leaving, it was said, nothing but debts. Dick had accumulated debts of his own, too. In desperation, he had to turn to his father’s brother—‘a pawky little widower’—who lived in ‘some ghastly suburb.’ We weren’t even told which suburb. Uncle Hamilton—I learnt his name later—played up well. He offered Dick a home in the ‘ghastly suburb,’ and sufficient money to take his degree, living the while in moderate, if unostentatious, comfort. There were relatives, too, on Dick’s mother’s side—the two sides of the family had always disliked one another—who offered him a job in their factory when he should have finished with Oxford. He was reading science—I suppose the idea had been that he would go to the factory sooner or later, and apparently the factory had a scientific side. Dick said, contemptuously, that his mother’s family made chemical fertilisers—he used another word for them—amongst other things.

So Dick’s life suddenly became earnest, and play had to yield to work. He took the change fairly well, outwardly, though he was never quite the same after it. ‘Well, well,’ he once said to me, ‘all this posing is all right when you’re twenty, but there isn’t much to be said for it when you’re twenty-one.’ ‘Did you pose?’ I asked him. ‘My dear fellow,’ he answered, ‘what do you think? Of course I posed, and did it very well.’

I asked him if he hadn’t always intended to go into the factory, and he said it was there as a last resort, if nothing better turned up. He had hoped to have a year or two in which to look round, perhaps to take up free-lance journalism, or write a successful play. Now there was the factory and nothing but the factory. He must make good there. It was a little distressing to see him so changed—as it has been phrased, ‘on the road from Oxford to London.’

But when he reached London, he didn’t fare too badly. He seemed to give satisfaction in the factory, and fairly soon obtained a living wage. The factory was in the direction of Croydon, but it had offices in the City, and I used to meet Dick there for luncheon from time to time. I liked him better than I had done in Oxford. Adversity had tamed his brilliance. I might even say it had turned the tables, for, thanks to my Aunt Catherine’s will, and a little good luck in my business, I was now in the position of host, while he was an agreeable guest. At bridge he was especially useful, and I’m afraid there was a period in which I regarded him chiefly from this angle. When hard up for a fourth, I would say to myself, ‘Oh, Dick Findlay will do,’ and he did. He developed an interest in horse-racing, and gave me two Derby winners. From time to time, he asked me to do little deals for him on the Stock Exchange—generally with success. He was an ideal client, gave clear instructions, never asked for advice, and paid promptly. None the less, I was always a little nervous that he might let my firm down. When I went away for a holiday I used to say to my senior partner, ‘Now mind, if Dick Findlay asks you to buy ten thousand Mexican Oilfields, you’re not to do it!’ But he never attempted anything of the sort.

He was still living with his ‘pawky’ uncle, Hamilton Findlay, in South Mersley, one of London’s outermost south-western suburbs, and I went there once to dinner. Once was enough. It was a dismal evening and it dearly embarrassed Dick to have me there. I imagine it had been a command invitation, and that the uncle had said: ‘You keep mentioning this Malcolm Warren. Let’s have a look at him,’ while poor Dick couldn’t reply: ‘I’m not particularly keen on his having a look at you!’

The house was an ugly, late-Victorian building, with gables and spikes on the roof—considered a small place, no doubt, when it was built, but relatively big now that it was surrounded by modern houses. A good deal of the land had no doubt been sold for building at some time or another, and Uncle Hamilton now had rather less than an acre. I think he must have bought the property cheaply; for it was of the kind to make any house agent despair. There was nothing to commend it, except roominess. If a thousand pounds had been spent on it, I dare say it could have been made into quite a pleasant retreat for a City man, but Uncle Hamilton hadn’t spent the thousand pounds. The inside was only fairly clean. The furniture was late-Victorian with a few gimcrack additions from a later period. The garden was mostly lawn studded with a few rose-beds, in which Uncle Hamilton showed a desultory interest, and such landscape effect as might have existed was spoilt by a big old-fashioned garage—complete with inspection pit, I was told. However, even this was useless, as, at that time, neither Dick nor his uncle had a car.

What a background for my brilliant friend of the Oxford days! And what an uncle! Hamilton Findlay had his nephew’s physique but none of his good looks. His eyes were small and dull blue. His complexion was reddish. His grey-black moustache was so straggly that it looked as if it had been badly gummed on for amateur theatricals. Even an unobservant person could have seen that he wore a wig—an old wig, probably, since there was no touch of grey in it, as there was in the moustache and eyebrows. The only kind things I could find to say about him were that he was dressed with fair neatness and that he looked clean and healthy.

He made himself moderately agreeable to me, and it was easy for me to talk to him, because he clearly wanted to talk about the Stock Exchange. I was wondering whether I should get him as a client, when he announced with needless emphasis that for the last thirty years he had done all his Stock Exchange transactions through his bank. ‘I have always found it a very satisfactory method,’ he said, ‘and I never speculate. However, I always enjoy hearing a professional broker’s views.’

