‘I’ll take him out all right and be glad to,’ Tad said, ‘but I’m damned if I’ll let you pay for it. Bill Kenrick was my buddy, not yours.’

So he sat in the warm, aromatic air of the barber’s shop, half dive half clinic, and tried to think of something that they could still do to find Bill Kenrick’s suitcases. But it was the returning Tad who provided the suggestion.

Why, said Tad, not Agony-advertise for this girl.

‘What girl?’

‘The girl who has his luggage. She has no reason to be shy—unless she’s been helping herself to the contents, which wouldn’t be unknown. But Bill is a—was a better picker than that. Why don’t we say in capital letters: “BILL KENRICK”—to catch the eye, get it? — and then just: “Any friend get in touch with Number what’s-it.” Is there anything against that?’

No, Grant could think of nothing against that, but his eye was on the piece of paper that Tad was fishing from his pocket.

‘Did you find the book?’

‘Oh, yes. I had only to lean in and pick it up. That guy doesn’t do any homework, it seems. It’s the dullest list of engagements outside a prison. Not a gardenia from start to finish. And no good to us anyway.’

‘No good?’

‘He was busy, it seems. Will I write out that advertisement for the papers?’

‘Yes, do. There’s paper in my desk.’

‘Which papers shall we send it to?’

‘Write six, and we can address them later.’

He looked down at Tad’s child-like copy of the entries in Lloyd’s engagement book. The entries for the 3rd and 4th of March. And as he read them the full absurdity of his suspicions came home to him. What was he thinking of? Was his mind still the too-impressionable mind of a sick man? How could he ever have dreamed that Heron Lloyd could possibly have been moved to murder? Because that was what he had been thinking, wasn’t it? That somehow, in some way that they could not guess, Lloyd had been responsible for Bill Kenrick’s death.

He looked at the crucial entries, and thought that even if it were proved that Lloyd had not kept these particular engagements it would be fantastic to read into that absence any more than the normal explanation: that Lloyd had been indisposed or had changed his mind. On the night of the 3rd he had apparently attended a dinner. ‘Pioneer Society, Normandie, 7.15’ the entry read. At 9.30 the following morning a Pathé Magazine film unit were due to arrive at 5 Britt Lane and make him into number something-or-other of their Celebrities At Home series. It would seem that Heron Lloyd had more important things to think of than an unknown flyer who claimed to have seen ruins in the sands of Arabia.

‘But he said: “On what?”’ said that voice in him.

‘All right, he said: “On what?”! A fine world it would be if one was going to be suspected, if one was going to be judged, by every unconsidered remark.’

The Commissioner had once said to him: ‘You have the most priceless of all attributes for your job, and that is flair. But don’t let it ride you, Grant. Don’t let your imagination take hold. Keep it your servant.’

He had been in danger of letting his flair bolt with him. He must take a pull on himself.

He would go back to where he was before he saw Lloyd. Back to the company of Bill Kenrick. Back from wild imaginings to fact. Hard, bare, uncompromising fact.

He looked across at Tad, nose to paper and pursuing his pen across the page with it as a terrier noses a spider across a floor.

‘How was your milk-bar lady?’

‘Oh, fine, fine,’ said Tad, absent-minded and not lifting his glance from his handiwork.

‘Taking her out again?’

‘Uh-huh. Meeting her tonight.’

‘Think she will do as a steady?’

‘She might,’ Tad said, and then as he became aware of this unusual interest he looked up and said: ‘What’s this in aid of?’

‘I’m thinking of deserting you for a day or two, and I’d like to know that you won’t be bored if left to your own devices.’

‘Oh. Oh, no; I’ll be all right. It’s time you took some time off to attend to your own affairs, I guess. After all, this is no trouble of yours. You’ve done far too much as it is.’

‘I’m not taking time off. I’m planning to fly over and see Charles Martin’s people.’

‘People?’

‘His family. They live just outside Marseilles.’

Tad’s face, which had looked for a moment like a lost child’s, grew animated again.

‘What do you reckon to get from them?’

‘I’m not doing any reckoning. I’m just beginning from the other end. We’ve come to a blank wall where Bill Kenrick is concerned—unless his hypothetical girl-friend answers that advertisement and that won’t be for two days at the very least—so we’ll try the Charles Martin end and where we get from there.’

‘Fine. What about me coming with you?’

‘I think not, Tad. I think you had better stay here and be O.C. the Press. See that all these are inserted and pick up any answers.’

‘You’re the boss,’ Tad said in a resigned way. ‘But I sure would like to see Marseilles.’

‘It’s not a bit the way you picture it,’ Grant said, amused.

‘How do you know how I picture it?’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose I can sit on a stool and look at Daphne. What funny names girls have in this neck of the woods. It’s a bit draughty, but I can count up the number of times people say thank-you for doing other people service.’

‘If it’s iniquity you’re looking for you’ll find as much on a Leicester Square pavement as you will on the Cannebière.’

‘Maybe, but I like my iniquity with some ooh-la-la in it.’

‘Hasn’t Daphne got any ooh-la-la?’

‘No. Daphne’s very la-di-da. I have an awful suspicion that she wears woollen underwear.’

‘She would need it in a milk-bar in Leicester Square in April. She sounds a nice girl.’

‘Oh, she’s fine, fine. But don’t you stay too long away, or the wolf in me will prove too strong and I’ll take the first plane out to Marseilles to join you. When do you plan to go?’

‘Tomorrow morning, if I can get a seat. Move over and let me reach the telephone. If I get an early-morning service I can, with a piece of luck, get back the following day. If not, then Friday at the latest. How did you get on with Richards?’

‘Oh, we’re great buddies. But I’m a bit disillusioned.’

‘About what?’

‘About the possibilities of the trade.’

‘Doesn’t it pay?’

‘I expect it pays off in coin but not any other way, take it from me. All you can see from outside a window, believe it or not, is your own reflection in the glass. What are the names of those papers you want me to address these things to?’

Grant gave him the names of the six newspapers with the largest circulations, and sent him away with his blessing to employ his time as he saw fit until they met again.

‘I certainly wish I was going with you,’ Tad said once more as he was leaving, and Grant wondered if seeing the South of France as one big honky-tonk was any more absurd than seeing it as mimosa. Which was what it was to him.

‘France!’ said Mrs Tinker. ‘When you’ve only just come back from foreign parts!’

‘The Highlands may be foreign parts, but the South of France is merely an extension of England.’

‘It’s a very expensive extension, I’ve ’eard. Roonous. When was you expectin’ to be back? I got a loverly chicken from Carr’s for you.’

‘The day after tomorrow, I hope. Friday at the latest.’

‘Oh, then it’ll keep. Was you wantin’ to be called earlier tomorrow mornin’, then?’

‘I’ll be away before you come in, I think. So you can have a late morning tomorrow.’

‘A late mornin’ wouldn’t suit Tinker, it wouldn’t. But I’ll get me shoppin’ done before I come in. Now you see and take care of yerself. No burning the candle at both ends and comin’ back lookin’ no better than when you went away to Scotland in the beginnin’. I ’ope it keeps fine for you!’