Free The Follower by Patrick Quentin Page B

one of those little insects clinging to the side of the vast cup. It didn’t bring her closer. She only seemed less real.
    The girl waved at a drink vendor and bought a beer in a cardboard cup. She leaned back comfortably with it, surveying the arena. A man was sticking darts in the bull’s back. They were gay fluffy darts like little pink Christmas trees. Mark made his decision. He would go back to the hotel and wait. As he shifted in his seat to get up, a man’s cheerful voice called in English from the aisle beyond the girl:
    ‘Hi, there you are, Mrs Liddon.’
    Mark reacted to the name as if he had been stabbed by a dart. He spun around. Ellie was here. Then all this time … Eagerly he scanned the row of faces on the tier behind him again. They were all Mexican and unfamiliar.
    He turned back to the man who had called Ellie’s name. He was pushing his way down the row towards the girl with the red handbag. He was just as obviously American as she. In his early forties, he had a happy pink moon-face, shrewd eyes, crinkled at the corners, an expensive suit and a loud hand painted tie. He looked like the vice-president of any prosperous company with an eminent position in the Elks or Shriners. He reached the seat next to the girl and sat down.
    ‘Guess you thought I’d abandoned you. Never try and telephone in this country. You can walk there quicker.’ He turned his beaming smile to the girl. ‘Have I missed anything good?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said the girl. ‘No one’s been killed yet. Is that good or bad?’
    The pink-faced man laughed uproariously and slapped a plump knee. ‘I can see I have a cynic on my hands. I’ll have to initiate you into the mysteries of the bulls, Mrs Liddon.’
    There it was. It had been said again. There was no getting around it. The blonde with the red handbag, sitting in the seat next to him, was called Mrs Liddon.
    Mark’s first feeling was one of dejection. The ticket-seller at the Reforma had not made a mistake. She had given him a ticket next to a Mrs Liddon and her ‘gentleman.’ This was the Mrs Liddon she had meant. There must be two Mrs Liddons at the hotel.
    And yet, surely, if there had been two Liddons listed the clerk at the desk would have mentioned it. Was this then the only Mrs Liddon at the Reforma? Was this, too, the Mrs Liddon who had stayed only a short time at the Hotel Granada and checked out with a blond young American? The idea carried Mark even farther back and was suddenly appalling in its implications. What if the salesgirl at Derain’s had made a mistake and given him the address of a Mrs Liddon who was not Ellie?
    Was this whole journey a preposterous wildgoose chase? Was he stranded here in Mexico while Ellie was still somewhere in New York?
    A matador was in the ring now, prowling around the bull with a scarlet cape and a drawn sword. Mark’s common sense came back. No, the girl at Derain’s could not possibly have made a mistake. She knew Ellie by sight; she knew her picture was in Harper’s Bazaar; and on the address she had copied for Mark, Ellie’s name had been written: Mrs Mark Liddon. It was inconceivable that Derain’s could have two customers called Mrs Mark Liddon who had both bought suits and needed them shipped at the same time.
    Ellie, then, had asked to have her suit sent to the Hotel Granada. She had at least planned to go to Mexico. And, when he had called the hotel from New York, he had specified Mrs Mark Liddon. Surely no coincidence could have brought two Mrs Mark Liddons to the Hotel Granada simultaneously. Ellie must have been the Mrs Liddon whom Oscar had seen go off with a blond young American. For that matter, Mark had specified Mrs Mark Liddon at the Reforma too.
    A sudden new idea came to him. It was improbable, but no other theory fitted the improbable facts. He couldn’t believe in two Mrs Mark Liddons following each other from Derain’s to the Hotel Granada, from the Hotel Granada to the Hotel