The Mystery of the Burning Bridges
I finished the first chapter of A THING! Please, please, please give me your thoughts. No need to be gentle with me - I like it rough! ;)
Elizabeth Hilton had never, ever liked Tuesdays. They were sluggishly grey days, miserably far from the weekend, with a high chance of heavy drizzle and still four days left to slog through in the company of the sulky grey- or red-faced boors who filled the newspaper offices where she worked as junior photographer #3 with an alcoholic, middle-aged haze of beer, cigarette fumes and sweat. Her grandfather had died on a Tuesday, her last angry dispute with her older brother Pip had been on a Tuesday, and she was very nearly positive she had signed the paperwork for her grub of a flat on a Tuesday, too. And all of this culminated on this particular Tuesday morning in the rattling, too-cramped lift to the fifth floor of the offices of the London Standard, and the unmistakable feeling of her chief editor’s fat, sly fingers groping without shame at her posterior as they both exited it. Betsy reacted as her mother had always taught her to: by taking deep breaths and counting in a ladylike, restrained way to twenty.
And then, since she was still furious, she threw her camera at him anyway.
The camera, which Betsy had always referred to as Philip for the way it liked to thwart her at all the worst possible moments, was not by any means a small piece of machinery. Nor was it cheap. And the sounds it made as it arced through the air and collided with the stupefied, balding head of Editor-in-Chief George Reynolds were almost enough to drown out the sound of all her bridges burning at once.
It was really rather a good throw, Betsy considered, storming in as dignified a fashion as she could manage to her desk and collecting her meagre belongings. It was certainly one which would have both surprised and delighted her old games mistress - who had, now she came to think of it, strongly resembled Mr Reynolds in any case. She would have quite liked to ask if they were related, just to see if she could improve on the habitual smug sneer on his face, but she certainly wasn’t going to hang about this dingy, smelly little building long enough to let him actually sack her. She didn’t have a box, she realised too late, wondering why on earth this always looked so much better in the movies. She was positive underpaid, overworked, justifiably furious office staff always had a suitable box to hand when storming out of the office in Hollywood, but this being a particularly grubby part of West Chiswick all she could find were a couple of undersized paper bags, one of which split unglamorously (but right on cue) as she attempted to pick it up. With her arms full with the overflowing sacks she couldn’t quite manage to stalk out of the building in the dramatic style she had envisioned, but on her way out of the door she did at least manage to declare loftily that she never had liked this job anyway, which was entirely true.
It was also directly as a result of this that Betsy managed to make it all the way down the five floors in the lift and out of the badly-lit office lobby into the street before she even thought about wanting to cry.
~*~
He always had been rather keen on Tuesdays, Frederick Trotteville mused, serenely ignoring the persistent drizzle as he strolled down to Piccadilly Circus under the protection of a large and cheerfully flamboyant purple umbrella. They were rather cheerful days, that hideous gauntlet of a Monday having been safely endured and done with and the rest of the week stretching full of promise before him. His last birthday had been on a Tuesday, his beloved dog Buster had been first presented to him on a Tuesday, and the latest generous windfall of ‘pocket money’ from indulgent Uncle George (which had most obligingly rescued him from those unpleasant and rather insistent chaps belonging to Mr Peter in Brixton) had arrived, as it happened, on exactly Tuesday last. And this particular Tuesday had, as it chanced, discovered him furnished most unexpectedly with a small and neat as a pin little office in Fleet Street, all amenities provided, which Great Aunt Olivia was not presently using but which she did not currently wish to sell. The new office and its surroundings suggested a vast array of possibilities, as did the gleaming new week it had arrived at the beginning of, and at this moment Frederick considered that these possibilities were best considered over a quiet celebratory tipple in a favoured establishment of his which happily chanced to be near the new acquisition in question.
Buster the Scottie, who was having an unexpectedly sprightly day for such an elderly dog, capered at his master’s immaculately-shod feet, enquiring in a hopeful bass woof about the possibilities of a visit to the park. Frederick, briefly tempted himself, finally shook his head. The weather was too poor, the mud too likely to do irreparable harm to his exquisite footwear, the city too crowded - and besides, the novel concept of calmly and seriously considering his future over a good malt like the twenty-six-year-old the date on his birth certificate proclaimed him to be seemed attractive, if only for its novelty. What was more, he really ought to actually see the property if he truly proposed to do something sensible - or better yet, something not-at-all sensible - with it, in order to give all due justice to either his prospective folly or his prospective genius. Furling the violet umbrella and picking up a reluctant Buster (whose diminutive size and advanced years prevented him from scrambling down the steps as he had once done so easily), therefore, Frederick duly proceeded towards the Underground and the sensible, sober evaluation of his new property before (he hoped) a rather less sober evaluation of what he should best do with it.
Some two hours later, therefore, and after a rather more cursory examination of the office than he had planned before the fatal attraction of the warmth, company, alcohol and hot nourishment of the nearest public house finally took hold in earnest, found the fortunate Master Trotteville leaning back against the satisfyingly warm leather sofa-back of the bar’s snug and patting his well-rounded stomach in appreciation of the excellent mid-morning snack he had just enjoyed. Buster, meanwhile, curled up at his feet and went to sleep with a clear intention to stay that way until such time as the equally-excellent brunch of chicken, biscuits and gravy he had himself enjoyed had been thoroughly digested.
