When the Devil Drives Read Online Free PDF Page A

the devil?’ I said.
    She gave a reluctant shake of the head. I brought us back to business. ‘What about men meeting people off the stage last Thursday?’
    â€˜Old man meeting two old women. Young man in a squashed sort of hat meeting another young man. Bad-tempered cove meeting a fat woman with a yapping little dog . . .’ She ran through a list of seven or eight. It was a testimonial to her powers of extracting information and her memory.
    â€˜No good though, is it?’ Tabby said.
    I was inclined to agree, but didn’t want to depress her spirits any further. ‘It is in its way. Nobody noticed her. That almost certainly means that when she got off the coach she didn’t ask anybody for directions or stand round wondering where to go. Since she doesn’t know London, that probably means she was met.’
    â€˜But there isn’t any of them being met that sounds like her.’
    â€˜No. So that might mean that whoever met her took care that they shouldn’t be noticed.’
    â€˜So you and me was right. She was meeting some man she wasn’t supposed to meet.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    But the conclusion was bad news for us. If Miss Tilbury had eloped with a secret lover, they were lost to us among London’s two million citizens, or already gone from London to anywhere in the country or on the Continent. Any hope of tracing them would involve inquiries back at Miss Tilbury’s home about her correspondence and all the men she’d ever met. That would not be welcomed by the poetic young gentleman, so there’d be no more money from him. The guardian, from what Mr James had said, was likely to turn his back on the whole unpleasant business. Only a determination that our client should get his full two guineas worth kept me waiting there to meet the Braintree stage, the Sovereign .
    It arrived only five minutes late, turning into the yard at a hammering trot. The wheels had hardly stopped turning before the driver jumped down from the box and threw the reins to a waiting groom. He was a burly red-faced man, with a nose that looked like a squashed raspberry tartlet. I waited until he’d emptied a tankard that a waiter brought out to him before asking about the woman in a blue cloak a week ago.
    â€˜What is it about her? You’re the second one asking me.’
    He was bad-tempered, slurring his words. I guessed that he’d downed at least one tankard at the four or five stopping places between Braintree and London, probably with a warming measure of gin mixed in with the beer.
    â€˜Was the first one a fair-haired young man?’
    He nodded.
    â€˜And you remember picking her up in Boreham early on Thursday morning?’
    Another nod. He was watching the back door of the inn for the reappearance of the waiter.
    â€˜Did you see her getting off the coach?’
    â€˜No. Why should I? I’ve got enough to do with the horses and everything to see to.’
    I was sure that then, as now, he’d have had his face in the tankard.
    â€˜Did she say anything to you at all?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And you didn’t notice anybody waiting to meet her?’
    â€˜No. No business of mine.’
    He stumped into the inn, mumbling about the idleness of waiters.
    That seemed to end our investigations at the Three Nuns and I was looking for Tabby to go home when I overheard a scrap of conversation. Two women were standing by the gateway to the street, listening to a clerk-like man.
    â€˜. . . didn’t even know she was up there. First thing anybody knew, there she was on the pavement with her arm torn off and blood all over the place.’
    Other people were coming up to hear him. I joined them and asked one of the women what was happening.
    â€˜Girl threw herself off the Monument last night.’
    The man started his story over again, for the new arrivals. The Monument in question was the 200-foot high column on Fish