The Galloway Case Read online

  I still hadn’t discovered where she worked or why she’d come to Jersey. I teased her about it a little, pretending she was deliberately trying to give herself an enticing aura of mystery. She laughed and said there wasn’t any mystery, except quite temporarily, and that “later on’’ she’d tell me all about herself. I was curious, but I didn’t want to seem prying, and all I really cared about was that there should be a “later on’’—which seemed to be understood. We were going back on the boat together on Tuesday morning, and Mary was going to run me up to town in her car. She’d had to make a call in Hampshire on her way down from London, she said, so she’d driven to Southampton and garaged her car there. She still refused to commit herself about the future in words, but I felt pretty sure everything was going to be all right.

  We got back to St. Helier about teatime after our sail and went off to our respective hotels to change. It was our last evening and we were going to dine and dance again. I arranged to call for Mary at half past six. I still had the self-drive car and at twenty past six I drove round to the Paragon and sat down in the lobby to wait for her. She was a bit late coming down and I guessed she was making herself look specially terrific for this last night. I picked up a morning paper that was lying around and glanced through the headlines—I’d got shockingly behindhand with the news while I’d been in Jersey—but it was a thin, holiday paper and I soon put it aside. Presently I became aware that the porter was regarding me rather oddly. He knew me pretty well, of course, by now. After a moment he came over to me.

  “You’re not waiting for Miss Smith, are you, sir?’’ he said.

  “Yes. Why?’’

  “She’s left.’’

  I stared at him. “Left!’’

  “That’s right, sir. She checked out an hour ago. I believe she was catching the six o’clock plane to London.’’

  I continued to gaze at him stupidly. “But that’s impossible,’’ I said. “I was to meet her here at six-thirty.’’

  He looked quite concerned himself. “I’m sorry, sir—I’m afraid she’s gone, all right. Made up her mind all of a sudden, I s’pose.’’

  “But I was with her till nearly five and she said nothing then about going.… Surely she left some message for me?’’

  “No, sir, not that I know of.’’

  “Didn’t she say anything to you?’’

  “She just asked for her bill at the desk, sir, and said she wanted a taxi to the airport right away, and I called one, and off she went.’’

  “I see.…’’ I stood there for a moment, gazing at him helplessly. “Well, thank you …’’ I turned away, completely dazed. It seemed beyond belief that she could have gone off without getting in touch with me, without even leaving a note. It was beyond belief. It occurred to me that she might have dropped a message in at my own pub, which I hadn’t received yet, and I hurried back to ask. But there was nothing there.

  I went into the bar and ordered a double Scotch and tried to figure things out. If Mary and I had had any sort of quarrel, any misunderstandings or difficulties at all, I could have understood it better—but we hadn’t. I couldn’t think of a thing in our relationship to account for her abrupt and unexplained flight. We’d parted on the best of terms—on terms of tenderness, in fact. I knew she’d been looking forward to the evening and she’d seemed not to have a care in the world.

  I think I felt more baffled than angry at that moment. On the face of it, it was such a discourteous as well as heartless thing to do that I just couldn’t accept it at its face value. It seemed so utterly out of character. There must, I told myself, be some good explanation, some overriding reason. But what? Could there be some tie-up, I wondered, between this hurried flight and the extreme caginess Mary had shown about her job and her presence in Jersey? Had something suddenly cropped up in connection with her work?

  At that point I went back to the Paragon to make some more inquiries. The porter didn’t seem at all surprised to see me again. In fact, he was almost embarrassingly sympathetic.

  I said, “Do you know if Miss Smith had any telephone calls after she came in?’’

  “Definitely not, sir.’’

  “Did she telephone anyone herself?’’

  “No, sir.’’

  “Are you sure?’’

  “Positive, sir. If she’d rung from her room it’d have had to go through the switchboard and if she’d used the box down here I’d have seen her.’’

  “Did she go out at all?’’