He was just about to enquire about the possibility of acquiring another glass of whisky, even this early in the day (the barman being an old manservant of Great-Uncle Robert’s, and thus inclined to smile on him in the happy and certain knowledge that his uncle would insist on paying his tab) when the pub’s doors were shoved open and a slight blonde half-stormed, half-staggered in, her arms full of what looked rather like rubbish. She was also rather wet, though not soaked enough to be pathetic, merely scruffy-looking. Even twelve years since the war had ended, girls - women, rather - were not much seen in pubs, especially not in this primarily journalist-flooded area of the city, and the barman opened his mouth to say something but was felled by the power of the look she gave him. The world, it was clear, had already thwarted this particular young lady in many inventive ways this morning, and mere barmen were not about to be permitted to stand between her and her chosen variety of alcoholic solace.
“Do not give me that look,” she snapped at him. “It has been a very long day, and it’s not even lunch time yet.”
One of the paper bags she was carrying finally split entirely in two as she dumped it onto a corner table, spilling office paraphernalia to the floor in a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and Frederick was faintly scandalised to hear her curse - although admittedly, not as scandalised as he was to see someone who at least sounded like a young lady in a pub in the first place.
“I will have a double gin and tonic,” she continued. “No ice.”
“Anything to eat, Miss?” the barman enquired, having apparently been cowed into respect by either surprise, the sheer force of her personality of some combination of the two.
“No,” the blonde said curtly, sinking into a chair, but then seemed to feel that she had been too rude and hastily followed it up with a slightly flustered “Thank you.”
She said nothing further as the barman scuttled off to get her her drink, merely remained slumped in her seat with her chin resting schoolgirlishly on her hands and thus providing Frederick with the opportunity to study her with the horrified fascination of a suburban housewife who has discovered an attractive male interloper standing naked in her kitchen. Despite the rain and her state of stressed dishevelry, the newcomer was clearly an attractive young woman in an expensive-looking scoop-necked crimson frock which flared out from the waist, although its folds were no longer crisp thanks to the pouring rain. Her heels were black - like the dress’s belt - and of a not-quite-respectable height, and one of her stockings was laddered. Her blonde hair had clearly started the day neatly coiffed, but the rain and now the snug heat of the pub had inexorably caused it to escape its pins. She had an elfin face discreetly made up, brown eyes which (he suspected) were not usually prone to looking as furiously weary as at present, a firm chin and a full mouth. She was also increasingly familiar the more he stared at her, and as he watched her tug the string of pearls at her throat back into place Frederick suddenly realised why.
“Bets!” he exclaimed, rising hastily from his chair. “Bets, by all that’s holy!”
Startled, the girl looked his way and gave vent to a brief shriek of clarion recognition. “FATTY!”
Frederick visibly winced, as well he might in the face of having his least-beloved nickname screamed to a London pub. “It’s, er, Frederick these days, old girl.”
His old friend appeared to be ignoring him in favour of Buster, who had woken at Frederick’s shout and was now busying himself in a variety of complex and delighted frisks about his old friend’s ankles.
“It’s Betsy these days, too,” she informed him presently. “But I could never call you Frederick, it’s far too formal. Haven’t you any other name?”
“Well, my middle name’s Algernon, but I’m blowed if I’ll let anyone, even you young Betsy, call me that.” He paused. “Some of the chaps at university used to call me Freddy. I shouldn’t mind that too much, I suppose.”
Betsy pulled a face. “Freddy still doesn’t really seem like you. But it is better than Frederick.”
“Well, never mind all that, how have you been?” Frederick demanded, unperturbed by this criticism of his Christian names. “It’s been an absolute age since I saw you last.”
Betsy’s pretty face darkened. “I just threw my camera at my editor’s head.”
Frederick whistled slowly. “Well, well, well. Did you hit him?”
Betsy’s flipped curved into a reluctant grin. “Oh, yes.”
“Splendid, splendid,” Frederick said briskly. “I should hate to see you get fired for a throw that didn’t even connect.”
At that, Betsy had to giggle. “Actually, I didn’t get fired. I walked out before anyone could fire me.”
Cheerfully, “Better and better.” Frederick looked down. “Buster, give the young lady three cheers.”
The little Scottie did his best, but the ‘cheers’ were a rather lacklustre affair. Betsy stooped to pick him up, fussing him sentimentally.
“Oh darling Buster, I have missed you so,” she said happily. “He must be dreadfully old now, Fa - Freddy?”
“Yes, rather. Fifteen next March sixteenth, actually.” Frederick stroked his pet’s furry head with a pudgy finger. “But there’s life in the old dog yet, eh old boy?”
Betsy smiled at him, reminding him with a rather uncomfortable jolt just how pretty she had become. “What about you?” she asked. “What have you been doing with yourself since you went off to university?”
“Oh, this and that, this and that,” Frederick said vaguely, waving an eloquent hand. “You know how it is.”
Betsy gave him an uncomfortably searching looking, suggesting that no, she did not know how it was, and that she was about to Ask Questions. “Let’s sit down,” he continued hastily, “I simply must buy you a drink, for one thing.”
“I’ll have to finish this one first,” Betsy objected, casting a darkling look towards the bar, where the barman was now dubiously adding individual ice cubes to what clearly hoped to become a gin and tonic. “When I get it,” she added, voice raised, and Jim the barman startled and hurried out with the glass in hand. Clearly feeling more merciful now that Frederick had turned up, Betsy forbore to complain about the unwanted ice and merely took the glass with a ‘thank-you’ and a brief smile before promptly downing quite half the glass in one gulp. Having been quite scandalised already by her mere appearance in the pub, Fatty’s faint horror at the professional way she drank was levelled to a mere aftershock.
