‘Mrs Bolsover,’ Edward called out loudly, still standing on the step, and noticed with pride that his hearty command had brought the lady forth. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bolsover,’ said Edward. ‘Remember me, again?’
‘I remember,’ said Eve slowly, puzzled by several things. ‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘I work for an organization,’ said Edward. ‘I come to warn you, and to help you in this moment of disaster.’
‘Damn you!’ said Septimus Tuam.
‘No,’ said Edward, ‘I have things to say.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Eve. ‘Why have you come here?’
‘He’s a private detective,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘I’ve seen the like before.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Eve. ‘He’s something different altogether.’
‘I work for a love organization,’ explained Edward. ‘And I will tell you this: I hold the trump cards.’
‘Let him in, I should,’ said Eve, and Septimus Tuam, much against his will, opened the door wide and allowed Edward to pass into the house. ‘What a pretty place!’ said Edward, looking around.
‘See here,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘Say what you have to say and then clear off. You’re in the employ of Mrs FitzArthur, are you?’
‘I am not in the employ of Mrs FitzArthur. Why Mrs FitzArthur?’
‘Who’s Mrs FitzArthur?’ said Eve.
‘An aunt,’ said Septimus Tuam, staring hard at Edward. ‘An eccentric old aunt.’
‘You have enemies, Mr Tuam,’ stated Edward. ‘But they are not the kind of enemies you might imagine. Your world is well beyond mine: I am being impelled beyond by desires.’
‘He’s queer in the head,’ said Septimus Tuam.
Edward said:
‘I’m not too bad in the head, actually. I went to a quiet house because I had a thing about the posters. But then I was impelled to come away in a hurry, and to do this work. I grant you I’m not entirely in control of myself.’
‘I thought,’ said Eve, ‘you were a friend of Mrs Hoop’s.’
‘I met Mrs Hoop in the Hand and Plough. She and old Beach. I was feeling low one night.’
‘Shove off then,’ ordered Septimus Tuam, opening Mrs FitzArthur’s front door again, ‘and stop following us about. Go back to the quiet house.’
‘No,’ cried Edward, banging the door with his fist. ‘No, no, no: you don’t understand a single word of what I’m telling you. What I’m saying is that I am engaged by a woman who has powers.’
‘Go off to hell,’ cried Septimus Tuam, ‘or I’ll put the police on you. Ring up the police, Mrs Bolsover, and say there’s a raving maniac at large in Wimbledon.’
Edward drew a breath. Smoke rose from Eve Bolsover’s cigarette and caused a tickle in one of his nostrils. He watched her lift the tipped cigarette to her lips and suck smoke through the tobacco and later emit it. He was aware of the anger and impatience of Septimus Tuam.
‘God help you, Mrs Bolsover,’ said Edward. ‘God save your marriage. This is a slippery man: stick with your husband.’
‘It is really no concern of yours,’ said Eve.
‘I suppose it’s not,’ agreed Edward sadly, knowing that he might speak for twenty-four hours and still not persuade either of them of anything. He had simply wished to say that Septimus Tuam should flee the country; he had wished to say that Septimus Tuam was scheduled for death. But the words stuck within him: it was an ugly statement to make.
‘If I see you again,’ said Septimus Tuam, ‘I’ll take official action. Be off down that road at once.’
Edward heard the door slam behind him as he walked despondently away. Once more, failure pressed hard upon him. ‘I’m inept in every way,’ he said. ‘It’s his only hope.’
Like James and Eve Bolsover, Edward often imagined the future he wished to know. He was not of the ilk of Septimus Tuam, who did not care to hazard too far ahead, whose trips through time were of a more local and practical kind. While Eve imagined deserts and dancing Arabs, and James thought wishfully of the scenes of his disgrace, so Edward imagined the bungling of his crime. As he walked from Mrs FitzArthur’s house and crossed the busy road, he thought of the telephone wire disintegrating in his hands because of its indifferent quality. ‘I had it on the neck of him,’ he said to Lady Dolores. ‘I was tightening it up.’ He imagined rifles that were ineffective through rust, knives that were blunt or bladeless, and poison as innocent as milk. ‘Run him down in a car,’ commanded Lady Dolores. ‘I couldn’t drive one,’ replied Edward.
