Mrs Cartwright gave a featherlight knock with one hand while with the other she peremptorily pass-keyed entry.
Mr Rothermere, hair and beard tousled, hauled himself by the bedclothes to a sitting position. He looked a good deal alarmed for some seconds, then noticed that Julia was making semi-conscious stirrings beside him. He solicitously replaced over her naked breast the sheet his own rising had disturbed.
Mrs Cartwright opened the curtains and inspected the scene with quicksilver eye before beckoning the major through the doorway. He set the tray down on the floor in the corner furthest from the bed.
Mr Rothermere said thank you. Julia pretended to be still asleep. The major, who wore a loose drill jacket over the shirt and trousers of the night before, stood by the door for a few moments staring at Julia and the tray by turns, as if hopeful that she might suddenly dash to retrieve it. His wife bustled him out.
In the corridor, she looked at him thoughtfully and said: “It’s him. You’re quite right. It’s Mr Hive.”
“Said it was.”
“Yes, but he didn’t have the beard before. Just the moustache. A beard suits him.”
“Thought he’d retired.”
“Detectives never retire.”
The major lifted the corner of his lip derisively. “Detective? The man’s a professional co-respondent. Always was. A blasted paid bed-jumper.”
“Used to be.” Mrs Cartwright was shaking her head. “Used to be. And even then he was very select. Very select. He once told me that this hotel was very handy for the Sandringham trade. I expect that’s why he’s here now. And why he’s not let on to me who he is. Because of her.”
Speculation and dispute continued to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. Then other breakfasts demanded attention, other awakenings.
Mr Rothermere, formerly Hive, told Julia, on her return to bed with the tray, that he sincerely valued womanly independence and never tried to erode it by displays of pseudo-chivalry. He also told her—to her even greater gratification—that she picked her way amongst furniture with the grace of the nude eighteen-year-old Indonesian waitress he once had seen at the home of Godfrey Winn.
They balanced the tray between them and surveyed its contents. There were sausages, four fried eggs, some rashers of bacon, mushrooms, fried bread, a rack of toast, butter in a dish, marmalade and honey, and a large pot of coffee.
“Among the many excellent attributes of the English,” remarked Mr Rothermere, spearing sausages, “is their recognition of adultery as healthy exercise.”
“We are supposed to be married,” Julia observed.
“Mm-yes.” He slid a couple of eggs on to her plate and added bacon. “Hampstead address, though. Sinful connotations. How nice to have really crisp fried bread.”
“Oh, it is, it is. I hate it when they fry only one side and leave the blank side down on the plate to get steamy and soggy.”
“God, yes. They used to do that at Marlborough. I’ve never forgotten. Nor forgiven.”
“Hotel, was it?”
Mr Rothermere saw innocence in the eyes above the raised forkful of bacon and mushroom and quelled his conditioned reflexes. Instead of murmuring “School, actually,” he nodded.
Julia, happily determined to prolong the novelty of conversation at breakfast, indicated the butter with her knife. “How much more appetising,” she said, “than those dreadful little foil-wrapped tablets.”
“Indeed, yes.” He sought with his eyes the bowl of demerara. “And no wrapped individual sugar cubes, you notice. They always look to me like instruments of polite euthanasia.”
Julia thought: How nice and warm he is, under the bed-clothes and not forever shuffling about.
Mr Rothermere thought: There is a graciousness about this woman that I like: when my stomach rumbled just now, she pretended to look pleased, as if by birdsong.
And as they ate and drank and discoursed, her left foot and his right came together and little toe linked companionably in little toe.
They rose and dressed at half-past nine. In the hotel lounge they were scrutinised by two women and an elderly clergyman, all looking worried; and by a family in chairs at the window: father, mother and two adolescent boys, whose general expression was of gloomy pique, as if they had been put into quarantine.
“Anyone for beach cricket?” Mr Rothermere jocosely inquired of the room at large.
The clergyman and his escort quickly looked away from him and froze in contemplation of one another’s knitwear.
The two boys, reddening horribly at the sudden eruption of a loony into their lives, gazed down at their hands and had breathing trouble, on noticing which their father went red also. He leaned forward, pulled ears, and hissed admonition, leaving his wife to offer sole response to Mr Rothermere’s invitation. This she did by smiling flickeringly (loose connection? wondered Mr Rothermere, compassionately) and saying that it was nice of him, Mr—er—but not just now, thanks all the same, Mr—er...
“Rothermere,” he supplied, beaming. “I own the Daily Mail.”
The respiration of the smaller of the two boys grew suddenly more erratic. He began to wet himself.
Julia tugged at her companion’s arm. “You have some business to attend to, remember? And it’s a long way to Flaxborough.”
They went out into the lobby.
“What are you going to do?” he asked her.
“Some shopping. And I should like to walk along the beach if it’s not too cold.”
“Don’t forget that you have been done away with. At least remember not to ask a policeman anything.”
She grinned, but almost at once looked serious again. “It won’t come to that.” She took hold of his sleeve. “Look, Mortimer—you’re not to carry this thing too far. Scare the bugger a little, certainly; I don’t mind that. But I couldn’t go through with the real thing. You did realise that, didn’t you?”
He took her hand. “Of course. He must feel that we are ruthless, though. That is why you must stay out of the way. Leave it to me to keep up the pressure.” And Mr Rothermere made wheel-turning motions with his free hand and looked as grim as Captain Ahab having his leg off.
“No police, then?”
“No police. I promise.” Ahab was gone and back was Edward the Seventh, kindly, genial, reliable.
Julia posted a quick, schoolgirlish kiss in the gap between beard and moustache and walked lightly to the door. She looked back. “You’ll ring tonight?”
“Without fail, dear lady.”
She smiled and was gone.
Mr Rothermere went over to the reception counter, where Mrs Cartwright had been straining, under cover of busy-ness with ledgers, to catch what she could of the conversation. He bowed, holding his silver-grey, curly brimmed hat close to his diaphragm, and handed her the room key.