“Steady on, old thing,” he remonstrated, but more out of a sense of duty than of any real objection. “You’re liable to drink the whole Thames dry, carrying on like that.”
“If they made it out of gin, I feel I jolly well would, right now,” Betsy retorted, but nevertheless moderated her intake somewhat - if only to make the drink last longer.
“So,” he enquired, anxious to steer the conversation away from his own doings for as long as possible. “Have you thought about what you’ll do next?”
She looked glum, which was answer enough. “No. Mother’s going to have a field-day - I’ve been getting regular ear-bashings for months about how being a newspaper photographer’s no job for a young lady.” She wrenched her voice into a passable imitation of her mother’s well-bred whine. “Out until all hours, the company you keep, no wonder you can’t find a husband! What man is going to want you while you’re such a shrill little grub?” She made a face. “As if I even care about being the perfect little woman. It doesn’t seem to have made her very happy, anyhow.”
Frederick’s eyebrows rose. “Well, playing mother always was rather more Daisy’s thing than yours, as I recall,” he remarked. “What do you want from life, then? Other than to practice your camera-throwing skills, anyway.”
The richly irritated look with which Betsy favoured him at this rather patronising addendum was a clear ‘do not try me today’ warning sign, and Frederick made a hasty mental note: No longer the baby, don’t push your luck.
“Not to spend it throwing horrid bloody little tea parties and wondering what the neighbours are doing,” Betsy said, with vicious determination. “I want to do something that actually matters a bit! And,” she finished, “To work with people who know how to keep their damn hands to themselves.”
Frederick nodded. “Certainly seems fair enough to me. And you’ve not found anything to fit the criteria yet?”
“No.” Her shoulders slumped; she made fresh inroads on her drink. “Not since we were the Five Find-Outers, anyway.” She laughed, but there wasn’t a great deal of laughter in the sound. “D’you remember, Fatty?”
He noticed the slip in regards to his Christian name, but elected to let it pass in light of his companion’s mood. “And dog,” he nodded, reaching down to fondle Buster’s ears. “Mustn’t forget old Buster, after all. But yes, they were good days. Is old Clear-Orf still running round after any children who show signs of possessing a functioning braincell?”
“Oh, Lord knows - I haven’t spent more than an afternoon in Peterswood since I finished university.” Betsy giggled. “Probably had a heart-attack years ago, if the colours his face always attained were any evidence. What about you - what have you been up to since you went off to Oxford?”
“Oh, this and that, this and tha -” Frederick cut off abruptly as he noticed the thoroughly sceptical look on her face. “I take it my repetition isn’t proving terribly convincing, old thing?”
“Not particularly, no,” she admitted, sounding rather more amused than angry. “Suppose we take it from the top, with more specifics and less prevaricating?”
Amused or not, it was becoming clear that avoiding the question was not an option. She wasn’t quite at the point of shining a fifty-megawatt lamp in his face and demanding he talk - although something about her expression suggested that he shouldn’t rule the possibility out entirely - but nevertheless he was rapidly beginning to realise that Betsy could be as tenacious as a starving cat after a mouse if her questions were not answered satisfactorily. That being the case, he considered, he might as well concede with good grace.
“Oh, very well,” he said, and gave her his very best rendition of Ingratiating Grin #2 (charming, rather schoolboyish, just a hint of wry humour). He flattered himself that he could see it taking effect - he always had been Betsy’s favourite amongst their group of friends - but it could have been a trick of the light, or possibly just mild indigestion.
“I had a fantastic time at Oxford - there’s nothing like it, Bets, you really have no idea. Thing was, I had such a brilliant time that I, er... only just scraped a second-class degree. To be brutally honest, I’m not at all sure I would have even managed that if my head of department hadn’t been an old school chum of Great-Uncle Percy’s.”
Betsy raised her eyebrows, clearly having some trouble reconciling this strangely modest young man with the boastful, utterly confident ‘Fatty’ she had known as a child. “And now?”
Frederick shrugged, staring gloomily into his drink. “Well, you know what the job market’s like these days. Oh, I’ve had a lot of interviews, and even one or two trials, but I just can’t seem to stick at anything. My Uncle Roger keeps trying to lure me into a splendidly reliable managerial post at his bank, but I just can’t face it - all that bean-counting, all those silly petty rules. I think I should die, quite frankly.”
“And I’ve just walked out of my first ever proper job,” Betsy completed. “Oh, Freddy. We are a proper pair of failures, aren’t we?”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk like that just yet, old girl,” Frederick said, faintly alarmed. “Here - my Great Aunt Olivia’s just given me the use of a splendid set of rooms in Fleet Street, absolutely rent-free. I was just wondering what to do about them, and I think you’ve given me the inklings of a really smashing idea. Just you come along and see them with me while I finish thinking it out and I’ll explain, all right?”
Betsy looked bemused, but seemed willing to play along for the time being. “What about my things?” she asked, standing up and finishing her drink in one fluid movement that told Frederick a good deal more than he ever wanted to know about her usual drinking habits.
He waved an airy hand. “Oh, Jim will keep an eye on them for an hour, I’m sure - and we can find you some manner of box or bag to put them in while we’re out and about.”
Much to his relief, she grinned. “Oh, go on then. What’s this about rooms?”
“Well, from the letter she sent I rather understood that Great Aunt Olivia meant she was offering me the use of an office she isn’t making use of at present, but I’ve just been along to take a dekko at it and it appears I have cruelly misjudged her.” Frederick, about to gallantly help Betsy into her coat, caught her eye and wisely thought better of it. “It’s just around the corner from here, so happily we’ve not much of a walk to be rain on for.”
