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Where's Hilda?

The well-rounded police officer methodically scratched his balding head as he studied the frail old man sitting in front of him. He nodded at the scene; after seventeen years as a police officer in Whitby, Sergeant Arthur Breakwell had experienced hundreds of similar conversations, and experience told him that first impressions can often be very misleading.

"So you say she has been missing for five days now?" Arthur enquired as he scribbled something in his pocket sized wire bound police issue notebook.

"That's right... 'Twas Tuesday I realized she was missing when there was no sausage and eggs on the table. She's made me breakfast at eight o' clock sharp every morning for the last thirty seven years she has."

"And she gave you no indication that she was going to leave?"

"None that I can remember - Although I have been forgetting a few things of late."

Arthur carefully scrutinized the nondescript parlor of Mr. Humphrey Wentworth's modest detached post-war house. He studied the well worn furniture, the fading carpet, the gas fire surrounded by a tiled mantel, with a most ordinary carriage clock perched on top. It was in every detail the most typical of houses. It could, in fact, have been one of a thousand or more houses found in this part of the Yorkshire coast. Furthermore Humphrey appeared in all aspects every bit the typical retiree; grey trousers a good inch too short, paisley socks, a striped shirt, with an old tie meticulously tied around the collar, and a blue cardigan with neatly repaired elbows. Could there be any mystery here? - he thought to himself - surely his wife's disappearance has a simple and logical explanation - clearly they must have had some sort of falling out and soon she will return, apologetic, and they will continue on their unexciting lives side by side. Then his eyes caught sight of something in the corner of the room; a dog bed.

"You have a dog?" he prompted.

"Yes, we have an Airedale terrier mix, it is the wife's dog really, she rescued the bloomin' bugger from the pound... She called him Oliver, although where the Dickens she ever came up with that name I will never know... She always was a soft-hearted lass..."

"Was?" He added, suddenly fully attentive of Humphrey's choice of words.

"Heavens I mean is... She is a very soft hearted soul."

"Where is he?"

"Well he is in the back garden; whereas the misses likes him in the house, I certainly do not... Makes the place stink something 'orrible he does. I was never one for dogs

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