I gave him mine, for what they were worth, while Dick tried to make conversation with his cousin, William Hicks, who was the fourth member of our dinner party, if such it could be called. Dick had warned me about Bill Hicks in the train, as we were travelling down to South Mersley. ‘He’s the strong silent man incarnate,’ he said, ‘and so dull that he makes you scream. He’s a nursery gardener.’ I suggested that gardeners were usually very pleasant people, and he said: ‘Oh, I dare say Bill’s pleasant enough. We’ve never got on. Cousins. You know what it is. He went through the war, and I didn’t. I went to Oxford, and he didn’t go anywhere. I made a marvellous circle of friends. I don’t think he knows anybody at all beyond a few people in the village near his nursery, and two or three farmers. But you’ll see for yourself.’

‘How does he get on with your uncle?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think either of them cares twopence about the other,’ he replied. ‘But he lets Uncle Hamilton have rose-trees at half price.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I suppose Uncle Hamilton sometimes sends a tiny cheque to Aunt Grace. She’s Bill’s mother, and lives with him.’

‘He isn’t married, then?’

‘No.’

I confess that when I met Cousin Bill, I found him as uninteresting as the dinner, which, by the way, was eatable, but little more. I can’t remember his saying anything at all, except once, when the conversation came round to roses. Then he described, in a dull, deep voice, how his father—also a nursery gardener, I gathered—had tried to produce a really good white rose, with the pure white of Frau Karl Druschki, the perfect form of, say, Mabel Morse, and the vigorous but neat habit of Shot Silk. He went through the newer white roses one by one, pointing out the faults in each of them. His chief complaint was that most of them weren’t really white. And the few that were really white had other defects. It was a not uninteresting lecture, but Uncle Hamilton, who, perhaps, had heard the story before, listened impatiently, and finally cut Cousin Bill short by saying: ‘Well, I bet it cost your father a lot of money. And he didn’t produce anything to beat Clarice Goodacre. You stick to the commercial side of your business, and leave the fancy stuff alone. Now what about some coffee outside, before we start bridge?’

The maid brought tepid coffee to us in a small brick building in a corner of the garden. It was a fine day in mid-July. ‘We call this the loggia,’ Dick whispered to me, with a smile.

Uncle Hamilton began to talk about the merits of his house, which he said he wouldn’t exchange for any other house in the district. It wasn’t overlooked, but it was handy for the station. There was a bus-stop only two minutes away, and yet you hardly heard the traffic. He couldn’t understand why people paid three and four thousand pounds for band-boxes near the Garden City. Tied up with every kind of restriction, too. You couldn’t even put up a piece of trellis without permission from the Garden City architect. I asked a few questions about the Garden City, and Dick said it was a vast semi-philanthropic foundation. Uncle Hamilton snorted. ‘Reeks of Socialism,’ he said, and led the way indoors.

By ill luck I had him as my partner for all four rubbers. He played badly and cantankerously, and sometimes abused me for things I hadn’t done, or couldn’t have done. ‘Why on earth didn’t you lead a heart, young man?’ ‘I hadn’t got a heart,’ I would reply. ‘And you might have known I hadn’t, because ...’ Sometimes I retaliated quite vigorously. Dick enjoyed our wrangles, though he may have been a little afraid that I should go too far.

We played for a halfpenny a hundred, and I lost elevenpence-halfpenny. Dick gave me a halfpenny change for my shilling with mock solemnity. After a whisky-and-soda, I said goodbye to my host and thanked him for a pleasant evening. Dick walked with me to the station. Apparently Cousin Bill’s station was on a different line.

‘Well, Malcolm,’ Dick said, when we were out of earshot of the house, ‘you now see how the poor live! I promise I won’t inflict that on you again. Next time we’ll dine in town.’

I protested that it hadn’t been so bad.

‘Oh, it isn’t too bad,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bed-sitting-room upstairs. There wasn’t a chance of showing it to you. I’ve had it quite nicely done up. It’s not like those ghastly rooms you saw downstairs. And the house is fairly convenient for the factory. As long as I’ve got to go there, I might as well live in South Mersley as anywhere. But—well, it’s all a bit of a come-down, isn’t it?’

It was. As I said good-night to him I felt quite sorry for him, and thought how much more agreeable he was than when we first met—and he parodied my parodies of the great composers.

This expedition of mine to South Mersley took place some three years before the evening when I mis-mashed my potatoes. In the intervening period I had met Dick on an average about once every two months. He had had a rise in salary and had bought a large second-hand two-seater car, with an enormous luggage recess in the back, which impressed me. He still lived with Uncle Hamilton in South Mersley, though he talked of striking out for himself. Despite my growing sympathy for him, I still regarded him more as an acquaintance than a friend—an acquaintance with whom I was not altogether comfortable. Hence my hesitation when, out of the blue, he asked me to dine with him Aux Trois Pommes. But I was committed to that now....