“Lots of rain, though,” Betsy said, gloomily doing up the buttons of her coat. “Shall we leave Buster here to stand guard? It seems a pity to wake him up again just to take him out into such a dreadful torrent.”
“Oh, Buster loves it,” Frederick said bracingly; and indeed, the little Scottie was already wide awake as his master clipped on the regulation thin red leash that city living enforced. “Jim, you’ll look after the young lady’s belongings for half an hour, won’t you?”
“Right you are, sir,” said the barman agreeably, leaning on the counter. “They’ll all be here when you get back, never you fear.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Betsy remarked with a wry giggle, but she nevertheless permitted herself to be led out into the street, looking deeply amused as Frederick once again unfurled his purple umbrella.
“Still the same old show-off,” she told him, teasing. “I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised.”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about, I’m sure,” he said sniffily, looking absurdly dignified for a man presently sheltering under an enormous lavender umbrella; Betsy only laughed.
~*~
The ‘office’ Freddy had spoken of turned to be a whole suite of rooms on the third floor of a rather battered but not wholly disreputable building, sparsely but sufficiently furnished with quietly expensive furniture. Betsy, who had quite expected any relation of Freddy’s to be equally as flamboyant as he was, was almost as shocked as Freddy himself had been to see her drink. The main room had a desk, three green-backed chairs, a small over-stuffed sofa, two fat bookcases and a large bay window which looked out onto Fleet Street proper. Off it was a small but clean bathroom equipped with toilet, sink and shower, a somewhat less small bedroom with a double bed, and a tiny but undoubtedly serviceable kitchenette. Buster sniffed all around, investigated a few likely-looking bold holes, and finally curled up in a corner and went to sleep with a deep sigh that spoke of his intense satisfaction with the whole affair.
“Altogether, it’s really rather good,” she remarked, her hand resting lightly on the soft green back of one of the chairs. “And for free, it’s wonderful. But what on earth are you planning to do with it?”
“Well, yes, that really is somewhat of a puzzler,” Freddy agreed. “As a matter of fact it was just what I was pondering when you happened upon me in that pub, and I rather think I’ve just about got it.”
“Go on,” she prompted encouragingly, preparing her best #7 adoring smile (sycophantic, not too sugary) for deployment in case Freddy had undergone a complete personality transplant in the twelve years since she had last seen him and was no dramatically less fond of his own views than heretofore.
“Well... what about a detective agency?”
Betsy blinked, startled. “...What?”
“What about a detective agency?” he repeated. “You said it yourself, Bets - our time as the Find-Outers really was the only job you’ve ever enjoyed, and frankly I don’t mind admitting that I feel exactly the same way. We used to have a success rate that turned old Clear-Orf green, or rather puce, with envy - if it worked when we were children, why not now we’re adults?”
“What about money?” she objected. “We’d need something to start us up, I should imagine - and I can’t speak for you, but I don’t mind saying I’ve about gone through the last of my savings.”
“Well, for starters I rather think I shall move in here,” Freddy said. “That will reduce my bills somewhat, and then I shall have my deposit back from my current, ah, address. Just think about it, Betsy: we’d set our own hours, make our own rules - and I hardly need state that I can safely be relied upon to keep my hands to myself.”
It was a surprisingly tempting proposition, and Betsy gave it the consideration she felt it deserved. It would, at the very least, put off the moment of returning home to the scolding of her mother and the well-nigh unbearable smugness of her older brother. But if she’d expected Freddy to suggest anything, it certainly hadn’t been this. “Well, I suppose I can just about keep going for a month or two...” she mused. “Much longer than that, though, I should imagine you’ll find me sleeping on your sofa.” She gave him a searching look. “Do you really think we could make something like this work?”
“Oh, I’m certain of it,” Freddy said grandly, waving a grandiose hand. He himself perched half-on, half-off a corner of the desk, heedless of the mess he was making of its careful polish and looking quite at home already. “Don’t tell your brother or Larry I said this, of course, but you and I always were the brains of our bunch - and if it worked once, it’ll work again. What’s old Pip up to these days, by the way?”
“Telling me how to live my life, mainly,” Betsy said, with the faint scowl of the long-suffering. “But he actually gets paid to be a policeman - he’s Detective Sergeant Philip Hilton these days, and don’t I know it.”
“Well, there you are, then,” he said, again waving a hand in a way that would have given Betsy sincere concern for the future of the desk-lamp if there had been one. “If a fathead like your brother can make a living as a detective, why on earth can’t we?”
At that, she had to chuckle. She was pretty sure she’d never entertained such a hare-brained scheme before in her life - but then again, as far as she could see, at this juncture sensible decisions involved a life spent attending tea parties and gossiping with the neighbours, and quite possibly a death surrounded by chintz. “Oh well, if I am to go down in flames anyway, I may as well do it in style. Go on, then, we can but give it a try.”
Freddy gave her a thoroughly gratifying - and, if she was any judge, wholly genuine - beam. “Good-oh!” he exclaimed, bouncing forward from his perch on the desk to shake her hand with such gusto that she was briefly alarmed for its safety. “Partners it is!”
“Partners it is,” she affirmed with a wry smile, before a thought struck. “We ought to have a name, though - something that will make us really stand out when we advertise. What can we use?”
“Oh!” Freddy paused mid-shake. “Oh, yes, I suppose we should rather.” He thought a moment. “Hilton and Trotteville?”
