Cold, Lone and Still

any case, a woman is far better at coping with another woman than ever a man can be.

‘She is very tired and upset,’ said Miss Moore upon her return to the office. ‘She wanted to come in again tomorrow to help out while Alexander is away, but I told her that we had the Pallister contract to negotiate and her presence would only be a distraction, not a help.’

‘I hope you convinced her,’ I said. ‘She has wasted quite enough of our time already. People can’t come into a busy office and pick up the threads as though they were picking up dropped stitches in a piece of knitting.’

‘That is a very clever way of putting it, Comrie.’ (We all used first names in the office.)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m a very brainy bloke when I make the effort.’ Elsa and I had a very pleasant no-nonsense relationship and I valued it very much.

Exactly what she had said to Hera I do not know, but whatever it was it seemed to have been effective, for Hera did not show up again at the office. I went round to see her each evening. She seemed unusually subdued. I would have told her about the thuggish attack on Sandy, but as soon as he got back he had repeated his request that I should not mention it. Hera enquired whether I had heard about his holiday, so I thought the safest thing was to say that since his return he had talked of nothing much except the proposed visit to Stockholm. This, up to a point, was true, although I could not understand at the time why I was not to mention to Hera that he had been attacked by a mugger in the well-named Mugdock Wood. As it turned out, he had not felt well enough to search for the stone building.

He telephoned me from Stockholm, told me everything was going very nicely and asked after Hera. He had negotiated contracts for two of our authors and obviously was feeling pleased with himself. I asked how his injuries were getting on. He said his arm and shoulder were still badly bruised and rather stiff, but the head wound was not troubling him and a woman at the book fair had told him that it gave him a very romantic appearance and had asked whether it was the result of a duel.

I was very glad to see him back. I was having a sticky time with Hera, who had recovered her health but not her temper, and my lot was not being made easier by the publisher of one of our authors who wanted us to persuade the lady to agree to a ten per cent royalty instead of the twelve and a half which she claimed she had been promised by word of mouth in the publisher’s office. She had nothing in writing, but stuck to her story and negotiations (if the acrimonious exchanges could be so called) were still going on when Sandy returned to the office and sorted things out.

‘Ten per cent and a slightly larger advance,’ he said to our author. ‘I can get them to agree to that, I’m sure. After all, Delia dear, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and money in your bank account is better than looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Let’s put down a few figures on a bit of paper and then I’ll take you out to lunch.’

‘Thank God,’ I said to him later, ‘for the authors who don’t come to see us!’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I do feel that the personal touch is important. Besides, she’s not a bad old girl. As a matter of fact, I’m quite sure she really thinks she was promised twelve and a half.’

‘Not on the first five thousand,’ I said. ‘Not on her sales!’

‘She’s industrious and keeps up her output. We don’t want to lose her.’

‘You may not!’ I said, remembering various passages at arms we had had with the lady over a number of years.

‘How is Hera?’ he asked.

‘Prickly. I wonder what happened when she took that trip to Paris? I think something there must have upset her. Besides, she’s still brooding over our refusal to take her into partnership. We thought she would kick up sooner or later, and she has.’

‘I’m sorry about that, Comrie, but you agree it wouldn’t do, don’t you? Within a week she’d be trying to boss the whole show. We’ve always realised that, so we must both stand firm.’

‘Oh, I’ll hold the fort,’ I said. ‘It’s becoming a war of attrition, but I certainly shan’t give in.’

He looked at his reflection in a picture which hung on the office wall and touched the scar which ran down the right side of his forehead. It still looked rather angry, I thought. Knowing what I knew at that juncture, I ought to have recognised his touching it as being a symbolic gesture, but on this occasion what Hera (talking unkindly about my predilection for stumbling over dead bodies) has called my ‘ESP or whatever’ gave me no help at all.

12: Europa and the Bull

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Sandy had been back for less than a week when we had a prospective client. He was a surprise item if ever there were such a thing, but before he presented himself we had another visitor. This was young Trickett. News of his arrival reached us by way of the usual channels. Briggs, our office boy, reported to Polly, the senior typist of what she proudly called her ‘pool’ — herself and two youngsters fresh from commercial college — that: ‘There’s a young guy in horn-rims and a dirty sweater wants to see Mr Melrose.’

Polly translated this to Elsa as: ‘There’s a kind of poet-type in jeans and a roll-neck pullover. He is asking for Mr Melrose. Says his name is Trickett.’

From Elsa came the amendment: ‘A rather dingy literary llama — see Hilaire Belloc — wants an interview, Comrie. I don’t remember anybody on the books named Lucius Trickett, so he can’t be one of ours. Will you see him?’ (All this lovely informality would have gone, I knew, if we had taken Hera into partnership.)

‘Trickett? Oh, yes, I know him. Send him in,’ I said.

‘That’s the student bloke, isn’t it?’ said Sandy. ‘I’ll leave him to you.’ He went to his own office, taking Elsa with him, and Trickett came in.

‘Awfully sorry to bother you in business hours,’ he said, ‘but it seemed better than calling at your flat. I say, you know, it’s getting a bit much, you know.’