Down the hall came the clip clop of high heels on linoleum, and the girl came back from Mr Fielder. She said, 'The manager can see you now, sir.'

'Thank you,' I said. I went down the hall and through the open door at the end.

The man who rose to greet me and shake hands was a heavy, well-tailored, urbane man in his middle forties. He wore spectacles with heavy black frames, had smooth black hair and hard blue eyes. He seemed a man of too strong a personality to be sitting in the back office of a taxi firm, too high-powered an executive for the range of his job.

I felt my heart jump absurdly, and I had a moment's panic in which I feared he knew who I was and what I was trying to do. But his gaze was calm and businesslike, and he said only, 'I understand you wish to make a block booking for a wedding.'

'Yes,' I said, and launched into fictitious details. He made notes, added up some figures, wrote out an estimate, and held it out to me. I took it. His writing was strong and black. It fitted him.

'Thank you,' I said. 'I'll give this to my sister, and let you know.'

As I went out of his door and shut it behind me, I looked back at him. He was sitting behind his desk staring at me through his glasses with unwinking blue eyes. I could read nothing in his face.

I went back into the front office and said, 'I've got the estimate I wanted. Thank you for your help.' I turned to go, and had a second thought. 'By the way, do you know where I can find Mr Clifford Tudor?' I asked.

The girls, showing no surprise at my enquiry, said they did not know.

'Marigold might find out for you,' said one of them. 'I'll ask her.'

Marigold, finishing her call, agreed to help. She pressed the switch. 'All cars. Did anyone pick up Mr Tudor today? Come in please.'

A man's voice said, 'I took him to the station this morning, Marigold. He caught the London train.'

'Thanks, Mike,' said Marigold.

'She knows all their voices,' said one of the girls, admiringly. 'They never have to tell her the number of their car.'

'Do you all know Mr Tudor well?' I asked.

'Never seen him,' said one girl, and the others shook their heads in agreement.

'He's one of our regulars. He takes a car whenever he wants one, and we book it here. The driver tells Marigold where he's taking him. Mr Tudor has a monthly account, and we make it up and send it to him.'

'Suppose the driver takes Mr Tudor from place to place and fails to report it to Marigold?' I asked conversationally.

'He wouldn't be so silly. The drivers get commission on regulars. Instead of tips, do you see? We put ten per cent on the bills to save the regulars having to tip the drivers every five minutes.'

'A good idea,' I said. 'Do you have many regulars?'

'Dozens,' said one of the girls. 'But Mr Tudor is about our best client.'

'And how many taxis are there?' I asked.

'Thirty-one. Some of them will be in the garage for servicing, of course, and sometimes in the winter we only have half of them on the road. There's a lot of competition from the other firms.'

'Who actually owns the Marconicars?' I asked casually.

They said they didn't know and couldn't care less.

'Not Mr Fielder?' I asked.

'Oh, no,' said Marigold. 'I don't think so. There's a Chairman, I believe, but we've never seen him. Mr Fielder can't be all that high up, because he sometimes takes over from me in the evenings and at week-ends. Though another girl comes in to relieve me on my days off, of course.'

They suddenly all seemed to realize that this had nothing to do with my sister's wedding. It was time to go, and I went.

I stood outside on the pavement wondering what to do next. There was a caf‚ opposite, across the broad street, and it was nearly lunch-time. I went over and into the caf‚, which smelled of cabbage, and because I had arrived before the rush there was a table free by the window. Through the chaste net curtains of the Olde Oake caf‚ I had a clear view of the Marconicar office. For what it was worth.

A stout girl with wispy hair pushed a typed menu card in front of me. I looked at it, depressed. English home cooking at its very plainest. Tomato soup, choice of fried cod, sausages in batter, or steak and kidney pie, with suet pudding and custard to follow. It was all designed with no regard for an amateur rider's weight. I asked for coffee. The girl said firmly I couldn't have coffee by itself at lunch-time, they needed the tables. I offered to pay for the full lunch if I could just have the coffee, and to this she agreed, clearly thinking me highly eccentric.

The coffee, when it came, was surprisingly strong and good. I was getting the first of the brew, I reflected, idly watching the Marconicar front door. No one interesting went in or out.

On the storey above the Marconicars a big red neon sign flashed on and off, showing little more than a flicker in the daylight. I glanced up at it. Across the full width of the narrow building was the name L. C. PERTH. The taxi office had 'Marconicars' written in bright yellow on black along the top of its big window, and looking up I saw that the top storey was decorated with a large blue board bearing in white letters the information 'Jenkins, Wholesale Hats'.

The total effect was colourful indeed, but hardly what the Regency architect had had in mind. I had a mental picture of him turning in his grave so often that he made knots in his winding sheet, and I suppose I smiled, for a voice suddenly said, 'Vandalism, isn't it?'

A middle-aged woman had sat down at my table, unnoticed by me as I gazed out of the window. She had a mournful horsey face with no make-up, a hideous brown hat which added years to her age, and an earnest look in her eyes. The caf‚ was filling up, and I could no longer have a table to myself.

'It's startling, certainly,' I agreed.

'It ought not to be allowed. All these old houses in this district have been carved up and turned into offices, and it's really disgraceful how they look now. I belong to the Architectural Preservation Group,' she confided solemnly, 'and we're getting out a petition to stop people descrating beautiful buildings with horrible advertisements.'

'Are you having success?' I asked.

She looked depressed. 'Not very much, I'm afraid. People just don't seem to care as they should. Would you believe it, half the people in Brighton don't know what a Regency house looks like, when they're surrounded by them all the time? Look at that row over there, with all those boards and signs. And that neon,' her voice quivered with emotion, 'is the last straw. It's only been there a few months. We've petitioned to make them take it down, but they won't.'

'That's very discouraging,' I said, watching the Marconicar door. The two typists came out and went chattering up the road, followed by two more girls whom I supposed to have come down from the upper floors.

My table companion chatted on between spoonfuls of tomato soup. 'We can't get any satisfaction from Perth's at all because no one in authority there will meet us, and the men in the office say they can't take the sign down because it doesn't belong to them, but they won't tell us who it does belong to so that we can petition him in person.' I found I sympathized with Perth 's invisible ruler in his disinclination to meet the Architectural Preservation Group on the warpath. 'It was bad enough before, when they had their name just painted on the windows, but neon-' Words failed her, at last.

Marigold left for lunch. Four men followed her. No one arrived.

I drank my coffee, parted from the middle-aged lady without regret, and gave it up for the day. I took the train back to my car and drove up to London. After a long afternoon in the office, I started for home at the tail end of the rush-hour traffic. In the hold-ups at crossings and roundabouts I began, as a change from Bill's mystery, to tackle Joe Nantwich's.