But in his heart Edward doubted that the future would be at all like that for him. ‘I want you to put a stop to Septimus Tuam,’ she had said. ‘You have been put on earth for that very reason.’ Inept at all else, the truth might be that his genius was reserved for his violent task. He is silent beside Mrs Bolsover, he had written, occasionally making a gesture. I have never seen him smile. He had written that he was thin no matter how you looked at him, from the front or from either side. He had written that his black hair had a curl in it and that his feet were noticeably small. He had filled the blank pages with a wealth of detail, but apparently that wasn’t enough. He had no option but to go on weakly protesting; he would protest until he received his final orders and knew that he could not disobey. ‘I’m useless with any kind of instrument,’ he’d say to her. ‘It’s as much as I can do to butter a piece of bread.’ She would shake her head, and for all he knew she might even be right. A Very Fine Murderer, a newspaper would pronounce; Useful to the Nation. The headlines dazzled Edward’s mind and caused him to feel giddy. ‘Is my leg being pulled?’ he cried from the saddle of his landlady’s bicycle. ‘Is this some joke?’
People walking on the pavements heard these questions and paused in their strolling to stare at the cyclist who had uttered them. A few raised their eyebrows; others laughed.
20
‘We can’t have this, you know,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘You’re snarling up all our lines, sir. The station’s business is being interfered with.’
‘What business, for heaven’s sake?’ shrieked Mrs Poache. ‘Have you ever done an honest’s day work in your life?’
Had she been able to, she would have telephoned Septimus Tuam himself, but Septimus Tuam was not, and never had been, on the telephone. He had explained to her that he did not care to have the dark and foreboding instrument anywhere near him, interrupting his thoughts, as by its nature it must. ‘What’s the matter with call-boxes?’ he had asked her in his direct way, and she recalled with vividness being unable to say that anything much was the matter with call-boxes.
He had come to her at a time when she was feeling low. Just before a Christmas it had been, about ten years ago. ‘What a lot of shopping you have!’ he had said, sitting at her table in Fortnum and Mason’s. ‘Christmas is such a time.’ They had drifted into conversation, in the course of which she had revealed where she lived. ‘Well, here’s a coincidence,’ the young man had replied, ‘I am making for that very area myself, my next port of call. Now, please do let me help you with that load.’
The next time, she had run into him in one of the local shops. ‘Four thin slices of lamb’s liver,’ she’d been saying at the time. ‘Why, Mrs Poache,’ said he, coming up behind her. And then the following morning he’d arrived at the house, with a black glove, saying he thought she’d dropped it yesterday. But she had to confess that she had never seen this black glove before. ‘So kind of you,’ she said, and held the door wide, thinking of the Captain, who would probably have kicked the glove into the gutter rather than seek out the lady who had dropped it. She had given him a cup of coffee, and he, noticing all the work she had laid up for herself in the kitchen, had taken off his jacket and fallen to like a young Trojan. ‘I’ll wash these dishes,’ he had murmured softly. ‘You dry them if you’d like to, Mrs Poache; or why not take a rest from chores this morning?’ But she, feeling she couldn’t do that, had picked up a dish-cloth and had dried.
Mrs Poache could neve
r afterwards remember at what point she had felt weak. All she knew was that she had suddenly sat down at the kitchen table, watching him and leaving him to do all the work. And then he had said that he’d fallen in love with her in Fortnum and Mason’s and she hadn’t been able to believe her ears.
Mrs Poache, ten years later, found the one photograph she had to remind her of him. It had been taken by a street photographer who had snapped his camera before Septimus Tuam could stop him. He had been angry about the incident, and had been even angrier when she gave the man her name and address and asked that a copy be sent to her. Septimus Tuam made her promise to bring him the photograph when it arrived so that together they might destroy it. But what had arrived was a small contact print from which she was to order the larger picture by quoting a number and enclosing money. ‘Here’s that photo,’ she had said to Septimus Tuam, handing him the contact print. She had afterwards quoted the number and enclosed the money, and two days later the larger photograph had arrived. It was the only time she had ever deceived him, but she knew even then that a day might come when she would welcome the comfort of a memento. And when the time in fact did come, she often wondered as she looked at the faded photograph how much he had changed in the intervening years, and she guessed that he had hardly changed at all.
