‘I must see a moat before I go back to OCAL.’ And then, after a pause, ‘I’m really very worried about Bill, Mr Grant.’
‘Yes, it is certainly very odd.’
‘That was nice of you,’ Mr Cullen said unexpectedly.
‘What was?’
‘Not to say: “Don’t you worry, he’ll turn up all right!” I can hardly keep my hands off people who say: “Don’t you worry, he’ll turn up.” I could strangle them.’
Moymore Hotel was a tiny version of Kentallen, without the turrets. But it was whitewashed and cheerful, and the trees behind it were coming into leaf. In the little flagged entrance-hall Mr Cullen hesitated.
‘In Britain I notice people don’t ask you up to their hotel bedroom. Would you like to wait in the sitting-room, perhaps?’
‘Oh, no; I’ll come up. I don’t think we have any feeling about hotel bedrooms. It is probably just that our hotel sitting-rooms are so near our bedrooms that there is no need to go up, and so we don’t suggest it. When a public lounge is a day’s journey from your own room it is easier to take a guest with you, I suppose. That way you are at least in the same hemisphere.’
Mr Cullen had a front room, looking across the road to the fields and the river and the hills beyond. With his professional eye Grant noticed the log fire ready-laid in the hearth and the daffodils in the window: Moymore had standards; with his personal mind he was concerned for this Tad Cullen, who had interrupted his leave and come to the wilds of Caledonia to find the friend who meant so much to him. A foreboding that he could not shake off had grown in him with every step of the way to Moymore, and now it filled him to the point of nausea.
The young man took a letter-case from his travelling-bag and opened it on the dressing-table. It contained practically everything but the wherewithal for writing letters. Among the mess of papers, maps, travel folders and what not, there were two leather articles: an address-book and a pocket-book. From the pocket-book he took some photographs and riffled through the feminine smiles until he found what he was looking for.