A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie Page B

and a vast gilt bed. On one side of the room was a door into a mirror-lined bathroom with a sunk orchid-pink porcelain bath. Beyond the bathroom, reached by a communicating door, was Rex Fortescue’s dressing room. Neele went back into Adele’s bedroom, and through the door on the farther side of the room into her sitting room.
    The room was furnished in Empire style with a rose pile carpet. Neele only gave it a cursory glance for that particular room had had his close attention on the preceding day—with special attention paid to the small elegant desk.
    Now, however, he stiffened to sudden attention. On the centre of the rose pile carpet was a small piece of caked mud.
    Neele went over to it and picked it up. The mud was still damp.
    He looked round—there were no footprints visible—only this one isolated fragment of wet earth.
    IV
    Inspector Neele looked round the bedroom that belonged to Gladys Martin. It was past eleven o’clock—Crump had come in half an hour ago—but there was still no sign of Gladys. Inspector Neele looked round him. Whatever Gladys’s training had been, her own natural instincts were slovenly. The bed, Inspector Neele judged, was seldom made, the windows seldom opened. Gladys’s personal habits, however, were not his immediate concern. Instead, he went carefully through her possessions.
    They consisted for the most part of cheap and rather pathetic finery. There was little that was durable or of good quality. The elderly Ellen, whom he had called upon to assist him, had not been helpful. She didn’t know what clothes Gladys had or hadn’t. She couldn’t say what, if anything, was missing. He turned from the clothes and the underclothes to the contents of the chest of drawers. There Gladys kept her treasures. There were picture postcards and newspaper cuttings, knitting patterns, hints on beauty culture, dressmaking and fashion advice.
    Inspector Neele sorted them neatly into various categories. The picture postcards consisted mainly of views of various places where he presumed Gladys had spent her holidays. Amongst them were three picture postcards signed “Bert.” Bert, he took to be the “young man” referred to by Mrs. Crump. The first postcard said—in an illiterate hand: “All the best. Missing you a lot. Yours ever, Bert.” The second said: “Lots of nice-looking girls here but not one that’s a patch on you. Be seeing you soon. Don’t forget our date. And remember after that—it’s thumbs up and living happy ever after.” The third said merely: “Don’t forget. I’m trusting you. Love, B.”
    Next, Neele looked through the newspaper cuttings and sorted them into three piles. There were the dressmaking and beauty hints, there were items about cinema stars to which Gladys had appeared greatly addicted and she had also, it appeared, been attracted by the latest marvels of science. There were cuttings about flying saucers, about secret weapons, about truth drugs used by Russians, and claims for fantastic drugs discovered by American doctors. All the witchcraft, so Neele thought, of our twentieth century. But in all the contents of the room there was nothing to give him a clue to her disappearance. She had kept no diary, not that he had expected that. It was a remote possibility. There was no unfinished letter, no record at all of anything she might have seen in the house which could have had a bearing on Rex Fortescue’s death. Whatever Gladys had seen, whatever Gladys had known, there was no record of it. It would still have to be guesswork why the second tea tray had been left in the hall, and Gladys herself had so suddenly vanished.
    Sighing, Neele left the room, shutting the door behind him.
    As he prepared to descend the small winding stairs he heard a noise of running feet coming along the landing below.
    The agitated face of Sergeant Hay looked up at him from the bottom