‘I’ll be perfectly all right.’
‘Yes, but I won’t be perfectly all right if I hear afterwards that you’ve been mugged or raped, or knocked out and left for dead. You’d better come up to my flat; we’ll phone the police from there and then I’ll walk back with you.’
Without waiting for her answer, he went through to the main hall, and up the wide curving staircase, clearly assuming she would follow him. Since there did not seem to be anything else to do, Antonia fought down her annoyance and did follow him.
The main stairs wound up to the first floor where Godfrey Toy had his flat, and a narrower flight went up to the second floor. Oliver Remus unlocked a door at the top, and went in ahead of Antonia, switching on lights. The flat was surprisingly large; it apparently took up the entire second floor of Quire, and the rooms were high-ceilinged with an elegant fireplace in the big sitting room and several nice old pieces of furniture. There were a great many books, some on shelves, some spilling onto the floor, and there were brass lamps on side tables, and scatterings of pens and sheaves of notes. In one of the window recesses was a large Victorian desk, with a computer and a fax machine on it. A battered suitcase stood in the centre of the room, with two large boxes of books propped against it.
‘Gleanings of the trip,’ said Oliver Remus, seeing Antonia glance at the boxes. ‘A house that belonged to a former headmaster of a minor public school. I picked up two quite nice first editions and a Rex Whistler book plate. Oh, and a set of Ruskin’s books but only what’s called the Waverley editions which aren’t particularly valuable. Would you like me to phone the police for you? It’d probably carry more weight.’
‘Because they know you?’
‘That sounds as if you think I’m an old lag, Miss Weston.’ It was lightly said, but Antonia’s eyes flew upwards to his face. ‘You’d better have a glass of brandy first, though. Antidote to shock.’
He poured the brandy, and then checked an address book and made the call, merely saying that there were signs of a break in at Charity Cottage and that the cottage was presently occupied by a lady living on her own. He listened to the voice at the other end for a moment, and then said quite sharply, ‘Yes, I do think you should send someone out at once. I don’t know if anything’s been taken, but Miss Weston’s presumably got to sleep in the cottage tonight and if the prowler’s still around…’ There was a pause, and then he handed the phone to Antonia. ‘They’re sending someone out to take a look round and get statements in about half an hour, but they’d like more details from you first. It’s Sergeant Blackburn.’
He left her to it, going into one of the other rooms–presumably his bedroom because he took the suitcase with him–but even though he closed the door Antonia thought he could probably hear what she was saying. Infuriatingly, relayed to the stolid-sounding sergeant, the two incidents sounded like the delusions of a neurotic female: the first ridiculously trivial–the cat got in without my seeing how or where; the second over-dramatic. A hangman’s noose tied to a beam in the kitchen, left there for her to find.
Yes, she had said a hangman’s noose. Yes, she was sure. No, she had not touched anything, she had simply got out of the cottage as fast as—Well, presumably the thing was still there, unless the person had sneaked back in and removed it in her absence. ‘I should think that’s perfectly possible, shouldn’t you, Sergeant?’
Sergeant Blackburn said cautiously that anything was possible when you were dealing with the workings of a disturbed mind, madam, and passed on to the question that Antonia had known would come at some point.