Betrayal at Blackcrest

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  I was hungry, and I needed to sit down and think about exactly what I intended to do. Across the street I saw the Tea Shoppe. Unlike the other shops, it had a front of honey-colored brick, with neat green-and-white-striped awnings over the windows on either side of the green door. The final “pe” on the sign seemed pretentious, but at least there wasn’t a “Ye Olde” in front. I crossed the street and went inside. A tiny brass bell jangled as I closed the door behind me.

  It was cool and dim inside. The walls were soft blue, the carpet thick and gray. There were several small tables covered with snowy white linen cloths, a bowl of blue larkspurs in the center of each. I could see the gleam of fine china and silver and hear the tinkle of glass. The atmosphere was extremely genteel, soothing. I sat down at one of the tables and looked around. The stout woman in tweeds I had seen earlier sat in one corner, stuffing down tiny glazed cakes and discussing bird-watching with a thin, limp woman who sipped her tea daintily. They were the only other customers, and neither had looked up as I came in.

  I was beginning to think no one would wait on me, when the back door swung open and the waitress sauntered toward me. The atmosphere of gentility was shattered immediately. This creature belonged behind the bar of a rowdy pub, selling beer and ale. She was certainly not suited for an establishment such as this. She wore a bright red blouse and a tight black skirt. Cheap five-and-ten bangle bracelets clattered at her wrists, and golden hoops dangled from her ears. Her short curls were dyed an improbable shade of black.

  “What’ll it be, ducks?” she said breezily.

  She stood beside the table, chewing a wad of gum. Her face might have been pretty, but it was coated with makeup, the lipstick too red, the Pancake too thick, the mascara too dark and improperly applied. Her lids were coated with blue-gray shadow, and a black satin beauty mark was stuck on her cheek. She spoke pure cockney. I wanted to ask her if she were for real, but good breeding forbade.

  “Could you bring me a menu?” I asked.

  “Could do,” she said, “but it wouldn’t do you no good. You can have cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches, tea and cakes. That’s it.”

  “Cucumber and watercress?” I said.

  “Very refined,” she said. “On white bread, with the edges trimmed. Tiny little things.” She seemed to think it a grand joke. She grinned impishly and wrinkled her nose at me. “You want the works? ’Course, if you’re really hungry, you can go to Benton’s down the block. They’ll give you meat and boiled potatoes.”

  “I’ll take the works,” I said after only a moment’s hesitation.

  “Righto, ducks. Be right with you.”

  She left my table and went over to speak to the women in the corner of the room. They looked horrified when she asked if everything was all right. The stout woman paused with cake halfway to her mouth, looking at the waitress as though the girl had leprosy. The waitress laughed and sauntered on into the back. The women finished quickly, dumped a pile of coins on the table, and left. The bell jangled angrily as they slammed the door behind them.

  I smiled to myself. Despite her makeup and ill-advised clothes, the waitress had that breezy, devil-may-care manner that I always found delightful. I wondered what she was doing in a place like this, and then I remembered Andrea mentioning “that awful Tottie” and saying she didn’t come to the Tea Shoppe anymore since the girl had arrived. Andrea had also mentioned that Alex Tanner had been seeing the girl.

  I asked myself what Alex, with all his poise and polish, could find attractive in such a girl, and I answered myself almost before the question was properly framed. He would admire that same breezy quality I had already noticed, and the girl obviously had an availability that would be most welcome in a dull town like this. The makeup and junk jewelry that offended me would only make her more appealing to a man who wanted a casual companion for an evening at home. I had few illusions on the subject. Alex was a man, and men demanded satisfaction. That was the reason for good-natured creatures like Tottie.

  She came back into the room, bearing a heavily laden tray. She set it on the table, whipped off the white cloth covering the food, and displayed a plate of tiny sandwiches, a silver pot of tea, and three minute glazed cakes with pink-and-white frosting.

  “Here you are, duckie,” she said, pouring tea into a white cup.

