'No.'
As Lewis left, he noticed the RSPB sticker on the rear win-dow of a car he would have given quite a lot to drive. Per-haps not so much as fifty pounds, though.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this one thing I know full well: I do not love thee, Doctor Fell (THo Mns BROWN, I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell)
Standing quite still behind the curtained window of the first-floor front bedroom, she looked down across the drive at the departing policeman. She had a very good idea of what the interview had been about. Of course she had.
She was completely naked except for the dressing-gown (his) draped around a figure which was beginning to wob-ble dangerously between the voluptuous and the over-blown--the beginnings of a pot-belly quite certainly calling for some fairly regular visits to the Temple Cowley pool in East Oxford, to plough through some thirty or forty lengths a time (for she was an excellent swimmer).
The smell of her was seductive though, she knew that.
How else, with that posh eau-de-toilette just squirted every-where about her person? 'Mimosa Pour Moi'--the last thing Felix had bought her.
Felix...
Always (above all perhaps?) he'd adored the sight and the smell of her when she'd just finished drying herself af-ter one of her frequent baths. And how she treasured that letter--well, sort of letter--he'd written that morning in a posh London hotel as he'd sat waiting (and waiting and waiting) to go down to breakfast whilst she reclined luxu riously, reluctant to make any decisive move from the b tub.
How she loved a long, hot bath.
Yummy!
And how she loved what he'd written---one of the v, few things she carried around in that scuffed shoulder-I of hers: I ask my darling if she is ready for breakfast; and she stands in front of me; and with a synchronised circular swish of her deodorant-can, she sprays first her left armpit, then her tight.
But she gives no answer.
I ask my darling if she has been thinking of me duff our night together; and she forms her lips into a moue and rocks her tight hand to and fro, as if she was stretching it forward to steady a rickety tabl, on the stone-flagged floor at The Trout.
But she gives no answer.
I ask my darling why she can't occasionally be more punctual for any rendezvous with me; and I wo be so glad if she could speak and dip into a pool of unconvincing excuses.
But she gives no answer.
I ask my darling what she loves most of all in her life; and she smiles (at last, a smile!) and she points behind her to the deep, scented water in which she has just been soaking and poaching, her full breasts seemingly floating on the surface.
It is, I must suppose, the nearest I shall ever come to an answer.
She'd read it many, many times. Above all she enjoy reading about herself in the third person. It was as if s were a key character in some roman-fi-clef (Felix had tc her about that sort of book--told her how to pronounce i a character far more important on the page than in reali Oh, yes. Because in real life she wasn't important at all; n ever would be. After all, she wouldn't exactly be tiding to the abortion clinic that Wednesday in a Roller, nc would she? God, no. Just standing on that perishing Plat-form Number 2, waiting for the early bloody train up to bloody Birmingham.
Ashley Davies opened the bedroom door and walked up be hind her, unloosening the belt of her (his) dressing-gown.
'GOd, am I ready--'
But she slipped away from him--and slipped out of the dressing-gown, fixing first her black suspender-belt, then her black bra; then pulling a thin dark blue dress over her ridic-ulously colourful head before hooking a pair of laddered black stockings up her legs.
Davies had watched her, silently. He felt almost as sex-ually aroused by watching her dress as watching her un-dress.
At last he spoke: 'What's the matter? What have I done wrong?'
She made no reply, but stood tip-tilting her chin towards the dressing-table mirror as she applied some transparent substance to her pouting lips.
'Ellie?'
'I'm off.'
'What d'you mean, you're off?. I'm taking you out to lunch, remember?'
'I'm off.'
'You can't do this to me!'
'Just watch me!'
'Is it the police?'
