The Daffodil Affair Read Free Page A

of nearly all their clothes… Hudspith marched – as if behind Queen Anne’s Mansions, beyond the Underground’s clock, somewhere near Victoria station maybe, blew and wallowed that elusive Whale.
    Rideout: it was not, Hudspith thought, what you would call a tony name. On the other hand the address – a block of service flats here on the fringes of Westminster – suggested substance; and if the Rideouts were substantial the more substantial would be Hudspith’s severity. He had received no particulars; it was his habit to disregard the first, and often confused, report that came in; he had learnt, however, that there was a mother, a Mrs Rideout – and by this he was obscurely pleased. Mothers, when there were mothers, were commonly greatly to blame. Although Mrs Rideout could scarcely be herself the Whale, she might yet be abundantly deserving of one or two preliminary harpoons. Hudspith was accustomed to limber up in this way. He quickened his pace, turned a corner, and his objective was before him.
    The Rideouts were in the humblest station: there lay something of disappointment in this. Mrs Rideout was employed as a cleaner and her daughter as a waitress, and normally they lived ‘out’. But recently their home had disappeared in the night; this had moved Mrs Rideout to announce her intention of withdrawing to her sister’s in the country; whereupon the management of the flats where she was employed, being much in need of such services as Rideouts supply, had provided restricted but sufficient living quarters on the premises. Through the basement, past the ironing-room and the two small storerooms, the temporary abode of the Rideouts would be found.
    Hudspith, having learnt so much from a melancholy porter whose own living quarters appeared to be in a lift, descended menacingly into the cold, the half-light and the gloom. It was familiar territory. Like the poet, but perhaps from a more pressing professional necessity, he was much aware of the damp souls of housemaids; he knew how easily perdition attended their despondent sprouting at area gates. And he knew – he told himself – all about Lucy Rideout, the half-witted waitress. Unsettlement, cramped quarters with an uncongenial parent, inadequate privacy, the constant sight of expensive or at least prosperous living upstairs, the drift of male guests – themselves often unsettled, uprooted: in all this – and in the pictures, the glamorized advertisements, the pulsing sexy music – the story lay. Had he not probed it a hundred times? And Hudspith marched on, confident in his abundant experience, his often-tested technique. Hudspith marched against the demons – all unaware of the curiously literal way in which, far in the distance, demons awaited him.
    Mrs Rideout had friends. Almost might she be said, in upstairs language, to be receiving – for two ladies were coming away as Hudspith reached the door; a third, approaching from some other angle through this subterraneous world, was making a ceremonious claim for admittance; and from inside there came a murmur of voices and a chink of cups. Here however was nothing to confound the experienced investigator; it would be untoward were Mrs Rideout found enjoying her sensational sorrow in solitude.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ said Hudspith to his fellow visitor. ‘A sad occasion this, marm; very sad indeed.’
    ‘What I asks,’ said the visitor, ‘is – where was the police?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Hudspith. ‘Where, indeed? But they’re here now, missis.’ With subdued drama he tapped himself on the chest. ‘Come along.’
    The woman, who had been about to open the door, paused round-eyed. ‘Toomer’s my name,’ she said. Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Would it be worse than death?’
    Hudspith frowned austerely. ‘That remains to be seen.’ And he opened the door and ushered Mrs Toomer – she was a dim-featured, almost obliterated woman – into the Rideout home.
    It was possible – or it ought to