Steve found that her attention was straying. Charlie Vosper lacked the eye for detail which makes for a good raconteur. ‘I suppose,’ she said flippantly, ‘that Young Woodley has run off with the housemaster’s wife?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Vosper. ‘Who is Woodley?’
‘The missing boys are called Baxter,’ said the assistant commissioner. ‘They live with their father in a cottage on the Westerby estate. Their mother died about two years ago. Carry on, Charlie, tell them what happened.’
Vosper signalled to the publicity girl for another drink before he continued. He was a beer drinking man himself, but he was apparently reconciled to the rules being changed for one evening. He sipped a large whisky.
‘Three weeks ago last Tuesday,’ said Vosper, ‘Michael and Roger Baxter and another boy left St Gilbert’s after school and walked the mile or so to the Baxter cottage together. When they reached the cottage Michael Baxter remembered that he’d left a book at the school. It was a book he needed for prep that evening so he went back to fetch it. Left his brother and the other lad sitting on a fence in front of the cottage.’
He took another sip at the whisky. ‘Well, to cut a long story short, those two boys waited for nearly an hour, and then Roger Baxter decided to go back to school and look for his brother. The other boy went home. At seven o’clock that evening Mr Baxter, the father, became worried about the boys and went to the school. You can guess the story. The headmaster hadn’t seen the Baxter boys, they hadn’t gone back to the school, and they haven’t been seen since.’
‘I guessed it,’ said Paul. ‘And how did they get on with their father?’
‘Extremely well.’ Vosper nodded emphatically. ‘There was obviously nothing premeditated about this business, Temple. That was the first thing that interested me. They were perfectly normal teenagers, plenty of friends in the village, they were good at sport, interested in girls. Michael is seventeen and he’s particularly friendly with a Miss Maxwell. She’s a niece of Lord Westerby’s and lives at the Hall.’
‘Diana Maxwell?’ asked Paul.
‘Yes. I thought you might have heard of her. She writes poetry, although you wouldn’t think so to meet her. She looks quite normal.’
‘Charlie popped up to Dulworth Bay,’ explained the assistant commissioner, ‘semi-officially. The local inspector invited him up for a couple of days. That was when nose-ology came into the case. Charlie found that his nostrils were twitching.’
‘There may be nothing to it,’ said Vosper modestly. There was only one peculiar detail I could point to, and that may not be significant. But the Baxter boys share a bedroom; it’s a large, pleasant room, more like a playroom in some ways, and it overlooks the lane. I searched it, of course, read through the exercise books and the adolescent stuff that you’d expect to see. But the interesting oddity was a cricket bat.’
‘A boy’s proudest possession,’ said Paul Temple. ‘I remember how I kept mine oiled and supple—’
‘That’s the picture,’ said Charlie Vosper. ‘Young Roger Baxter is fourteen, and he’d collected the autographs of the St Gilbert’s first eleven on the blade of his bat. Struck me as a funny thing to do, but at my school we used cricket bats to hit each other with when we used them at all. So I made a check on the names, and there was one which I couldn’t account for.’ He smiled, pleased with himself. ‘It wasn’t even a genuine signature. Roger Baxter had written it there himself.’
‘What was the name?’ asked Paul.
‘The name,’ pronounced Inspector Vosper, ‘was Curzon.’
‘Just Curzon? No Christian name or initials?’
‘Just Curzon!’ Vosper placed his empty glass on a nearby table and watched it in the hope that it might be miraculously refilled. But it was every man for himself now and the journalists had the drink pinned at the far end of the room. ‘I wouldn’t claim that the name has any particular significance,’ he said. ‘Only that it was odd. I was looking for oddities by that time.’
‘You see, Temple,’ the assistant commissioner interrupted, ‘that’s nose-ology. Nobody at the school has heard of anyone called Curzon. Charlie asked the boys’ father and the name was completely unknown to him. Unknown to everyone else in Dulworth Bay. So what made Roger Baxter write it on his precious cricket bat?’
‘Charlie has a nose for detail,’ murmured Paul. ‘I wonder what Dr Stern would make of the story?’
Steve sighed and rose to her feet. ‘I know, don’t say it: his book is ridiculous.’
‘Nonsense,’ agreed Sir Graham.
‘Paul, are we going home? I’m tired and the noise in this room is giving me a headache. I can scarcely see who’s doing the shouting through this cigarette smoke. I need some fresh air.’
It was a quarter to ten. Paul took her arm and went in search of Scott Reed.
‘I’m fed up with cocktail parties!’ said Scott, staring at a burn and three whisky stains on the carpet. ‘I do hope it hasn’t been too boring, Temple. Goodbye, Steve, so good of you to have kept those detectives amused.’
Kate Balfour had long since gone home, so Paul pottered about in the kitchen producing the cocoa. He prided himself on his masculine independence. He could make cocoa without burning the milk and boil an egg without the yolk becoming solid. He took the drinks upstairs to the living room flushed with a sense of achievement.
‘I hope we didn’t leave too abruptly,’ he said as he put the tray on the table. ‘You didn’t even tell Dr Stern how much you admire his book.’
‘I didn’t admire it,’ Steve confessed. ‘But I did read the wretched thing, which is why I found the rest of you so irritating.’ She went across to the telephone answering machine on the shelf beside Paul’s desk. The large room was furnished in two halves separated by a step. Paul’s study was the half above the garage. ‘We left abruptly because I didn’t want you to start advising the police how to do their job. I know how they resent it—’
‘I thought Sir Graham was inviting my opinion.’
‘He may have been, but he’s only the assistant commissioner. Charlie Vosper is the man who does the work, and he didn’t want your advice. He’ll make Sir Graham pay for tonight’s little indiscretion, I could see it from his eyes.’
Steve smiled at the thought and absently pressed the button on the automatic answering machine. It whirred gently as the loop tape spun back to the beginning. ‘This is Paul Temple’s residence,’ said the recorded voice. ‘Mr and Mrs Temple are not available, but if you care to leave a message…’
Paul sank back into the armchair and drank his cocoa. He was beginning to hate the anonymous actor whose voice punctuated the messages; he always avoided switching on the machine until he was properly fortified against the day by three cups of coffee.
The telephone rang three times and the actor repeated his piece. ‘Gor,’ said a man in disgust, ‘I’ll write you a bloody letter.’ The telephone clicked, rang three times, and the actor spoke again. It was nerve-racking.
‘Damn,’ said a girl’s voice. ‘Oh well, this is Diana Maxwell. I needed to speak urgently to Mr Temple. Tell him I’ll ring him back, will you? I do hate all these mechanised gadgets!’
Paul rose to his feet in astonishment. ‘What did she say her name was?’
‘Exactly,’ said Steve. ‘Now isn’t that a coincidence?’ She spun the tape back to replay the message. ‘She’s the poet who seemed quite normal to Charlie Vosper.’
‘It isn’t a coincidence,’ Diana Maxwell explained when she telephoned the next day. ‘Inspector Vosper visited me on Friday and he mentioned your literary cocktail