Читать книгу Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. - James Hawkins - Страница 8

The Bluebottles, a six-piece combo of off-duty police officers, are hammering away on stage as Daphne Lovelace demonstrates the Twist to a handful of novitiates with more gusto than a sixties go-go dancer.

Peter Bryan keeps an eye on her as he puts on a serious mien and takes Bliss to one side.

"How the hell did they know where to find Daphne?" Bliss queries as soon as he's dispelled the notion that his son-in-law is pulling some sort of perverted joke.

"Apparently the killer ditched Mrs. Dennon's handbag in a dumpster outside the station. They found her wedding invitation in it and put two and two together."

"Oh my God," breathes Bliss, wondering how he's going to break the news. "Look at her. She's eighty-odd and she still thinks she's Ginger Rogers…"

"Do you want me to —" starts Bryan, but Bliss cuts him off.

"No. It's your big day, Peter. Anyway, she knows me better."

"That doesn't necessarily make it easier," says Bryan sagely, but Bliss waves him away.

"Don't worry, Peter. Just get me a very large brandy…"

"Aren't you going to drive her home then?"

"It's not for me, you idiot; it's for her."

Word spreads faster than cholera in a room filled with nearly eighty policemen, and a depression settles over the reception as Bliss gently leads Daphne from the dance floor. Samantha has heard the news and races to be at Daphne's side as her father edges the aging woman towards a distant chair.

"What's happening, David?" Daphne demands breathlessly, aware that she is suddenly the centre of attention.

"Just a minute," he says, and frantically signals the band to start up again.

"You're scaring me, David," Daphne continues, but Bliss needs her to be seated.

Daphne sits, crushed in her own private world, as Bliss forges through the downpour with his face pressed to the windshield. "There's no point in hurrying," he has told himself a dozen times since leaving the Berkeley, "it won't bring her back." But he can't keep his foot off the throttle. He turns on the radio to break the overbearing silence and catches the end of the hourly news.

"… reporting live from the scene of today's murder.

"In a bizarre attack in Westchester this afternoon an elderly pensioner was pushed into the path of a London-bound express."

"I don't think I want to hear," says Daphne quietly, and Bliss turns it off as the reporter confirms that the victim's name is being withheld while next-of-kin are informed.

"She doesn't have any — not close, anyway," says Daphne, before sinking back into her misery.

Detective Inspector Mike Mainsbridge of the British Transport Police is the officer in charge at the scene and is giving the same answer to the local radio reporter.

"What can you tell us then, Inspector?" demands the reporter.

"We've contacted a friend of the deceased and are awaiting her arrival, though we are fairly certain that we can positively identity her from articles found in her possession."

"Any suspects at this time?"

"We're looking for a white male, twenty to thirty years…" Mainsbridge continues, while Ronnie Stapleton slumps on Krysta Curran's bed with his face buried in his hands as they listen to the report.

"Don't turn me in. I didn't do it, Krys, honest," he snivels. "The old bag just jumped."

Krysta swats ineffectually at her own tears. "They said she wuz shoved on the telly," she says, as if a picture of a police officer demands greater credence than mere words, and the tears continue to cascade down her cheeks. "You can't stay here…" she is saying as the Inspector continues, "Fortunately we have a clear picture of the suspect from the station's surveillance camera…"

Stapleton lashes out in frustration. "Switch it off!" he yells. "Switch it off." Then he sags in despair. "What am I gonna f'kin do, Krys?"

"You could turn yourself in."

"What — and tell ‘em I didn't do it — yeah, right. They'll swallow that. I got form, remember. I'm on probation."

"Yeah. For a couple of ounces of dope — not for bumping someone off."

"D'ye think the filth'll care?"

"It'll be worse if they catch you."

"They ain't got no witnesses," spits Stapleton.

"You heard him, Ron — they got video."

"It was dark. They could be bluffing," he pleads, tears streaming down his face. "She f'kin jumped, honest." Then he brightens with an idea. "You could say I wuz ‘ere all afternoon with you. We wuz playing on your computer — remember?"

Krysta's face falls. "I dunno…"

"I thought you loved me. I mean, it's not like it's gonna make any difference now. The old crumbly's gone."

"But, we wuz in the caff together. You wuz making fun of her. The others will know."

"Then we came right back ‘ere afterwards, aw'right?"

Krysta keeps her eyes on the floor as she mumbles. "My mum and dad will be back soon."

"You're throwing me out?"