“Trotteville and Hilton sounds better,” Betsy objected. “But it’s a little ... dull. All the other private investigators just go by their surnames, I believe - we want something with rather more flair, I should think. It sounds terribly childish now, but I suppose...”
“Go on, Bets,” he prompted her, when she paused. “Your area of expertise, this, after all.”
“Not quite, actually, but I do happen to have met one or two private eyes.” She fussed with a stray lock of hair for a moment. “Well, what about the Find-Outers?”
“Hmm. It certainly does stand out, you’re right,” Freddy mused. “And using our old name does hold a certain appeal. Oughtn’t we to have outgrown that by now, though?”
“Perhaps - but on the other hand, you must admit that it would make us stand out from everyone else out there.” Betsy felt herself feeling more supportive of her own idea even as she argued it; she’d never been entirely sure how that worked, but it certainly wasn’t the first time it had happened to her. “That could be our - our - ” she snapped her fingers, hunting for the right word - “our niche - all those posh society types who wouldn’t dare consult a nasty rough private dick. ‘When you can’t go to anyone, come to us’: that could be our strap-line.”
“We’ll probably get a lot of missing Pekineses and kleptomaniac maids after the family silver,” Freddy said pessimistically. “But that slogan - that’s got real potential, that has. I like it. Discreet, classy folk who you don’t have to admit at the servants’ door - that’ll be us.”
“Well, what does it matter what cases we take, so long as we get paid to take them?” Betsy tutted. “I’ll retrieve all the pekes and poms and - and Chihuahuas from here to China so long as it pays decently. Anyway, at least it would get us known. I believe I may still have some friends left at whom I haven’t yet thrown a camera - I think I can probably get us some free, or at least cheap, advertising in the Times, or at least the Telegraph, if I ask them nicely.”
“Oh, smashing.” Freddy grinned broadly. “You’re, er, really taking this seriously, then?”
“Of course.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “I’m hardly going to deliberately crash and burn and make a fool of myself while I’m at it, am I? At any rate, not if I have any say in the matter.” She paused, twiddling her hair again. “Besides, I don’t know about you, but I absolutely refuse to slink back to my mother with my tail between my legs and I admit I failed in my attempt to be an independent adult. I simply will not.”
“It isn’t the most appealing prospect in the world for me either, no,” Freddy admitted. “My mother has somehow still clung on to the idea that I am a misunderstood genius, gravely and wantonly abused by this wicked world of ours, and I’m afraid I should hate to disillusion her.”
Betsy laughed. “Gracious. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Frederick Trotteville?”
He pulled a face at her, looking rueful. “Good question, really. I’m pretty certain I was supposed to be a self-made millionaire by now, for one thing.”
“Oh, well, you’ve time yet - and who knows, this could be the thing that finally makes your fortune,” Betsy said consolingly. “Now, what else do you think we need to turn this place into a proper detective agency?”
“Books and notes, for one thing - and lots of them,” Freddy said with a grin. “To make us look busy and important.”
She snorted. “And a telephone, surely? If only so we can look at it gloomily and wonder why it doesn’t ring, as is traditional.”
“You’ve been reading a good deal too many bad detective stories, I think,” Freddy told her. “At least, I jolly well hope you have. “Still, a phone’s not a bad idea - we can put our number in adverts and business cards, so we look professional and like we actually know what on earth we’re doing.”
“Well, my mother keeps telling me I’ve been fooling myself for years, so fooling the rest of the population shouldn’t be too difficult in comparison,” she remarked with a rueful laugh. “Anyway, supposing I can get on to the exchange and find out what our telephone number will be today, I should be able to have us advertising and up and running by... Hmm. Shall we say Friday morning? Monday, at the outside.”
“Friday seems fair, if you can manage it,” he agreed, nodding. “I’ve no contract on my flat, as it happens, so I should be able to move in here by myself. I’ll see to it that we have all the necessary amenities by then, in that case - phone included.”
“You’ll make someone a wonderful mother some day, you know that?” Betsy teased.
“Well, at least one of us will,” he shot back, and promptly missed by millimetres her smack to the back of his head.
“I shall ignore that remark, this once,” Betsy informed him, making a game effort to rise above the jibe despite her failed attempt to commit physical violence, but only half joking as she continued, “But next time I may simply be forced to kill you. Just so you know.”
Fatty gave her a mock salute, laughing with - she felt - rather more smugness than was warranted by the situation. “Duly noted.”
“Glad we got that cleared up,” she said sweetly, picking up her handbag. “Do you think we ought to be getting back? I still need to find something to carry all my office things in, after all - and besides, I believe you still owe me a drink.”
“Right you are,” he assented. “Although actually, I think there may be a box under the kitchen sink you can use.”
He was quite correct, and accordingly five minutes later found the three of them (counting Buster, which they always did) once again dodging fat raindrops on their way back to the pub for a rather long - if very carefully budgeted - lunch.
Elizabeth Hilton had never, ever liked Tuesdays. They were sluggishly grey days, miserably far from the weekend, with a high chance of heavy drizzle and still four days left to slog through in the company of the sulky grey- or red-faced boors who filled the newspaper offices where she worked as junior photographer #3 with an alcoholic, middle-aged haze of beer, cigarette fumes and sweat. Her grandfather had died on a Tuesday, her last angry dispute with her older brother Pip had been on a Tuesday, and she was very nearly positive she had signed the paperwork for her grub of a flat on a Tuesday, too. And all of this culminated on this particular Tuesday morning in the rattling, too-cramped lift to the fifth floor of the offices of the London Standard, and the unmistakable feeling of her chief editor’s fat, sly fingers groping without shame at her posterior as they both exited it. Betsy reacted as her mother had always taught her to: by taking deep breaths and counting in a ladylike, restrained way to twenty.