  She went over to the table where the women had been and scooped up the money. She rang it up on the cash register beside the door and then began to clear the table. She hummed merrily to herself as she worked. I found the food surprisingly delicious. The sandwiches were crisp and full of flavor, the tea strong and aromatic. I was eating the last cake when Tottie came back to my table.

  “More tea?” she asked.

  “Please,” I replied.

  She went to fetch a fresh pot of tea, and when she came back I was sitting with my chair pushed away from the table, completely relaxed. I smiled at the girl as she poured the tea.

  “Are you a native of Hawkestown?” I asked.

  “You’ve got to be kiddin’, duckie. Do I look like one?”

  “Well—hardly. No offense,” I hastily added.

  “None taken. You ain’t either, sweets. A native, I mean. No one in this town dresses like that. The minute I laid eyes on you, I said to myself, that little number ain’t from this town, not by a long shot. You stand out like a sore thumb. I mean that nice-like.”

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “London?”

  I nodded.

  “Me, too, though not from the same circles, I’d wager. No, I was out of work, and the old man who runs this place needed a girl. He was in London and talkin’ to a friend of his who’s a friend of mine, so they got together an’ fixed it up for me to come work here. Me, sellin’ cucumber sandwiches! The owner almost dropped his teeth when I came sashayin’ in a few weeks ago. He didn’t know what to expect, but he sure didn’t expect me. Nice old coot, though. Pays a decent salary, and hasn’t fired me yet.”

  “You’ve been here only a few weeks?”

  “Six or seven. Long enough to know this ain’t the town for me. The women who were just in here, for example. Bird-watching! I ask you, is that sane? Everyone here seems to be livin’ in the past. You’d hardly know it was the twentieth century. No action. Well—” She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Almost none,” she said.

  “Alex Tanner?” I said.

  “How’dja know?”

  “Someone mentioned it.”

  “That’s another thing. Everyone knows what everyone else is doin’. A guy gets a new stamp for his stamp collection, and the next day everyone in town knows how much it cost, where it came from, and what page in the album he stuck it. Makes me nervous—not that I’ve got anything to hide. I mean, Alex an’ I’re just friends, in case you wondered. He’s a knockout, real smooth, but not my type. I like the beefy kind, truck drivers an’ that sort. Alex an’ I have a few laughs now and then, an’ God knows he’s the only person in this town who can keep a girl amused.”

  She put a hand on her hip and stared at me with twinkling eyes. She was engagingly frank, delightfully straightforward. Tottie was clearly a girl who loved a good time and didn’t mean to be bothered by hypocritical niceties. Without makeup, jewelry, and cockney accent, she would be ideal, but I supposed they were all part of her personality.

  “Just passin’ through, ducks?” she asked.

  “No, I have a job here.”

  “Well, luck to you, sweetie. Dry rot begins to set in after the first couple of weeks, and on the third you start to go stir crazy. It takes guts to stay here.”

  “I don’t intend to stay long,” I remarked.

  “More power to you.”

  I hesitated a moment. “I … I am on an errand, really. Perhaps you can help me.”

  “Anything I can do, ducks. Just ask me.”

  “I’m looking for a girl. My cousin. I have reason to believe she came here. She—you see, she’s disappeared in a way, and I’m trying to find her.”r />
  “Run away from home?” Tottie asked.

  “Not exactly. She just—left.”

  I didn’t intend to go into detail, but I had to try everything. It was quite possible that Delia had been seen in Hawkestown. Tottie was a bright and observant girl, and she might be able to help me. She was certainly the most friendly person I had run into in town. If she hadn’t seen Delia herself, she might have overheard some gossip. I told her about Delia’s disappearance, leaving out everything that concerned Derek Hawke. I didn’t want to bring his name into it. Not yet.

  “Hey, that’s too bad,” Tottie said. “Imagine runnin’ off like that and just vanishin’, not thinkin’ about you and how worried you’d be. A girl like that needs a good shakin’.”

