THE GIRL SAYS YES: WHAT DO THE POLICE SAY?
See inside for the story.
He put out his hand and turned over the page.
Yes; it was all there, except for the Sharpes' name.
He dropped the page, and looked again at that shocking frontispiece. Yesterday The Franchise was a house protected by four high walls; so unobtrusive, so sufficient unto itself, that even Milford did not know what it looked like. Now it was there to be stared at on every bookstall; on every newsagent's counter from Penzance to Pentland. Its flat, forbidding front a foil for the innocence of the face above it.
The girl's photograph was a head-and-shoulders affair, and appeared to be a studio portrait. Her hair had an arranged-for-an-occasion look, and she was wearing what looked like a party frock. Without her school coat she looked-not less innocent, nor older; no. He sought for the word that would express it. She looked less-tabu, was it? The school coat had stopped one thinking of her as a woman, just as a nun's habit would. A whole treatise could probably be written, now he came to think of it, on the protective quality of school coats. Protective in both senses: armour and camouflage. Now that the coat was no longer there, she was feminine instead of merely female.
But it was still a pathetically young face, immature and appealing. The candid brow, the wide-set eyes, the bee-stung lip that gave her mouth the expression of a disappointed child-it made a formidable whole. It would not be only the Bishop of Larborough who would believe a story told by that face.
"May I borrow this paper?" he asked Stanley.
"Take it," Stanley said. "We had it for our elevenses. There's nothing in it."
Robert was surprised. "Didn't you find this interesting?" he asked, indicating the front page.