Chapter 6. Exercise in Detection
‘Where do you think the body was? About here?’ asked Giles.
He and Gwenda were standing in the front hall of Hillside. They had arrived back the night before, and Giles was now in full cry. He was as pleased as a small boy with his new toy.
‘Just about,’ said Gwenda. She retreated up the stairs and peered down critically. ‘Yes-I think that’s about it.’
‘Crouch down,’ said Giles. ‘You’re only about three years old, you know.’
Gwenda crouched obligingly.
‘You couldn’t actually see the man who said the words?’
***
‘It’s rather a forlorn hope,’ said Giles to Gwenda. ‘But you never know. I don’t think we’ll write. We’ll go there together and exert our personality.’
Calcutta Lodge was surrounded by a neat trim garden, and the sitting-room into which they were shown was also neat if slightly overcrowded. It smelt of bees-wax and Ronuk. Its brasses shone. Its windows were heavily festooned.
A thin middle-aged woman with suspicious eyes came into the room.
Giles explained himself quickly, and the expression of one who expects to have a vacuum cleaner pushed at her left Miss Galbraith’s face.
‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I can help you,’ she said. ‘It’s so long ago, isn’t it?’
‘One does sometimes remember things,’ said Gwenda.
‘Of course I shouldn’t know anything myself. I never had any connection with the business. A Major Halliday, you said? No, I never remember coming across anyone in Dillmouth of that name.’
‘Your father might remember, perhaps,’ said Gwenda.
‘Father?’ Miss Galbraith shook her head. ‘He doesn’t take much notice nowadays, and his memory’s very shaky.’
Gwenda’s eyes were resting thoughtfully on a Benares brass table and they shifted to a procession of ebony elephants marching along the mantelpiece.
‘I thought he might remember, perhaps,’ she said, ‘because my father had just come from India. Your house is called Calcutta Lodge?’
She paused interrogatively.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Galbraith. ‘Father was out in Calcutta for a time. In business there. Then the war came and in 1920 he came into the firm here, but would have liked to go back, he always says. But my mother didn’t fancy foreign parts-and of course you can’t say the climate’s really healthy. Well, I don’t know-perhaps you’d like to see my father. I don’t know that it’s one of his good days-’
She led them into a small black study. Here, propped up in a big shabby leather chair sat an old gentleman with a white walrus moustache. His face was pulled slightly sideways. He eyed Gwenda with distinct approval as his daughter made the introductions.
‘Memory’s not what it used to be,’ he said in a rather indistinct voice. ‘Halliday, you say? No, I don’t remember the name. Knew a boy at school in Yorkshire-but that’s seventy-odd years ago.’
‘He rented Hillside, we think,’ said Giles.
‘Hillside? Was it called Hillside then?’ Mr Galbraith’s one movable eyelid snapped shut and open. ‘Findeyson lived there. Fine woman.’
‘My father might have rented it furnished…He’d just come from India.’
‘India? India, d’you say? Remember a fellow-Army man. Knew that old rascal Mohammed Hassan who cheated me over some carpets. Had a young wife-and a baby-little girl.’
‘That was me,’ said Gwenda firmly.
‘In-deed-you don’t say so! Well, well, time flies. Now whatwas his name? Wanted a place furnished-yes-Mrs Findeyson had been ordered to Egypt or some such place for the winter-all tomfoolery. Now what was his name?’
‘Halliday,’ said Gwenda.
‘That’s right, my dear-Halliday. Major Halliday. Nice fellow. Very pretty wife-quite young-fair-haired, wanted to be near her people or something like that. Yes, very pretty.’
‘Who were her people?’
‘No idea at all. No idea. You don’t look like her.’
Gwenda nearly said, ‘She was only my stepmother,’ but refrained from complicating the issue. She said, ‘What did she look like?’
***
Giles did not, after all, find it necessary to go to London. Though his energetic nature always made him prone to rush hither and thither and try to do everything himself, he admitted that a purely routine enquiry could be delegated.
He put through a trunk call to his office.
‘Got it,’ he exclaimed enthusiastically, when the expected reply arrived.
From the covering letter he extracted a certified copy of a marriage certificate.
‘Here we are, Gwenda. Friday, Aug. 7th Kensington Registry Office. Kelvin James Halliday to Helen Spenlove Kennedy.’
Gwenda cried out sharply!
‘Helen?’
They looked at each other.
Giles said slowly: ‘But-but-it can’t beher. I mean-they separated, and she married again-and went away.’
‘We don’t know,’ said Gwenda, ‘that she went away…’
She looked again at the plainly written name:
Helen Spenlove Kennedy.
Helen…