And then, since she was still furious, she threw her camera at him anyway.
The camera, which Betsy had always referred to as Philip for the way it liked to thwart her at all the worst possible moments, was not by any means a small piece of machinery. Nor was it cheap. And the sounds it made as it arced through the air and collided with the stupefied, balding head of Editor-in-Chief George Reynolds were almost enough to drown out the sound of all her bridges burning at once.
It was really rather a good throw, Betsy considered, storming in as dignified a fashion as she could manage to her desk and collecting her meagre belongings. It was certainly one which would have both surprised and delighted her old games mistress - who had, now she came to think of it, strongly resembled Mr Reynolds in any case. She would have quite liked to ask if they were related, just to see if she could improve on the habitual smug sneer on his face, but she certainly wasn’t going to hang about this dingy, smelly little building long enough to let him actually sack her. She didn’t have a box, she realised too late, wondering why on earth this always looked so much better in the movies. She was positive underpaid, overworked, justifiably furious office staff always had a suitable box to hand when storming out of the office in Hollywood, but this being a particularly grubby part of West Chiswick all she could find were a couple of undersized paper bags, one of which split unglamorously (but right on cue) as she attempted to pick it up. With her arms full with the overflowing sacks she couldn’t quite manage to stalk out of the building in the dramatic style she had envisioned, but on her way out of the door she did at least manage to declare loftily that she never had liked this job anyway, which was entirely true.
It was also directly as a result of this that Betsy managed to make it all the way down the five floors in the lift and out of the badly-lit office lobby into the street before she even thought about wanting to cry.
~*~
He always had been rather keen on Tuesdays, Frederick Trotteville mused, serenely ignoring the persistent drizzle as he strolled down to Piccadilly Circus under the protection of a large and cheerfully flamboyant purple umbrella. They were rather cheerful days, that hideous gauntlet of a Monday having been safely endured and done with and the rest of the week stretching full of promise before him. His last birthday had been on a Tuesday, his beloved dog Buster had been first presented to him on a Tuesday, and the latest generous windfall of ‘pocket money’ from indulgent Uncle George (which had most obligingly rescued him from those unpleasant and rather insistent chaps belonging to Mr Peter in Brixton) had arrived, as it happened, on exactly Tuesday last. And this particular Tuesday had, as it chanced, discovered him furnished most unexpectedly with a small and neat as a pin little office in Fleet Street, all amenities provided, which Great Aunt Olivia was not presently using but which she did not currently wish to sell. The new office and its surroundings suggested a vast array of possibilities, as did the gleaming new week it had arrived at the beginning of, and at this moment Frederick considered that these possibilities were best considered over a quiet celebratory tipple in a favoured establishment of his which happily chanced to be near the new acquisition in question.
Buster the Scottie, who was having an unexpectedly sprightly day for such an elderly dog, capered at his master’s immaculately-shod feet, enquiring in a hopeful bass woof about the possibilities of a visit to the park. Frederick, briefly tempted himself, finally shook his head. The weather was too poor, the mud too likely to do irreparable harm to his exquisite footwear, the city too crowded - and besides, the novel concept of calmly and seriously considering his future over a good malt like the twenty-six-year-old the date on his birth certificate proclaimed him to be seemed attractive, if only for its novelty. What was more, he really ought to actually see the property if he truly proposed to do something sensible - or better yet, something not-at-all sensible - with it, in order to give all due justice to either his prospective folly or his prospective genius. Furling the violet umbrella and picking up a reluctant Buster (whose diminutive size and advanced years prevented him from scrambling down the steps as he had once done so easily), therefore, Frederick duly proceeded towards the Underground and the sensible, sober evaluation of his new property before (he hoped) a rather less sober evaluation of what he should best do with it.
Some two hours later, therefore, and after a rather more cursory examination of the office than he had planned before the fatal attraction of the warmth, company, alcohol and hot nourishment of the nearest public house finally took hold in earnest, found the fortunate Master Trotteville leaning back against the satisfyingly warm leather sofa-back of the bar’s snug and patting his well-rounded stomach in appreciation of the excellent mid-morning snack he had just enjoyed. Buster, meanwhile, curled up at his feet and went to sleep with a clear intention to stay that way until such time as the equally-excellent brunch of chicken, biscuits and gravy he had himself enjoyed had been thoroughly digested.
He was just about to enquire about the possibility of acquiring another glass of whisky, even this early in the day (the barman being an old manservant of Great-Uncle Robert’s, and thus inclined to smile on him in the happy and certain knowledge that his uncle would insist on paying his tab) when the pub’s doors were shoved open and a slight blonde half-stormed, half-staggered in, her arms full of what looked rather like rubbish. She was also rather wet, though not soaked enough to be pathetic, merely scruffy-looking. Even twelve years since the war had ended, girls - women, rather - were not much seen in pubs, especially not in this primarily journalist-flooded area of the city, and the barman opened his mouth to say something but was felled by the power of the look she gave him. The world, it was clear, had already thwarted this particular young lady in many inventive ways this morning, and mere barmen were not about to be permitted to stand between her and her chosen variety of alcoholic solace.
“Do not give me that look,” she snapped at him. “It has been a very long day, and it’s not even lunch time yet.”