  “No, sir.’’

  “Did she have any visitors?’’

  “No, sir.’’

  That seemed to be that. Whatever had sent her flying off, it didn’t look as though it could have been any new development from outside. That made the affair even more inexplicable.

  I said, “How did she seem when she went off? Was she agitated?—was she upset?’’

  “She was a bit pale, sir, I thought—and in a great hurry. That’s all.’’

  I nodded. For the moment, my inventive powers had come to an end—but I’d learned enough to settle my own course of action. She’d been pale. Something serious must have happened, even if it was only in her own mind. Perhaps she needed help. Clearly, I must go after her.

  It was only then that I realized, with a feeling close to panic, that I knew neither her address nor her telephone number. I snatched up the hotel register and turned to the entries for the previous Thursday. Mary’s entry read “Mary Smith, London.’’ There was no address. And even the name “Mary Smith’’ had suddenly begun to seem unconvincing. I put the register back and asked the receptionist if Miss Smith had reserved her room by phone or letter. The girl said neither, she’d just walked in off the boat and engaged it on the spot. I asked if she’d paid her bill by check or in cash, and the girl said in cash. I was getting nowhere fast.

  Then I had another idea. If Mary had left by air, she must have given her full name and address to the airport people for their passenger list. They wouldn’t have accepted “Mary Smith, London.’’ I went out to the car and drove straight to the airport. I had a bit of a job wheedling my way into the confidence of the girl clerk in the booking office, but in the end she turned up her records for me—and the information I wanted was there. “Mary Smith, 8 Landon Mews, London, S.W.1.’’ With infinite relief I wrote it down. It wouldn’t be long now before I was hearing Mary’s explanation from her own lips.

  I couldn’t get a seat on a plane that night, but I caught the first one out of Jersey next day and by mid-morning I was in a taxi on my way to Landon Mews. I’d no idea whether Mary would be home or not but I was free till evening and could wait all day if necessary. She’d have to come home sometime. I chafed a bit as the taxi got bogged down in a series of traffic blocks, but by twelve-fifteen I was there. I paid off the cab and walked up the Mews with a racing pulse. I passed numbers 1, 2, and 3, and stopped at number 4. I stopped there because that was where the Mews came to an end. There wasn’t a number 8. I knocked at the door of number 4 and described Mary to the woman who opened it, just in case there’d been some mistake over the number, but the woman said she didn’t know anyone like her. I went to the nearest post office and checked with the London directory to see if there was any other Landon Mews. There wasn’t, but there was a Landon Street in S.W.7. I picked up another cab and drove there. Number 8 was a grocer’s shop, and they knew nothing of Mary Smith. As a last resort, I tried a Clandon Mews in S.W.3. Then I gave up. It was no use deceiving myself any longer—there’d been no mistake. Mary had deliberately given a false address at Jersey airport, and as I was the only person who was likely to be on her trail she’d clearly done it with me in mind. Taken together with the fact that she’d left no message for me, the conclusion was inescapable. She’d ditched me. For some reason that I couldn’t begin to comprehend, she’d decided not to see me again.

  Chapter Two

  I was on the night turn at the Post that night, starting at eight o’clock. Apart from a sensational
murder story that the crime man had already been assigned to, there was almost no news about. That suited me well, for I’d never felt less in the mood for work. I stuck my feet on a desk in the Reporters’ Room and pretended to be dozing so that I wouldn’t be disturbed, and for the next hour or so I concentrated on the problem of Mary’s extraordinary behavior.

  There were, as far as I could see, two broad possibilities—neither of them very convincing. The first was the obvious one—that she’d simply had a change of heart about me. It would have had to be very sudden, of course, but such things did happen. It might have been connected with that former boy friend she’d mentioned. Perhaps she’d never really got him out of her system. She could have started her affair with me on the rebound, persuaded herself she was fond of me, and then had a sudden emotional bouleversement in the Paragon that evening, realized her mistake, and decided to make a clean break. It was feasible—but only just. For one thing, if she’d been as fundamentally unsettled as that I’d have expected to see some sign of instability in her manner. In fact, she’d been calm and relaxed. For another, I still couldn’t believe she’d have gone off without a word, however upset she’d been. It would have cost her nothing to scribble a farewell line.

