The New Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes Page A

certainly looking for something.
    Petticate found himself irrationally wondering whether there was anything that he ought to have hidden away. This indiscipline of his own mind annoyed him, so that he spoke more briskly than before.
    ‘Well, hand it over. No need to beat about the bush. And drop in on Hennwife as you go out. He’ll be anxious to offer you a glass of beer.’
    ‘Much obliged, Colonel, I’m sure. But it wouldn’t be regular to serve the summons on you, sir. The lady must have it herself. Apologizing for troubling her, I need hardly say.’
    ‘You mean it’s for my wife?’
    Bradnack at this produced a blue envelope from his pocket and studied it with care – for about the length of time, Petticate thought, in which a man might read a page of small print.
    ‘Mrs Ffolliot Petticate,’ Bradnack pronounced presently. And again he looked earnestly round the room, rather as if he supposed that Sonia might be lurking in a cupboard or behind a settee.
    ‘My wife is not at home,’ Petticate said. ‘You had better leave the thing with me. I can give you a receipt, I suppose.’
    Bradnack shook his head.
    ‘It wouldn’t be regular, Colonel. We can use the registered post now, you know. But personal service can’t be by deputy. I must just trouble you for Mrs Petticate’s present address.’
    ‘I’ve no idea of it, I’m afraid. My wife is on holiday, and moving about from one place to another. I’m quite out of contact with her.’
    For a moment Bradnack considered this seriously. Then an indulgent smile spread itself over his large face.
    ‘Come, Colonel. No call to make a little game of it. The summons is nothing serious, you understand. Unnecessary obstruction. The beaks never take a severe view of that. A civil letter to their clerk, Colonel, and it won’t go beyond ten bob. No call for foxing.’
    Petticate did not feel inclined to accept this imbecility with much tolerance.
    ‘My good fellow, there is no question of trying to avoid the summons. I am telling you the simple truth. Mrs Petticate is abroad, and I have no means of communicating with her. I don’t know when I shall have. Her plans are quite indefinite.’
    ‘Oh, abroad!’ Bradnack’s face cleared. ‘In that case, of course, it ceases to be my responsibility, in a manner of speaking.’
    ‘I’ve no doubt there is a regular procedure in such cases.’ Petticate was again rather impatient. Bradnack had spoken with a gloomy solemnity, rather as if the tracking down of Sonia would now pass automatically to Interpol. ‘Your Inspector will know about it.’
    ‘Yes, sir. Come to think of it, he may want a few particulars.’ With maddening deliberation Bradnack now produced a notebook. It was of the portentous kind that is secured by a broad black elastic band, and with this Bradnack fiddled for some seconds before bringing out a pencil. ‘Might I just know,’ he asked, ‘the date on which Mrs Petticate left the country?’
    Petticate was dismayed. The whole thing was, no doubt, merely tiresome and absurd. But being thus asked by the police – even in this most harmless of contexts – to account for Sonia’s recent movements had its insidiously frightening side. Besides, he didn’t know on what date Sonia had left the country. It was a detail he hadn’t yet filled in. What Youth Desires had been too seductive. He had been inventing stuff about Claire and Timmy when he ought to have been inventing stuff about his wife.
    ‘Only a few days ago,’ he said. ‘We had a sailing holiday together, and towards the end of it my wife decided on a trip abroad.’ That, he thought, was just right – neither prematurely precise nor unaccountably vague.
    Sergeant Bradnack appeared much interested in this information. But his interest didn’t seem to be professional in character, since he had now closed his notebook.
    ‘That’s something I’ve always had a fancy for,’ he said. ‘A bit of sailing. Gets you right away from it all,