London is both a place of ordinary business and a working base for the investigation. Bobby Jones first goes there to meet a prospective garage partner; later, he and Badger Beadon are in the city while Bobby handles the confusion surrounding Badger’s affairs. Frankie Derwent also uses London to speak with Bobby away from Staverley and to pursue a lead concerning John Savage’s will. Its recurring importance lies in this practical combination: people can travel into the city, meet out of sight, and follow separate lines of inquiry through its streets and institutions.

Business and the Railway

The first visit described here begins the morning after Bobby’s cliffside adventure. He goes up to London to meet a friend who is considering starting a garage and thinks Bobby’s cooperation might be valuable. The proposed business is a separate, immediate concern from the adventure Bobby has just experienced, and the visit gives him a reason to be in the city before the investigation’s later London episodes. Two days later, Bobby catches the 11.30 train home, but only by seconds. At Paddington, the clock shows 11.28; he rushes through the subway and reaches platform 3 as the train is already moving. He throws himself into the first carriage he sees, amid the protests of ticket collectors and porters, and lands on his hands and knees inside. The hurried departure makes London a point of transit as much as a destination: the account registers the city through a clock, a station, a platform, and the physical scramble to get away.

A Base with Badger

A week later, Bobby has joined Badger Beadon in London. Frankie has sent several enigmatic messages, most so illegible that Bobby can only guess at them; their general instruction is that he should do nothing until he hears from her. In the meantime, he is occupied untangling the many difficulties Badger has managed to create for himself and his business. The city is therefore not simply a place where the investigation pauses. It provides the setting for Bobby’s practical work and for the waiting period in which Frankie’s plan remains unclear. Bobby’s caution follows him there. After being poisoned with eight grains of morphia, he is suspicious of food and drink and has brought a Service revolver to London, although carrying it makes him uncomfortable. The danger travels with him into the city, turning routine activity into something he must manage warily. That unease is interrupted when Frankie’s Bentley roars down the Mews and stops outside the garage where Bobby, in grease-stained overalls, comes out to meet her. She is driving, with a gloomy-looking young man beside her; London brings the investigation directly into the garage where Bobby has been working.

Brook Street and the Conversation

Later, Frankie uses a drive into town to secure a private conversation with Bobby. She explains that the journey itself was an excuse: at Staverley she could not risk being seen walking the lanes in deep conversation with her chauffeur. A pseudo-letter from her father provided a pretext for the drive, though the plan nearly went wrong when Roger Bassington-ffrench came along too. Frankie says they could have dropped him wherever he wished and continued to Brook Street, and they decide to go there in any case because Bobby’s garage may be watched. Bobby then tells her about inquiries made about him in Marchbolt. They go to the Derwents’ town residence in Brook Street, where Frankie says only her maid and a couple of caretakers are present. Bobby waits outside while she enters; she soon opens the door and beckons him in. Upstairs, in the large drawing room, they pull up some of the blinds and remove the covering from one of the sofas. The house offers a controlled meeting place after the risks of being observed in the country, and the transition from the drive to a private room gives their conversation a different degree of privacy.

Streets and Legal Inquiry

London also becomes a route into the history of John Savage. Frankie considers whether the circumstances of his death might have been suspicious and thinks his will could provide a clue. She remembers that there is somewhere in London where wills can be read for a shilling, but cannot recall where. The search begins not with a clear plan but with this fragment of practical knowledge, and the city’s transport system complicates it: Frankie overshoots Oxford Circus, where she had meant to change, by two stations. She leaves the train at the British Museum station. An idea comes to her as she emerges into the street, and after a five-minute walk she reaches the offices of Messrs. Spragge, Spragge, Jenkinson & Spragge. She is received deferentially and ushered into the private office of the senior partner, Mr Spragge. The episode redirects her from a remembered place for consulting wills to a solicitor who may know about the matter; the evidence establishes the visit, not that she reads the will there. At three o’clock that afternoon, Frankie is also seen approaching 17 St Leonard’s Gardens in Paddington, dressed fashionably but soberly, with pince-nez, an earnest frown, and a sheaf of pamphlets and papers. The surrounding houses are described as gloomy and dilapidated, with an air of having seen better days. Frankie looks up at the numbers and stops with a grimace of vexation. Against the purposeful movement between stations, offices, and the Brook Street house, this moment gives London a less polished face: investigation here also means negotiating an unfamiliar street and its numbered doors.