“We get ourselves op-based on Thursday night. Persimmon is to rendezvous with us the following morning. He doesn’t. We contact the store and his home. Negatively. Finalization of the campaign visuals is deadlined for May 7. Right. So we out-phase P and proceed. What else can we do, inspector? No one is so vital he cannot be redundantized.”
Having listened attentively to this summary by Gordon, Hugh directed upon the inspector a smile infinitely regretful and shrugged.
Purbright indicated the film stills. “Are you going to have to do all that again?”
“Tomorrow,” said Richard. He looked as nearly worried as Purbright had yet seen him.
“Come hell and high water,” added Hugh, jocularly. He darted approval-seeking glances at everyone else in the room. Hendy curled her lip at him.
Twenty minutes after Purbright’s departure, another visitor tapped at the door of the Dixon-Frome op-base and opened it immediately.
“Anybody home?”
Gordon, sifting disconsolately through the pages of a sales analysis, looked up to see the benign but alert features of a woman perhaps twenty years his senior. She was dressed in the kind of clothes—of excellent cut and quality but with a challenging touch of frumpishness—that proclaim the well-born who has managed to hang on to her money.
Gordon rose. He was alone in the room except for Sheila, who was asleep in her chair and faintly snoring. Hendy and Richard had gone down to the bar. Hugh, a compulsive body-cleanser, was locked in a bathroom somewhere for the third time that day.
The woman advanced into the room and subjected Gordon to close and friendly scrutiny.
“You are Dixon-Frome, of course,” she said, having nodded approvingly at the lemon hue of his drip-dry Executon shirt.
Gordon half-opened his mouth, remained motionless for a second, then snapped his fingers. “You’re TEAK...” He waited, smiling uncertainly.
“Teak?”
“Thornton-Edwards. One of their M-R execs. Right?”
She pursed her lips teasingly, then looked round for somewhere to put down her old-fashioned but very costly-looking blue sealskin handbag. Gordon took the bag and placed it on the table. She selected a chair for herself and sat down. Her legs were surprisingly shapely.
“No,” she said at last, “I am not from Thornton-Edwards, although I do know of them, of course. I was on the board of an agency for a number of years. Nowadays my interests lie in a direction different from advertising.”
“Oh, yes?”
“My name is Lucilla Teatime—incidentally, I should much prefer you to use it without the feudal handle, which may look well enough on company notepaper but does tend to be painfully embarrasing in conversation—and I am Operational Director of ECPRF.”
There was a tiny pause.
“Small world,” said Gordon.
“Indeed it is,” agreed Miss Teatime. She gazed past his shoulder as if the Antipodes had just swum into view above the sideboard. Then she said, slowly and deliberately: “Your promotion film has run into serious difficulties.”
Gordon started. “How do you know about that?”
“Should we say, perhaps, that our lines crossed? What a pity that Dixon-Frome did not consult us in advance. The site you chose for filming is quite notorious in PR circles, you know.”
“Our consultancy was quite happy with it, PR-wise.”
Miss Teatime gave a tinkling, tea-with-the-vicar laugh.
“Public Relations...oh dear, a small misunderstanding I fear. I was speaking of something rather less mundane. PR stands also for Psychical Research.”
“I see.” Gordon fingered his tie dubiously.
“Ah, you are embarrassed, are you not. Your idea association mechanism is in good order. It has given you the print-out. Psychic—spiritualism—table-turning and cheesecloth-mad old ladies in dark Peckham parlours...”
He sent a hesitant little smile to meet hers. “Well, actually...”
“Perfectly natural,” declared Miss Teatime. “You can have no idea of how that image still interferes with the work of purely scientific agencies. What I dare say you would term respect potential is something we have worked hard to achieve in the Edith Cavell Psychical Research Foundation.”
“Edith Cavell?”
Miss Teatime blushed. “My middle names, actually. Rather shame-making but the Trust insisted. They meant it kindly, I suppose, but people do not realize how unworthy of them is this persistent deference to money and aristocratic connection. However, and be that as it may, you will be wanting to know, will you not, in what practical manner the Foundation proposes to assist you and your excellent consultancy.”
“I’m not sure that I see how you...”
“Would you mind?” A little cheroot had appeared between two of Miss Teatime’s elegantly poised fingers. Gordon looked about him. He spotted a box of matches that rose and fell on the stomach of the sleeping Sheila.
Miss Teatime accepted a light with careful concentration, as if she valued it highly, then indicated the prints on the table.
“Those are some of the stills, are they?”
Gordon obediently handed them to her.
Miss Teatime donned a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and scrutinized the first print. It showed a group of washwives, with Hugh in their midst. Each of the women was displaying a garment incredibly besmirched with foodstuff or effluent of some kind. The scene was saved from looking like an incipient lynching by Hugh’s expression of calm, almost saintly, reassurance.
Over every inch of the print ranged Miss Teatime’s keen eye. Gordon heard her sudden intake of breath when she came to the section ringed in Hendy’s white crayon.
“Amazing!”
He looked over her shoulder, but she was already busy upon the second photograph.
“Absolutely fascinating!”
“You see why all this work has negative use-value,” Gordon said. “The spoilage rate is terrific.”
She seemed not to hear.
Another print was of the washwives gazing at the river in which boatman Heath was pretending to fill his medieval bucket. The floating bull’s-head mask was clearly visible.
“Minoan ectoplasm!” breathed Miss Teatime.
A shot of the line-up of washwives at the display of their clothing after it supposedly had been immersed in Lucillite suds bore three of Hendy’s censorship rings.