  “I … I am afraid something has happened to her.”

  “Don’t you believe it, duckie. Despite what you read in the papers an’ all, nothin’ happens to a girl that she doesn’t want to happen. She will turn up, older an’ wiser an’ probably richer from the experience. I can see why you’re worried, though.”

  “Right now I just want to find proof that she was here. If I could do that, I’m sure I could eventually locate her … or find out what happened to her.”

  “What does she look like?” Tottie asked.

  I took out my purse and pulled a snapshot of Delia out of my wallet and showed it to Tottie. She studied the picture for a long time, pressing her brows together in concentration. I could tell she was trying to remember seeing Delia. After a moment she shook her head and handed the picture back to me.

  “’Fraid not, ducks. Lots of people come in here, an’ I’d have remembered her. Pretty little thing, cute face an’ all. No, mostly old folks come in the shop, bird-watchers and tweedy types who like to gorge on cakes and tea after shoppin’ a bit in town. She never came in. What did you say her name was?”

  “Delia. Delia Lane.”

  “Pretty name. Doesn’t ring a bell, though.”

  “She’s not too tall, and her hair is red—blazing red, cut short. I think she might have been wearing a pink scarf over her hair, and she had on a full-length gray fur coat the last time I saw her.”

  Tottie snapped her fingers and nodded her head rapidly two or three times. “Hey—just a minute,” she said. “When did you say she was supposed to be here?”

  “Around April 15. Almost six weeks ago.”

  “Yeah, I would’ve been workin’ here just a few days myself. I know she never came in here—I’d of remembered for sure—but when you said that about the red hair and pink scarf, I remembered something. One day things were kinda slow here, an’ I was standin’ at the window an’ I saw a girl go past the shop. She was walkin’ real fast, and I couldn’t get a real good look at her, but I remember the scarf and the red hair. It was a strange combination, I thought. Red hair and pink don’t go together, but this didn’t clash at all. There were little sequins on the scarf. I remember them twinklin’ in the sunshine. I said to myself, that must’ve cost a pretty penny, that scarf. It could have been your cousin, though I wouldn’t swear to it.”

  “I’m sure it was. I didn’t mention the sequins on the scarf. You remembered that on your own. It was Delia, all right.”

  “Hey, that’s swell. At least you know she got here safe and sound. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.”

  She stood leaning against the table, her bracelets jangling every time she moved her hand. She wore a cheap, too sweet perfume, but at the moment it smelled heavenly to me. Tottie straightened her skirt and ran her fingers over her short black curls. She looked pleased with herself for remembering.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  The bell jangled, and an old man in a brown leather jacket came into the shop. He settled at a table, coughed, and took out a huge pipe. He pulled out his tobacco pouch and began to fill the pipe as Tottie walked over to the table to take his order. She greeted him heartily, and he smiled feebly, coughed again, and ordered tea and cakes. I sat lost in thought, wondering what I should do next. There must be some logical way to go about this. I couldn’t just go around canvassing the neighborhood and asking everyone I met if they had seen Delia. Then I had an idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. I took a pencil and notepad out of my purse and tore off a clean sheet. I printed the telegram Delia had sent me, word for word. I remembered it perfectly.

  “What’s that?” Tottie asked.

  She had served the old man and was back at my table.

  “It’s a copy of the telegram my cousin sent to me. I’m going to go to the telegram office and see if they remember her sending it. Where is the office?”

  “There isn’t one. Not as such. The post office is down the block. You can send telegrams from there. Just one old woman runs the place, a crazy old character who comes in for tea now and then. Jiggs, they call her. She gives me the creeps. She sorts mail and sends telegrams, does all the work herself, though a regular man delivers the mail, of course. You can rent books there, too. It’s the only library Hawkestown has, not that I spend much time readin’, mind you. Old Jiggs may be able to help you.”

  “I’ll see,” I told her.