I found him in the little bar of the Trois Pommes drinking a dry Martini. He looked well and handsome, and there was a touch of bravado in his manner which reminded me of him as he used to be when he was younger. On my way to the restaurant I had wondered what had induced him to ask me to dinner so suddenly. He used to entertain me about once for every three times that I entertained him—a fair proportion having regard to the difference in our means. It wasn’t quite ‘his turn’ yet. Perhaps he found himself stranded in London, and had tried other people first. But he had rung up my office as early as five. The fact that I tended to ask myself why he should want to see me, showed how little we were close friends.

Over a cocktail we talked spasmodically about some friends with whom we had spent a week-end in April—the last time I had seen him. Then we went into the restaurant. He ordered boldly from the menu, and pressed me so hard to have caviare, which I adore, that I couldn’t bring myself to refuse it.

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘we must make this a Dutch party.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’re my guest. You must let me do my little bit sometimes. Besides, I’m unusually well off at present—thanks to the Derby. I hope you got Midday Sun^[1] all right? I’m frightfully sorry I tipped you Le Grand Duc, but when we last met——’

Racing carried us through our first two courses. When this subject began to languish, I said: ‘How is Uncle Hamilton?’ He stiffened momentarily, and said: ‘Well, that really brings me to the point. Uncle Hamilton has vanished, and I want your advice. That’s why—oh, I don’t mean that!—that’s one of the reasons I was so eager to get hold of you to-night.’

‘My dear Dick, I’m so sorry—and greatly flattered. You ought to know by now that my advice won’t be much use. I’m a stockbroker, not a detective. Do you need a detective, by the way? If you do, I know a very agreeable one.’

I was thinking of Detective-Inspector Parris, whom I had met during my eventful Christmas at Beresford Lodge in Hampstead.^[2]

‘I don’t think I do want a detective—at least a professional one—yet,’ he said. ‘But I think I’m quite right to call in an unprofessional one—like you.’

‘But I’m not even that.’

‘Well, you’ve been in two murder cases, and they must have given you some kind of experience, which—— By the way, I’m not implying that this is a murder case, or anything of the sort. But I’d better give you the facts at once—when we’ve ordered the rest of our dinner. Waiter!’

He chose an expensive Bombe—he always had a sweet tooth—and I chose a savoury. Then he began:

‘Uncle Hamilton has vanished. By that, I mean, he went away for the week-end, and hasn’t turned up again, and hasn’t written or telegraphed to say he was detained. The story really starts with our domestic arrangements. As you may remember, my uncle runs Tylecroft with a staff of two, Mrs. Pressley and her ill-favoured daughter, Sibyl, who waited on us that memorable night when we had the honour of your company. It’s too small a staff, really. That’s why the house always looks a bit dingy. But Uncle Hamilton doesn’t believe in spending twopence where a penny will do. Some weeks ago—oh, it must have been in April—Mrs. Pressley announced that her niece was being married on June 5th, that’s last Saturday. The wedding was to be somewhere in Essex, where she comes from, and was a great family event. Could she and Sibyl go to it, and have the week-end off? Uncle Hamilton wasn’t at all pleased—he hates anything that upsets his habits—but he said rather grudgingly that the Pressleys could go. After all, he would probably find it hard to get another couple who would suit him so well, at the mean wages he pays.

‘It was arranged that they should go after luncheon on Friday—last Friday, June 4th. And they did go. While they were away a local “help,” a Mrs. Garlick, was to come in the mornings and “do” for us, leaving cold suppers ready for evenings. We’ve had Mrs. Garlick before in spring-cleanings and other emergencies. As you know, we don’t exactly live en prince when the Pressleys are available, but I can assure you that if the Garlick takes their place, life becomes a thousand times more horrible. Compared with Mrs. Garlick, Mrs. Pressley is the head chef at the Savoy. My uncle grumbled a bit, but I supposed he was going to put up with it, as he’s done once or twice before—last year, for instance, when Mrs. Pressley’s father died. Then, some weeks ago, he surprised me by saying he was going to spend the week-end of the Pressleys’ wedding in Cornwall.’

‘Why were you surprised?’ I asked. ‘It seems a fairly reasonable thing to do, doesn’t it?’

‘Not quite, where Uncle Hamilton’s concerned. He’s most frightfully set in all his habits. I’ve never heard of his going to Cornwall before. And it seems a long way to go just for the week-end. I should have thought the expense of the railway-fare would have deterred him.’

‘Does he never take holidays?’

