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Eleven
Rowley opened the big mauve envelope with some surprise. Who on earth, he wondered, could be
writing to him, using that kind of stationery—and how did they manage to get it, anyway? These
fancy lines had surely gone right out during the war.
“Dear Mr. Rowley,” he read,
“I hope you won’t think I’m taking a liberty in writing to you this way, but
if you’ll excuse me, I do think there are things going on that you ought to know
about.”
He noted the underlining with a puzzled look.
“Arising out of our conversation the other evening when you came in asking
about a certain person. If you could call in at the Stag I’d be very glad to tell
you all about it. We’ve all of us felt down here what a wicked shame it was
about your Uncle dying and his money going the way it did.
“Hoping you won’t be angry with me, but I really do think you ought to
know what’s going on.
“Yours ever,
“Beatrice Lippincott.”
Rowley stared down at this missive, his mind afire with speculation. What on earth was all this
about? Good old Bee. He’d known Beatrice all his life. Bought tobacco from her father’s shop
and passed the time of day with her behind the counter. She’d been a good-looking girl. He
remembered as a child hearing rumours about her during an absence of hers from Warmsley Vale.
She’d been away about a year and everybody said she’d gone away to have an illegitimate
baby. Perhaps she had, perhaps she hadn’t. But she was certainly highly respectable and refined
nowadays. Plenty of backchat and giggles, but an almost painful propriety.
Rowley glanced up at the clock. He’d go along to the Stag right away. To hell with all those
forms. He wanted to know what it was that Beatrice was so anxious to tell him.
It was a little after eight when he pushed open the door of the saloon bar. There were the usual
greetings, nods of the head, “Evening, sir.” Rowley edged up to the bar and asked for a
Guinness. Beatrice beamed upon him.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Rowley.”
“Evening, Beatrice. Thanks for your note.”
She gave him a quick glance.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Rowley.”
He nodded—and drank his half pint meditatively whilst he watched Beatrice finish serving out.
She called over her shoulder and presently the girl Lily came in to relieve her. Beatrice murmured,
“If you’ll come with me, Mr. Rowley?”
She led him along a passage and in through a door marked Private. Inside it was very small and
overfurnished with plush armchairs, a blaring radio, a lot of china ornaments and a rather battered-
looking pierrot doll thrown across the back of a chair.
Beatrice Lippincott turned off the radio and indicated a plush armchair.
“I’m ever so glad you came up, Mr. Rowley, and I hope you didn’t mind my writing to you
—but I’ve been turning it over in my mind all over the weekend—and as I said I really felt you
ought to know what’s going on.”
She was looking happy and important, clearly pleased with herself.
Rowley asked with mild curiosity:
“What is going on?”
“Well, Mr. Rowley, you know the gentleman who’s staying here—Mr. Arden, the one you
came and asked about.”
“Yes?”
“It was the very next evening. Mr. Hunter came along and asked for him.”
“Mr. Hunter?”
Rowley sat up interestedly.
“Yes, Mr. Rowley. No. 5, I said, and Mr. Hunter nodded and went straight up. I was surprised
I must say, for this Mr. Arden hadn’t said he knew any one in Warmsley Vale and I’d kind of
taken it for granted he was a stranger here and didn’t know any one in the place. Very out of
temper Mr. Hunter looked, as though something had happened to upset him but of course I
didn’t make anything of it then.”
She paused for breath. Rowley said nothing, just listened. He never hurried people. If they liked
to take their time it suited him.
Beatrice continued with dignity:
“It was just a little later I had occasion to go up to No. 4 to see to the towels and the bed linen.
That’s next door to No. 5, and as it happens there’s a communicating door—not that you’d
know it from No. 5 because the big wardrobe there stands right across it, so that you wouldn’t
know there was a door. Of course it’s always kept shut but as it happened this time it was just a
bit open—though who opened it I’ve no idea, I’m sure!”
Again Rowley said nothing, but just nodded his head.
Beatrice, he thought, had opened it. She had been curious and had gone up deliberately to No. 4
to find out what she could.
“And so you see, Mr. Rowley, I couldn’t help hearing what was going on. Really, you could
have knocked me over with a feather—”
A pretty substantial feather, thought Rowley, would be needed.
He listened, with an impassive, almost bovine face, to Beatrice’s succinct account of the
conversation she had overheard. When she had finished, she waited expectantly.
It was fully a couple of minutes before Rowley came out of his trance. Then he got up.
“Thanks, Beatrice,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
And with that he went straight out of the room. Beatrice felt somewhat deflated. She really did
think, she said to herself, that Mr. Rowley might have said something.
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