  “Be careful with her—she’s senile, at least when she wants to be. She lives over the post office in a tiny room, and they say she keeps two Great Danes up there, though no one’s ever seen ’em. People claim they hear ’em barkin’. Of course, there’s them who say Jiggs is the one barkin’ at night. Creepy.”

  “Very,” I said.

  “These small towns,” Tottie said, shaking her head. “You hear how weird people in London are. I’m here to tell you they can’t hold a candle to some of the characters I’ve seen right here during the past six weeks.”

  I paid Tottie for the food and left a large tip. I thanked her for her help and walked toward the door. Tottie rang the money up on the cash register and smiled at me. She began to straighten up the stacks of chocolate mints piled in a dish beside the cash register.

  “Don’t you worry,” she said. “Everything will work out.”

  Her voice was sincere. Something in her eyes told me that Tottie was genuinely concerned with my problem. She was very real, very human, not at all the outrageous creature I had first thought her. She arranged the mints in their silver dish and wrinkled her nose at me.

  “You—uh—you won’t mention any of this, will you?” I asked.

  “Mum as mum, luv.”

  “Thank you again,” I said. “You’ve been kind.”

  “Don’t mention it, duckie. And good luck with Jiggs. I think you’ll need it.”

  12

  The post office stood on a corner. It was a narrow building two stories high, the gray brick faded. Blue curtains hung at the windows of the second story, and a flourishing green plant grew in a pot behind one of them, creating a very domestic effect. The lower story had two large, dusty plate-glass windows, POST painted in flaking gold leaf on one, OFFICE on the other. In the lower-right-hand corner of one was a tattered cardboard square with RENTAL LIBRARY printed in clumsy black block letters. The door stood wide open, and it was very dark within. I stood for a moment in the dazzling sunlight, apprehensive; then I walked into the building, the slip of paper clutched in my hand.

  To my left there was a wall of mailboxes, each one with its own name tag and tiny glass door, and to my right there were several racks of books, their colored jackets protected with plastic covers. At the end of the small building there was a large wooden counter behind which a woman worked sorting mail. Her back was to me. I saw several parcels on the counter, as well as a telegraph machine, various pads and pens, two wooden trays, an ancient cash register, and a flowering cactus plant. The place smelled of dust and glue. There was an electric light behind the counter where the woman worked, but the front of the building had to rely on what little light came in through the dusty glass windows. The floorboards creaked as I walked across them. The woman did not turn to look at me. She kep
t on sorting mail with nimble hands, stashing the letters in various compartments with an alarming speed.

  She seemed to be so frantically busy at the moment that I was loath to interrupt her. Tottie’s description of Jiggs had prepared me for an eccentric, and I knew that if I intended to get any information whatsoever, I had to be very careful. I turned to the racks of books, remembering that Andrea had asked me to pick out some thrillers “for Jessie.” The racks had four sides, on revolving stands, and I turned them slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  The books were surprisingly well read, the pages thumbed and bent, the check-out slips in front stamped profusely. I supposed the people of Hawkestown did a lot of reading in lieu of the more glamorous entertainments offered by the city. All the bestsellers were here, all the new thrillers. I chose four that looked particularly bloody, hoping Andrea would find them stimulating. I took the books back to the counter. The woman continued to sort mail, ignoring me. I coughed discreetly.

  “You’ll find a card in back of each book. Fill in name, date, and address. I’ll do the rest later on. Advance deposit required. Leave it on the counter.” Her voice was harsh and masculine.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Can’t you read? Says so right there on each jacket. I don’t have time to read it to you! Devon, Dorset, Norfolk, Oxford, New York. New York!” The woman had been tossing letters in compartments, barely looking at them. She paused and examined the letter in her hand. “Hmm. Rae Stanton, addressed to a cosmetics firm. Probably hopes to find a cure for that acne!” She tossed the letter in a compartment marked OVERSEAS, then continued her work, chanting. “Leicester, Warwick, Oxford again, Kent—are you still there? Haven’t you got the correct change?”