One of the paper bags she was carrying finally split entirely in two as she dumped it onto a corner table, spilling office paraphernalia to the floor in a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and Frederick was faintly scandalised to hear her curse - although admittedly, not as scandalised as he was to see someone who at least sounded like a young lady in a pub in the first place.
“I will have a double gin and tonic,” she continued. “No ice.”
“Anything to eat, Miss?” the barman enquired, having apparently been cowed into respect by either surprise, the sheer force of her personality of some combination of the two.
“No,” the blonde said curtly, sinking into a chair, but then seemed to feel that she had been too rude and hastily followed it up with a slightly flustered “Thank you.”
She said nothing further as the barman scuttled off to get her her drink, merely remained slumped in her seat with her chin resting schoolgirlishly on her hands and thus providing Frederick with the opportunity to study her with the horrified fascination of a suburban housewife who has discovered an attractive male interloper standing naked in her kitchen. Despite the rain and her state of stressed dishevelry, the newcomer was clearly an attractive young woman in an expensive-looking scoop-necked crimson frock which flared out from the waist, although its folds were no longer crisp thanks to the pouring rain. Her heels were black - like the dress’s belt - and of a not-quite-respectable height, and one of her stockings was laddered. Her blonde hair had clearly started the day neatly coiffed, but the rain and now the snug heat of the pub had inexorably caused it to escape its pins. She had an elfin face discreetly made up, brown eyes which (he suspected) were not usually prone to looking as furiously weary as at present, a firm chin and a full mouth. She was also increasingly familiar the more he stared at her, and as he watched her tug the string of pearls at her throat back into place Frederick suddenly realised why.
“Bets!” he exclaimed, rising hastily from his chair. “Bets, by all that’s holy!”
Startled, the girl looked his way and gave vent to a brief shriek of clarion recognition. “FATTY!”
Frederick visibly winced, as well he might in the face of having his least-beloved nickname screamed to a London pub. “It’s, er, Frederick these days, old girl.”
His old friend appeared to be ignoring him in favour of Buster, who had woken at Frederick’s shout and was now busying himself in a variety of complex and delighted frisks about his old friend’s ankles.
“It’s Betsy these days, too,” she informed him presently. “But I could never call you Frederick, it’s far too formal. Haven’t you any other name?”
“Well, my middle name’s Algernon, but I’m blowed if I’ll let anyone, even you young Betsy, call me that.” He paused. “Some of the chaps at university used to call me Freddy. I shouldn’t mind that too much, I suppose.”
Betsy pulled a face. “Freddy still doesn’t really seem like you. But it is better than Frederick.”
“Well, never mind all that, how have you been?” Frederick demanded, unperturbed by this criticism of his Christian names. “It’s been an absolute age since I saw you last.”
Betsy’s pretty face darkened. “I just threw my camera at my editor’s head.”
Frederick whistled slowly. “Well, well, well. Did you hit him?”
Betsy’s flipped curved into a reluctant grin. “Oh, yes.”
“Splendid, splendid,” Frederick said briskly. “I should hate to see you get fired for a throw that didn’t even connect.”
At that, Betsy had to giggle. “Actually, I didn’t get fired. I walked out before anyone could fire me.”
Cheerfully, “Better and better.” Frederick looked down. “Buster, give the young lady three cheers.”
The little Scottie did his best, but the ‘cheers’ were a rather lacklustre affair. Betsy stooped to pick him up, fussing him sentimentally.
“Oh darling Buster, I have missed you so,” she said happily. “He must be dreadfully old now, Fa - Freddy?”
“Yes, rather. Fifteen next March sixteenth, actually.” Frederick stroked his pet’s furry head with a pudgy finger. “But there’s life in the old dog yet, eh old boy?”
Betsy smiled at him, reminding him with a rather uncomfortable jolt just how pretty she had become. “What about you?” she asked. “What have you been doing with yourself since you went off to university?”
“Oh, this and that, this and that,” Frederick said vaguely, waving an eloquent hand. “You know how it is.”
Betsy gave him an uncomfortably searching looking, suggesting that no, she did not know how it was, and that she was about to Ask Questions. “Let’s sit down,” he continued hastily, “I simply must buy you a drink, for one thing.”
“I’ll have to finish this one first,” Betsy objected, casting a darkling look towards the bar, where the barman was now dubiously adding individual ice cubes to what clearly hoped to become a gin and tonic. “When I get it,” she added, voice raised, and Jim the barman startled and hurried out with the glass in hand. Clearly feeling more merciful now that Frederick had turned up, Betsy forbore to complain about the unwanted ice and merely took the glass with a ‘thank-you’ and a brief smile before promptly downing quite half the glass in one gulp. Having been quite scandalised already by her mere appearance in the pub, Fatty’s faint horror at the professional way she drank was levelled to a mere aftershock.
“Steady on, old thing,” he remonstrated, but more out of a sense of duty than of any real objection. “You’re liable to drink the whole Thames dry, carrying on like that.”
“If they made it out of gin, I feel I jolly well would, right now,” Betsy retorted, but nevertheless moderated her intake somewhat - if only to make the drink last longer.
“So,” he enquired, anxious to steer the conversation away from his own doings for as long as possible. “Have you thought about what you’ll do next?”
She looked glum, which was answer enough. “No. Mother’s going to have a field-day - I’ve been getting regular ear-bashings for months about how being a newspaper photographer’s no job for a young lady.” She wrenched her voice into a passable imitation of her mother’s well-bred whine. “Out until all hours, the company you keep, no wonder you can’t find a husband! What man is going to want you while you’re such a shrill little grub?” She made a face. “As if I even care about being the perfect little woman. It doesn’t seem to have made her very happy, anyhow.”