"Ron… I…"

"Oh. Screw you."

"Where'ya gonna go then?"

"Mind yer own f'kin business."

Daphne Lovelace has kept a stoic face since receiving the news, though she has loudly blown her nose on several occasions as Bliss drives her back to Westchester. "I'm afraid I rather spoiled Samantha's wedding," she starts, but Bliss rebukes her immediately.

"You most certainly did not. Hardly anyone noticed. In any case, it wasn't your fault."

"Well, I still feel responsible. Minnie was probably feeling miffed that I'd gone without her when she wasn't feeling well."

"In which case she wouldn't have been at the station?"

"Maybe she'd perked up and decided to come to the reception."

It seems unlikely, thinks Bliss, finding it difficult to imagine that someone of Minnie's age would venture to London alone. Then he chides himself for the thought; after all, she was just about to set out around the world.

"She was so thrilled about the trip," continues Daphne, reading Bliss's mind. "She's never really travelled anywhere before — not like me — and I was looking forward to showing her all the places I'd been… Red Square in Moscow, Istanbul — the blue mosque — the Taj Mahal…" Daphne's voice slowly fades in loss and sorrow and she blows her nose again.

The rain hasn't eased as Ronnie Stapleton slinks along the scruffy lane at the back of his parent's terraced house on the outskirts of Westchester. With his eyes focused steadfastly on the light from his mother's kitchen, Ronnie peers over the rotten lattice fence and sees her familiar figure fussing over the stove.

"I'm gonna chuck his dinner out if he doesn't show up soon," Dorothy Stapleton calls out to her husband, and she checks the clock on the microwave. "It's gone eight. I told him not to be later than six."

"I'll eat it," yells a child's voice in response, and the shadow of Ronnie's rambunctious ten-year-old brother, Marty, appears in the window.

"You will not, and it's time you were in bed," laughs his mother. "You've got school in the morning."

The muffled sounds and blurry images of his family tug at Stapleton, and the prospect of a hot meal and some warm, dry clothing drag him towards the backyard gate. They obviously don't know, he tells himself, and seriously considers walking in as if nothing has happened.

You're innocent, the voice in his mind says, though he hangs back, asking, How long before they see the news? How long before the knock on the door?

And how will they know it's you? The cop said it was a white male aged twenty to thirty. You're only eighteen.

What about the video?

They're lying. They always say they've got video.

And, what if they're not lying this time?

Ronnie Stapleton pauses with his hand on the gate latch and the memory of his father's final admonition ringing in his ears. "This is the last time, son. You only get one chance in my books," he'd said only three weeks earlier as he'd led his son out of court. "If the fuzz ever come looking for you again, you're out."

"Yes, Dad."

"Your mother and me won't stand for it — understand?"

"Sorry, Dad."

"You will be if you don't shape up.

"I'll have to do the honours, I suppose," says Daphne Lovelace, breaking a twenty-minute silence as she and Bliss approach Westchester. "It ought to be church, but my front room would probably be more fitting; I don't think God's been on Minnie's Christmas list for a few years now. And you'd be amazed what they charge for a service today."

"I wonder if she wanted to be buried or cremated," Bliss muses aloud, though Daphne's response holds no answer.

"I don't even know if she's got a will. I thought she was just like the rest of us, with a little rainy-day money tucked away somewhere, until a few weeks ago when she told me her plans."

The day that Minnie broke the news about her grand intentions had started inauspiciously for Daphne. Her kitten, Missie Rouge, had rounded up a couple of mice for recreation, but the young cat's natural boisterousness had overcome one of the terrified creatures as she'd enthusiastically batted it around the kitchen floor, whereas the other had gone to ground under the kitchen cabinet.

Minnie's unexpected arrival found Daphne sprawled on the kitchen floor with the vacuum cleaner's hose stuck under the cupboard.

"I did ring the bell…" Minnie started, explaining why she had used her emergencies-only spare key on her friend's front door, but Daphne shushed her.

"Mouse," she whispered, then yelped joyfully as the little animal disappeared up the tube with a pronounced, "Plop!"

"That's put the wind up him," she cried triumphantly, and then she rushed into the garden to release the tiny rodent.

"Shakes ‘em up a bit," she explained on her return, "but they usually survive." Then she turned quizzically to Minnie. "It's Wednesday. Isn't it your bingo day?"

