“Yes, that looked well for the efficiency of Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives. This is decidedly a Sherlock Holmes case. Even you cannot have failed to notice the similarity between it and the disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.”
“Do you expect to find Mrs. Leigh Gordon’s body in a coffin?”
“Logically, history should repeat itself. Actually—well, what do you think?”
“Well,” said Tuppence. “The most obvious explanation seems to be that for some reason or other Hermy, as he calls her, is afraid to meet her fiancé, and that Lady Susan is backing her up. In fact, to put it bluntly, she’s come a cropper of some kind, and has got the wind up about it.”
“That occurred to me also,” said Tommy. “But I thought we’d better make pretty certain before suggesting that explanation to a man like Stavansson. What about a run down to Maldon, old thing? And it would do no harm to take some golf clubs with us.”
Tuppence agreeing, the International Detective Agency was left in the charge of Albert.
Maldon, though a well known residential place, did not cover a large area. Tommy and Tuppence, making every possible inquiry that ingenuity could suggest, nevertheless drew a complete blank. It was as they were returning to London that a brilliant idea occurred to Tuppence.
“Tommy, why did they put Maldon Surrey on the telegram?”
“Because Maldon is in Surrey, idiot.”
“Idiot yourself—I don’t mean that. If you get a telegram from—Hastings, say, or Torquay, they don’t put the county after it. But from