The sergeant said, “Good morning,” in a commendatory and very cheerful way, as if he had come to sell something.
The woman behind the bar had finished rinsing the glass and was now screwing a towel into it. She trained a sad eye upon Love and gave her head a little upward toss which opened her mouth at the same time.
“A pint of your best bitter,” declared Love, who knew about robust country ways.
The woman looked about her, searched for a moment beneath the bar counter, and retreated through a door at her back. When she re-appeared, she was carrying a pint glass, which she held to the light and rubbed round the rim with a middle finger before filling it with beer, which she did by twice pouring the contents of a half-pint glass into it.
“Oh, Sadie, for heaven’s sake!”
It was the white-haired woman. She had been watching the performance with a thin, mocking smile. Now she turned to Love.
“The dear, dear girl always but always goes through this...” she flapped a hand weakly—“...this thing with beer. But you mustn’t take any notice. Sadie’s really rather a darling.”
The sergeant guessed at once that here was Gentry, if not actual Aristocracy. He gave the woman a grin, then offered another, much smaller, to Sadie, who had gone back to screwing her towel into glasses.
“Connie Whybrow,” announced the woman, without the italics this time. Her face was assertively uptilted, friendly.
Lucky me, Love told himself. A listed person at first shot.
“Pleased to meet you.” He did not volunteer his identity. She would ask him, though. Funny thing, the upper ten were not polite.
She looked him up and down and glanced at his pint. “Insurance, Mr...?”
He shook his head promptly and cheerily. “The name’s Love, actually.”
“Good God!”
“Sidney Love,” he added, hastily. He had expected a little upper-class banter, but Mrs Whybrow’s habit of heavy syllabic emphasis was most disconcerting.
“Love...Sidney Love...Sidney Love...” Musingly she repeated the words. “But how absolutely too sweet.” She reached suddenly and captured his forearm which she gently pulled to and fro whilst addressing the barmaid:
“Sadie, did you hear? Did you hear the gentleman’s name? Now you must open a bottle of champagne or give us all drinks on the house or just simply cavort or something.”
Sadie responded by moving to the other end of the bar, where she began to refill the roasted peanut dispenser.
“But you should be in insurance,” Mrs Whybrow asserted. “I mean, round here you’d just take people’s money for ever. I mean nobody ever dies, so you wouldn’t have to pay out, would you?”
Love said he supposed not.
Mrs Whybrow, who had released his arm once, now seized it again.
“Never mind,” she said. “With such an absolutely marvellous name, I’m sure you must do something quite wildly exciting, and I think the village ought to be thrilled about it.”
Love swallowed. “I’m a policeman, as a matter of fact, Mrs Whybrow.”
As he told Purbright afterwards, the words had come out of their own accord, like a cry for help. “You blew your cover, Sid,” Purbright was to tell him, but only in fun.
The strong bony hand tightened its grip. “A policeman!” The voice, dry with smoking and gin, had become suddenly hard as a mans. But then it trilled away huskily once more: an echo from some Claridge’s party in the thirties.
“Oh, but that’s much too good to be true. I’m sorry, but I simply don’t believe you, Mr Cupid. You don’t look in the least like a policeman.”
Which happened to be true. Love tried to scowl. He muttered “Detective sergeant” and took a gulp of his drink.
“Do tell me,” said Mrs Whybrow, with furtive leer, “what you’ve come to investigate. Is it something terribly...” The adjective eluding her, she flapped the hand that seemed to serve as a subsidiary vocabulary.
Love used the opportunity to move and sit down just beyond danger of further arrest.
“Routine,” he said airily. “Stolen property. Missing persons. We get these lists. I mean, there’s no one here actually suspected.” Exposure to Mrs Whybrow’s verbal idiosyncrasy clearly carried the risk of infection.
“My dear sweet, I cannot bring myself to believe that. This village is absolutely swarming with suspicious characters. They come in, you know.”
“Foreigners?” Love knew country-dwellers liked quaint terms.
“Oh, no—English,” insisted Mrs Whybrow, who had been born and bred in South London. “That makes it worse...or am I being old-fashioned and tiresome?”
“Not a bit, madam,” Love assured her. The “madam” brought a cracked whoop of delight from Mrs Whybrow. She chain-lit another cigarette and ground the discarded stub into an ashtray as if into the face of an enemy.
Love wondered if this would be a good moment to begin the establishment of confidence. He glanced at the small quantity of colourless liquid in Mrs Whybrow’s glass. It looked like something pretty expensive. Better not rush things.
“Sad about Mr Loughbury,” he said.
Mrs Whybrow stared at him. “What do you mean, sad?” One eye was screwed shut to escape the thin blue fume from the cigarette; the other glared in disbelief.
Love shrugged and blew out his cheeks a little.
“Sa...a...ad?” bleated Mrs Whybrow with terrible irony.
Again Love gave a little lift to his shoulders. “Not nice. Dying...” He pouted and regarded one shoe in a melancholy fashion.
At that moment, Love heard someone enter the room and walk heavily to the bar. Mrs Whybrow grinned past him at the new arrival.
“Morning, Win.”
Love heard a grunt, then the rattle of coins on wood. Guardedly, he turned his head.