"I thought it must be Alzheimer's or the gin bottle," Daphne continues to Bliss as they slow down in Westchester's suburbs. "I'd never seen her so flighty. And you know what she can be like when she gets excited. ‘How about you and me taking a trip all the way around the world, Daph?' she said, out of the blue, so I started telling her all the places I'd like to go, just to humour her."

"But she was serious?"

"Absolutely. I even went with her to Maplin's when she booked. Then we had to go to London to get her a passport."

"Daphne…" Bliss pauses and puts a note of concern in his voice. "You do realize that the local police will probably want you to identify the body."

"Oh. Don't worry, David. I've seen more bodies than I care to remember. It's the least I can do for the poor old soul."

"I'll drop you home first and make some enquiries," says Bliss, knowing that he could just as easily pick up his cell phone and call Westchester's police control room, but preferring not to do so with Daphne sitting alongside him.

It is approaching nine o'clock when Daphne turns the key in her front door.

"I'll light the fire," she says, shuddering at the coolness of the empty house and the realization that she'll never be opening the door to her oldest friend again.

Bliss switches on the television and is surprised to discover that Minnie has become the poster child for Age Concern, and several other elderly-rights groups, and her demise has been catapulted to first place in the national news.

"With surveys just out showing that forty-seven percent of the general population, and a staggering seventy-eight percent of the elderly, are frightened to venture out after dark," begins the newscaster with a backdrop of a heavily dressed bag lady struggling along a dark street, "residents of the usually peaceful community of Westchester were shocked to learn today that a frail widow —"

"Turn it off, David. They make her seem like some friendless down and out," says Daphne. "I'll put the kettle on."

The sound of the front-door bell makes them jump.

"I'll go," says Bliss, and he is met at the door by Phil and Maggie Morgan, Daphne's elderly neighbours. Phil has armed himself with a large flashlight and the fireplace poker and is riding shotgun as he constantly sweeps the bushes while Maggie gushes, "Minnie's been murdered, David."

"I know…"

"Pushed in front of an express."

"You'd better come in —"

"They say that bits of her were scattered halfway to Briddlestone," chimes in Phil, and Bliss changes his mind, eases himself out of the door and drops his voice.

"Look… You can come in, but please don't upset Daphne. She doesn't want to talk about it at the moment, though it would be nice if you'd stay with her while I go to the station to find out what's happening."

Westchester's railway station is alive with uniforms when Bliss arrives ten minutes later. County police officers, together with specialists from the British Transport Police, shelter under the platform canopy, while a team of forensic scenes-of-crime technicians are scouring the track at the end of the platform in the daylight of a dozen halogen floodlights. But it's a lost cause. The driving rain has washed away all trace of the incident, and the speeding train has spread Minnie's remains for nearly a mile.

A cluster of officers gathered around a mobile control room in the station's parking lot fall silent as Bliss approaches, seeking the officer in command. He flashes his badge — "D.I. Bliss. Met. police C.I.D.," says Bliss, momentarily forgetting his recent promotion.

"Wow! God's squad," mutters the junior officer.

Detective Inspector Mainsbridge of the Transport Police introduces himself with a quizzical eye on Bliss's morning coat.

Bliss takes a mental look at himself and laughs, "It's my daughter's wedding. It's going back to the hire place tomorrow."

"National Crimes' Squad?" questions Mainsbridge, wondering why the heavy brigade would be involved in such a straightforward murder.

"Hardly — Interpol liaison officer, actually. I just knew Mrs. Dennon, that's all."

"Did you know her well?" asks Mainsbridge, angling for the significance of Bliss's presence.

"Just a friend of a friend — Daphne Lovelace. She was with me at the wedding. Have you established a motive?"

"Mugging. The surveillance camera caught him grabbing her bag. The tape's fuzzy, but we should be able to get the lab boys to clean it up."

"Cash?"

"Could be as much as ten grand in big ones, we think."

"Phew!" exclaims Bliss. "Ten thousand quid. That's a hefty bundle for an old woman to be carting around. How d'ye know?"

"We've got her bank book. It seems as though she's cleaned out her life savings over the past couple of weeks, two withdrawals totalling seven thousand. And it looks as though she took out a loan for another three."

"Hmm," hums Bliss. "You might want to check with the local travel agents on that. My info is that she's just spent thirty grand on a world trip."

Now it's Mainsbridge's turn to be surprised. "You're well informed."

"Inside information," Bliss says smugly, then asks, "Where's the body now, Mike?"