‘Oh, yes. Unadventurous, regular little holidays. He goes away for a week in the spring, during spring-cleaning—always to the same boarding-house in Folkestone, and for a fortnight or three weeks in August, when the Pressleys have their yearly holiday. Then he goes to some seaside place on the East Coast, usually with his friend, Dr. Fielding, who’s a keen chess-player, like my uncle. Dr. Fielding is coming into my story in one minute. So you see I had the prospect of a solitary week-end at Tylecroft, with only Mrs. Garlick to look after me. I made one or two unsuccessful efforts to cadge invitations, and then was reduced to asking an artist I know—I don’t think you’ve met him, his name is Woodwell—if he’d like to have a motor-run with me to the Norfolk Broads. He said he was fixed up, but when I told him of our domestic crisis at Tylecroft, he offered to lend me his mews flat in Chelsea while he was away. I wasn’t frightfully keen to spend the week-end in London, but rather impulsively I accepted his offer and said I’d be glad to have the flat from Friday night till Tuesday, the day before yesterday. Oh, I’ve forgotten to tell you that for some reason or other, the Pressleys weren’t expected back till the Tuesday morning. I told my uncle about the arrangement, and he was a bit sniffy, as he always is when I plan to leave what he calls my “comfortable home,” but he didn’t make any actual objection.

‘Well, the Pressleys left after lunch on the Friday, and on Friday evening I had a cold supper with my uncle at Tylecroft. I should have liked to go straight to London when I’d finished my work, but I thought my uncle might not be too pleased if I did. He’d want me to be there to make coffee for him. Mrs. Garlick, of course, would be there to get his breakfast on Saturday morning.

‘We had our meal, I made the coffee, and we were sitting in the loggia—you remember it, don’t you?—when he surprised me by saying that he was frightened of missing his train the next morning, and thought he would like to spend the night at a hotel in London. In view of the probable discomforts which Mrs. Garlick would inflict upon him, it was quite a reasonable idea, but I should have thought that the extra cost would have deterred him.’

I interrupted him.

‘Beyond deciding to go to Cornwall for the week-end, this was the first thing your uncle did which was not quite true to type?’

‘Yes, I think it was.’

‘I think it’s always helpful,’ I said, ‘to notice anything which is slightly “out of character.” ’

‘Ah, there speaks my little detective! But let me tell you the rest of the story. When my uncle suggested going to a hotel in London, I volunteered at once to drive him there in my car. This pleased him, as it saved him the fare. He had already done most of his packing. I went upstairs and put my few things together, came down and got the car out, and helped my uncle to shut up the house. Then we drove off.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Oh, about nine, I suppose. On the way, my uncle said he’d like to see the flat I was going to stay in, and we stopped there and I took him in. He didn’t like it at all and said it was cramped and unhealthy—a poor exchange for Tylecroft. Then, about half-past ten, or a little later, he said he must be going. I urged him to let me drive him to his hotel, but he said he couldn’t think of troubling me any more—a most unusual attitude, this. In the end we compromised and he agreed that I should drive him most of the way and put him down in Westbourne Terrace, which, of course, was handy for Paddington. I had assumed that he would stay at the station hotel, but it occurred to me that he might be wanting to find a cheaper place and was ashamed to let me know. So I drove him half-way up Westbourne Terrace, and put him down. He got out, I wished him a pleasant journey, and he walked on towards Paddington, carrying his bag. That was the last time I saw him. And I haven’t heard from him since.’

He paused and a waiter, who had been hanging round, came up with the bill. We were the only diners left in the restaurant, which does not provide suppers, and for some time there had been signs of impatience behind us, swishings of tablecloths, clatterings of cutlery, lights turned out, and so on. I felt rather uncomfortable, and suggested to Dick that we should continue the story in my flat. He agreed, though he said that there wasn’t much more story to tell.

‘Oh,’ I said, when we had got into a taxi, ‘if you really want me to help you I shall have to ask you a lot of questions. I must get the background of all this into my head. I must be able to visualise it all as part of a natural process—as flowing from the general scheme of your and your uncle’s lives.’

He laughed and said: ‘Really, Malcolm, you might be writing an essay in a philosophical paper!’

‘Well, those are my methods!’

‘So you’ve really decided to interest yourself in the case?’

‘You’ve made it so interesting, though I can’t help wondering. ...’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing much. But I shall, sooner or later, have to ask you some impertinent questions.’

‘I know exactly what question you’re thinking of,’ he said. ‘You want to ask me about Uncle Hamilton’s sex-life!’

He laughed again, embarrassingly.

‘That, no doubt, will transpire, among other things,’ I answered, a little prudishly. ‘But first you might just round off your story for me. You’d got to the point when the figure of Uncle Hamilton was seen, for the last time, walking with his bag in the direction of Paddington. What did you do?’

‘Turned the car round, drove to Chelsea, garaged it, and went to my own humble lodging. Oh, one little detail, though it’s of no importance. We’d forgotten to tell Mrs. Garlick—to leave a note for her, I mean—that there would be nobody at home the following morning. She knew, of course, that I wasn’t going to be there, but she was expecting to have to take Uncle Hamilton his early tea and cook him one of her horrible breakfasts. Uncle Hamilton thought of this during our drive to London, and asked me to telephone to Mrs. Garlick next morning, just in case she got in a flutter. He also asked me to remind her to do some shopping for Mrs. Pressley on Tuesday morning. Dr. Fielding was coming to dinner that night—you remember my mentioning Dr. Fielding, my uncle’s chess friend—and it was necessary to have some respectable food in the house ready for Mrs. Pressley to cook when she got back from her beano.

