It seemed wrong somehow to keep these ill-gotten gains, she had no need of money, and so yesterday she had returned to Regent Street for the first time since the “handbag incident,” as she now thought of it, and had quietly handed the money to the blind cornetist. His repertoire had not grown any more joyful in the intervening time.
She had helped him secure the money in the inside pocket of his coat—to leave it in his instrument case would have been an open invitation to theft. He was horribly grateful, almost overcome. In the end she had helped him pack up his cornet and had retired with him to a nearby café, where they drank tea together and she learnt that his name was Herbert but that he liked to be called Bert and before the war he had played in dance bands on the great ocean-going liners, finishing up on the Mauretania. Gwendolen wondered if she could bring him on board her own ship, the Crystal Cup. She supposed decisions like that had to be referred back to Nellie. And perhaps his melancholy spirits would be unwelcome in the Crystal’s dance band. They were a jolly lot, rightly disinclined to introspection.
Given the hours that she now worked (how different from library hours!) she had had some time to pursue her lost lambs, but to no avail. Despite her assurances to Frobisher, she had returned to Henrietta Street, but her efforts to speak to the occupant came to nought. She had, somewhat against her will, gone to see The Green Hat. She had not asked Frobisher but had gone on her own, hoping that, against the odds, Freda might somehow appear on the stage. She did not.
The lambs remained stubbornly lost and, working on the principle that no news is good news, Gwendolen did not report her lack of findings back to York.
After that first social call to the flat (or “inspection,” more accurately), Gwendolen had not seen Nellie again. Ramsay was the Coker who had been delegated to steer her passage through the protocol of the clubs, a subject on which he was remarkably apathetic. He was writing a novel, he said with some pride. He was green, almost naive, yet Gwendolen couldn’t help but warm towards him, the elder sister in her rekindled.
All this had been duly reported to Frobisher in the Refreshment Rooms in Paddington.
She was back from Paddington by midmorning and had time to consider what would be the most suitable outfit for the afternoon’s excursion. She had been pleasantly surprised by Frobisher’s invitation—it would be nice to get away from the grime of London’s sooty streets, even nicer to get away from them with Frobisher. Although, of course, it would have been nicest of all—the superlative—to have gone away with Niven. She had seen neither hide nor hair of him since she had started work at the Crystal Cup. (“Comes and goes like a tomcat,” Nellie said.) Gwendolen was disappointed yet relieved. She had a core of iron, but he was a lodestone. There could be no sound outcome with a man like that. All would be ruined.
The sailor-collared dress, she decided, even though they were not going on the water. French blue with a crisp white trim. And her new straw hat.
* * *
—
“I hope you are not absent without leave, Inspector,” Gwendolen said as she climbed into the passenger seat of his car.
“Quite the opposite,” he said. “I told the station that I would be out for the rest of the day on police business.”
“Is that what I am? Police business?”
“Exactly so. You’re an informant, Miss Kelling.”
Gwendolen found herself shrinking from that word. It implied calumny. Treachery, even. And yet he was right, wasn’t he?
“In the service of the greater good,” he mollified her, although rather pompously, in Gwendolen’s opinion. It seemed to make him fret constantly that she would somehow be enticed into nothing short of sin by the Cokers. Was he religious? Did that account for it? Or a Robespierre, driven by the purity of a revolution?
Nellie Coker was Frobisher’s bête noire, or perhaps the white whale that he had determined to pursue to the death. Was she really worth harpooning? She had corrupted Bow Street, he said. She corrupted everyone she came into contact with. “Not me,” Gwendolen cheerfully assured him.
They had rendezvoused this time at King’s Cross—perhaps they would eventually do the round of all the major London train stations. Frobisher pulled up at the taxi rank, engine idling, and she jumped in the passenger seat.
“Oh, my goodness, you have a dog, Inspector!” She hadn’t seen the dog at first—it was sitting quietly on the back seat, waiting to be noticed. Now it sat up and regarded her with a hopeful expression. She leant over and scratched its head. “He’s such a sweet little thing. What is he? A fox terrier?”
Frobisher glanced over his shoulder and gave the dog a quizzical look. The dog seemed to return the look. “I don’t think he’s a particular breed, more of a mongrel.”
Having a dog added a new dimension to Frobisher in Gwendolen’s eyes. She had not taken him for a dog owner. She thought of the Alsatian that had been with Niven the first time she met him. It had seemed to reflect its master’s character, as dogs often do. She wouldn’t have taken Frobisher for a small, appealing terrier.
“What’s he called?”
Frobisher took a moment to think. Surely he knew the name of his own dog? “Pierrot,” he said eventually, sounding as if he were inventing it on the spot.
“Pierrot?” Gwendolen said. “He doesn’t look like a Pierrot. He’s more of a Spike or a Smudge or a Pickle.”
“I didn’t name him,” Frobisher said, and before she could ask who had, he said, “We have to move. There is an angry cab driver bearing down on us. I think we’ve stolen his spot.”
* * *
—
Frobisher had drawn up a list of several possible destinations for their outing in his new car, but after she had climbed in Gwendolen said, “I was wondering—is Oxford too far for you, Inspector?”
“Oxford?” He was surprised. “Not at all. The city of dreaming spires. Oxford it is.” Still sparkling, she noted. (Keep it up, Frobisher!)
The drive west out of town was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. Frobisher was a gung-ho driver who didn’t seem to have had any tuition and with very little idea of how a motor car worked, and Gwendolen found herself holding on grimly to her seat in the little car for most of the journey through the Chilterns. (“Forty miles an hour top speed, Miss Kelling!”) It was hard not to compare his motoring skills to those of Niven, who handled his beautiful, extravagant car with such casual competence. Niven had embraced the machine age in a way that Frobisher clearly had not.
Neither could Gwendolen help comparing her current feelings to what they would have been if she had been sitting next to Niven in the Hispano-Suiza, flying through the pretty rural villages, one after another. What would be at the end of that road? With Frobisher it would be tea and a tour of the colleges; with Niven she suspected their destination would be something different.
Frobisher had rather hesitantly put her in charge of directions, in the shape of an Automobile Association touring map of Great Britain (published, she noticed, by her old friend Bartholomew). “I was once a Girl Guide,” she reassured him. “I may have little sense of direction, but I can read a map.”
They stopped in Amersham for lunch—decent steak pies and half-pint mugs of cider in a pub garden. The dog sat at their feet and was rewarded with a sausage from the pub kitchen.