Mainsbridge takes a meaningful look along the tracks before replying. "We've found a couple of bucketfuls so far."

"Oh, shit," moans Bliss.

"Could you formally I.D. her for us, Dave?"

"Not in a bucket, I couldn't," replies Bliss seriously, and Mainsbridge gives him a wry smile.

"Well, if it isn't Chief Inspector Bliss of the Yard," says a familiar voice, and Bliss warms at the approach of a smiling face.

"As soon as I heard that Daphne Lovelace was involved I guessed you'd show up," laughs Superintendent Donaldson, slapping Bliss affectionately on the back. Then his face falls in concern. "How's the old bird taking it?"

"You know Daphne," starts Bliss, and Donaldson turns to Mainsbridge in explanation. "She was the charlady down at the Nick for years, but she cracked more cases than most of the brainless wonders in C.I.D. put together. ‘I reckon old so-and-so did that,' she'd whisper in my ear whenever she brought my tea and biscuits, and I don't think she was wrong once."

"She's keeping her chin up," says Bliss, "but I'd better get back to her."

"Why don't you just get a permanent transfer here, Dave? We could do with a real live hero on the force."

"Hero?" queries Mainsbridge vaguely.

"Yes," says Donaldson, inviting Mainsbridge to search his memory banks. "This is the Detective Chief Inspector David Bliss."

"The Nazi gold case?" breathes Mainsbridge.

"The very same," says Donaldson, basking in his association with Bliss. "The man who uncovered a buried fortune off the coast of Corsica, and all he got was an extra pip on his shoulder."

"I'm surprised you didn't quit," says Mainsbridge. "You could make a mint if you wrote a book about it."

"Oh, I've definitely given it some thought," replies Bliss, though he doesn't add that the book he's planning is about an even greater mystery than the discovery of the missing Nazi treasure. Tell them you've discovered the identity of the man in the iron mask and watch them laugh their heads off, he tells himself, but lets it go. "Anyway," he continues. "If there's anything I can do to help."

Donaldson ticks off a completed task list on his fingers: "Forensics, witness appeal, coroner informed, murder squad are checking similar M.O.'s… Not a lot more we can do till the morning. Mike's got everything under control here. I was just going for a bite to eat. There's a new steakhouse in the High Street; care to join me?"

"Any suspects?" asks Bliss, remaining focused.

Mainsbridge steps in, saying, "We've got a witness." And he pulls out his notebook to confirm the name. "A Janis Ng. She's pretty sure that she saw some young punk stalking the old lady outside the cathedral just before it happened. She didn't see his face, but he had a swastika painted on the back of his jacket."

"That should help…"

"And the signalman saw him, though couldn't really give us much — talk about shaken up. The poor bastard knew exactly what was going to happen and couldn't do a thing to stop it — like watching a Hugh Grant movie. Then there's the surveillance tape, of course, though it's a bit murky."

"Right then, Dave. Let's eat," says Donaldson, but Bliss shakes him off.

"I really ought to get back to Daphne…"

"Breakfast, then," continues Donaldson, undeterred. "Eight-thirty at the Mitre. We should have the whole thing sewn up by then. How long are you staying?"

"Couple of days, I expect. Just to keep Daphne company. I had tomorrow off anyway. My daughter was married today so I thought I'd take a long weekend. Though God knows what I thought I'd be doing. They obviously didn't need me."

"Always the same for us blokes," moans Mains-bridge. "Christmas, birthdays, weddings. I dunno why we even try. We might as well just hand over the chequebook and piss off to the pub until it's over."

"Sir," questions a sergeant. "The railway people are asking when they can reopen the line."

"Tell them we're still waiting for the engineers to examine the train's brakes, though it's a waste of bloody time. The poor bastard couldn't have stopped a bike that quick."

"How is the driver taking it?"

"Shock — completely confused. We've bundled him off to the hospital."

Ronnie Stapleton is also confused as he squats on the concrete floor of a phone booth, examining the contents of Minnie's purse while he tries to work out his future. "F'kin fourpence," he mutters in disbelief. "I ain't doin' life for that."

Stapleton's descent from mugger to murderer has left his mind racing faster than a rat in a maze. Escape… but to where? And how? Thumbing a lift is a risky option, yet it's all he can afford. He would normally have jumped a train, but the sight of Minnie's body slamming into the front of the engine still runs and reruns in his mind like a cartoon character being whisked away at a hundred miles an hour. He closes his eyes, hoping it's just a crazy computer game and that when he comes out of it he'll be a winner, but the picture's even gloomier when he refocuses, and the tears start again. He'd like to be crying for the woman, but knows that he's not.

