“You do not have any connection with criminals, do you?” asked Kerridge, thinking that if Berrow had hired an assassin, it didn’t really matter what sort of alibi he had.
“My dear fellow, I do not know such types. I consort with the highest in the land, including our King.”
Kerridge fixed a flat-eyed gaze on him. Berrow shifted uneasily, not knowing that Kerridge was dreaming of him being shot by a firing squad at the people’s revolution, masterminded by himself. He could see this fat lord trembling as he shouted, “Fire!” Then he realized to his consternation that he had shouted aloud.
“What fire? Where?” Berrow looked wildly around. “I don’t have electricity.” People in homes lit by electricity often sat with cushions at the ready to throw at the skirting as the occasional over-powerful surge of electricity caused it to burst into flames.
“My apologies. I was thinking of something else.”
They questioned him further, Berrow growing more and more relaxed when he realized there was to be no mention of that photograph.
But when they had left, he phoned Cyril to tell him of the visit. “I can’t take any more frights like this morning,” he said. “We’ve got to get that negative.”
“He might keep it at his office. I’ve heard there’s only a secretary there.”
“We’ll watch his office.”
“He might see us. I’ll send a servant to let us know. We’ll wait in a coffee shop nearby.”
Ailsa Bridge, Harry secretary, was not her usual placid self because she had run out of gin. While she knew her employer kept drinks in his inner office, she dismissed the idea. That would be stealing. But she began to make mistakes in her typing. She looked longingly at the door of the inner office, where the bottles in the cupboard seemed to be singing a siren song to her.
It was too much. She got to her feet. The telephone rang, making her jump guiltily. It was Harry. “I won’t be back for a couple of hours,” he said. “I don’t have any appointments, do I?”
“Three o’clock is the next one,” said Ailsa.
“Good. I can trust you as usual to take care of anything that arises.”
Ailsa replaced the receiver and stood, lost in thought. If she went out to buy gin, he wouldn’t know. But what if some important case came up and she wasn’t there?
“Just a little fortifier,” she murmured and headed for the inner office. She crouched down by the cupboard. “Whisky, brandy, sherry, but no gin. Blast!”
Whisky would have to do. She extracted the cork with her teeth and took a large swig, feeling the spirit coursing through her veins. And then she heard footsteps on the stairs. She rammed the cork back in the bottle when she heard a man’s voice say, “The place is empty. Let’s get to work before the bastard gets back.”
Ailsa, the prim, spinsterish daughter of missionaries, had been in a lot of difficult situations in Burma. She carefully took the revolver Harry kept in his desk and, holding it behind her thin figure, emerged from the inner office.
Two masked men stood there. The heavy-set one advanced on her. “Sit down and keep your mouth shut,” he growled, “or it will be the worse for you.”
Ailsa produced the revolver from behind her back. “Get out,” she said calmly.
They both stopped short. The other man gave a sniggering laugh. “A little lady like you shouldn’t be playing with guns.”
Ailsa levelled the gun and shot him in the foot. He screamed and fell down. Ailsa picked up the receiver and said, “Police.”
“Let’s get out of here!” screamed the injured one. “I’m dying!”
Helped by his companion, they both stumbled out of the office and down the stairs.
The injured party was Cyril Banks and he had to wait, moaning and crying, while Berrow found a doctor who would keep his mouth shut, knowing that the police would be checking the hospitals. Because he was an inveterate smoker and kept a spare cigarette case inside his elastic-sided boot, his foot was only badly bruised.
After the doctor had left, he and Berrow sat down to think up ways and means of getting that photograph back.
Harry knew who the culprits probably were and told the police. But when they called on Cyril, it was to find he appeared to be walking normally and there was no sign he had been shot. Threatened with everyone from the king to the prime minister, the police backed off with apologies.
When he heard the news, Harry assumed that they had hired a couple of men. “Maybe,” he said to Ailsa, “you should take some leave. They will try again.”
“I am not afraid,” said Ailsa, “although I did have a fright. I am afraid I helped myself to some of your whisky.”
“That’s all right. But be vigilant. There is a police guard now on the door downstairs.”
“We need to be subtle,” said Berrow. “She looked like a real dried-up spinster. What about getting someone to romance her? Let me think. Who needs money?”
“Most of London society.”
“We need a charming wastrel.”
“There’s Guy Delancey. Still owes me a packet from a baccarat game. But if he courts her and gets that negative, maybe there’s another print with it and he’ll see that photograph.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell him how we were set up.”
¦
The dark days moved on to Christmas. The earl was preparing to remove to Stacey Court in the country. Harry had been invited to join them, and to Rose’s amazement had accepted. He had been at her side as much as he could, but always at social occasions, and had not seemed to make any push to be alone with her.
Rose still diligently worked at the soup kitchen, forgetting in her zeal that the idea had originally been to get her photograph in the newspapers. She now wore her hair tightly bound up in a disinfected turban. At times she wearied of the smell and degradation of the people she was serving and could only marvel at Miss Friendly’s unremitting and cheerful manner.
A hard frost had London in its grip. The earl ordered that the water pipes outside the town house were to be lagged with old sheets because he could see the burst pipes of less diligent owners glittering with long icicles.
Ailsa was leaving work one evening. She stopped outside a butcher’s shop and looked up at the fat geese hanging from hooks.
A light pleasant voice behind her said, “Which one would you like?”
Ailsa turned round. In the light of the shop, she saw a fashionably dressed man with a dissipated face and his tall silk hat worn at a rakish angle.
“I am admiring the birds, sir,” she said. “I will not be buying one.”
“Going to be alone at Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Look, it’s dashed cold evening. Why don’t you join me for a drink in that pub over there?”
Ailsa surveyed him from under the brim of her black felt hat ornamented with a pheasant’s feather. She had not had much to drink that day. Although Harry paid her a good salary, a large part of it went to an orphans’ charity, some on food and rent and the rest on gin.
A pub was a public place. Nothing could happen to her there. Also, she was curious to find out why this man had waylaid her.
“Very well, sir,” she said. “But just one. I have a weak head and I am not accustomed to strong liquor.”
Guy Delancey felt relieved. Berrow had said to charm her, get her drunk and either get the office keys out of her reticule or make her so besotted with him that she would turn over the negative.
He took her arm and guided her across the road through the traffic, which had ground to a halt as usual. The newspapers were complaining that the whole of London was seized up with too much traffic.
He found a corner table in the pub. A waiter came bustling up. “What will you have, miss? Champagne?”
“No, I might try some gin. My mother used to like gin.”
“Gin it is. Make it a large one, and I’ll have a large whisky.”
When the drinks arrived, Guy introduced himself. Ailsa thought of using a different name but then gave him her real one.
“Drink up,” said Guy.
