‘Goodbye,’ said Tommy. ‘And for God’s sake, Tuppence, don’t go poking into something that’s none of your business.’ ‘I think,’ said Tuppence, meditatively, ‘that what I shall really do, is to take a few railway journeys.’ Tommy looked slightly relieved.
‘Yes,’ he said encouragingly, ‘you try that. Buy yourself a season ticket. There’s some scheme where you can travel a thousand miles all over the British Isles for a very reasonable £txed sum. That ought to suit you down to the ground, Tuppence. You travel by all the trains you can think of in all the likely parts. That ought to keep you happy until I come home. again.’ ‘Give my love to Josh.’ ‘I will.’ He added, looking at his wife in a worried manner, ‘I wish you were coming with me. Don’t – don’t do anythin stupid, will you?’ ‘Of course not,’ said Tuppence.
CHAPTER6
Tuppence on the Trail
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Tuppence, ‘oh dear.’ She looked round he with gloomy eyes. Never, she said to herself, had she felt more miserable. Naturally she had known she would miss Tommy but she had no idea how much she was going to miss him.
During the long course of their married life they had hardly ever been separated for any length of time. Starting before theis marriage, they had called themselves a pair of’young adventurers’.
They had been through various difficulties and danger’, together, they had married, they had had two children and jus as the world was seeming rather dull and middle-aged to them, the second war had come about and in what seemed an almosl miraculous way they had been tangled up yet again on the outskirts of the British Intelligence. A somewhat ,.morthodo pair, they had been recruited by a quiet nondescript man wh{ called himself ‘Mr Carter’, but to whose word everybod] seemed to bow. They had had adventures, and once again the, had had them together. This, by the way, had not been planned by Mr Carter. Tommy alone had been recruited. But Tuppence displaying all her natural ingenuity, had managed to eavesdrop in such a fashion that when Tommy had arrived a’ a guest house on the sea coast in the role of a certain M: Meadows, the first person he hd seen there had been a middle-aged lady plying knitting rseedles, who lhd looked up at him with innocent eyes and whom he had b%n forced to greet as Mrs Blenkinsop. Thereafter they had WOrked as a pair.
However, thought Tuppence to herself, I can t do it this time.’ No amount of eavesdropping, of ingenuity or anything else would take her to the recesses of Hush Hush Manor or to participation in the intricacies of I.U.A.S. Just n Old Boys Club, she thought resentfully, without Tommy the flat was empty, the world was lonely, and ‘What on eaeah,’ thought Tuppence, ‘am I to do with myself?.’ The question was really purely rl.etori,cal for Tppence had already started on the first steps of ¢nat she pmnnd to do with herself. There was no question this time ofintellignee work, of counter-espionage or anything of that kind. Ntthing of an official nature. ‘Prudence Beresford, Private [nvestigator, that’s what I am,’ said Tuppence to herself.
After a scrappy lunch had beeo hastily cleared away, the dining-room table was strewn with railway time-tables, guide books, maps, and a few old diaries which Ttlppence had managed to disinter.
Some time in the last three years (not longer, She was sure) she had taken a railway journey, and looking out o’the carriage window, had noticed a house. But, what railway Journey?
Like most people at the present time, the Beresfords travelled mainly by car. The railway journeys they took were few and far between.
Scotland, of course, when they went to sta3 with their married daughter Deborah – but that was a night journey.
Penzance – summer holidays – got Tuppence khew that line by heart.
No, this had been a much more casual journey, With diligence and perseverance, Tuppence had made a meticulous list of all thepossible jotrneys, she had taken which might correspond to what she was looking for. On or two race meetings, a visit to Northumberlatd, two possille places in Wales, a christening, two weddings, a sale they hd attended, some puppies she had once delivered for a friend! who bred them and who had gone down with influenza. The meeting place had been an arid-looking country junction whose name she couldn’t remember.