  The second possibility, a much more melodramatic one, was that she’d been putting on an act all the time, using me for some secret purpose of her own and discarding me when I was no longer necessary to her. It seemed pretty fantastic, but then so was the way she’d behaved. And what, after all, did I really know about her or her mysterious visit to Jersey? A clever and attractive girl might be mixed up in almost anything, from crime to the intelligence service. Yet Mary wasn’t my idea of a modern Mata Hari or a gangster’s moll. Even if she had been, I couldn’t imagine what possible purpose a romantic affair with me would have served. And wasn’t it I who had started the affair and done all the running, not she? In any case, I had an inner conviction that her feelings toward me at the time had been genuine. I could be wrong, but in such matters one went by instinct and that was my instinct.

  Still baffled, I turned to the practical question of what I was going to do. In principle I hadn’t any doubt about that. If it was humanly possible I was going to find her. It wasn’t just that I was head over heels in love with her—her disappearance had become a challenge and my professional blood was up. I’d traced vanished persons for the Post before now with very little to go on and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be successful on my own account. Not that I underrated the peculiar difficulties in Mary’s case. I had the snapshots I’d taken of her in Jersey, which might help, but when I mentally totted up the bits of solid information I had about her I realized they amounted to almost nothing. I knew she was attractive and intelligent; I knew she had taste in clothes and the money to indulge it; I knew she read the Times and had traveled; I knew she could dance well; I knew she could sail a boat. That was about all. Everything else was what she’d told me and none of it need be true. I didn’t know for certain that she was a secretary or that she lived with a girl friend in London. Even the name she’d given me might not be her real name. Probably it wasn’t. I’d already rung the ten Mary Smiths in the London telephone directory as a routine move and none had been the right one. However, there was one clue that seemed to offer possibilities. Whatever Mary had been up to I couldn’t see why she should have told me she’d driven down to Southampton and garaged her car there if she hadn’t. And if she had, I might well be able to get on its track.

  I couldn’t do anything about it right away because I was sent off to East Anglia next day on a story. That assignment came to an end on Friday and I had Saturday free. By that time my snapshots of Mary had been developed and I collected them. They’d all come out pretty well and I found them horribly nostalgic. I put them in my pocket and drove straight down to Southampton. Mary had told me her car had been a present from her father but she hadn’t said what make it was, so it was a bit like looking for the proverbial needle. I spent all day calling at garages, showing my photographs, and talking to managers and mechanics. I was working through a list I’d compiled from a local directory and there were an awful lot of garages. I’d almost given up hope when, just before six, I suddenly got on the trail. The proprietor of a small garage in a back street near the station recognized Mary from her picture and my description. But that was as far as it went. She’d been driving, he thought, a Morris Ten, but he hadn’t any record of its registration number. She’d hired a lock-up for the weekend, he said, and with lockups they didn’t bother to make a note of the numbers. It was pretty sickening, because with a bit more luck my search could easily have ended right there. The only crumb of comfort, a small one, was that on this point at least Mary had told the truth.

