the shelter of a stone portico.
This was, or rather once had been, the Flaxborough Radical Club. It was said that Mr Gladstone had cut a rose from the bush that still grew in the little earth enclosure beside the steps.
Just inside the doors was a list of the offices above. Purbright looked vainly for the name Staunch or reference to a matrimonial agency. Then he noticed at the far end of the stone-flagged entrance hall an illuminated sign. It hung over a doorway and bore two words in bright green Gothic lettering on a pink ground.
“Handclasp House”.
Chapter Five
Purbright pushed open the door. He entered a small square room, carpeted from wall to wall in dark grey. A paler, pinkish grey was the colour of the hessian-like material that covered the walls. There hung from the ceiling a plain white globe. Three chairs in mushroom plastic were the only furniture. The place was like an optician’s waiting room—neutral, reticent.
Set diagonally across the far corners of the square were two more doors. A little orange bulb glowed in the centre of each. Purbright approached the door on his right. Like the other, it bore a notice.
When this light is on, MR DONALD STAUNCH is at the service of any gentleman who wishes to know how we can work to help him. Come straight in and make yourself at home.
He crossed to the other door, and read:
When this light is on, the free and friendly advice of MRS SYLVIA STAUNCH is available to our lady callers. Don’t knock: come in and have a chat with her.
Clever, thought Purbright. He could not have devised a better formula himself to avoid the unfortunate ambiguity of merely labelling the doors “Ladies” and “Gentlemen”.
Perhaps in the circumstances he ought to have a word with Donald first. He opened the right hand door and stepped through.
The contrast to the aseptic waiting room was almost startling.
In the light from a tall standard lamp behind a cushion-strewn oaken settle, the inspector saw what might have been a stage set for an English domestic comedy. Two armchairs separated by a coffee table faced a glazed hearth in which glowed the dummy embers of an electric fire. Upon a sideboard were glasses, decanter, biscuit barrel and miniature dinner gong. An open work-basket was beside one armchair, a rush stool by the other. He saw somewhere a pipe lying in an ashtray, a small scattering of hair curlers, a magazine open at the picture of a nude. The smell of the room seemed to be compounded of flowers and fresh laundry, with just a suggestion of...he sniffed—yes, newly baked bread.
Clever, he said again to himself. Very. Even the versatile “Rex” must have been a little awed by the insight and ingenuity of the Staunches.
“Do sit down, Mr er...”
He turned.
There had entered by a door on the farther side of the fire-place a woman with bluish grey hair, expertly waved and lustered, and the glint around neck and wrists of rather a lot of jewellery. Her eyes were strong and alert.
“Purbright,” he supplied. “Detective Inspector.”
Her smile narrowed for an instant to a pout. It emphasized her precise but heavy application of lipstick. Then the expression of businesslike solicitude was back.
She sat and ventured the small joke that seemed a proper way of getting a measure of the policeman’s attitude.
“I presume you are not here to offer yourself as a client, inspector.”
Purbright smiled back. “Hardly.”
“I thought not. You don’t look married, and that is the surest sign that you have a wife and are well content with her.”
“I shall tell Mrs Purbright that.”
He saw, now that she was seated, that the tailoring of her clothes was excellent. She had slim, rather hard- looking legs.
“You are Mrs Staunch, of course?”
She inclined her head.
“I’d rather expected”—Purbright indicated the door by which he had entered—“that it would be Mr Staunch whom I would find.”
“A small deception of the trade, inspector. I have a husband, but so far as the agency is concerned Donald is a fiction. I interview all my clients myself. It’s just that men seem to find the first step easier if they think they’re going to deal with a man. Once the ice is broken, they’re quite happy to pour out their troubles to me.”
“Your husband takes no part in the work then?”
“In
“Yet in no other country are people so insistent on the importance of being introduced. Isn’t that just your function? To effect introductions?”
Mrs Staunch spread her hands. “Precisely!” Her smile implied that she found Purbright a very sensible fellow indeed. “But you try telling that to an architect!” She deepened her voice on the last word in mock solemnity.
“Architect?”
“Donald. Well, an architectural consultant, actually. Next time you want your cells rebuilding, or whatever,