Krysta answers the phone at the first ring and accepts the charges.

"You shouldn't ‘a called," she whispers. "Dad might have answered."

"You didn't tell ‘em, did ya?"

"No. ‘Course not. But everyone's talkin' about it."

"You gotta get me some dough, Krys. I gotta get away."

"I dunno…"

"Please…"

"I'll try. Call me back in half an hour, ‘kay?"

Bliss is also wishing that it was simply a game as he views the station's surveillance video alongside D.I. Mainsbridge and sees Stapleton's shadowy figure racing across the platform towards Minnie's figure at the platform's edge.

"Try freezing it," Mainsbridge instructs the VCR operator, hoping to catch the moment of impact, but the technician has made several attempts already and is sceptical of his chances.

"It will be better when it's transferred onto a DVD, though I'm not promising," he says as he reruns the tape again and again, while grumbling about the inadequateness of the antiquated recording system.

"Sorry, guv," he says in exasperation as Minnie's body simply vanishes time and time again, leaving Stapleton holding her bag.

"I'd better get back to Ms. Lovelace," Bliss says eventually. "I'll have another look in the morning." And as he heads towards his car, he can't help hoping that if they play it enough times, Minnie will eventually not be whisked away like a magician's assistant.

Ronnie Stapleton is another player yearning for the immediate invention of time travel as he's forced out of the phone box by the evening's chill and he seeks some warmth from the window lights of a small street of dingy shops. A car slowly rounds the bend behind him. "Cops," he breathes, and he instantly turns to use the window as a mirror as he pretends to peer at the wigs in a hairdressing salon.

They must have changed the one-way system, Bliss is thinking, not recognizing the street, and then he is alerted by the loiterer's suspicious movement.

"Turn around… let's see your face," mumbles Bliss, as he cruises slowly past, but Stapleton's face is frozen to the window display. Then Bliss's lights catch the offensive logo on the back of the boy's jean jacket.

"Got you," breathes Bliss in amazement, stepping on the brake pedal.

The car's brake lights bounce off the window and Stapleton hits the pavement at a run. Seconds later he is jinking down a side alley like a startled gopher.

Bliss is out of his car in a flash, but he wastes time as he ducks back inside to grab his cell phone. He should call for assistance, but he knows he'll lose his quarry if he does. And he still hasn't seen the youngster's face.

Stapleton is already racing down the littered alley, leaping boxes, abandoned bikes and rusty garbage bins, as Bliss takes up the chase. With his eyes firmly on the youth, Bliss lurches from obstacle to obstacle and curses the long tails of his morning coat as they snatch at passing junk and threaten to snag him.

A discarded supermarket buggy trips Bliss and sends him sprawling as Stapleton shoots from the lane into the High Street where the Odeon cinema is turning out.

"Police — stop!" yells Bliss, spurring his quarry on, and a group of youngsters neatly part to let the fleeing man through, then they jeer Bliss as he passes with shouts of "Let him go, Pig!"

The fleeing youth gains ground as a couple of drunks try playing catch with Bliss, and he's slowed further as he grapples with his cell phone.

"Which service do you require?" the emergency operator says for the third time before Bliss catches his breath sufficiently to screech, "Police!"

Encouraging yells from the cinema crowd still ring in Bliss's ears as Stapleton swings off the High Street and runs into the ancient stone perimeter wall of the cathedral grounds. "Got you," breathes Bliss, rounding the corner and finding himself in a blind alley, and he is just weighing up his chances of taking on the fit-looking youth when Stapleton, with age and adrenaline on his side, heaves himself up and over the wall with the aid of the iron spikes set into the top.

"Bugger," swears Bliss, and he scans unsuccessfully for an entrance or some kind of ladder before grappling for a toehold in the wall. His cell phone drops from his hand and lands in the scrub.

"Damn!" he mutters, scrabbling to retrieve it, and is considering giving up when he hears a groan from the other side of the wall and realizes that Stapleton hasn't yet escaped.

"Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey," Bliss tells himself as he gingerly scales the six-foot wall and quietly hauls himself up on one of the iron spikes.

Beneath him, Stapleton cowers under a small tree and massages an ankle.

"Just stay there, lad," calls Bliss firmly, and Stapleton leaps to his feet with a yelp and hobbles into the gloom of the cemetery.

