By half-past ten on Monday morning he was sitting in front of a steaming cup of coffee in the Karena. He began with the Karena because when one thinks of coffee at all one thinks of a Karena, with the smell of the roasting coffee downstairs in the shop and the liquid version waiting upstairs among the little tables. And if he was going to have a surfeit of coffee he might as well have some good stuff while he could still taste it.

He was holding the Ack–Emma in his hand with the girl’s photograph open to the gaze of the waitresses as they passed, hoping vaguely that his interest in it might cause one of them to say: “That girl used to come in here every morning.” To his surprise the paper was gently removed from his grasp, and he looked up to see his waitress regarding him with a kind smile. “That is last Friday’s,” she said. “Here.” And she proffered that morning’s Ack–Emma.

He thanked her and said that while he would be glad to see this morning’s paper he would like to keep the Friday one. Did this girl, this girl on the front page of Friday’s, ever come in there for coffee?

“Oh, no, we’d have remembered her if she did. We were all discussing that case on Friday. Imagine beating her half to death like that.”

“Then you think they did.”

She looked puzzled. “The paper says they did.”

“No, the paper reports what the girl said.”

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

“They wouldn’t print a story like that if it wasn’t true. It would be as much as their life’s worth. You a detective?”

“Part time,” Robert said.

“How much do you get an hour for that?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“No, I suppose not. Haven’t got a Union, I suppose. You don’t get your rights in this world unless you have a Union.”

“Too true,” said Robert. “Let me have my bill, will you?”

“Your check, yes.”

At the Palace, the biggest and newest of the cinemas, the restaurant occupied the floor behind the balcony and had carpets so deep that one tripped on them, and lighting so subdued that all the cloths looked dirty. A bored houri with gilt hair, an uneven hem to her skirt, and a wad of chewing gum in her right jaw, took his order without ever glancing at him, and fifteen minutes later put down a cup of washy liquid in front of him without letting her eyes stray even approximately in his direction. Since in the fifteen minutes Robert had discovered that the never-look-at-the-customers technique was universal — presumably they were all going to be film stars the year after next and could not be expected to take any interest in a provincial clientèle — he paid for the untasted liquid and left.

At the Castle, the other big cinema, the restaurant did not open until afternoon.

At the Violet — royal purple everywhere and yellow curtains — no one had seen her. Robert, casting subtleties aside, asked them bluntly.

Upstairs at Griffon and Waldron’s, the big store, it was rush hour and the waitress said: “Don’t bother me!” The manageress, looking at him with absent-minded suspicion, said: “We never give information about our customers.”

At the Old Oak — small and dark and friendly — the elderly waitresses discussed the case interestedly with him. “Poor love,” they said. “What an experience for her. Such a nice face, too. Just a baby. Poor love.”

At the Alen?on — cream paint and old-rose couches against the walls — they made it plain that they had never heard of the Ack–Emma and could not possibly have a client whose photograph appeared in such a publication.

At the Heave Ho — marine frescos and waitresses in bell-bottomed trousers — the attendants gave it as their unanimous opinion that any girl who took a lift should expect to have to walk home.

At the Primrose — old polished tables with raffia mats and thin unprofessional waitresses in flowered smocks — they discussed the social implications of lack of domestic service and the vagaries of the adolescent mind.

At the Tea–Pot there was no table to be had, and no waitress willing to attend to him; but a second glance at the fly-blown place made him sure that, with the others to choose from, Betty Kane would not have come here.

At half-past twelve he staggered into the lounge of the Midland, and called for strong waters. As far as he knew he had covered all the likely eating-places in the centre of Larborough and in not one of them had anyone remembered seeing the girl. What was worse, everyone agreed that if she had been there they would have remembered her. They had pointed out, when Robert was sceptical of that, that a large proportion of their customers on any one day were regulars, so that the casuals stood out from the rest and were noted and remembered automatically.

As Albert, the tubby little lounge waiter, set his drink in front of him, Robert asked, more out of habit than volition: “I suppose you’ve never seen this girl in your place, Albert?”

Albert looked at the front page of the Ack–Emma and shook his head. “No, sir. Not that I recollect. Looks a little young, sir, if I may say so, for the lounge of the Midland.”

