Mosley appeared to hold no opinion on the subject.
‘Of course,’ Grimshaw said, ‘Toplady and Saunders are simply mindless. They’re not worth a week’s gruel to the exchequer. But I should like to see the girl get a stiff handout.’
‘I wouldn’t, sir.’
‘Explain your thinking, Mosley.’
‘I think you heard what I told her last night – about the machine.’
‘You have more confidence in the machine than I have. At least you’ll agree with me that the child is truly remarkable.’
‘True,’ Mosley said, but he meant the opposite of what Grimshaw did, and he made it look like that. ‘So remarkable that I can see her in real danger if we don’t get her into the machine herself soon.’
Emily Morrison got her money back without her husband being told the part that she had played. Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw connived at this out of the goodness of his heart. Her daughter Janet also connived. That cost her mother ten of the five-pound notes.
Beamish solved single-handed the mystery of Veronique’s Boutique. It seemed that Bessie Bullough’s young ladies were all personable and all hard workers. They were also consummate needlewomen too. Their forte lay in making near-copies of new fashions that Bessie and they had seen in catalogues and at shows, and that she was able to sell at midway prices between the originals and cheaper, later imitations.
Beamish did climb illicitly into the rear of the premises, but was able to gain no vantage point from which he could see anything but personable young women at their machines. He was therefore driven in extremis to going in one evening through the front door, as if he were just another of the endless stream of male visitors.
‘Ah,’ Bessie said. ‘You want to join our little club? I’ve seen you taking an interest in us from across the road.’
She showed him into a capacious basement under her workroom, and there the biggest model railway he had ever seen was being operated to a complex schedule by bank managers, Rotarians, accountants, lawyers’ clerks, architects and insurance brokers. Sometimes, he learned, it was necessary for members to go in during the daytime, to deal with elusive blown fuses, burned-out circuits and signal failures.
Kevin Toplady was remanded on bail on his father’s recognizances. One of the conditions was that he should make no attempt to contact Elizabeth Bateman. His mother bought another tin of salmon for their first high tea together as a family. If there is anything that Kevin Toplady cannot stand, it is tinned salmon. It reminds him excruciatingly of the unutterable misery of Sunday tea when he was a boy.
It is Saturday morning on Bagshawe Broome Market.
Miley’s spot is not available to him on Market Day. He has to do the best he can from a point on the pavement from which he can see much, but not everything. Mosley allows himself to be more mobile.
For old time’s sake he goes to cast a friendly eye over Dickie Holgate’s stall, watches a woman buy a leather umbrella case from the 1920s. Another is asking the price of a pair of shepherd’s dagging shears. Two others are on the brink of falling out over a banjolele that neither of them will ever learn to play. When there is a lull in trade, Dickie beckons Mosley.
‘You do operate a small fund to reward informants, Mr Mosley?’
Mosley is non-committal.
‘I’m out of pocket over something I just bought – but I thought I’d better keep the evidence among friends.’
It is a collectors’ limited edition of the Decameron in a tooled leather binding.
‘The name on the fly-leaf is Hamble-Petheridge,’ Holgate says. ‘That’s Waterbrigg Hall.’
‘Who sold you this?’
‘Miley.’
‘I’ll give you a receipt for it. I was damned certain she hid something in the garden before she came to the Wainwrights’ door. This is her ticket into the machine, Dickie. Whack-ho!’
Ten minutes later, Mosley sees Janet out shopping with her mother.
‘I’d like a little word with you,’ he says.
‘What, me, Mr Mosley?’
Copyright
First published in 1988 by Quartet Books
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © John Greenwood, 1988
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What Me, Mr Mosley? Page 16