‘This was just a piece of fussiness on my uncle’s part, as I’m sure the Pressley arranged all this with the Garlick before going away. Of course I said I’d telephone, though, as a matter of fact, I forgot all about it.’

‘This is important,’ I said, ‘because it shows that your uncle had every intention of being back on Tuesday night.’

‘Yes, it does. Of course he may have forgotten the engagement later.’

‘That would be quite “out of character,” wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, quite.’

‘Well, here we are.’

We got out, I paid the taxi and showed Dick upstairs into my sitting-room. He went at once to the piano and played a few brilliant little passages, while I got out the drinks. His fingers seemed to have lost none of their agility.

‘Do you play at home?’ I asked.

‘Yes, when my uncle isn’t about. Music irritates him.’

Then we both sat down in easy chairs.

‘Let me finish off first,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I spent my week-end in London, and went back to Tylecroft on Tuesday, finding the Pressleys installed there again, but no Uncle Hamilton. Half-past six, seven, a quarter-past seven. Mrs. Pressley became agitated. Had I had any message from Mr. Findlay? None. Had she? None.

‘Dr. Fielding was expected any minute. What was she to do about dinner? Keep it hot, if she could, I suggested, at any rate till eight. Then we’d better have it, whether my uncle had arrived or not. He must have missed his train.’

‘Out of character?’

‘Out of character, in the highest degree. I’ve never known him to miss a train. He isn’t even late for the train before the one he wants to catch. Dr. Fielding arrived at half-past seven.’

‘What sort of a man is he?’

‘He’s the sort of man whom, when we were at Oxford, we should have thought of as simply non-existent. Drab, featureless, dead almost. Of course one has to be more tolerant as one grows older. What one loses in brilliance, one is supposed to gain in human understanding. Quite frankly, if you had produced a father like Dr. Fielding in Oxford, I should have regarded you as utterly damned. And, by the way, you might have thought the same of me, if I had produced an uncle like Uncle Hamilton.’

The whisky is making him long-winded, I thought, but I let him go on.

‘Dr. Fielding is simply an old fogey. I suppose he was a doctor once, but he hasn’t practised since I’ve known him, which is ever since I’ve been living at Tylecroft. He doesn’t even produce medical dicta. Perhaps he was a doctor of botany, or philology. You can’t tell. His conversation is so colourless. He’s an indifferent but devoted chess player. I know that because my uncle, who isn’t really much good, usually beats him. It wouldn’t be like Uncle Hamilton to play against anyone who was too good.

‘I imagine Dr. Fielding has private means. He lives in a small house in a row not far away from us. I’ve dined there two or three times. Dull evenings, like so many that I’ve had to spend these last fourteen years. But this isn’t a moment for self-pity.

‘As I said, Dr. Fielding arrived at half-past seven. I did the honours as well as I could. Offered the sherry and so on. I asked him if my uncle had mentioned the trip to Cornwall to him, and he said he had. He agreed with me that my uncle must have missed the train. We kept the conversation going till eight, when Sibyl brought in dinner. Every minute I expected a telegram. None came. We ate dinner. Dr. Fielding is rather greedy and doesn’t talk much when he’s eating. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Pressley had performed above her usual standard. Then we had coffee in the loggia. Dr. Fielding criticised my uncle’s rose-beds. He’s a bit of a rosarian too, though his own little garden is frightful. I told him Cousin Bill supplied the roses at half price. He asked for the address of Cousin Bill’s nursery.’

‘What is it, by the way?’ I asked.

‘Cantervale Nurseries, Sedcombe, Surrey, about twenty-five miles south-west of South Mersley. But why on earth do you want to know?’

I answered truthfully that I hadn’t the vaguest idea.

‘Nine o’clock came, then half-past nine, then ten. Then, mercifully, the old man seemed to have had enough of my society, and went away. I sat up, playing the piano, till eleven, twelve, one. Then I thought it unreasonable that I should be kept out of bed any longer. I left the front door unbolted and went to bed. After all, I had to work the next day. If Uncle Hamilton must arrive in the small hours, he must let himself in. He had his latch-key. It was bad enough that he should have left me to entertain his friend. I got up next morning. No uncle, no telegram, no letter. I went to work and came home as usual, and found Mrs. Pressley very worried. This was yesterday. Somehow, it seems longer ago than that. This morning—the same story. Mrs. Pressley very worried indeed. Ought I to go to the police? I said I thought it was hardly time for that yet, but that I had a friend who’d been connected with the police—that’s you, Malcolm!’

‘Good lord!’ I said.

‘And that I’d try to get in touch with him. I got away from my business rather early and rang you up at five in your office. They told me you were going home via the barber’s, and I waited till I was sure you’d have got home and rang you up again, when I got hold of you. And here we are. That’s my story. What am I to do?’

