“It was a piece of terribly bad luck that someone should send in an animal that happened to be called Rip,” said Miss Teatime, reflectively.
“You can say that again,” muttered the Warden. “Stone me!”
“Ah, well, Mr Leaper”—she rose—“in the circumstances we had better call the job off.”
He shut his jack knife with some difficulty and peered anxiously at his thumb. “Yeah. Pro tem.”
Miss Teatime was about to reach for the door, which had been standing slightly ajar, when it began to move inward of its own accord.
Two men were standing outside. One, though young, was white-haired. He looked cheerful. His companion, a pace behind, did not.
“We did knock,” said the nearer man. “You seemed busy, though. Not to worry.” He smiled.
Leaper looked quickly from one to the other and then at Miss Teatime, as if asking her to account for them. She gave a small shake of the head.
The white-haired man appeared to understand their dilemma. “Allow me,” he said, “to introduce ourselves. We are executive representatives of Happy Endings Incorporated. I wonder if you now have a few moments to spare, madam and sir?”
Chapter Eighteen
The white-haired man glanced quickly about the hut interior and pronounced it “fascinatingly rural”. It would not be sufficiently commodious, however, to allow them to hold the kind of conference he had in mind. Perhaps Miss Teatime could suggest somewhere else?
“I’m Charles, by the way,” he added, “and this”—he indicated his companion, loitering diffidently in the doorway—“is Simon.”
“Of the Cultox Corporation?” inquired Miss Teatime, pleasantly.
“Of Cultox, as you say. Security division.”
The Warden was glowering. “What was all that about happy endings and everything?”
“A little pleasantry, Mr Leaper. I fancy Miss Teatime will understand.”
She said: “You seem to know my name, Mr Charles. Yours is not familiar to me. However, names are of no concern to our little four-footed friends, so why should they matter to us?”
“What a beautiful philosophy,” Charles declared. Simon nodded gravely in the background. His clasped hands made slow and continuous movements, like a stomach digesting.
Miss Teatime said that she would like nothing better than to entertain the two visitors in her own home. Unfortunately, she lived within ecclesiastical precincts and had to be more than normally circumspect. They would be welcome, however, in her office in Saint Anne’s Gate.
Charles said that would be marvellous and looked as if he meant it. Looking pleased, Miss Teatime reflected, seemed to be a speciality of his: she already had ticketed him in her own mind as the Happy One.
“You must allow me to give you a lift in my car—or have you transport of your own?”
“No, we came from the town by taxi.”
“It will be something of a squeeze,” warned Miss Teatime.
Charles said no, not a bit of it, for he alone would take advantage of her kind offer. Leaper could not possibly leave his post, and Simon would be glad to keep him company. Simon liked talking about dogs. He had two of his own.
Probably Dobermann Pinschers, thought Miss Teatime. She smiled and said: “Aaahh!”
Charles declared the sports car to be marvellously fast looking. He contrasted in vivid terms the motorist’s frustrations in traffic-choked London with his unhindered and rapid progress in “these splendid little provincial places”.
The fair wagon’s unwilling retinue having finally piled to a halt at the northern end of the town bridge, they took twenty-five minutes to reach Miss Teatime’s office.
Charles paid close and admiring attention to the shabby staircase, the big draughty landing and the doors that had last received a coat of paint in the year of George V’s Jubilee. “If these old walls could only talk,” he said. “Ah, yes,” replied Miss Teatime, adding silently: But thank Christ they can’t.
Before shutting and locking the door behind them, she hung a card outside that promised her return in one hour. Then she placed gloves and bag on the desk, and waved her guest to a chair beside it.
“You drink whisky, of course, Mr Charles.” It was less an invitation than a confident statement.
“What a lovely surprise. Yes, I do, on the odd occasion. And it’s Charles, incidentally, not Mister Charles.”
“Ah, yes; the instant intimacy of the boardroom and the sports interview. But my upbringing in a rectory was rather old-fashioned, Mr Charles. I have never been persuaded that ease of social intercourse was to be secured by the bandying of Christian names by complete strangers.”
“Stranger? Oh, come, that’s rather hard on me, isn’t it?”
Charles half stood to receive his glass. His jocular manner had subsided somewhat.
“Formality of address,” said Miss Teatime, putting a small jug of water within his reach, “is no bad thing until each person knows exactly what the other is after and at what price.”
“I stand rebuked, Miss Teatime. I shall fight my inclination to call you Lucy. Cheers.” He took a sip of his whisky.
“Your good health, Mr Charles.” She drank; then placed between them a box of small cigars, one of which she examined critically before lighting it and inhaling the first drag with as fastidious an air of appreciation as if she held a bunch of newly picked primroses.
She said: “Your Mr Simon—the one who looks like an unfrocked priest—will not attempt to hurt that unfortunate Mr Leaper, I trust.”
“Hurt him? Good heavens, no. Why should he?”
She made a dismissive gesture with her cigar. “A twinge of anxiety on my part. Please disregard it. Is the whisky to your satisfaction? It is something they call a straight malt, and most wholesome, I understand.”
Charles was beginning to look strained. He drank a little more, rocked his head from side to side, pouted thoughtfully, and finally drew breath and began: “Miss Teatime, you are a woman of the world...”
The sudden cascade of her laughter cut him short. “Oh, dear, Mr Charles, I thought you would never say it!”
He frowned, visibly annoyed at last.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “Never mind, the time for propositions seems to have arrived. Please unburden yourself. I promise to listen.”
Charles said coolly: “When I described you as a woman of the world, I was not paying you an idle compliment. We do know something of your history, Miss Teatime. We are aware, for instance, that you are an old London acquaintance of our man Rothermere. Nothing more natural than his paying you a call while he was up here. Simon noticed, of course. Simon tends to mooch about a lot when he’s away from home. What did rather surprise us, though, was finding you this morning. You’re a bit of an R.I.P. researcher, I gather.”