By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Tommy & Tuppence 4)

'Hallo... hallo?'

A faint and far away voice spoke. 'Mr Thomas Beresford?

Can you accept a personal call from Invergashly?'

Yes.'

'Hold the line, please.'

Tommy waited. His excitement was calming down. He had to wait some time. Then a voice he knew, crisp and capable, sounded. The voice of his daughter.

'Hallo, is that you, Pop?' 'Deborah!'

'Yes. Why are you sounding so breathless, have you been running?'

Daughters, Tommy thought, were always critical.

'I wheeze a bit in my old age,' he said. 'How are you, Deborah?'

'Oh, I'm all right. Look here, Dad, I saw something in the paper. Perhaps you've seen it too. I wondered about it.

Something about someone who had had an accident and was in hospital.' 'Well? I don't think I saw anything of that kind. I mean, not to notice it in any way. Why?' 'Well it - it didn't sound too bad. I supposed it was a car accident or something like that. It mentioned that the woman, whoever it was - an elderly woman - gave her name as Prudence Cowley but they were unable to £md her address.' 'Prudence Cowley? You mean ' 'Well yes. I only - well - I only wondered. That is Mother's name, isn't it? I mean it was her name.' 'Of course.' 'I always forget about the Prudence. I mean we've never thought of her as Prudence, you and I, or Derek either.' 'No,' said Tommy. 'No. It's not the kind of Christian name one would associate much with your mother.' 'No, I know it isn't. I just thought it was - rather odd. You don't think it might be some relation of hers?' 'I suppose it might be. Where was this?' 'Hospital at Market Basing, I think it said. They wanted to know more about her, I gather. I just wondered - well, I know it's awfully silly, there must be quantities of people called Cowley and quantities of people called Prudence. But I thought I'd just ring up and £md out. Make sure, I mean, that Mother was at home and all right and all that.' 'I see,' said Tommy. 'Yes, I see.' 'Well, go on, Pop, is she at home?' 'No,' said Tommy, 'she isn't at home and I don't know either whether she is all right or not.' 'What do you mean?' said Deborah. 'What's Mother been doing? I suppose you've been up in London with that hush-hush utterly secret idiotic survival from past days, jawing with all the old boys.' 'You're quite right,' said Tommy. 'I got back from that yesterday evening.' 'And you found Mother away - or did you kiaow she was away? Come on, Pop, tell me about it. You're wozfied. I know when you're worried well enough. What's Mother been doing?

She's been up to something, hasn't she? I wish at her age she'd learn to sit quiet and not do things.' 'She's been worried,' said Tommy. 'Worded about something that happened in connection with your Great-aunt Ada's death.' 'What sort of thing?' 'Well, something that one of the patients at the nursing home said to her. She got worded about this old lady. She started talking a good deal and your mother was worded about some of the things she said. And so, when we went to look through Aunt Ada's things we suggested talking to this old lady and it seems she'd left rather suddenly.' 'Well, that seems quite natural, doesn't it?' 'Some of her

relatives came and fetched her away.' 'It still seems quite natural,' said Deborah. 'Why did Mother get the wind up?' 'She got it into her head,' said Tommy, 'that something might have happened to this old lady.' 'I see.' 'Not to put too frae a point on it, as the saying goes, she seems to have disappeared. All in quite a natural way. I mean, vouched for by lawyers and banks and all that. Only - we haven't been able to fred out where she is.' 'You mean Mother's gone off to look for her somewhere?' 'Yes. And she didn't come back when she said she was coming back, two days ago.' 'And haven't you heard from her?' 'No.' 'I wish to goodness you could look after Mother properly,' said Deborah, severely.

'None of us have ever been able to look after her properly,' said Tommy. 'Not you either, Deborah, if it comes to that. It's the same way she went off in the war and did a lot of things that she'd no business to he doing.' 'But it's different now. I mean, she's quite old. She ought to sit at home md take care of herself. I suppose she's been getting bored. That's at the bottom of it all.'

'Market Basing Hospital, did you say?' said Tommy.

'Melfordshire. It's about an hour or an hour and a half from London, I think, by train.' 'That's it,' said Tommy. 'And there's a village near Market Basing called Sutton Chancellor.' 'What's that got to do with it?' said Deborah.

'It's too long to go into now,' said Tommy. 'It has to do with a picture painted of a house near a bridge by a canal.' 'I don't think I can hear you very well,' said Deborah. 'What are you talking about?' 'Never mind,' said Tommy. 'I'm going to ting up Market Basing Hospital and find out a few things. I've a feeling that it's your mother, all right. People, if they've had concussion, you know, often remember things first that happened when they were a child, and only get slowly to the present. She's gone back to her maiden name. She may have been in a car accident, but I shouldn't be surprised if somebody hadn't given her a conk on the head. It's the sort of thing that happens to your mother.

She gets into things. I'll let you know what I fred out.' Forty minutes later, Tommy Beresford glanced at his wrist watch and breathed a sigh of utter weariness, as he replaced the receiver with a final clang on the telephone rest. Albert made an appearance.

'What about your dinner, sir?' he demanded. 'You haven't eaten a thing, and I'm sorry to say I forgot about that chicken - Burnt to a cinder.' 'I don't want anything to eat,' said Tommy. 'What I want is a drink. Bring me a double whisky.' 'Coming, sir,' said Albert.

A few moments later he brought the required refreshment to where Tommy had slumped down in the worn but comfortable chair reserved for his special use.

'And now, I suppose,' said Tommy, 'you want to hear everything.' 'Matter of fact, sir,' said Albert in a slightly apologetic tone, 'I know most of it. You see, seeing as it was a question of the missus and all that, I took the liberty of lifting up the extension in the bedroom. I didn't think you'd mind, sir, not as it was the misSuS.' 't don't blame you,' said Tommy. 'Actually, I'm grateful to you. If I had to start explaining ' 'Got on to everyone, didn't you? The hospital and the doctor and the matron.' 'No need to go over it all again,' said Tommy.