"Oh, Christ!" exclaims Bliss as he struggles onto the wall and hears a rip as his tail catches in a spike. But now he's stuck. It's a six-foot drop either way and Stapleton is getting away.

"Police… How can we help?" calls a desperate voice from his pocket and Bliss whips out his cell phone, but it's too late. A snivelling figure limps out of the graveyard's murk and stands under him at the base of the wall.

"I wanna give myself up," whimpers Stapleton.

"Hang on a minute," says Bliss into the phone, then questions his prisoner.

"What's your name, son?"

"Ronnie Stapleton," he mumbles, adding tearfully, "I didn't do it, honest. I wuz with my girlfriend all afternoon."

"Exactly what didn't you do?" asks Bliss, and he might have laughed if not for the seriousness of the situation.

"Talk about stitching himself up," says Bliss a few minutes later as Mainsbridge and twenty other officers help him down from the wall.

Ronnie Stapleton sits in a police car, tears still streaming down his face, while he is read his rights by a constable. "Let's see what's in your pockets, shall we?" says D.I. Mainsbridge once the officer has finished, and no one is surprised when a little old lady's purse is discovered.

A posse of press have arrived, flashbulbs popping, and Mainsbridge should be gloating over the successful arrest, but the look on his face says something is wrong as he begins to open the purse.

"Fourpence! Is that it?" he cries in disbelief. "Where's the rest of the money?"

"That's all there was, honest. I ain't spent any of it," replies Stapleton as the cameras click, not realizing that he's guaranteed himself a place in history as the country's most incompetent robber.

Also guaranteed are tomorrow's front pages in half a dozen dailies; a 1954 wedding picture of Minnie under the headline, "Murdered for a Widow's Mite."

Superintendent Donaldson has been hoisted out of the Feedlot Steakhouse with a phone call and he arrives, breathless, within minutes.

"Christ, David. You've only been back half an hour and you've already nailed a murderer — are you sure I can't interest you in a transfer?"

"No, thanks," says Bliss with a smile. "But I could do with something to eat now. All that exercise has given me an appetite."

Donaldson checks his watch and his stomach. "Well, most places are closing now, but we could probably get something at the bar of the Mitre Hotel; although you look as though you need something stronger than a sausage roll. And look at the state of your coat. I thought you said it was rented."

Phil and Maggie Morgan are still at Daphne's, both fast asleep on her settee in front of the fire. "I didn't like to wake them," Daphne tells Bliss as she lets him in and shushes him with a finger to her lips. "I think they were frightened of being alone with a murderer on the loose."

"He's not on the loose any longer," says Bliss, and Daphne seizes his meaning immediately.

"You've caught him already," she breathes and Bliss nods, underplaying his hand as he adds, "He was only a kid. He gave himself up."

"Oh, that's brilliant…" she starts, but her face falls. "Not that it will bring Minnie back." Then her eye catches the jagged tear in the tail of his coat. "Oh my gosh! Look what you've done! And look at the mud on your trousers."

"It was raining," he says, childlike. "Don't worry. Mr. Donaldson says he'll pay for it out of petty cash. Talking of which, have you got a key to Minnie's place?"

A rough voice greets them as they open the street door to Minnie's building and triggers a shrill alarm. "Who-are-ya? I'm calling the cops."

"Mr. Ransom," yells Daphne, "it's me, Daphne. Minnie's friend." Then she whispers to Bliss. "He's deaf. I knew we should have left this to the morning."

"What d'ya want at this time o'night?"

"Oh God. He doesn't know," whispers Bliss, and is taken aback as the pyjama-clad old man shuffles out of his flat, saying, "She's been done in. The police and the newspapers was here earlier and I let them in."

"It's funny, but it's only just sunk in that she's gone," Daphne says as she opens Minnie's door. "I can feel the emptiness. It's as if Minnie took something with her."

Ten minutes later, Bliss has no choice but to agree with her. "Every single penny she owned, I'd say. So either young Mr. Stapleton is lying, or she was down to her last fourpence."

"But she paid for the trip," insists Daphne. "That was more than thirty thousand —"

"I just hope she took cancellation insurance," says Bliss, rechecking Minnie's bank book, "because according to this, she owes the bank three grand."

"Are you sure?" asks Daphne, peering over his shoulder and quizzing, "But why would she book a world tour if she couldn't afford a bus ticket to Bognor Regis, let alone a boat to Bombay?"