Joe stood outside No. 15 Lock-keeper's Lane and rang the doorbell with some trepidation. To his relief it was the boy Liam who opened the door. Joe glanced at his watch. It was half past three. Joe said, "Hi, Liam. Back from school already?" "Exams," said the boy lugubriously. "You want to see Mum?" Not if I don't have to, thought Joe. He said, "Just wondered, that morning Steve left, did he actually eat his breakfast?" "Yeah, Steve always ate his breakfast," said Liam wonderingly. "He really liked Mum's cooking!" Recalling the burned offering he'd seen on his previous visit, Joe understood Liam's wonderment, but he wasn't sure the boy had fully understood the question. "Don't mean generally," he said. "I mean, that specific Wednesday morning, did he definitely have breakfast before he went?" Now the boy understood him. He turned away and yelled, "Mum! It's for you!" Then he vanished up the stairs. Oh shoot! thought Joe, his heart sinking not only at the prospect of renewing acquaintance with Mrs. Tremayne but because he already had his answer. She emerged from the kitchen in a puff of vegetable steam. Presumably she was preparing her returning lodgers' evening meal. It did not surprise Joe that she belonged to that old-fashioned school of landladies who thought that vegetables could never be boiled too much. Her face was already flushed from the heat of the kitchen, but irritation at the sight of Joe slapped on another coat of puce. "What?" she demanded. "Mrs. Tremayne, quick question then I'm out of here. Did you cook breakfast for Mr. Waring the morning he left?" She hesitated, obviously debating whether an answer or a slam of the door would get rid of Joe quickest. Then she glanced up the stairs and said, "What's he been saying?" "Nothing," said Joe. "He's a good lad. I can see that." "He says you're a private detective." "That's right. And all I'm doing is asking a question that the police might want to ask." "The police?" she said, outraged and anxious at the same time. "Nothing for you to worry about," he assured her. "Only, please, in your own interest, answer me the same as you'd answer them, so there's no contradiction." As an argument it didn't feel all that weighty to Joe, but it worked for Mrs. Tremayne. "Yes, I started cooking it, but no he didn't eat it, if that's what you're getting at. Two eggs, three rashers, half a pound of pork sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes and a slice of fried bread. No use to me when it's cooked, is it? So I didn't see why your friends shouldn't pay for it."
"Ain't no friends of mine," Joe assured her. "So when Mr. Waring didn't appear for his breakfast, what did you do?"
"I yelled up the stairs, then I went to his room and knocked, then I opened the door."
"Did his bed look like it had been slept in?"
"It looked like it always looked," she snapped. "A tip! I told him, Mr. Waring, I said, if you want your room cleaned and your bed made, you had better start leaving it halfway decent. Till you do that, I'm not going in there!"
"But you went in that morning and he wasn't there?"
"No."
"And when Mr. Waring's brother was settling his bill this morning, he didn't make any fuss about exactly when Mr. Waring had left?"
"No. He was most accommodating. He said, 'Mrs. Tremayne, no problem, I'm perfectly happy to accept that my brother was here till the morning of the Wednesday the twelfth and left after eating his usual hearty breakfast,' and he insisted on me putting that down on the receipt."
"I bet he did," said Joe. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Tremayne."
"Is that all I get? What about some explanation?" demanded the woman switching back to aggrieved-party mode. "I'm entitled to know what's going on in my house."
Joe sniffed. The steam seemed to be darkening and the boiling smell was being overtaken by the odor of burning.
"Think what's going on is your veggies have boiled over," he said.
With a scream of rage, she turned and rushed back into the kitchen.
Joe made his escape. As he headed up along Plun- kett Avenue, he felt his sense of relief at escaping from Mrs. Tremayne evaporate like the nourishment from her over-cooked vegetables.
He was bearing news to rejoice and news to dismay the Young Fair God, and by now he felt he knew his man well enough to be sure which would prevail.