“Excellent!’ He slapped his knee, as though it was all settled. “Then you must come back here.”
I didn’t argue. It wasn’t every office that had an IBM electric with cassette ribbon and auto-correction facility.
“Love to,” I said.
Dear old Mr. Bloor looked like the cat that’d swallowed the canary.
I gained two kilos in eight very festive days, and when I got back to London all hell had broken loose.
...Bridget broke her leg skiing at Bad Gastein and is in hospital in Salzburg. Caris has flown to assist. Job with dogs didn’t work out. One bit her and she kicked back...
Things were little better at the office. I walked in on a screaming row. Someone had been selling off company secrets. It was in all the papers.
The usually calm professor was going off like a bag of crackers. And the language! Viologens, diquarternary derivatives, sulfates, paraquat, diquat.
They didn’t even notice me slip behind my IBM and pop my soup thermos on the floor with my tote.
“You’re the trials expert, Bloor.” Mr. Sharpe’s charm had dissipated somewhat. His accusations were swarming like wasps. “My job’s selling the muck.”
“Yes, Algy.” I flinched at how hard he pronounced the “g.” “Seems you’ve been selling to the wrong side, you grubby little traitor.”
When I eventually cleared my throat, it was as if I’d thrown a bucket of water into a dog fight.
“Pleasant Christmas, Rosie?” The professor looked on the verge of a stroke.
“Still here!” Mr. Sharpe didn’t look much better. He looked even more surprised than he had that morning when I’d greeted him in my best soprano.
But Mr. Bloor had puffed like an adder. “We managed to persuade Rosie to stay on.”
“Marvelous.” Mr. Sharpe flashed me a particularly dazzling smile. “Bloody marvelous.”
He left the office shortly afterwards. To buy a “wretched radiator hose,” or so he claimed.
Mr. Bloor was dreadfully upset about the whole sorry business. “If this mud sticks, I’m finished,” he confided. “I’m an old man, Rosie. Scrap heap for me, if they let me go.”
“They’d never do that,” I assured him. “Bet you’ve never done anything improper in your life.”
He was still wallowing in misery when I took the morning bits and bobs in to the professor.
“You might want to see this.” I set a used typewriter cassette on his blotter. It bore a recent date in my unmistakable neat printing.
With cool efficiency, I picked up his diary and flipped to the appropriate date.
“Oh look,” I indicated that day’s diary entry. “You were addressing a conference in The Hague. Mr. Bloor was down in Kent. Any typing I did must’ve been for Mr. Sharpe.”
The professor’s eyebrows had already arched. But his fingers weren’t steepling. They were too busy fiddling with that typewriter cassette. When he pried it open, he’d be able to read what he needed to know.
By the time Mr. Sharpe got back, his hands covered in engine grease, Prof’s spirits had lifted. He invited both gentlemen to lunch at The Savoy.
Dear old Mr. Bloor sloped out like a dog about to get a bullet.
The sight sickened me. I tipped my soup down the sink and made a really strong coffee, then locked the office and took a long bike ride through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the sanctuary I called home.
But I biked back well in time to witness the group’s return. Mr. Sharpe was considerably less buoyant. It took him all of two minutes to scribble his resignation.
“I’ll type it up, if you like,” I offered.
He politely declined.
That night, I was mugged as I rode past the Long Water, heading for Peter Pan. I’d just discarded my tatty old tartan thermos in one of the bins when someone leaped out of the shadows and knocked me senseless.
Luckily, they didn’t nick my tote, because it had my passport in it. Ignored my bike, too. Old sit-up-and-begs didn’t rate too highly on the black market, even then.
When I came around after six days in an induced coma, the doctors said I’d had a lucky escape. Miraculous, more likely, I realized later. Depressed skull fracture and two broken ribs. They didn’t even mention the ruined pair of new sheer, sequined tights.
Phillip and Mr. Bloor visited me in Charing Cross Hospital. The professor sent a lovely bunch of lilies from Aalsmeer.
“Death flowers,” I giggled. The drugs must’ve gone to my head.
Phillip just sat there, more pale than any lily.
Mr. Bloor wasn’t exactly animated, either. Just his fists kept clenching and unclenching, like he wanted to beat someone to pulp.
“Harley’s dead,” Phillip finally uttered.
Mr. Bloor remained rigid.
“What happened?” I struggled to sit up, but the room had started to spin.
“Seemed like flu at first, but the police think it’s some sort of poison. They’re doing tests.” He looked at Mr. Bloor and cleared his throat.
“Algy Sharpe’s been arrested. A witness identified him hanging about your house. He’d been under a lot of stress lately; obviously he cracked.”
Obviously.
He’d been just as obvious on the cycle path the night I was mugged. Porkpie hat. The muttered, “Take that, Flower,” as the sharp points of his shiny shoes kicked in.
I understood his bitterness towards me. He’d been caught out trying to poach a few rather unremarkable company secrets before taking his even less remarkable sales skills elsewhere.
I couldn’t imagine he’d killed Harley.
In my sworn statement, I stuck strictly to the facts.
“Mr. Sharpe did call Harley a scoundrel,” I sobbed truthfully, when questioned. “Said someone should shake him down a peg or two. I think those were his exact words.”
The professor said enough for everyone later, at the trial. Sharpe’s obsession with me. His reference to a certain herbicide as “killing juice.” His disloyalty to the company. Then, of course, the crucial empty vial discovered in his alligator-hide briefcase.
Harley’s murder didn’t rate a mention in that month’s call home to Mother. She’d only have worried.
Bridget’s back, and sharing with Phillip. Worked out brilliantly, because he has a spare bed. Caris is staying in Strasbourg with a ski instructor called Jurgen. Going tonight to see Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes at The Victoria Palace. Hyde Park a riot of colour. George down the Portobello reckons it’ll be a smashing summer.
That was all years ago now, but if I’m honest, there’s a big part of me that still yearns for London. I’d done things there I’d never have dreamed of doing at home.
The professor writes every Christmas. He says poor Mr. Sharpe’s done his time and is now living in quite a nice part of Kensington.
On the streets.
Ironic, really. When I was there, I’d see the street people and wonder about the reasons for their slide into ruin. Some had such cultured accents.
Mr. Bloor, my loyal protector, is living out his retirement not far from his old trial sites in Kent. A quiet retiree, from all reports. Gran always said you had to watch the quiet ones.
Life’s quiet here too, in Australia, surrounded by memories and old books.
Like the first edition Harley was so keen to see that lunchtime, when I poured him his last, strong coffee.
He should never have violated my personal space like that. He should never have seen those tapes and my remarkable letter to a rival manufacturer of “killing juice.”
He should never have tried to blackmail me, either.
It was wrong.
Quiet as the grave it is, here.
Copyright © 2009 Cheryl Rogers