'Market Basing Hospital,' said Albert. 'Never breathed a word of that, she didn't. Never left it behind as an address or anything like that.' 'She didn't intend it to be her address,' said Tommy. 'As far as I can make out she was probably coshed on the head in an out of the way spot somewhere. Someone took her along in a car and dumped her at the side of the road somewhere, to be picked up as an ordinary hit and run.' He added, 'Call me at six-thirty tomorrow morning. I want to get an early start.' 'I'm sorry about your chicken getting burnt up again in the oven. I only put it in to keep warm and forgot about it.' 'Never mind chickens,' said Tommy. 'I've always thought they were very silly birds, running under cars and clucking about. Bury the corpse tomorrow morning and give it a good funeral.' 'She's not at death's door or anything, is she, sir?' asked 'Subdue your melodramatic fancies,' said Tommy. 'If you'd done any proper listening you'd have heard that she's come nicely to herself again, knows who she is or was and where she is and they've sworn to keep her there waiting for me until I arrive to take charge of her again. On no account is she to be allowed to slip out by herself and go off again doing some more tomfool detective work.' 'Talking of detective work,' said Albert, and hesitated with a slight cough.

'I don't particularly want to talk about it,' said Tommy.

'Forget it, Albert. Teach yourself book-keeping or window-box gardening or something.' 'Well, I was just thinking - I mean, as a matter of clues ' 'Well, what about clues?'

'I've been thinking.' 'That's where all the trouble in life comes from. Thinking.' 'Clues,' said Albert again. 'That picture, for instance. That's a clue, isn't it?' Tommy observed that Albert had hung the picture of the house by the canal up on the wall.

'If that picture's a clue to something, what do you think it's a clue to?' He blushed slightly at the inelegancy of the phrase he had just coined. 'I mean - what's it all about? It ought to mean something. What I was thinking of,' said Albert, 'if you'll excuse me mentioning it ' 'Go ahead, Albert.' 'What I was thinking of was that desk.' 'Desk?' 'Yes. The one that came by the furniture removers with the little table and the two chairs and the other things. Family property, it was, you said?' 'It belonged to my Aunt Ada,' said Tommy.

'Well, that's what I meant sir. That's the sort of place where you find clues. In old desks. Antiques.' 'Possibly,' said Tommy.

'It wasn't my business, I know, and I suppose I really oughtn't to have gone messing about with it, but while you were away, sir, I couldn't help it. I had to go and have a look.' 'What - a look into the desk?' 'Yes, just to see if there might be a clue there. You see, desks like that, they have secret drawers.' 'Possibly,' said Tommy.

'Well, there you are. There might be a clue there, hidden.

Shut up in the secret drawer.' 'It's an agreeable idea,' said Tommy. 'But there's no reason as far as I know for my Aunt Ada to hide things away in secret drawers.' 'You never know with old ladies. They like tucking things away. Like jackdaws, they are, or magpies. I forget which it is.

There might be a secret will in it or something written in invisible ink or a treasure. Where you'd find some hidden treasure.'

'I'm sorry, Albert, but I think I'm going to have to disappoint you. I'm pretty sure there's nothing of that kind in that nice old family desk which once belonged to my Uncle William. Another man who turned crusty in his old age besides being stone deaf and having a very bad temper.'

'What I thought is,' said Albert, 'it wouldn't do any harm to look, would it?' He added virtuously, 'It needed cleaning out anyway. You know how old things are with old ladies. They don't turn them out much - not when they're rheumatic and fred it hard to get about.'

Tommy paused for a moment or two. He remembered that Tuppence and he had looked quickly through the drawers of the desk, had put their contents such as they were in two large envelopes and removed a few skeins of wool, two cardigans, a black velvet stole and three frae pillow-cases from the lower drawers which they had placed with other clothing and odds and ends for disposal. They had also looked through such papers as there had been in the envelopes after their return home with them. There had been nothing there of particular interest.

'We looked through the contents, Albert,' he said. 'Spent a couple of evenings really. One or two quite interesting old letters, some recipes for boiling ham, some other recipes for preserving fruit, some ration books and coupons and things dating back to the war. There was nothing of any interest.'

'Oh, that,' said Albert, 'but that's just papers and things, as you might say. Just ordinary go and come what everybody gets holed up in desks and drawers and things. I mean real secret stuff. When I was a boy, you know, I did six months with an antique dealer - helping him fake up things as often as not. But I got to know about secret drawers that way. They usually run to the same pattern. Three or four well-known kinds and they vary it now and then. Don't you think, sir, you ought to have a look? I mean, I didn't like to go it mese

lf with you not here.

I would have been presuming.' He looked at Tommy with the air of a pleading dog.

'Come on, Albert,' said Tommy, giving in. 'Let's go and presume.' 'A very nice piece of furniture,' thought Tommy, as he stood by Albert's side, surveying this specimen of his inheritance from Aunt Ada. 'Nicely kept, beautiful old polish on it, showing the good workmanship and craftsmanship of days gone by.' 'Well, Albert,' he said, 'go ahead. This is your bit of fun. But don't go and strain it.' 'Oh, I was ever so careful. I didn't crack it, or slip knives into it or anything like that. First of all we let down the from and put it on these two slab things that pull out. That's right, you see, the flap comes down this way and that's where the old lady used to sit. Nice little mother-of-pearl blotting case your Aunt Ada had. It was in the left-hand drawer.' 'There are these two things,' said Tommy.

He drew out two delicate pilastered shallow vertical drawers.