The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L. C. Tyler Page B

in.’
    ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ he said. ‘Come on up, then tell me.’
    As he led me up the seemingly endless flights of stairs, it struck me that the seediness of his new surroundings had started to rub off on him. The corduroy trousers were old, the jersey had only one elbow rather than the normal number, and he had not shaved.
    The flat was small and had all the marks of being a temporary staging post on his route to wherever it was he was going. The botched paintwork, the ill-fitting chair covers, the stained rug, the dusty Indian blinds suggested that few of the previous tenants had planned to stay there long either. It was bad enough, but even from here you could of course still go down. Down is one way you can always go.
    ‘I have less news than I would like,’ I began. ‘It won’t surprise you to learn that there is no money in Geraldine’s account.’
    ‘But my two hundred thousand?’
    ‘Gone to Switzerland,’ I said.
    I watched his expression carefully, but it betrayed nothing except blank incomprehension. ‘Switzerland? Why?’
    ‘It’s where all money would go if it had the choice. It’s where money is loved and appreciated. You mean you didn’t know that she was planning to move the money overseas?’
    He shook his head as if at some impossibly difficult crossword question. ‘To Switzerland? No. I’ve told you: she was planning to invest it in some houses in Hackney. What would be the point of transferring it to Switzerland? Look, Ethelred, I have just got to get that money back.’
    ‘Which is why I am continuing my researches. The bank is getting me details of the account. If it is in her name it may not be too difficult for me to retrieve the money.’
    ‘It might not be in her name? Why do you think that?’
    ‘Let’s not worry about that yet,’ I said quickly, though if he was not worried at this stage then he never would be. Or perhaps he could be a tad more concerned if he knew about Smith’s little loan to Geraldine, which would complicate the ownership of anything that might be recoverable. I could have told him, of course. But I didn’t.
    ‘I’m terribly grateful to you, Ethelred. You don’t know how reassuring it is to know that you are looking after things.’
    ‘We go back a long way,’ I said with a friendly smile. ‘But perhaps you can give me a little more help?’
    ‘Anything. Just ask.’
    ‘Over the past year did you ever get the feeling that there was somebody else in her life?’
    ‘Before we split up or after?’
    ‘Both.’ There had been something that he was planning to tell me that evening at my flat in Findon. Perhaps he would choose to reveal more now.
    ‘I’m not really in a position to comment on after, but before – yes, certainly. Since about March, if I had to put a date on it. Nothing I could really put my finger on – just that she would be away for odd days, or sometimes overnight. She said that she was also looking at various projects outside London, which she may well have been, of course.’
    ‘But it made you suspicious?’
    ‘No … well, yes. There was one occasion when she said she had been to Leeds. Then, when I borrowed the car a couple of days later, I found one of those car park tickets on the dashboard. It was for the day that she said she had been in Leeds, but it was for a car park in Chichester.’
    ‘Careless,’ I said.
    ‘I mean: Leeds … Chichester … it would have all been the same to me, so why tell me one when she was at the other? Then of course six months later her car turns up at West Wittering, not half a dozen miles from Chichester.’
    ‘Coincidence?’
    ‘Maybe. That’s why I wondered … you live down that way … did she ever call in to see you … about last May, it would have been.’
    ‘Why should she do that?’ I asked.
    ‘No, of course not. Silly of me to ask. But it did make me think at the time.’
    ‘Was there anything else? That made you suspicious, I mean.’
    He frowned and then