“A very personable young man,” declared Miss Teatime. She put on a pair of glasses and looked more closely. “Dear me, what a dangerous place to have received an injury.” She indicated a thin white scar from the corner of Giacomo’s right eye to his upper lip.
“Kids!” expostulated the fond parent. “Would you believe Jimmy did that falling off the can when he was four?”
Miss Teatime, who knew a razor slash when she saw one, would not, but she was too polite to say so. She inquired instead: “And what is your son’s choice of profession?”
“Olive oil importer.”
The second photograph was a little out of focus, but again the dark, challenging eyes of the Tudor family were immediately noticeable.
“Vittorio was going to be a priest.”
“Indeed?” Miss Teatime examined the well-fed, petulant face of the younger brother, with its hair-line moustache, reminiscent of dance halls in the ’thirties, and diagnosed a surfeit of maternal admiration and pasta. She guessed that whereas Giacomo probably operated in the protection sector, Vittorio’s speciality would be either drugs or prostitution.
“He has a certain spirituality of countenance,” she said. “Tell me, then: what vocation lured him from the seminary?”
“You mean what’s Vic’s job? Well, I guess he’s in the olive oil importing business.”
When Mr Tudor had, with a lingering look of fondness, punched once more the pictures of his offspring, he walked to the window and looked sideways down into the Close, keeping flat in the shelter of the wall.
Miss Teatime watched his manoeuvre impassively, then tapped the ash from her cigar into a little china pomade pot decorated with very pale cornflowers.
“So you come to Flaxborough in the role of a peacemaker,” she said.
Mr Tudor gave this some thought as he edged away from the window. Suddenly he nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”
“What do you propose to do if you succeed in finding this fellow countryman of yours who is intent on killing someone or other? In any case, how would you recognise him?”
A confident half-grin briefly replaced Mr Tudor’s expression of mourning. He pointed with a forefinger to each eye.
“These I have used every day, every night, right from the days of Big Al. They know what to look for, Looce.”
“And when they find him?”
Mr Tudor’s shoulders raised slightly. “He’ll listen. He’ll have respect. I think maybe he will go back with me. In respect for my family, you understand?”
“I am not yet quite clear,” Miss Teatime said, “as to how you think I may help in this commendable mission.”
“Tonight I ring my brother in Miami Beach. He will know whatever has been found out back home. Most of all, we want the name of the contract. As soon as we get this name, you can help. The cops we do not want. You are respected. The contract is a wheel, so respected, right? You go to the guy and tell him get lost a few days in Sherwood Forest or Loch Lomond or some place while I do a fumigation job for him. OK?”
With which burst of loquacity, Mr Tudor took a final squint out of the window, put on raincoat and hat, picked up his case and his stick, and made for the stairs. He would be available, he told Miss Teatime, “at the village inn”, by which, it transpired, he meant Mr Maddox’s imposed establishment on East Street, the Roebuck Hotel.
Chapter Thirteen
The Mackintosh-Brooke team could not be accused of tardiness in the mornings. When Edmund Amis entered the Floradora a few minutes before nine o’clock, Bernard’s head appeared round the door of the Wassail Hall. “Morning, Ed.” A quick, alert smile. Then the head was withdrawn. Amis almost fancied that he could hear something being jotted down on a note clip.
He looked on the floor. No mail.
“Morning.”
Peter had come into the entrance hall, spruce as a television salesman.
“I have the post, if you’d like to see it,” Peter said. “I simply wanted to make a sample assessment of your communication situation.”
Amis followed him to Hatch’s personal office, which had been put at the team’s disposal for the week. Julian was seated at the desk, getting what he called “the gut feel” of some ledgers.
Julian looked up, greeted him briskly, and indicated with a nod the sheaf of letters at the other end of the desk.
The secretary drew up a chair and did his best not to look annoyed.
On top of the pile was a letter that had not been opened. It was addressed in crude, hand-printed capital letters to Hatch in person. The envelope was of poor quality. “Flaxborough” had been spelled out twice; the original, cancelled, version looked more like “Flaxburow”. The letter bore three stamps to make up the United States air mail rate; two were large representations in yellow and violet half-tone of the President. The postmark was New York, the date four days before.
“I assumed,” remarked Peter, who was about to leave again, “that that was something private. But the telegram I did open: it is in my recollection that Mr Hatch was unspecific in relation to the confidentiality of telegrams.”
Amis read and sorted the letters first. The telegram was at the bottom. Amis read it slowly. He was conscious that Bernard was watching him as he did so. He and the others had probably discussed it. And no wonder, Amis reflected.
PHILADELPHIA DEAL CLOSED DOLLARS THREE EIGHT ZERO ZERO STOP NAKEDNUNS WITH COVER DISPATCHED TODAY STOP NOTE INCREASE REASON EXTRA COMMISSION STOP DALLAS REPORT FALSE NO NUNS BELIEVE SUPPLY ENDED CERTAIN STOP PAICE
“Code?” The quiet, laconic question came from Bernard.
Amis shrugged. “Some sort of joke, more likely.”
“Joke?” Bernard sounded to be naming an incredibly rare metal.
“We do have our wags in these parts,” said Amis, drily. “But it was sent from America. From Newark, New Jersey, point of fact.”
Amis checked. “So it was. Well, that simply makes it more elaborate, that’s all. I can’t imagine that any of old Hatch’s enterprises require a code.” He gave Bernard a look of mockery that was nearly, but not quite, good-natured. “Hasn’t your team learned yet that they like playing games in this town?”
“We have certainly encountered some pretty counter-productive attitudes.”
Amis smiled. He put the cablegram aside and collected together a number of invoices from that morning’s post. He unlocked a drawer of the desk and took out a cheque book.
Both men busied themselves with their separate tasks. Conversation lapsed.
Hatch examined and brooded over the letter from New York for fully ten minutes. At one point, he seemed about to screw it into a ball and throw it in the waste basket. But instead he read it once again and looked carefully at the envelope.
“Eddie.”
Amis appeared at the half open door.