into his living room was to say hello and go on weaving. Mr Clough sat down in the least uncomfortable chair, Mr Demaris leaned against the mantelpiece, and Jane subsided onto the footstool. She noticed that Cousin Shirley had left the room, and thanked heaven for small mercies.
If Jane had expected an awkward silence she was wrong. Men who charge over three hundred pounds an hour for their time are rarely silent for longer than it takes to breathe in.
“You weren’t at the office today, then,” said Mr Clough.
“No,” said Jane. “I had some holiday coming.”
“That’s fair enough,” said Mr Demaris. “Next time, though, perhaps you should clear it with Craig Ferrara first.”
“You didn’t come all this way,” said Jane shakily, “to tell me that. Or were you just passing?”
Cousin Shirley was back in the room again. She had brought Mr Clough a cup of tea. Just the one cup. She hadn’t stirred it, and the milk lay about a quarter of an inch under the surface like a grey cloud.
“We’re flying back to London tonight,” said Mr Demaris. “We’ll give you a lift, if you like.”
“That’s very kind,” Jane said, “but I don’t want to put you out in any way.”
There was a shuffling noise and Cousin Shirley was with them again. She was offering Mr Clough a plate of very hard biscuits. He took one without looking down at the plate, popped it into his large mouth and said, “You’ve done well on the Bridport matter, but I think we should work together on it from now on.” Then he reached out, took another biscuit, and smashed the one already in his mouth into powder with one movement of his powerful jaws.
“I do think that would be best,” said Mr Demaris, “don’t you? Don’t get me wrong, we’re very impressed with how you’ve handled it, but this is something where we have to be very careful, don’t you think?”
Jane had intended to fight, but her willpower had melted like a candle in a microwave. “How did you find me?” she asked.
“Right then,” said Mr Clough, standing up and smiling, “now that’s settled we’d better be on our way. Thank you for the tea, Mrs Regan, and we’ll be in touch about that other matter in due course.”
This remark jerked Jane out of her comatose state. “What other matter?”
Cousin Shirley gave her a look of pure scorn. “Mr Clough is our accountant,” she said.
“We’re thinking of making the business into a limited company,” said Julian unexpectedly. “But George thinks we should wait another year, because of the tax implications.”
That, as far as Jane was concerned, was that. She went quietly.
Mr Clough explained it to her on the drive to the airport. It was very simple. Moss Berwick were the accountants for the advertising agency where Julian had worked, and since the agency was such an important client, Mr Clough had acted for them personally; at least, he let his subordinates do the work but personally attended the more important lunches. When Julian had decided to get out of advertising and into authentic knitwear, he had mentioned this fact to Mr Clough over the nouvelle cuisine. Mr Clough, whose greed for clients was pathological, immediately appointed himself accountant to the projected enterprise, obtained a cheque for a thousand pounds on account of initial costs, and handed the matter on to the YTS girl. Accordingly, when Mr Clough turned up on the doorstep half an hour before Jane’s arrival and started talking loudly about rollover relief and Section Thirty elections, Julian and Shirley hadn’t been at all surprised. They simply handed him a cheque for another thousand pounds and believed everything he told them, the way people do when they talk with their professional advisers.
“So now what?” Jane said.
“Mr Gleeson will explain,” said Mr Demaris.
Jane stared and was incapable of speech. Mr Gleeson was the senior partner. Mr Gleeson, it was widely rumoured, did the accounts for God. In fact, so the story went, it was Mr Gleeson who first gave God the idea of organising the Kingdom of Heaven into a properly integrated group of holding companies. The idea of actually talking to him was more than Jane’s mind could hold.
“Really?” she said.
“He’s waiting for us at the airport,” said Mr Clough. While Jane’s mind did another series of forward rolls, Mr Demaris was considering something. “I’ve heard people say,” he said, “that you’ve got no sense of smell. Is that true?”
Jane admitted that her sense of smell was none too good. Mr Clough looked at Mr Demaris.
“I think it’s about time we reviewed your salary,” he said.
FIVE
Can I speak,” Vanderdecker shouted, “to Professor Montalban?”
In a long life, reflected the Flying Dutchman, I have come across many bloody silly ideas, but two of them are in a class of their own for pure untainted idiocy. One was the Court of King Ludwig of Bavaria, and the other is the privatised British telephone service.
A long way away, definitely in another continent and quite probably in another dimension, a little voice asked him to repeat the name.
“Montalban,” he said. “M for Mouse…”
The lovely part of it was that he was standing in a telephone kiosk within sight of the gates of the power station he was telephoning. If he was to shout just a little bit louder they’d be able to hear him without using the phone at all.
“Who’s calling, please?” said the voice.
“My name’s Vanderdecker,” Vanderdecker said.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice, “I didn’t quite…”
“
“Professor Montalban has gone to Geneva,” said the voice, “we don’t expect him back for a week or so. Will you hold?”
“No, no,” said the Flying Dutchman, “that’s fine, have you got a number for him in…”
“Could you speak up, please?” the voice said, “it’s rather a poor line.”
“Have you got a number where I can reach the professor in Geneva?” Vanderdecker enunciated. The voice said no, she didn’t, could she take a message? Vanderdecker thanked her and hung up.
Even on his antiquated maps, Geneva was clearly marked as being a long way from the sea. Not from water, but from the sea. All in all, it would be foolish to risk trying to reach him there. Vanderdecker pressed the little lever, but no change came cascading down into the tray marked Returned Coins. There would be nothing for it, he said to himself, but to put out to sea for a while until the good professor came back.
For above the seven thousandth time, Vanderdecker assured himself that the alchemist would be as keen to see him as he was to see the alchemist. If Montalban was even remotely concerned with the same field of research as he had been in the reign of His Most Catholic Majesty Philip II, it stood to reason that he would welcome a chance to examine his very first human guinea pigs. His reading of scientific journals had taught him a lot about the way scientists think. They like to have plenty of data. Vanderdecker had a ship full of data; noisome, foul-smelling data, it was true, but…
At this point, a thought entered into Vanderdecker’s mind. During the short time it stayed there, it made its presence felt in more or less the same way a hand grenade would assert itself in a glassworks.
If Montalban had drunk exactly the same stuff as he had, presumably Montalban had been subject to exactly the same side-effects. Yet here the alchemist apparently was, spending a week here, a fortnight there, completely surrounded by human beings. It was by no means unlikely that he had gone to Geneva in an aeroplane, and that while there he would stay in a hotel. If he was able to do these things, it necessarily followed that he didn’t smell. How was this?
In Caithness, many of the postmen still ride bicycles. If without any warning they get downwind of a member of the crew of the sailing ship