Mrs Poache sighed. She would have given a hundred pounds to be able to walk from the house now and take a bus into London and meet him for coffee in Fortnum and Mason’s. She remembered his eyes. She remembered a way he had of running the tips of his fingers lightly over the palms of her hands. Angrily, she shouted into the Captain’s sock on the mouthpiece of her telephone. She stamped her foot.
‘He lived in your district,’ she shouted at the desk sergeant, ‘and may still do. You’ll have a murder on your hands; I don’t suppose you care.’
‘Hullo,’ said the desk sergeant.
She had never known his precise address, knowing only that he resided near the river, somewhere near Putney Bridge. He had told her that much one day, replying that he was a Putney man when she had called him a man from nowhere, a mystery man and an enigma. ‘I am a seventh child,’ he had said. ‘I am the runt of the family.’ He had almost died in childbirth, he added, reflecting aloud that fairies could have carried the miniature coffin. ‘You might never have been born,’ she had cried. ‘Oh, my boy!’ She remembered his taking a lace handkerchief from her handbag, on that occasion or on a similar one, and himself dabbing her tearful eyes with it. He loved to powder her face for her, and to smear on her lipstick. He said he had never known a woman like her.
‘He lives nearby you, don’t you see?’ cried Mrs Poache. ‘He’s in your charge.’
‘What’s your name, sir, and address, please?’ said the desk sergeant. ‘Speak up a bit, if you would.’
‘I am speaking through a layer of wool. I have no intention of making myself known.’
‘In that case –’
‘Listen to me at once.’
‘What is it you wish to say, sir?’
‘If no arrest takes place I am planning to report you to Scotland Yard. I am quite capable of telephoning friends at the Yard. I trust you appreciate that.’
The desk sergeant heard the line go dead, and blew loudly through his mouth, causing his lips to shake. ‘That same old gin-and-tatters,’ he said to a constable who was standing by with his helmet off, ‘impersonating a dame.’
Septimus Tuam examined the calendar by his bedside and saw the pencilled ring around October 12th. He left his room and said to a man who was coming up the stairs of the rooming-house: ‘Is it the twelfth?’ The man replied that it was. ‘The twelfth of never,’ he said, and laughed very loudly.
‘Mrs James Bolsover,’ said Septimus Tuam in a telephone-box. ‘Is she there and may I speak to her?’
‘Who is that?’ retorted Mrs Hoop. ‘Who is speaking there?’
‘The cutlery department of Harrods.’
‘Cutlery? The house is full of it.’
‘Is Mrs Bolsover in? It would be helpful to have a word with her. I will not delay her long.’
‘She is around certainly. I think she is trying to make some food in the kitchen.’
Septimus Tuam heard Mrs Hoop call out to her employer that there was a man about cutlery on the telephone.
‘Yes?’ said Eve.
‘My dear, it’s me.’ He spoke quickly and urgently. He said, ‘Something odd has arisen. I may have to go away absolutely at once, for six or nine months.’
‘But why? Oh surely not!’
Septimus Tuam explained that all this was a considerable embarrassment to him. ‘That legacy,’ he said, and paused. He had mentioned the small legacy before, he continued, as being one that was tied up in a legal way. It was due to him from the estate of an elderly cousin and had been due for quite some time, while he, already counting on the money, had spent a portion of it in advance. ‘A wretched creditor,’ said Septimus Tuam, ‘has taken it into his head to put on the heat. You may laugh, but what I am obliged to do is flee the country. It is more complicated than it sounds,’ added Septimus Tuam, not sure himself what the law was in these matters.
‘But surely nowadays –’
‘Who fancies being chalked up a bankrupt, dear, when all the time there is this tied-up legacy? I’ve asked Lord Marchingpass, but alas, poor chap, he has over-spent himself on the Californian fig market. It is most wretched really; quite absurd –’
‘How much is it? Surely I can lend you the money for a while?’
