It was a step that took a couple of hours, as it turned out; but eventually he had Richards to himself in a corner with a pint. He was debating with himself whether to produce his card and use his official credentials for unofficial business, or to make it an affair of one ex-serviceman obliging another for a small consideration, when Richards said:

‘You don’t seem to have put on any weight with the years, sir.’

‘Have I met you somewhere?’ Grant asked, a little annoyed that he should have forgotten a face.

‘Camberley. More years ago than I like to think about. And you needn’t worry about forgetting me,’ he added, ‘because I doubt if you ever saw me. I was a cook. You still in the Army?’

‘No, I’m a policeman.’

‘No kidding! Well, well. I’d have said you were a dead cert for C.I.G.S. I see now why you were so anxious to get me into a corner. And me thinking it was my way with a dart that won you!’

Grant laughed. ‘Yes, you can do something for me, but it isn’t official business. Would you take a pupil tomorrow for a small consideration?’

‘To do any special windows?’ Richards asked, after a moment’s thought.

‘Number 5 Britt Lane.’

‘Ho!’ said Richards, amused. ‘I’d pay him to do them?’

‘Why?’

‘That bastard is never pleased. There’s no hanky-panky about this, is there?’

‘Neither hanky, nor panky. Nothing is going to be abstracted from the house, and nothing upset. I’ll go bail for that. Indeed, if it will make you any happier, I’ll put the contract in writing.’

‘I’ll take your word for it, sir. And your man can have the privilege of doing Mr Flipping Lloyd’s windows for nothing.’ He lifted his mug. ‘Here’s to the old eyes-right. What time will your pupil be coming along tomorrow?’

‘Ten o’clock do?’

‘Make it half-past. Your valentine goes out most mornings about eleven.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you.’

‘I’ll get my early windows done and meet him at my place—3 Britt Mews—at half-past ten.’

It was no use trying to telephone Tad Cullen again tonight, so Grant left a message at the Westmorland asking him to come to the flat as soon as he had had breakfast in the morning.

Then he at last had dinner, and went thankfully to bed.

As he was falling asleep a voice in his head said: ‘Because he knew that there was nothing to write on.’

‘What?’ he said, coming awake. ‘Who knew?’

‘Lloyd. He said: “On what?”’

‘Yes. Well?’

‘He said it because he was startled.’

‘He certainly sounded surprised.’

‘He was surprised because he knew that there was nothing to write on.’

He lay thinking about this until he fell asleep.

13

Tad arrived, very washed and shining, before Grant had finished breakfast. His soul was troubled, however, and he had to be coaxed out of a contrite mood (‘Can’t help feeling that I walked out on you, Mr Grant’) before he was any good to anyone. He cheered up at last when he found that there were definite plans for the day.

‘You mean you were serious about window cleaning? I thought it was only a—a sort of figure of speech, maybe. You know: like “I’ll be selling matches for a living if this goes on.” Why am I going to clean Lloyd’s windows?’

‘Because it is the only honest way of getting a foot inside the house. My colleagues can prove that you have no right to read a gas-meter, or test the electricity, or the telephone. But they cannot deny that you are a window-cleaner and are legally and professionally getting on with your job. Richards—your boss for today—says that Lloyd goes out nearly every day about eleven, and he is going to take you there when Lloyd has gone. He’ll stay with you and work with you, of course, so that he can introduce you as his assistant who is learning the trade. That way you will be accepted without suspicion and left alone.’

‘So I’m left alone.’

‘On the desk in the big room that occupies most of the first floor there is an engagement book. A large, very expensive, red-leather affair. The desk is a table one—I mean that it doesn’t shut—and it stands just inside the middle window.’

‘So?’

‘I want to know Lloyd’s engagements for the 3rd and 4th of March.’

‘You think maybe he travelled on that train, ’m?’

‘I should like to be sure that he didn’t, anyhow. If I know what his engagements were I can find out quite easily whether he kept them or not.’

‘Okay. That’s quite easy. I’m looking forward to that window cleaning. I’ve always wondered what I could do when I get too old for flying. I might as well look into the window trade. To say nothing of looking into a few windows.’

He went away, blithe and apparently forgetful that half an hour ago he was ‘lower than a worm’s belly’, and Grant looked round in his mind for any acquaintances that he and Heron Lloyd might have in common. He remembered that he had not yet rung up Marta Hallard to announce his return to town. It might be a little early in the day to break in on Marta’s slumbers, but he would risk it.

‘Oh, no,’ Marta said, ‘you didn’t wake me. I’m half-way through my breakfast and having my daily dose of news. Every day I swear that never again will I read a daily paper, and every morning there is the blasted thing lying waiting for me to open it and every morning I open it. It upsets my digestive juices, and hardens my arteries, and my face falls with a thud and undoes five guineas’ worth of Ayesha’s ministrations in five minutes, but I have to have my daily dose of poison. How are you, my dear? Are you better?’

She listened to his answer without interrupting. One of Marta’s more charming characteristics was her capacity for listening. With most of his other women friends silence meant that they were preparing their next speech and were merely waiting for the next appropriate moment to give utterance to it.

‘Have supper with me tonight. I’ll be alone,’ she said when she had heard about Clune and his recovered health.

‘Make it early next week, can you? How is the play going?’

‘Well, darling, it would be going a lot better if Ronnie would come up-stage now and then and talk to me instead of to the audience. He says it emphasises the detachment of the character to practically stamp on the floats and let the front stalls count his eyelashes, but I think myself it’s just a hangover from his music-hall days.’

They discussed both Ronnie and the play for a little, and then Grant said: ‘Do you know Heron Lloyd, by the way?’

‘The Arabia man? Not to say know; no. But I understand he’s almost as much of a hogger as Ronnie.’

‘How?’

‘Rory—my brother’s boy—was mad to go exploring in Arabia—though why anyone should want to go exploring in Arabia I can’t imagine—all dust and dates—anyway, Rory wanted to go with Heron Lloyd, but it seems that Lloyd travels only with Arabs. Rory, who is a nice child, says that that is because Lloyd is so Arabian that he is plus royaliste que le roi, but I think myself—being a low-minded creature and a rogue and vagabond—that he is just suffering from Ronnie’s trouble and wants the whole stage.’

‘What is Rory doing now?’ Grant asked, skating away from Heron Lloyd.

‘Oh, he’s in Arabia. The other man took him. Kinsey-Hewitt. Oh, yes, Rory wouldn’t be put off by a little thing like a snub. Can you make it Tuesday: the supper?’

Yes, he would make it Tuesday. Before Tuesday he would be back at work, and the matter of Bill Kenrick, who had come to England full of excitement about Arabia and had died as Charles Martin in a train going to the Highlands, would have to be put behind him. He had only a day or two more.

He went out to have a hair-cut, and to think in that relaxed hypnotic atmosphere of anything that they had left undone. Tad Cullen was lunching with his boss. ‘Richards won’t accept anything for this,’ he had said to Tad, ‘so take him out to lunch and give him a thundering good one and I’ll pay for it.’