  I didn’t have any more days off for a week and could do no more than plan the next move—which would have to be, I decided, a second visit to the Channel Islands. If Mary’s business in Jersey had been legitimate and I could trace her contacts there, I ought to be able to get her address. I waited till I had a couple of free days together and then flew back to St. Helier. I spent a grueling twenty-four hours in the town, trying to check Mary’s movements on the day she’d arrived. I talked to legions of taxi drivers, bus conductors, shopkeepers and policemen. I must have shown her picture to hundreds of people. Some of them thought they remembered seeing her around but they were all pretty vague. The key period seemed to have been the Thursday afternoon, more or less the same time that I’d been interviewing my financier. Apparently she’d left the Paragon at about three o’ clock, on foot, and had got back there about five. But where she’d been in those two hours remained a mystery. She’d seen someone, who might still be on the island, but there were fifty thousand inhabitants and I couldn’t interview them all. What I did do was call at the office of the local paper to see if I could get one of my snapshots reproduced as an advertisement. It turned out the quality wasn’t good enough but I did the next best thing and inserted a few carefully worded lines in the personal column seeking information about Mary Smith’s visit and address. Then I flew back to London. As far as Jersey was concerned I’d shot my bolt.

  When no replies came to my advertisement I seriously considered abandoning the search. I’d done all the straightforward things and any further inquiries were bound to be arduous. I told myself I was behaving like a damned fool, that the world was full of attractive and interesting women, that my feelings for Mary couldn’t have any real depth when I’d only known her for three days, and that if I made an effort I could soon put her out of my mind. But it didn’t work. You can’t argue yourself out of being in love. I tried taking out other girls I knew, charming girls, and it was pleasant enough but the spark was lacking. For me, Mary was unique. I didn’t want to put her out of my mind. I wanted to find her. I began to consider new lines of inquiry. There was the secretarial end, of course—though with confidential secretaries almost as common in London as pigeons it was difficult to know where to start looking. I’d probably be just as likely to find her by camping out in Piccadilly Circus Underground, where everyone was supposed to show up sooner or later. Still, I did try the larger agencies. When I drew a blank there I switched to the boat aspect—Mary might, I thought, have belonged to some yacht club. I called on most of the clubs in and around London but again I had no success.

  So far I hadn’t told anyone in the office what I was up to, but one night on the late turn when I was feeling pretty desperate and very much in need of a fresh view, I told the whole story to a friend and colleague named Harry Shawcross who was also a very shrewd reporter. He was amused, naturally, and extremely intrigued—and, as it turned out, helpful. He said, with a grin, “Have you tried the telephone directory?’’ I said I’d tried the Mary Smiths, but I hadn’t gone any further into the Smiths because I didn’t believe that was her real name anyway.

  He said, “Well, I don’t know about that, old boy—I’d have thought it probably was her real name.’’

  “Why?’’r />
  “Well, for one thing, if it was assumed I can’t see her drawing attention to its ordinariness the way she did when she told you what it was.… Anyhow, it was what she wrote in the hotel register, wasn’t it? And that was before she met you—before there was any question of deceiving you.’’

  “She could have been deceiving others.’’

  Harry shook his head. “If her business in Jersey was so secret that she needed to give a false name, I’d have thought she’d have been a bit more inventive. Mary Smith’s so commonplace it sticks out like a sore thumb. And wouldn’t she have added some address, the way she did at the airport? A phony address would have been much less conspicuous in the book than none at all. I may be wrong, old boy, but ‘Mary Smith, London’ sounds to me like the genuine entry of someone with nothing to hide. If I were you I’d get on the blower again.’’

  I wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed. I picked up the last volume of the London directory and paged through the Smiths. There were over a hundred columns of them—seven thousand entries, at a rough guess. Seven years for Rachel seemed modest by comparison! But only a small proportion would be “possibles’’—those where one of the initials was M. It was worth a try. I took a pencil and worked my way through the whole seven thousand, ticking the “possibles.’’ There were 276 Smiths with one of their initials M. I divided them into the more likely and the less likely. Mary, I thought, as a sophisticated business girl in no apparent need of money, would have chosen to live near Central London rather than in some out-of-the-way place on the fringe. The Post Office zoned its numbers according to distance from Oxford Circus so it was easy to sort them out. I drew up three lists. There were 66 entries within five miles of Oxford Circus, 143 in the next belt, and 67 in an outer belt.