I had been smoking too much recently, and my mouth was sour. The thought of the lively Volunteers and the generating priestesses seemed to make it sourer still.
Miss Marks saw me shaking my head over the letter.
‘Not very nice, is it?’
‘Not very,’ I said.
‘But maybe it’s all for the best.’
‘Maybe it is.’
‘It’s hard to know how it could have continued in the old way. And anyway there wasn’t anything very marvellous about that, was there?’
‘They liked it.’
‘Yes. … It’s an odd story, isn’t it, all of it?’
‘Very,’ I said, as I had said once before, to Mr Oliphant.
‘And this’ – she nodded to the letter – ‘seems to complete it somehow. I wonder if it’s the rounding-off that T.L. asks for in his memo.’
‘I wonder,’ I said.
Miss Marks had provided, indirectly, the beginning. There was a sense of fitness that she should provide the end.
About the Author
Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early and worked as a reporter before serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 to great critical acclaim and drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John le Carré. It was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966) and The Chelsea Murders (1978). He has thrice been the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award and, in 2001, was awarded the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2009
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
Copyright © Lionel Davidson, 1962
The right of Lionel Davidson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–25300–5 [epub edition]
The Rose of Tibet Page 35