XIII

This proved rather more difficult than was expected. Turning into a photographer’s and demanding a few assorted photographs, they were met with a cold rebuff.

“Why are all the things that are so easy and simple in books so difficult in real life?” wailed Tuppence. “How horribly suspicious they looked. What do you think they thought we wanted to do with the photographs? We had better go and raid Jane’s flat.”

Tuppence’s friend Jane proved of an accommodating disposition and permitted Tuppence to rummage in a drawer and select four specimens of former friends of Jane’s who had been shoved hastily in to be out of sight and mind.

Armed with this galaxy of feminine beauty they proceeded to the Bon Temps where fresh difficulties and much expense awaited them. Tommy had to get hold of each waiter in turn, tip him and then produce the assorted photographs. The result was unsatisfactory. At least three of the photographs were promising starters as having dined there last Tuesday. They then returned to the office where Tuppence immersed herself in an A.B.C.

“Paddington twelve o’clock. Torquay three thirty-five. That’s the train and le Marchant’s friend, Mr. Sago, or Tapioca or something, saw her there about tea time.”

“We haven’t checked his statement, remember,” said Tommy. “If, as you said to begin with, le Marchant is a friend of Una Drake’s, he may have invented this story.”

“Oh, we’ll hunt up Mr. Rice,” said Tuppence. “I have a kind of hunch that Mr. le Marchant was speaking the truth. No, what I am trying to get at now is this. Una Drake leaves London by the twelve o’clock train, possibly takes a room at a hotel and unpacks. Then she takes a train back