name of Constable Suckling—who’d been making his portly progress down the beach—arrived beside them.
Constable Basil Suckling had been perambulating the promenade all morning, keeping an eye fixed firmly on his beach. He’d noticed the dark-haired girl as soon as she arrived, and had been watching her closely ever since. He’d turned away only briefly over that blasted business with the donkey, but when he looked back the girl was gone. It had taken Constable Suckling a tense few minutes to find her again, behind the bathing huts, engaged in what looked to him suspiciously like heated discussion. Her companion, none other than the rough young man who’d been lurking beneath his hat at the back of the bandstand all morning.
Hand on his truncheon, Constable Suckling jostled across the beach. The sand made progress more ungainly than he’d have liked, but he did his best. As he drew near he heard her say, ‘That dress isn’t yours.’ ‘Everything all right then?’ said the constable now, holding his stomach in a little tighter as he came to a stop. She was even prettier up close than he’d imagined. Bowtie lips with up-turned outer corners. Peachy skin—smooth, he could tell just by looking, yielding. Glossy curls around a love-heart face. He added, ‘This fellow’s not bothering you is he, Miss?’
‘Oh. Oh, no, sir. Not at all.’ Her face was flushed and Constable Suckling realised she was blushing. Not every day she met a man in uniform, he supposed. She really was quite charming. ‘This gentleman was just about to return something to me.’
‘Is that right?’ He frowned at the young man, taking in the insolent expression, the jaunty way he carried himself, the high cheekbones and arrogant black eyes. They gave the lad a distinctly foreign look, an Irish look, those eyes, and Inspector Suckling narrowed his own. The young man shifted his weight and made a small sighing noise, the plaintive nature of which made the constable improbably cross. Louder this time, he said again, ‘Is that right?’
Still there came no answer, and Constable Suckling’s grip settled on his truncheon. He tightened his fingers around its familiar shaft. It was, he sometimes thought, the best partner he’d ever had, certainly the most abiding. His fingertips itched with pleasant memories and it was almost a disappointment when the young man, cowed, gave a nod.
‘Well then,’ the constable said; ‘Hurry it up. Return the young lady’s item to her. ’
‘Thank you, Constable,’ she said, ‘it’s so kind of you.’ And then she smiled again, setting off a not unpleasant shifting sensation in the constable’s trousers. ‘It blew away, you see.’
Constable Suckling cleared his throat and adopted his most policeman-like expression. ‘Right then, Miss,’ he said, ‘Let’s get you home, shall we? Out of the wind and out of danger’s way.’
Dolly managed to extricate herself from Inspector Suckling’s dutiful care when they reached the front door of Bellevue. It had looked a little hairy for a while—there’d been talk of walking her inside and fetching her a nice cup of tea to ‘settle her nerves’—but Dolly, after no small effort, convinced him that his talents were wasted on such menial tasks and he really should be getting back to his beat. ‘After all, Constable, you must have so many people needing you to rescue them.’
She thanked him profusely—he held her hand a little longer than was strictly necessary in parting which was uncomfortable, for his skin was sticky—and then Dolly made a great show of opening the door and heading inside. She closed it almost but not quite completely and watched through the gap as he strutted back to the promenade. Only when he’d become a pinprick in the distance did she tuck the silver dress beneath a cushion for safekeeping and sneak back out, doubling back the way they’d come along the prom.
The young man was loitering, waiting for her, leaning against the pillar outside one of the smartest guesthouses. Dolly didn’t so much as glance sideways at him as she passed, only kept walking, shoulders back, head held high. He followed her down the road, she could tell he was there, and into a small laneway that zigzagged away from the beach. Dolly could feel her heartbeat speeding up and, as the sounds of the seaside deadened against the cold stone walls of the buildings, she could hear it too. She kept walking, faster than before. Her plimsolls were scuffing on the tarmac, her breaths were growing short, but she didn’t stop and