I refilled both our glasses, to gain time. The truth was I hadn’t any idea what he ought to do, except, perhaps, take Mrs. Pressley’s advice and go to the police. And I felt I must at once disabuse him, if he thought that my two experiences of crime had given me any specialised knowledge as to its detection.

‘I’m not a detective, I’m a stockbroker.’

I repeated the phrase with emphatic variations for his benefit.

‘Well, then, as a man of the world, Malcolm—hang it all, I haven’t got too many friends now—real friends, I mean.’

This appeal both touched and flattered me.

‘Do you think there’s a case for doing anything at all?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps there isn’t—yet. But, clearly, there must be a time limit. I mean, we couldn’t go on like this for a year, or even a month. The money question alone would make that impossible. The Pressleys’ wages, and so on. I’m quite willing to do nothing for some days, but I must decide how long I ought to wait. That’s one of the things I want you to advise me about. Suppose your partner in the City didn’t turn up one morning, and continued not to turn up, how long would it be before you took some kind of action? Of course, you’d ring up his home the first morning, to ask if he was ill. But suppose they told you he’d set out for the office as usual?’

‘Oh, then, I suppose, we should call in the police almost at once. But your uncle’s disappearance isn’t quite so conclusive. After all, we don’t quite know—I mean, there is the question of his private life to be considered, isn’t there? Except for his engagement with Dr. Fielding there wasn’t any call for him to—turn up to time, shall we say, like one’s partner in the office. You’ve got to allow him rather more latitude, or run the risk of interfering in his private affairs, which I take it wouldn’t be good policy.’

I thought this rather a clever point to have made, and Dick seemed to think so too.

‘I must get the background clear,’ I went on, ‘before I can value these facts which you have told me. I want to feel them taking place, not merely to know they have taken place. In other words, I want to know all about your family and your home life at Tylecroft. That would take a long time, but perhaps you can give me an outline.’

‘I was born of poor but honest parents,’ he began. ‘No, even that isn’t quite true. They weren’t particularly poor, and I’ve never been very sure about my father’s honesty! No. I had two quite rich grandfathers. My mother’s father founded the fertiliser business in which I’ve been working. It was quite a small affair in his day, and he left each of his three daughters what used to be called a modest competence. One of my two aunts on this side of the family married an American, and died in America ten years ago, without issue. She left all her money, such as it was, to her husband. The other one lived as a spinster in England, and died three years ago and left me a thousand pounds. The rest went to friends and charities. My mother died when I was six, and left all her money to my father. Meanwhile, my two uncles on this side of the family, Uncle George and Uncle Herbert, came into the business, which prospered a good deal, especially after they took in a cousin of theirs. Uncle Herbert died soon after the war. Uncle George died last Christmas and the business is really run now by this cousin, whose name is Bagshaw, and his son. Both the Bagshaws are very able.’

‘Didn’t Uncle George leave you anything?’ I asked. ‘Excuse the question. It may just be relevant.’

‘Not a bean. He had masses of daughters. Besides, my mother’s relations always disapproved of the Findlays. I don’t think Uncle Hamilton has met Uncle George since my father’s death, when it was arranged definitely that I should go into the business. Now for my father’s side, which I know better. My paternal grandfather made his money by importing something—I think it was ladies’ shoes—and left each of his three children about twenty thousand pounds. Of course, it wasn’t so difficult in those days, with no income tax or death duties to speak of. The three children were my father, Uncle Hamilton, and Aunt Grace. I’ve mentioned them, a matter of fact, in order of juniority. My father was the youngest, and Aunt Grace is the eldest, with Uncle Hamilton in the middle. To take my father first. He was a financier. You may well ask me what that means. It means anything. I imagine that when he married my mother, he had a fairly steady kind of job. At all events, we lived well, in rather a grand house in Hampstead. Then, as I’ve told you, my mother died when I was six. I think it must have broken him up. There’s no doubt that he and my mother were very much in love with one another. Two years later, we left Hampstead and my father took a small house near Orpington, more countrified than it is now, of course. I had a nurse-housekeeper to look after me, and soon went to a little boarding school. My father was away from home a good deal. I think, even then, he had begun to find consolation in women and wine. I remember that when I was about twelve, he told me that he couldn’t afford to send me to Eton, for which I’d been entered, and that I should have to go to a very minor public school in the south of England. Really, it was hardly a public school at all. At that age, I didn’t care twopence, but how very quiet one was about this sort of thing at Oxford!

‘In due course I went to my so-called public school. It wasn’t bad. I was good at games and found work easy. Some of the masters were quite cultivated and took an interest in me. It was easy to be a success there. The competition wasn’t severe. Meanwhile, we gave up the house near Orpington, and so far as we had a home, it was at a private hotel in Chislehurst. My father now began to go to Paris a good deal, and when I went up to Oxford, where, as you know, I got a scholarship, he said he was going to live in Paris, which he found both cheaper and pleasanter than England. He was still dabbling in finance, trying to bring off “deals” and get a commission on them. Sometimes they succeeded, but more often they failed. As time went on, I think he lost grip on everything. He took me abroad once or twice, and I met some interesting people—people, that is to say, quite outside the scope of the Findlays or my mother’s family. I was precocious and fairly intelligent, and tried to make myself as cosmopolitan as I could. When I came up to Oxford I found that my sophistication carried me quite a long way. I’m afraid this all sounds rather odious. Oxford simply went to my head.’

