He ran down the stairs and out into the street. There was a cabstand a few yards along the road. The drivers were chatting in a group, stamping their feet to keep warm. Hugh ran up to them, saying: "Did any of you drive Lady Whitehaven this afternoon?"
"Two of us did," said a cabbie. "One for her luggage!" The others chortled.
Hugh's deduction was confirmed. "Where did you take her?"
"Waterloo Station, for the one o'clock boat train."
The boat train went to Southampton--where Micky was sailing from. Those two had always been cronies. Micky smarmed all over her like a cad, kissing her hand and flattering her. Despite the eighteen years' difference in their ages, they made a plausible couple.
"But they missed the train," the cabbie added.
"They?" Hugh said. "There was someone with her?"
"An elderly chap in a wheelchair."
Not Micky, evidently. Who, then? No one in the family was frail enough to use a wheelchair. "They missed the train, you say. Do you know when the next boat train leaves?"
"At three."
Hugh looked at his watch. It was two-thirty. He could catch it.
"Take me to Waterloo," he said, and jumped into the cab.
He reached the station just in time to get a ticket and board the boat train.
It was a corridor train with interconnecting coaches, so he could walk along it. As it pulled out of the station and picked up speed through the tenements of south London, he set out to look for Augusta.
He did not have to look far. She was in the next coach.
With a quick glance he hurried past her compartment so that she would not see him.
Micky was not with her. He must have gone by an earlier train. The only other person in her compartment was an elderly man with a rug over his knees.
He went to the next coach and found a seat. There was not much point in confronting Augusta right away. She might not have the snuffboxes with her--they could be in one of her cases in the luggage van. To speak to her now would serve only to forewarn her. Better to wait until the train arrived at Southampton. He would jump off, find a policeman, then challenge her as her bags were unloaded.
Suppose she denied she had the snuffboxes? He would insist that the police search her luggage. They were obliged to investigate a reported theft, and the more Augusta protested the more suspicious they would be.
