“Well, really, Julia; what am I supposed to make of talk about happy endings and people called Rothermere?”
Julia gave a long sigh, part of which came out as “Bloody hell!”
Her father’s failure to reprove this lapse into vulgarity indicated that far from being merely annoyed he was now concerned. She described briefly, with one pause to insert more money, the events of the past six days that had led to her present plight. The amatory aspect she did not mention, partly because she did not wish to overfill the cup of her father’s disapproval and partly because the memory, to her surprise, quite sharply grieved her.
“You realise,” Mr Clay said quietly, when she had finished, “that I have been visited by the police and asked questions.”
“Oh, no...”
“Yes. I did not know quite what to say, and I fear that I may have given the officer an impression of indifference. What I was trying to do, of course, was to make light of your leaving home lest what I felt your real reason for doing so—to escape from that lamentable marriage of yours for a couple of days—should be bandied around the town by common policemen and worse.”
What Mr Clay might consider worse than a common policeman Julia was in no mood to speculate. She asked simply what he thought she ought to do.
“Have you any money?”
“Some. Not a lot. But I’ve my cheque book.”
“An hotel, I feel, would be reluctant to accept a cheque from an unaccompanied lady. You had better meet your obligations in cash. And the sooner, the better.”
Julia considered. There was bloody Mortimer’s share of the bill, of course. She might just manage, though. “Yes, father,” she said, without irony.
“Have you your car?”
“No. We came in Mor...in Rothermere’s.”
“I see. In that case, I think it will be as well if I drive down and bring you back. In the meantime, it will create a favourable impression if you take the initiative and telephone the police. Tell them only that you saw the newspaper report and intend to return home at once. Answer no questions other than simple and obvious ones. I shall tell Scorpe to be ready to look after your interests.”
Justin Scorpe, doyen of Flaxborough solicitors, was considered by Mr Clay to fulfil in the sphere of litigation a role analogous to that of the grammar school gates in the sphere of education: he effectively insulated the worth-while and the privileged from the rough-and-tumble world of the envious, the vicious and the undeserving.
“And now,” said Mr Clay, “perhaps you will tell me as clearly as you can how I best may reach the, ah, establishment in which you are lodged.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Lucy, my dear, I envy you. I truly envy you. There is nothing more comforting to the bruised spirit than Gothic glimpsed through green.”
Mr Rothermere, stretched at full length within a chintz-frilled armchair, gazed dreamily through the big window with its many small panes. The parish church of Saint Lawrence loomed only fifty yards away, across the closely mown lawn that once had been its graveyard. Two immense yew trees screened much of the lower fabric, but the tower rose stark and splendid against the afternoon sky of autumn.
He was speaking to a woman of perhaps forty-five, perhaps sixty, who looked as if she had always had her own teeth and her own bank account. Her bearing bespoke discrimination but not fussiness; her clothes testified to taste which had no need to refer to fashion more often than every ten years or so. She had the face of a listener. A certain tone, a sort of controlled vivaciousness, about her body suggested appetites healthily unimpaired. She had remarkably good legs. Her name was Miss Teatime, Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime, and such was her character that it had never got her down.
“Your spirit would not need comforting,” said Miss Teatime, “if you had continued to follow honest employment instead of prostituting your gifts on behalf of big business.”
“The life of a private detective is not only squalid,” replied Mr Rothermere, “it is dreadfully insecure. Security is important to one who has misspent his youth.”
“How long have you been misspending your youth, Mortimer?”
“About fifty years. Yes, but Cultox do have this marvellous pension scheme. The time is coming when I shall want a retreat. Something monastic. I think I have a latent spirituality.”
Miss Teatime rose, as if prompted by a reminder, and went to a small, bow-fronted corner cabinet. She returned with glasses and a half-bottle of whisky.
“I liked Hive much better than Rothermere,” she said. “It sounds villainous and suits the beard. How long have you had that, by the way?”
“Since August, last year.” Mr Rothermere accepted a filled glass, pledged Miss Teatime’s health, and sampled the liquor with knowledgeable nods and grunts.
“Cultox,” he resumed, “sent me to Brussels to pick up a little information about the Italian vintage expectations. Cultox have a process to make Chianti from methane (for God’s sake keep that to yourself) and they wanted to know where to hit the market. So there I was in Brussels—an Italian count!” And Mr Rothermere grinned a grin bolognese and swallowed some more whisky.
Soon, though, he was looking dejected again.
“Lucy, I’m bloody worried. I really am.”
“Very well. Tell me all about it.” Miss Teatime set down her glass, selected a small cigar from a box on the table beside her, and lit it after piercing the end with a pearl-headed hatpin which she seemed to keep for the purpose.
As a prelude, Mr Rothermere drew an envelope from an inside breast pocket and let it rest, unopened, in his left hand.
“This,” he said, “is a little mystery which I think is at the centre of this awful business that I’ve let myself in for. You can see it for yourself later. I’ll tell you what I know first—such as it is.
“Cultox have something they call their Security Division—Christ, yes, I know—I mean, who doesn’t these days?—and that is the set-up for which I work. Odd, how one’s past catches up: it must have been that Duke of Windsor business that gave them a cross-reference to me...”
“Mortimer!”
He stopped in mid-exposition, one hand aloft.
Miss Teatime frowned fondly. “This is Lucy—remember? Erstwhile associate in the Gentlefolk’s Gold Brick Promotion Society, of Hallam Street, West. No spiels, dear lad, I beg you.”
Mr Rothermere looked innocently surprised, then subsided more deeply into his chair. Within his moustache lurked a little smile of gratification.
“You will remember,” he said, “my Happy Endings agency?”
“I do, indeed. Marriage counselling in reverse, was it not; an ingenious enterprise.”
“One tried to ease the path of true divorce. Anyway, Cultox obviously remembered it. I was asked to come to Flaxborough and apply the old technique to a little local problem, as Sir Malcolm termed it—Malky Eisenbach, that is—he’s the chairman of Cultox UK—delightful fellow and the third biggest crook in England.”