‘You went to Oxford’s head,’ I said generously.

‘Oh, no! A little circle of forty or fifty people. I cut no serious ice there. Well, you know the next chapter. My father died towards the end of my second year and left nothing. The family business became a reality which I had to face. Uncle George offered to take me in, provided I got a first in schools. I had to work, and did, and got my first and the privilege of entering Garvice and Bagshaw on probation at a salary of a hundred a year. This brings me to Uncle Hamilton, doesn’t it?’

He looked at his watch again.

I refilled his glass, and told him I could put him up for the night if necessary. He said he still had over an hour before he needed to start for the last train, if I could bear him for so long. I said I could, and he went on:

‘It’s always hard to judge one’s own father, but I think he was probably an able man in his way, and rather a fascinating character. Uncle Hamilton has always seemed to me to be just the opposite. He started life by going into house building—suburban building—and I think if he had been clever at it, he ought to have made a fortune. He didn’t, probably because he had small ideas and would never take a risk. However, I suppose it was something that he didn’t lose his money.’

‘Is he really a rich uncle?’ I asked.

‘That depends upon your standard. I should think he’s worth about forty thousand—made mostly by saving, I should say. He married before I was born, but his wife ran away with someone else after six months. She’s been dead a great many years. He settled at Tylecroft just after the war, and completely retired from building in 1920, since when he’s done nothing. I don’t know if his mind is filled with ecstatic contemplation of the nature of the universe, or is just a vacuum. I suspect the latter. Oh, he has his good points! I think he genuinely admired my father, who used to despise him almost openly. He was certainly very kind when my father was dying, and I suppose it was good of him to give me a home, though a small allowance would have been more to my taste. While my father was alive, I didn’t see very much of him. I remember very vividly an Easter holiday I spent at his house when I was sixteen. I was at a romantic age—you know, those dreamy romantic periods one has in adolescence—and spent my time reading everything I could. The visit lingers in my mind as having been marked by a warm spring rain which beat against my bedroom window, while I sat reading and thinking mysteriously like one on the threshold of a dream-world. The peach blossom was very lovely that year between the showers. Uncle Hamilton left me completely to myself. Twice only he gave me a shilling to go to the cinema. That was my first prolonged contact with him. The next one was after my father’s death, a contact which lasted till I dropped him in Westbourne Terrace on Friday night.

‘Even when I first went to his house as a penniless orphan, he didn’t bully me. He doesn’t bully. He nags over absurd little things that can’t matter to anyone. Of course, I have sponged on him. Even these last eight years, when I’ve been paying thirty shillings a week, I’ve been sponging. You’ll ask me, I know, why I stayed on at Tylecroft, while latterly, at all events, I could have afforded a pied-à-terre of my own. Well, the least creditable reason first—he would never have forgiven me if I’d left. In a kind of dim way, he likes to have me about his place, and, well, I have expectations, you know. But, apart from this, staying there did give me a good deal of pocket-money. I have been able to take trips abroad, which I adore, and to run a car, and do a certain amount of entertaining in London, though I know I’ve never done my fair share. As for Uncle Hamilton, I’ve just managed to rub along with him. He knows that if he nags me too much I shall go away, which he doesn’t want. And I know that if I don’t let myself be nagged up to a point, he’ll cut me out of his will. And I don’t want that. I’m speaking very frankly, though I dare say you could guess all I’m telling you. If you ask me whether I have any real affection for him, I shall simply have to say I don’t know. You see, I started with him at such a disadvantage. My life took such a sudden jolt for the worse when I had to go and live at Tylecroft. And it had promised to be such a delightful affair.’

He sighed wistfully. If there had been more time, I should have enjoyed him as one enjoys a novel, but there were one or two points I felt had to be cleared up.

‘Have you ever known your uncle to be, shall I say, amorously entangled?’

Greatly to my surprise, Dick showed the suspicion of a blush.

‘Good heavens, no,’ he said. ‘Uncle Hamilton is far too set in his ways. I remember when I first began to work in London, he gave me a lecture on the perils of the streets, more, perhaps, from the medical than the moral point of view. Mind you, Uncle Hamilton is a perfectly normal man. I’ve seen his eyes glisten in what old ladies would call “an unpleasant way” when he’s been served by a pretty shop-assistant. It is possible that when on holiday he has sometimes shaken a loose leg. But hardly during the last ten years, I should say. At all events, his home life is dismally respectable.’

‘I was only wondering,’ I said, ‘whether this trip of his to Cornwall——’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid not. Still, it might just be possible. Now, have I given you enough of Uncle Hamilton?’

‘I think so. For the present.’

