Free Murder Comes Calling by C. S. Challinor Page B

police won’t help us because she’s of age, but she took up with an undesirable character and I need to get her back home before she throws her life away. This is my old friend Malcolm, who’s kindly helping me.”
    Malcolm stood by, looking grave.
    “But what does this have to do with Notting Hamlet?” the woman asked.
    The ceaseless chatter and activity behind the partition led Rex to wonder whether the agents were packing up now that their employer was a prime suspect in a case where four stigmatized properties were listed under his name.
    “Closing up shop?” he asked the receptionist.
    “Reorganizing.”
    He would have liked to ask after Chris Walker but her demeanour, which had reverted to guarded, warned him to stick to his story. “We tracked my daughter from Edinburgh to Bedford, and we understand they were going to settle down in the area. When we were asking around Notting Hamlet, a resident told us she had seen a young woman fitting my daughter’s description in the company of the individual we want to save her from. This was around three weeks ago.” Rex hoped his blend of fact and fiction sounded convincing. “We decided to try here when we saw your For Sale signs in the neighbourhood, in case she’d come in.” He gave Lea a pleading look, parent to parent.
    “Do you have a photo?” she asked. “I never forget a face.”
    Rex had not had time to prepare for this eventuality. He turned to Malcolm. “You have it.”
    “Do I?” Malcolm patted down his pockets both inside and outside his raincoat. He began to look frantic. “I’m sorry, Rex. I think I must’ve left it at the pub when we were asking the staff if they’d seen her. The waitress took it to the landlord to see if he’d served the couple at the bar.”
    “We’ll have to go back for it.” Rex stared reprovingly at Malcolm, but inwardly applauded his quick thinking and consummate acting skills. “She’s an attractive blonde, five foot-six, stylish in her dress,” he told the receptionist, attempting to compensate for failing to produce a photograph. “She may be using a false identity and trying to disguise her Scottish accent. Her real name is Amanda Graves. He’s dark-haired and dark-eyed, powerfully built, and he’s definitely foreign.”
    Lea brushed her blatantly painted fingertips across the desk. “You do know what happened in Notting Hamlet?” she asked, looking up at Rex with a mixture of fear and concern.
    “The murders. I know. That’s why we’re doubly anxious.”
    “I’m surprised the police didn’t want to help you, considering,” Lea said astutely, leaving the statement hanging in the air.
    Rex continued to recount his story in an attempt to distract her from this obvious point. Any visitor to Notting Hamlet at the time of the murders should have aroused police interest. “We have reason to believe my daughter and this man were interested in purchasing a property on Fox Lane. They were going by the names of Mary and John Jones.”
    “Not very original,” the receptionist opined.
    “No, indeed. We were wondering if they might have left a forwarding address or phone number.”
    “I don’t recall them, and, in any case, I’m not supposed to give out such information,” the receptionist demurred, not without a hint of apology.
    “These are special circumstances. Could you please—please!—check for their names in your system? You may be our only hope,” Rex said, appealing to the compassionate nature he discerned the woman possessed.
    Expelling a sigh, she tapped the keys of her computer and spent some minutes reviewing the information on the screen, while Rex and Malcolm exchanged wondering glances. “I have a record of four couples and one man who viewed Fox Lane properties,” Lea said, glancing up at the men. “We have four properties on that street.”
    Woods, Spelling, Trotter, and Blackwell, Rex recounted to himself. “The house belonging to a Mr. Ernest Blackwell is the one my