rush… Oh my God!'
In such circumstances in a French farce or a British sit-com, the character in Joe's situation would probably have said, 'It's not what it seems…' but Joe knew from his gumshoe guru, Endo Venera, that unless you were watching one of those Ag Christie shows on the telly, it was wise to assume a guy with a smoking gun standing over a bleeding corpse was guilty as hell. OK, maybe his gun wasn't smoking, but a naked man standing over a woman in a nurse's uniform with her legs kicking in the air was a situation it would take even that Aircool Parrot a couple of hours in the library to explain away.
He said, 'Don't think I'm going to make it, Mimi.'
She managed a grin and said, 'Looks to me like you're halfway there, Joe,' and left.
Beryl pulled herself upright.
'And who the hell was that?' she demanded. 'Maybe I should have let Jurassic George tear your head off, after all!'
'No, no,' protested Joe. 'That wasn't Eloise. That was Mimi. We were flying off to Spain together… Hang about till I get dressed…'
He should have stuck to silence. Even that small beginning of explanation was a mistake. When he returned from his bedroom, fastening up his trousers, the living room was empty.
But not for long. Through the open door stepped Whitey. He looked around as if to say, I leave the place for a few hours and it's a tip! Then he moved purposefully into the kitchen.
He was right, thought Joe. Nothing so bad that a spot of breakfast wouldn't help.
From the kitchen came an imperious howl.
'I'm coming, I'm coming,' said Joe.
An hour later, his belly distended by a Full English Breakfast (minus of course that percentage which Whitey felt was his due), Joe felt able to bring the full beam of his mental searchlight to bear on recent events and his best response to them.
Going back to bed was a distinct possibility till it occurred to him that at some point Jurassic George was going to approach Eloise with a view to telling her all was forgiven and folding her to his bosom.
Now Eloise he knew to be a girl of spirit, and while she might react by returning the embrace with an equal passion, she might also knee him in the crutch and tell him to get his big bear paws off her lily-white body which belonged to another, and take a hike. In which case the likely direction of the hike could be back to Rasselas.
He'd already taken the precaution of shutting, locking and bolting his front door, but when he looked at the devastated security chain, even this didn't make him feel secure. Best, he decided, to be out of here and on the move.
First, though, he stripped off again and got under a nice hot shower. The Full English had fortified the inner man, but the outer man was indicating by a network of twinges and bruises exactly where Jurassic's assault had left its mark. In the shower he sang, not to keep up his spirits, which were self-raising anyway, but because a singer needs to exercise his vocal cords and the shower was the only place he could do it in the flat at this hour of day without the neighbors banging on the walls. He did Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel, which had won him plaudits at the last Luton Singfest, then he tried Bach's 'Ich habe genug' with which he was hoping to impress Rev. Pot sufficiently to put him forward for the baritone solo in the Luton Combined Choirs' performance of the Christmas Oratorio at the end of the year. It still needed a bit of work, he judged, so for his finale he moved on to a selection more in favor on Entertainment Night at the Supporters' Club, building up to his show-stopping 'Ol' Man River.'
This usually left him as uplifted as his audience but as he stepped out of the shower, his thoughts moved naturally from the Supporters' Club to Sir Monty Wright and thence to Monty's cohort, Ratcliffe King, who had paid him good money to be on a plane to Spain at this very moment.
While King Rat wasn't a real and present danger- unlike Jurassic, whose battering ram of a shoulder might at any moment be applied to the door-he was in the long run a far more potent enemy.
Probably Mimi had already put him in the picture so it might be a wise move to try and take the sting out of his anger by ringing up to explain and apologize and offer atonement.
He went to the phone and saw the message light on the answer machine had come on while he was showering. He pressed play.
'Joe, hi! It's Mimi. Listen, I'm just boarding our flight. Now don't get your boxers in a twist worrying about missing it. We've all been there and I know how easy it is to lose track. Anyway, things are busy here and the next flight I could get you transferred to leaves at two p.m., OK? So I'll take care of things till you show; quite looking forward to doing a bit of the real PI stuff instead of just being your gofer! But, Joe, Mr. King wants me to report in soon as we get ourselves settled at the hotel and make contact with Tomlin. I can hold back till this evening, no problem, but if you haven't shown by then, he'll have to know. So don't let me down. Give me a ring to say you've got the message, OK? Cheers.'
I am surrounded by wonderful women, thought Joe. Whoever said that stuff about a monstrous regiment got it wrong. Must have meant wondrous!
That dealt with the King Rat problem, and flying to Spain seemed a very good way of dealing with the Jurassic George problem.
He picked up the phone and rang Mimi's mobile number. He got the message service. Of course, she'd be switched off on the plane.
He said, 'Hi, Mimi, got your message, I'll be on the two o'clock. And thanks a bunch. I owe you.'
As he spoke he found himself thinking, What was it she'd said? We've all been there. Might be worth asking her about that when I get to Spain!
He shoved the unworthy thought out of his mind and rang Beryl's mobile. Her phone was off too, for which he was somewhat relieved.
'Hi,' he said. 'It's Joe. Listen, sorry about all that stuff this morning, but when you hear everything that's been happening, you'll understand. Main thing is, I'm still going to be away for a couple of days, well, four actually. So if you could do what you said about keeping an eye out for Whitey I'd be truly grateful. I expect you're up to your elbows in new-born babies or something now, so I'll ring you later, OK? Thanks a lot and I'm really sorry that moron George got you involved. Bye.'
There. Nothing there to get her heating up again. You are the master of diplomacy, Sixsmith. Now show you are also the master of self-preservation and get the hell out of here!
He grabbed the bag he'd packed the previous night and headed down to his car.
17
A Message from Frank
First stop was his office to check his mail, except that when he got there the postman hadn't been yet. He doubted it would hold anything but requests for money, whether official, commercial or charitable. It was far too early to go to the airport, but maybe hanging around here wasn't such a good idea. George, though no Nobel Prize winner, was quite capable of checking the Yellow Pages.
In any case, his conscience told him, after his deception of the Young Fair God last night, he really owed it to him to put these hard-won hours at his disposal. But how?
All he could think of was Steve Waring. Porphyry had supplied the address of the lad's digs. Joe didn't have a great memory except for song lyrics, but he'd found he could extend this specialized skill to other areas such as addresses by fitting their rhythms to a melody in his repertoire.
Mrs. Tremayne, 15 Lock-keeper's Lane marched very nicely with 'Give me some men who are stout-hearted men' from The New Moon. As for Upleck, this was a suburb of Luton whose name was engraved on Joe's heart as the site of the bus shelter in which he'd had his first experience of coitus which, perhaps fortunately, had been interruptus by the approach of the last No. 27 bus. Later he sometimes mused that a five-mile walk home might have been a small price to pay for letting this supremely important encounter run its full and natural course.
He couldn't really see how a visit to Waring's might be helpful in the case, but as he couldn't see how anything other than a small miracle was going to help, he might as well drive out there. At least it was unlikely he'd