‘Well then, I’d better polish off Aunt Grace, the eldest of Grandfather Findlay’s three children. She’s quite a nice old lady who married a nursery gardener named Hicks. A pleasant, cultivated nursery gardener, but he couldn’t make money, and died just when he’d lost all of Aunt Grace’s fortune. Since Cousin Bill has taken a hand—he’s the strong silent man you met at Tylecroft that awful evening—they’ve been doing rather better, but according to Uncle Hamilton even Cousin Bill is more interested in botany than in selling geraniums at a shilling a pot, and the Hickses are still very hard up. Aunt Grace used to like my father, but she could never abide Uncle Hamilton. She’s very plain-spoken. She thinks me rather a worm for having gone on living at Tylecroft. Cousin Bill has no use for me at all.’

‘You said Cousin Bill was a bachelor.’

‘Yes. A few years ago he was engaged, but the girl died, poor thing, after the doctors had had a lovely time with her. It was all very sad. Cousin Bill became stronger and more silent than ever.’

‘I was wondering,’ I said, ‘if you oughtn’t to have consulted Cousin Bill instead of me.’

He gave me a look of surprise, and thought for a moment before speaking.

‘It just shows you,’ he said, ‘what terms I’m on with Cousin Bill, that I haven’t even thought of asking his advice.’

‘Don’t you think you should?’

‘Perhaps. But if there’s nothing in this affair, or if, as you seem to suggest, Uncle Hamilton is kicking over the traces for once in a way, it would be a frightful mistake on my part to go calling a family council yet awhile. I’m quite sure Uncle Hamilton would rather I kept his peccadilloes (if any) to myself, than blabbed about them to Aunt Grace and Cousin Bill. Besides, Malcolm, do have a heart! As I said before, I haven’t many real friends now, and it is a relief to talk things over with someone like you, who do understand me up to a point, even if you did once describe me as “meretricious.” Your judgment is worth ten of Cousin Bill’s, who can’t even make a nursery-garden pay.’

He spoke quite passionately. One could put some of his fervour down to whisky, but he really did seem to want my help. I thought for a few minutes before answering, while he looked at me with anxiety.

Finally I said: ‘I will try to help you as much as I can, Dick. But tell me this first. Have you any kind of plan in your own mind?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I had thought we might go to Cornwall together for the week-end, just to see if Uncle Hamilton did go there, or for that matter, is still there. My word, it would be fun if we found him with a flaming cocotte! We should have to be discreet, of course. This is the only plan I’ve been able to think of.’

‘Cornwall! The county’s about a hundred miles long, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? Uncle Hamilton mentioned the town he was going to—Falmouth. We could explore the Falmouth area and inquire at the hotels there. What do you think of the idea?’

‘Like you, I can’t think of anything better,’ I answered. ‘While you were talking to me just now, it occurred to me that perhaps we ought to make inquiries at the hotels near Paddington, and start from there. But if your uncle said he was going to Falmouth, that seems the obvious place to begin with. You know, Dick, I think we ought both to sleep over this. Perhaps you’ll find your uncle safely at home when you arrive. I may have some brighter ideas to-morrow. I suppose you couldn’t have lunch with me in the City?’

‘Yes, I could,’ he said. ‘I shall be going to our City office to-morrow.’

‘Well then, come round to my office about one, and we’ll go out somewhere. I feel, after to-night, that it ought to be the Savoy. Meanwhile, I’ll sound my partners as to the possibility of my being away on Monday and Tuesday, just in case we do go to Falmouth. How long did you think of staying there?’

‘I thought we’d motor down in my car on Saturday, and come back on Monday or Tuesday, according to circumstances.’

‘Can you get away from your business all right without telling them why you’re going, I mean?’

‘Oh, yes. In any case, Uncle Hamilton means nothing to my directors, now that Uncle George is dead. I doubt if the Bagshaws know of his existence. Well, Malcolm, thank you very much. It’s funny how each of one’s real friends, one’s few real friends, seem to have a special niche in one’s life which no one else can fill. There’s no one else I could have talked to as I’ve talked to you to-night, on this particular subject. You’ve been a great comfort.’

‘You said I once called you meretricious,’ I remarked, as he went out into the hall, ‘but you’ve called me many worse things than that in your day.’

He laughed, and said: ‘Oh, non sum qualis eram. That’s been made pretty clear to you by now, hasn’t it? Don’t come down with me. Good-night, and many thanks. Till to-morrow at one. Au revoir.’

When he had gone I sat in my arm-chair for a quarter of an hour, thinking, not of the ‘case,’ but of Dick himself, and how he had changed since I first knew him. And mingled with these thoughts was the image which he himself had suggested, the image of Dick as a boy of sixteen, sitting by a bedroom window at Tylecroft, his head full of dreams and half-forbidden books, while the spring rain beat perpetually against the peach blossom on the wall.

[1] Midday Sun won the Derby of 1937, Le Grand Duc coming in third.

[2] See Crime at Christmas.