From his movements she guessed what he was doing. “Are you going to waste that pudding?” she demanded.
“I’m not going to eat it, if that’s what you mean,” he replied.
“It’s sinful,” she said. “I waited all afternoon with the table set.”
A slight exaggeration. He let it go.
“How would you like to spend a fine Sunday afternoon sitting waiting to wash up after somebody?” she wanted to know. “So busy. Such an important man. Couldn’t spare one minute in all the livelong day to phone his home.”
He let that go, too. But: “Did you have tea at your mother’s?” he asked politely.
That checked her. In the same polite tone he followed up: “How is the old hellion?”
She was coldly contemptuous. “Guttersnipe talk doesn’t become you,” she said. “But perhaps you can’t help it.”
“No, I can’t. And she is, isn’t she? Look what she’s done to your stepfather. He started to disintegrate as soon as she married him. One of these days he’ll just fall to pieces, and she’ll be looking for her third.”
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. He had never been deliberately offensive about her mother before. He never sought trouble as a rule. What was the matter with him?
In their most vehement squabbles she had never once thought that their marriage might be broken up. They were husband and wife, and if they quarreled, well, he was in the wrong. It was-as she saw it-her duty as a wife to try and make him behave like the man she wanted him to be. She thought that she railed at him for his own good, to keep him up to the mark, to suppress his natural-but deplorable-masculine proclivity for low pubs, low companions, slack behavior and general vulgarity. She would have been shocked and humiliated if she had known that he had wearily ceased to care what happened to their marriage, and that once or twice he had actually wished that she would leave him.
Her belief in the permanency of their union was reasonable. She was a product of the police tradition of happy marriage. If a policeman was not happily married, he had to pretend to be. Even in so-called enlightened times, divorce or separation was frowned upon by police authorities. Policemen had to be respectable, and ambitious policemen had to be very respectable. A break between Martineau and his wife, with maintenance or alimony decided in court, would destroy all his prospects of promotion. His wife never suspected for one moment that he would consider parting from her and ruining his career.
So, now, she could see only one reason for his unusual aggressiveness. He was intoxicated. He concealed it very well, but he had had too much to drink.
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“I am not drunk,” he replied.
“You ought to think about your position before you go and get too much to drink in a pub. You ought to think about your wife and your home. You’ve got responsibilities.”
“Responsibility. Singular. If it were plural there’d be a different atmosphere in this house.”
Not that again, she thought. Always on about children! It was getting worse! Of course, drunken men always got sentimental about little toddlers.
She did not answer him, but rose from her chair and began to set the table. She thought she had better get out his supper and carry it from the kitchen. She was afraid that-being drunk-he might stumble and spill gravy on the carpet.
“You needn’t bother. I can do it,” he said.
She brought the warm plate and put it on a cork mat. “Get your supper,” she said.
He began to eat.
“How is it?” she asked.
The roast beef was tender. “Not bad at all,” he said.
“It was lovely at dinnertime.”
He grunted something which might have been agreement, or sarcastic comment.
“It serves you right,” she said.
“You sitting there with nowt to do but natter, that serves me right too,” he replied.
To hell with her. She could clear out of it for all he cared, and damn the promotion.
Still Julia did not perceive what was in his mind. “It’s always a mistake to argue with inebriated people,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”
After supper he played the piano until she knocked on the bedroom floor.
8
The next day, when people had read their morning papers, the telephone operators at Police Headquarters became very busy. There was a great increase in the number of citizens who thought they had seen Don Starling. The police knew that nearly all of them would be mistaken, but they patiently investigated each report. That was work for subordinates, and Martineau left it to them. He phoned Vanbrugh at the County office.
“Anything new from the hinterland?” he wanted to know.
“A little,” the County inspector replied. “We found a shepherd who saw a dark-blue car at about half past ten on Saturday morning. It was standing in that little dead end which comes out at the Moorcock.”
“Near the lane leading to the quarry?”
“Yes, quite near. He thinks it was a taxi, but he has no idea of the number or the make. He’s not even sure if it had a Hackney Carriage plate.”
“Not a very satisfactory witness, but his time is right, if he’s sure of it. That was their second getaway car, my boy. But where do you suppose they went from there?”
“I’ve been working on that. The check points were set, both on the Lancashire and Yorkshire sides, before they could have got away from the quarry. If Don Starling was with them, as we surmise, they could never have got through a check point. But there’s one way they could have missed all the checks, if one of them knew his way.”
“That other little road from the Moorcock?”
“Yes. I told you it went through to the main Granchester-Huddersfield road, which was checked. Well, it turns out that it crosses a road which passes through a place called Scammonden. From there they could have sneaked right out of the checking area.”
“And gone where?”
“Joined the traffic on the Wakefield and Doncaster road.” The races again, thought Martineau. Always the races. The heavy traffic going to the St. Leger.
“You think they went a-racing?” he asked.
“They could have. They would have, if they had any sense. Nobody would notice ’em in race traffic, once they got in the thick of it. There’d be hundreds if not thousands of cars and taxis filled with ugly mugs. And if they did happen to be caught with the money on the way back, well, they’d won it at the races.”
“That seems to be a good assumption.”
“Good enough to work on till it’s disproved. We can try and find out if anybody saw Don Starling at Doncaster. And who he was with.”
“The gang would separate, surely.”
“They might, and they might not. They’d probably think they were safe once they got on the course.”
“H’m, possibly,” Martineau assented. “Thanks a lot. I’ll keep you up-to-date with what we get.”
“I’m hoping you will,” said Vanbrugh. “I’m hoping we catch the lot of ’em, with enough evidence to swing ’em.”
After that, Martineau put out the word for all officers in contact with informers to find out if Don Starling had been seen at the St. Leger meeting, and in what company. Then he turned his attention to the call book.
“Anything good here?” he asked.
The clerk grinned. “Starling’s been seen all over the place,” he said. “And sometimes in two places at once. Take your pick, there’s plenty to do.”
Martineau’s glance followed his finger down the pages. The name “Mrs. Lusk” caught his eye. He read the item which concerned her. Some woman peeping through a window alleged that she had seen Don Starling walk to Mrs. Lusk’s door and try it, and hurry away. Apparently he did not knock, he just tried the door. That was early on Saturday evening. Lucky Lusk would be working behind the bar at the Lacy Arms at that time.
“So what was the idea?” Martineau pondered. “One would expect the door to be locked.”