The Case Of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth Page B

big cases than I should have time to tell you about. The Yard owes her a great deal more than it is likely to acknowledge. She’s about the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, and what she herself would call a gentlewoman. If you feel you are getting out of your depth, I should advise you to go and see her. Here’s her name and address, and here’s your bus. See you some time.’
    Chapter Thirteen
    Frank Abbott had had a very busy week. A corn-chandler’s wife in Wapping went missing after a violent quarrel with her husband and had to be traced. Husbands in the most peaceable professions have been known to murder quarrelsome wives, and Wapping is convenient to the river. After a number of voluble neighbours had been interviewed, some dark suspicions hinted at, and a false trail which finished up at a mortuary at Gravesend investigated, it transpired that Mrs. Wilkins was visiting a friend in Hammersmith with the possibly illusory hope that her husband’s heart was being rendered fonder by her absence.
    A good deal of energy having been wasted and a good deal of time taken up, Sergeant Abbott would have been in a fair way to forgetting his brief encounter with William Smith if it had not been suddenly recalled to his mind. Then the telephone informed him that his cousin Mildred Darcy had arrived in England after a seven years’ absence. She appeared overjoyed to be back, and wanted, in rapid succession, to know whether policemen ever had any time off duty; if they did, when would he be having any; and what about dining with her and George at the Luxe tonight.
    Frank was reputed to have more cousins than anyone else in England and to be on good terms with them all. Seven years is a long time, and people are apt to change in the East, but he had always been very good friends with Mildred, and he thought he would like to see her again. She had been flighty, fluffy, and charmingly incompetent. He wondered if her rather notable complexion had survived. George he remembered as a heavy, worthy young man eminently suited to his probable role of providing ballast.
    He accepted the invitation to dinner, and at the appointed hour arrived to find George less noticeably earnest, but Mildred a good deal more inconsequent than he remembered her. The complexion was gone, and so was the charm. She looked out of date in more than the matter of clothes and hair, but she was obviously in high spirits and affectionately pleased to see him again. Under an appearance of rather mannered indifference Frank was clannish. He found himself shaking George by the hand and responding to Mildred’s pleasure. And then, right across all that, there jigged the recollection of William Smith.
    Mildred was saying, ‘I can’t think when we met last,’ and all of a sudden he remembered that it was at the party where he had seen William Smith, whom he recalled not as William or Smith, but simply Bill. Bill — and a girl in a gold dress. Up to this moment they were the only two whom he could have sworn to out of all the guests who must have been present, and now, like two bits of a jigsaw puzzle slipping into place, Mildred and George came into the picture. He even remembered that Mildred had worn pink. With the barest possible interval, he heard himself say,
    ‘It was here at the Luxe, just before the war — somebody’s party. But I can’t remember whose. I can’t remember anyone but you and George, and a man called Bill, and a girl in a gold dress.’
    George was leading the way into the dining-room. As they passed under the mirrored archway, Mildred Darcy looked sideways and saw herself reflected there with Frank. The reflection pleased her. Frank’s slim elegance, the excellent cut of his evening clothes, the smoothness of the fair slicked-back hair, his poise and assurance, all pleased her very much. It did not occur to her that her dress was démodée and not very fresh, that her hair looked brittle and dry and was done in a fashion which