“He is a merchant banker,” announced Miss Teatime.
Purbright caught a certain nuance of embarrassed apology, or thought he did. “Never mind,” he said.
“Mr Tudor has substantial financial interests in his own country,” added Miss Teatime, in a happier tone. “I understand he is extremely influential. His compatriots have even made him a member of the Committee for the Re-election of the President.”
The inspector made a soundless whistle of awe. “Have you plans to see him again?” he asked.
“Only very briefly,” said Miss Teatime. “He promised to call at five o’clock to collect a dinner ticket he commissioned me to obtain.”
“Dinner ticket?”
“A banquet ticket, to be precise.”
“The Floradora?”
“The same. Mr Tudor feels that he cannot let pass the opportunity of gnawing a bone or two across the centuries. He is a perfervid traditionalist.”
Purbright considered. “These tickets...”
“Are difficult to come by,” asserted Miss Teatime quickly. “I often wonder at the eagerness of people to part with their money in return for a blend of nostalgia and dyspepsia.”
“A distressing thought. But I was wondering if you might repeat for me the favour you did Mr Tudor.”
Her face twinkled with pleasure. “My dear Mr Purbright, if I could not oblige a friend in so small a matter, what would be the use of my having been appointed an official agent?” She opened a drawer. “How many tickets would you like?”
“One,” said Purbright. He took out his wallet. “And I should appreciate a receipt, if you would be so kind. The lucky gourmet I have in mind is a policeman and he will be there on duty.”
Chapter Fifteen
Behind a door inscribed “Tiring Roome of ye Serving Wenches”, time-and-motion-studying Bernard watched the female employees of Mr Arnold Hatch good-humouredly zipping one another into the seventeenth century. The Flowers obviously enjoyed banquet nights. As soon as they had been successfully compressed into their Nell Gwyn costumes, they would be inspected by Mr Hubbard, the Wassail Master, and each issued with the regulation tumbler of gin that was calculated to render her merrie and amenable to such medieval liberties as the guests might reasonably be expected to take during the festivities.
Somebody recalled with a giggle that one former Flower, dismissed after only a week for adopting an uncooperative attitude, had compared this favour with the rum ration that preceded going over the top in the First World War. There was a chorus of derision from the others. They assured Bernard that the girl quoted had been freaky and “a real wet”.
In Hatch’s office, Julian sat amidst account books, bank statements, receipts, counterfoils, invoices, tax forms and Customs requisitions; contented as a sheep in a clover crop. A plate of sandwiches lay untasted on the desk beside him. He had been working steadily for nearly eleven hours. Upon his smooth, tanned, quite handsome face, was the faintest of smiles. He believed he had verified out a meaningful and ongoing misapplication of accountancy techniques.
Julian was much too preoccupied with his task to notice the small sounds made by somebody entering in a tactful and considerate manner the next room along the corridor.
This was a sitting room of sorts, that had been included in the original plan of the club on Mrs Hatch’s suggestion so that when her husband should suffer his heart attack (Mrs Hatch awaited this lamentable event with fatalistic acceptance, for she was convinced that coronaries were contiguous to prosperity and she did not want to be poor again) medical aid might be rendered in more elegant surroundings than an office. Mr Hatch, however, had not guessed this consideration and had allowed the room to become a repository for discarded, if expensive, odds and ends: fishing rods, a tape recorder, the first three volumes of the Cyclopaedia of the Occult (an Astounding Opportunity), an eight-hundred guinea Olson and Morgan hammerless twelve-bore, a (Genuine Swiss) fondu bowl, and an undersea harpoon gun that had been part of the preparations for a Caribbean cruise, subsequently abandoned.
Peter left the kitchen at eight o’clock and took up a position in the Wassail Hall from which he could identify further opportunities for larding into the catering system an optimal element of motivation.
The sounds of minstrelsy were already being produced in the gallery by Roy Hubbard and his Rockadours in a warming up session. Roy, a Flaxborough electrical contractor and the younger brother of the Wassail Master, had developed a species of electronic lute. It made a noise, when suitably amplified, like the snapping of two-inch steel cables in Alpine valleys.
“Whe-e-ere are the Yo-ho-men, the Yo-ho-men of Vingland?” inquired Roy at full belt. He looked as if the question had been worrying him for a very long time.
“Wah wah wa-wa-wah,” the Rockadours replied, non-committally. There were three of them. They wore gold lamé riding breeches, heralds’ coats in pink and purple checks, and perky Robin Hood hats. All were chewing.
The first diners to arrive were a party of twenty members of Hambourne Women’s Institute, brought on a chartered bus. The evening was to be a special treat, for which they had rehearsed by holding a competition for a piece of tapestry representing “What I Like Best About the Middle Ages”. The winner had worked in wool a fair copy of as much of The Rape of the Sabine Women as she could get done in time. The judging committee had not been entirely happy about the latitude of interpretation, but failure to reward Mrs Goshawk’s wool-matching sense and uniformity of stitch, to say nothing of the fact that she was the wife of the only doctor in the village, would have been unthinkable. So here she was, at the head of her party’s table, listening happily to such scraps of high- spirited conversation as were not swept down-board by Roy Hubbard’s band.
Another early arrival was Detective Constable Burke. A police car brought him out from town and set him down at a point on Hunting’s Lane some two hundred yards from the club. After completing the journey on foot, he slipped into the shelter of shrubs that bordered the Floradora drive and formed a hide from which the entrance could be kept under observation. His instructions were to await the appearance of the man from the Roebuck Hotel whom he had been following the previous day. If the man had not arrived by half past eight, Burke was to take a seat at the festive board and continue to keep watch in case Tudor turned up late.
But Tudor was not late. At twelve minutes past eight, a taxi drew slowly past Burke’s bush. It was one of a number of cars that had turned into the driveway in close succession and were being delayed by some confusion in the parking area ahead.
Burke recognised the American at once. What he did not recognise was the fact that when Tudor leaned back, idly luxuriating in a yawn, he was actually taking in as much information through the gun turret slits of his seemingly closed eyes as if he had been staring as boldly—and incautiously—as Constable Burke.
The taxi stopped, started, stopped again. Burke remained in cover, watching through its rear window the outline of Tudor’s hat against the floodlit face of the club, flaring in the dusk like an electric bouquet.