The False Inspector Dew

'On the vases, madame, many little men.' Alain indicated the size with finger and thumb. 'No clothes. Maybe Barbara start with little men.'

'Oh.' Mrs Cordell considered the suggestion. She began to giggle. 'Little men. I like that.'

'I am not so big myself, madame.'

She laughed. 'I don't care what size he is, but my daughter's husband has got to be rich.'

5

When Walter got back to Putney, his dinner was not fit to eat. Cook said she would make him a salad.

Lydia had heard them talking about it. 'You took your time,' she remarked as he came into the drawing room.

'I thought you would like these.' He handed her the roses.

She was agreeably surprised. While he was out, she had been thinking about leaving him for good. 'Where did you get them, Walter?' It was the nearest she could get to thanking him.

'I didn't take them from a neighbour's garden.'

She handed them back. 'Ask Sylvia to find a vase for them. Did they give you my book?'

'Yes.'

But it wasn't tucked under his arm, and as she asked him she saw his free hand tighten suddenly. 'Who did you see?'

'The director. He was still there in the bar.'

'That doesn't surprise me. He reeked of gin this afternoon.'

'He said you were very good, my dear.'

'Hypocrite. They always say that.'

'He paid you a very nice compliment.'

'Hm.' She set her mouth contemptuously.

Walter said, 'I'll give these to Sylvia.'

'What was that, then?'

'What was what, dear?'

'The compliment.'

'Oh. He said you were a real professional.'

'A fat lot he would know about that!'

That wasn't all he said.'

'What else, then?'

'I'll just find Sylvia.' He had crossed into the hall. 'Would you like them in your room? They might look rather good on the stairs in the majolica jardiniere.'

'Leave it to Sylvia. Put them on the table in the hall and come and tell me exactly what Jasper said.'

He called back from the passage to the kitchen, 'Would you like a glass of Burgundy? I might enjoy it with the salad.'

She made a sound of irritation. The wretched man was so evasive on occasions. She could not be sure whether he really had something interesting to impart, or whether he was covering up about the book. He did this sort of thing deliberately. He knew the force of the theatre in her life. She craved it like a drug. It was painful parading herself for auditions in the provinces, but she went on doing it because she could not stop.

For as long as she could remember — she had actually been born backstage in one of the six theatres her father had owned — everything that mattered to her had been connected with the stage. Before she was twenty she had met Pinero, Barrie and Shaw. She had played at the Adelphi. Sir Herbert Tree had told her that in a year or two she would have the power to enslave a West End audience. Yet she had seen the danger of a life devoted wholly to the theatre. It was vital to her character and her art to keep a link with the real world outside. She had married Walter and financed his dental training with part of the legacy her father had left her. Walter was her hedge against unreality. What could be more down to earth than a husband who pulled teeth?

He came back into the drawing room with his salad on a tray and two glasses of wine. He handed one to her ceremoniously. He sat opposite her in the tall armchair her father had used for saying family prayers. She twitched her skirt impatiently.

'My dear,' said Walter, 'I have something rather important to discuss with you.'

6

The sign on the flower shop door said 'closed'. The blinds were down. The till was cleared and the money put away in the safe. Alma was performing her last duty of the day, assembling the bouquet that a fortunate bride would carry into church next morning. Her mind was so full of Walter Baranov that she had almost forgotten it. Her unsteady fingers snapped the head off a carnation as she wired it. She reached for another.

She was more excited than nervous. He had taken her completely by surprise, simply walking into the shop like that. It was as amazing and romantic as the arrival of Everard Monck at the desert encampment during Stella's unhappy honeymoon in The Lamp in the Desert. What Walter had said may not have amounted to much, but the fact that he had come had told her all she needed to know. He cared enough to have found out where she worked.

He must have gone to extraordinary trouble. She had not mentioned the flower shop to him before. She had not made any reference to it on the form she had filled in for the nurse. Walter — she had already discarded his surname in her thoughts — had located the address and he had come to find her: after one missed appointment. He could not have told her more clearly that he desired her. He was a married man, and it made no difference. He wanted her more than his wife.

She was flattered and intrigued and aroused. She was gripped by the sort of recklessness that was so often the making or undoing of women in books. She had always promised herself that in a situation like this she would take her chance with destiny. She would be spirited, vivacious, zestful, exuberant — all those dazzling adjectives that were applied to heroines.

But she had not performed too well at the start. She had been tongue-tied when he had come into the shop. She needed to cultivate confidence. She was secure in the knowledge that she was paramount in Walter's life, so there was no reason to behave like a nervous schoolgirl. She would resist the wild impulse to go looking for his house tonight with the scrapbook he had so conspicuously left on the counter. She would wait till her lunch hour tomorrow and take it to the surgery.

Tonight she was going to take it home and look at it.

7

Lydia sipped her Burgundy and let Walter hold the stage. She seldom gave him the opportunity. It was hardly likely that a man who spent his days investigating open mouths would learn anything of consequence to pass on. This evening was exceptional. She listened closely.

'Of course you and I know the state of the modern theatre,' he said, liberally sprinkling the salt over his salad. 'It doesn't need a puffed-up provincial director to tell us that talent hardly matters at all these days. Just think what you've come up against at auditions in the last few months: bribery, nepotism, the old school tie, politics and sexual trafficking. I sometimes ask myself if you wouldn't be wiser to employ your marvellous experience in some other area of production — at least until sanity returns to the theatre. Curiously enough, Jasper made the same suggestion.'

'That I should try something different?' said Lydia in a calm voice.