“She mightn’t look so young with a hat on,” Robert said, considering it.

“A hat.” Albert paused. “Now, wait a minute. A hat.” Albert laid his little tray down and picked up the paper to consider it. “Yes, of course; that’s the girl in the green hat!”

“You mean she came in here for coffee?”

“No, for tea.”

“Tea!”

“Yes, of course, that’s the girl. Fancy me not seeing that, and we had that paper in the pantry last Friday and chewed the rag over it for hours! Of course it’s some time ago now, isn’t it. About six weeks or so, it must be. She always came early; just about three, when we start serving teas.”

So that is what she did. Fool that he was not to have seen that. She went into the morning round at the cinema in time to pay the cheaper price — just before noon, that was — and came out about three, and had tea, not coffee. But why the Midland, where the tea was the usual dowdy and expensive hotel exhibit, when she could wallow in cakes elsewhere?

“I noticed her because she always came alone. The first time she came I thought she was waiting for relations. That’s the kind of kid she looked. You know: nice plain clothes and no airs.”

“Can you remember what she wore?”

“Oh, yes. She always wore the same things. A green hat and a frock to match it under a pale grey coat. But she never met anyone. And then one day she picked up the man at the next table. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“You mean: he picked her up.”

“Don’t you believe it! He hadn’t even thought of her when he sat down there. I tell you, sir, she didn’t look that sort. You’d expect an aunt or a mother to appear at any moment and say: ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, darling.’ She just wouldn’t occur to any man as a possible. Oh, no; it was the kid’s doing. And as neat a piece of business, let me tell you, sir, as if she had spent a lifetime at it. Goodness, and to think that I didn’t spot her again without her hat!” He gazed in wonder at the pictured face.

“What was the man like? Did you know him?”

“No, he wasn’t one of our regulars. Dark. Youngish. Business gent, I should say. I remember being a little surprised at her taste, so I don’t think he could have been up to much, now I come to think of it.”

“You wouldn’t know him again, then.”

“I might, sir, I might. But not to swear to. You — er — planning any swearing to, sir?”

Robert had known Albert for nearly twenty years and had always found him of an excellent discretion. “It’s like this, Albert,” he said. “These people are my clients.” He tapped the photograph of The Franchise, and Albert gave vent to a low whistle.

“A tough spot for you, Mr. Blair.”

“Yes, as you say: a tough spot. But mostly for them. It is quite unbelievably tough for them. The girl comes out of the blue one day accompanied by the police, to whom she has told this fantastic story. Until then neither of the two women has ever set eyes on her. The police are very discreet, and decide that they haven’t enough evidence to make it a good case. Then the Ack–Emma hears about it and makes capital out of it, and the story is all over Britain. The Franchise is wide open, of course. The police can’t spare men to afford constant protection, so you can imagine the lives these women are leading. My young cousin, who looked in before dinner last night, says that from lunch-time on crowds of cars arrived from Larborough, and people stood on the roofs or hoisted themselves up on the wall to stare or take photographs. Nevil got in because he arrived at the same time as the policeman on the evening beat, but as soon as they left the cars were swarming again. The telephone went continually until they asked the Exchange not to put through any more calls.”

“Have the police dropped it for good, then?”

“No, but they can’t do anything to help us. What they are looking for is corroboration of the girl’s story.”

“Well, that’s not very likely, is it? For them to get, I mean.”

“No. But you see the spot we are in. Unless we can find out where the girl was during the weeks she says she was at The Franchise, the Sharpes will be in the position of being permanently convicted of a thing they haven’t even been accused of!”

“Well, if it’s the girl in the green hat — and I’m sure it is, sir — I’d say she was what is known as ‘out on the tiles,’ sir. A very cool customer she was for a girl that age. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

“Butter wouldn’t melt in her little mouth,” the tobacconist had said of the child Betty.

And “on the tiles” was Stanley’s verdict on the pictured face that was so like “the bint he had had in Egypt.”

And the worldly little waiter had used both phrases in his estimate of her. The demure girl in the “good” clothes, who had come every day by herself to sit in the hotel lounge.

“Perhaps it was just a childish desire to be ‘grand’,” the nice si............