Fear by Night by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

maid were going for a cruise on Mr. Halliday’s motor yacht. He was very sorry, but he didn’t know any more than that. He had only been engaged for the month, and it was the same with all the other servants. They were shutting up the house, and handing in the key to a firm of house-agents.
    â€œI’m very sorry, sir, I’m sure, but I expect they’ll have let the post office know about their letters, so if you was to write to this address, it would likely be forwarded.”
    Charles came away rather more disquieted than before.
    He wrote to Ann, and presently got the letter back again. It was clear that, whatever Mr. and Mrs. Halliday had done, Ann had either not had an opportunity of arranging for her letters to be forwarded or had not availed herself of it. She had promised to send him an address, but none came. He began to rake London for people who might possibly know something about Mr. James Halliday. The man who had hinted at rum-running was a chance-met club acquaintance and had most inopportunely departed to Norway. Everybody Charles wanted appeared to be somewhere else.
    He contrived in the end to meet unofficially one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, and of him made discreet inquiries. He did not find the interview a very reassuring one. On Charles’ side Ann appeared as a cousin who had taken a job which worried her family. It is doubtful whether the Assistant Commissioner was deceived by this camouflage. On his part it appeared that, as far as the police were concerned, Mr. James Halliday had no history. He had never been in prison. He had never been in the hands of the police. Officially, there was nothing against him.
    This should have been reassuring, but somehow it wasn’t. As the Assistant Commissioner talked, Charles received a very definite impression that Jimmy Halliday—he spoke of him as Jimmy Halliday—owed this enviable state of affairs not so much to the innocence of his character as to the astuteness of his brain. “He looks like a mug and he talks like a mug, and if he’d been half such a mug as he looks, we’d have landed him long ago.” Pressed by Charles, the Assistant Commissioner had almost as little to impart as the young footman at Westley Gardens.
    â€œHe’s gone off on a cruise,” said Charles.
    â€œHe started life as a sailor, I believe,” said the Assistant Commissioner.
    â€œMiss Vernon’s on board as his mother’s companion.”
    â€œOh, then I should think she’d be all right,” said the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully. “He’s a very good son, I believe. Your—er—cousin will be all right if she’s with the old lady. I can let you know where the yacht touches if you like.”
    It was ten days later that he got a line saying that the Emma had put in at Oban, and by the next post he got a picture postcard from Ann. It depicted the copy of the Acropolis which so incongruously crowns the hill above that West Highland port. Charles could have done without the picture and with more of the pencilled lines in which Ann addressed him as her darling Charles, announced that she was having the time of her life and was thinking of taking a permanent job as a cabin-boy, and concluded with the cryptic remark: “Films are off. This is the great out of doors.” There was a little “Ann” in the corner just slipping off the card.
    Charles called himself seven kinds of damn fool, had a couple of suit-cases packed, his car greased and filled up, and departed up the Great North Road, leaving the sale of Bewley hung up between the boot-manufacturer’s latest advance and his, Charles’, latest retreat.
    The Emma stayed twenty-four hours at Oban, took Gale Anderson on board in an unobtrusive manner, and put to sea again in halcyon weather. Ann was enjoying herself so much that she was ready to be friends with all the world, but even on a day