Mrs Hoop, polishing the floor of the Bolsovers’ hall, heard her employer say that she was prepared to lend money to a man in the cutlery department of Harrods. She ceased all polishing and edged closer to the half-open door of the sitting-room.
Septimus Tuam said:
‘It is all of three hundred pounds, and I couldn’t ever borrow three hundred pounds from you, my dear, or even more as may be. However could I?’
‘Of course you could. It is only until you have the money yourself: it is the natural thing to do.’
‘No, no: I could never allow it. No, I shall fly off as Lord Marchingpass suggested. He has a little financial aid stacked away in Barcelona, or some such: he kindly permits me to make free with it. Though I cannot bring it back to London: it is apparently quite against the law. So I am off tonight.’
‘No, no –’
‘Look, my dear, how could I pay you back? Three hundred pounds? If the cousin’s legacy failed for any reason to materialize, what then, for heaven’s sake? Cash gets nibbled up by legal men.’
‘I’ll give you the money,’ cried Eve. ‘Of course I must. I’ll write you a cheque for three hundred pounds.’
In the hall Mrs Hoop entered a state of ecstasy, with her eyes closed and her polishing cloth idle in her hand. Well, this beats Bingo, thought Mrs Hoop.
‘Give it to me?’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘But I couldn’t ever let you. How could I?’
But Eve had already replaced the receiver and was searching for her cheque book, while Mrs Hoop, smearing on Mansion polish at a snail’s pace, was telling her story to a judge in a divorce court.
‘Anything like that?’ enquired Lady Dolores, showing Edward another portrait on her lined pad. ‘Have I got the eyes?’
‘I want to speak to you, Lady Dolores.’
Lady Dolores blew smoke about. She used her pencil, watching the point of it moving on the paper. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’m useless at stealth, Lady Dolores, and I’m useless with any kind of instrument. It’s as much as I can do to butter a piece of bread.’
‘Who’s talking about butter, Mr Blakeston-Smith? Look here, I don’t pay you to come in here talking to me about butter. I asked you about the eyes.’
‘The eyes are deeper. They’re blacker eyes. They’d frighten you.’
‘They’ll never frighten me. I’ll warn you of that.’
‘What about one of the clerks outside, Lady Dolores? They might be interested in this type of work. Th
ey’re always on about blood.’
‘They are poetic clerks, Mr Blakeston-Smith, which is more than you’ll ever be. These are rising men in the world of verse, obliged to earn a living otherwise. Is the hair right?’
‘The hair needs to be blacker. Is it poetry, all that? The dog and the mechanic? I never guessed.’
‘It is of the avant-garde, Mr Blakeston-Smith. Poetry of an advanced nature.’
‘Well, wouldn’t it be a good experience for them?’
‘The clerks have their work to do, as you and I have ours, Mr Blakeston-Smith. You appear to be trying to upset the whole organization.’
‘They sit there reciting poetry,’ cried Edward, ‘while I have to go out and do the dirty work. It’s hardly fair: they’re as happy as sandboys.’
‘You’re a well-dressed man now, Mr Blakeston-Smith. Who gave you a lovely pair of gloves?’
‘The clerks have the best of everything –’
‘You are seeing life, are you not? You are growing up apace. While the clerks sit pretending.’
‘The clerks are in their seventh heaven.’
‘You are filling up the dossier well, Mr Blakeston-Smith: I like the details you are putting down. You’ll be as angry as a cat when you see him at work in the Bolsover marriage –’
‘I’ve seen it, Lady Dolores. I’ve written down just what happens.’
‘You’re doing frightfully well. Don’t you like those gloves?’
‘Yes, of course –’
‘Well, then?’
‘I’m terribly frightened, Lady Dolores. I don’t think it’s right, you know, following people around like this. It’s against the law, that kind of carry-on.’
‘It’s not against any law, pet. There’s nothing to say you shouldn’t follow a man who sent three women to their graves.’
‘You’re making me act against my will,’ cried Edward. ‘You’ve got peculiar powers. You’re a contemporary witch.’
The Love Department Page 20