Frederick’s eyebrows rose. “Well, playing mother always was rather more Daisy’s thing than yours, as I recall,” he remarked. “What do you want from life, then? Other than to practice your camera-throwing skills, anyway.”
The richly irritated look with which Betsy favoured him at this rather patronising addendum was a clear ‘do not try me today’ warning sign, and Frederick made a hasty mental note: No longer the baby, don’t push your luck.
“Not to spend it throwing horrid bloody little tea parties and wondering what the neighbours are doing,” Betsy said, with vicious determination. “I want to do something that actually matters a bit! And,” she finished, “To work with people who know how to keep their damn hands to themselves.”
Frederick nodded. “Certainly seems fair enough to me. And you’ve not found anything to fit the criteria yet?”
“No.” Her shoulders slumped; she made fresh inroads on her drink. “Not since we were the Five Find-Outers, anyway.” She laughed, but there wasn’t a great deal of laughter in the sound. “D’you remember, Fatty?”
He noticed the slip in regards to his Christian name, but elected to let it pass in light of his companion’s mood. “And dog,” he nodded, reaching down to fondle Buster’s ears. “Mustn’t forget old Buster, after all. But yes, they were good days. Is old Clear-Orf still running round after any children who show signs of possessing a functioning braincell?”
“Oh, Lord knows - I haven’t spent more than an afternoon in Peterswood since I finished university.” Betsy giggled. “Probably had a heart-attack years ago, if the colours his face always attained were any evidence. What about you - what have you been up to since you went off to Oxford?”
“Oh, this and that, this and tha -” Frederick cut off abruptly as he noticed the thoroughly sceptical look on her face. “I take it my repetition isn’t proving terribly convincing, old thing?”
“Not particularly, no,” she admitted, sounding rather more amused than angry. “Suppose we take it from the top, with more specifics and less prevaricating?”
Amused or not, it was becoming clear that avoiding the question was not an option. She wasn’t quite at the point of shining a fifty-megawatt lamp in his face and demanding he talk - although something about her expression suggested that he shouldn’t rule the possibility out entirely - but nevertheless he was rapidly beginning to realise that Betsy could be as tenacious as a starving cat after a mouse if her questions were not answered satisfactorily. That being the case, he considered, he might as well concede with good grace.
“Oh, very well,” he said, and gave her his very best rendition of Ingratiating Grin #2 (charming, rather schoolboyish, just a hint of wry humour). He flattered himself that he could see it taking effect - he always had been Betsy’s favourite amongst their group of friends - but it could have been a trick of the light, or possibly just mild indigestion.
“I had a fantastic time at Oxford - there’s nothing like it, Bets, you really have no idea. Thing was, I had such a brilliant time that I, er... only just scraped a second-class degree. To be brutally honest, I’m not at all sure I would have even managed that if my head of department hadn’t been an old school chum of Great-Uncle Percy’s.”
Betsy raised her eyebrows, clearly having some trouble reconciling this strangely modest young man with the boastful, utterly confident ‘Fatty’ she had known as a child. “And now?”
Frederick shrugged, staring gloomily into his drink. “Well, you know what the job market’s like these days. Oh, I’ve had a lot of interviews, and even one or two trials, but I just can’t seem to stick at anything. My Uncle Roger keeps trying to lure me into a splendidly reliable managerial post at his bank, but I just can’t face it - all that bean-counting, all those silly petty rules. I think I should die, quite frankly.”
“And I’ve just walked out of my first ever proper job,” Betsy completed. “Oh, Freddy. We are a proper pair of failures, aren’t we?”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk like that just yet, old girl,” Frederick said, faintly alarmed. “Here - my Great Aunt Olivia’s just given me the use of a splendid set of rooms in Fleet Street, absolutely rent-free. I was just wondering what to do about them, and I think you’ve given me the inklings of a really smashing idea. Just you come along and see them with me while I finish thinking it out and I’ll explain, all right?”
Betsy looked bemused, but seemed willing to play along for the time being. “What about my things?” she asked, standing up and finishing her drink in one fluid movement that told Frederick a good deal more than he ever wanted to know about her usual drinking habits.
He waved an airy hand. “Oh, Jim will keep an eye on them for an hour, I’m sure - and we can find you some manner of box or bag to put them in while we’re out and about.”
Much to his relief, she grinned. “Oh, go on then. What’s this about rooms?”
“Well, from the letter she sent I rather understood that Great Aunt Olivia meant she was offering me the use of an office she isn’t making use of at present, but I’ve just been along to take a dekko at it and it appears I have cruelly misjudged her.” Frederick, about to gallantly help Betsy into her coat, caught her eye and wisely thought better of it. “It’s just around the corner from here, so happily we’ve not much of a walk to be rain on for.”
“Lots of rain, though,” Betsy said, gloomily doing up the buttons of her coat. “Shall we leave Buster here to stand guard? It seems a pity to wake him up again just to take him out into such a dreadful torrent.”
“Oh, Buster loves it,” Frederick said bracingly; and indeed, the little Scottie was already wide awake as his master clipped on the regulation thin red leash that city living enforced. “Jim, you’ll look after the young lady’s belongings for half an hour, won’t you?”
“Right you are, sir,” said the barman agreeably, leaning on the counter. “They’ll all be here when you get back, never you fear.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Betsy remarked with a wry giggle, but she nevertheless permitted herself to be led out into the street, looking deeply amused as Frederick once again unfurled his purple umbrella.
“Still the same old show-off,” she told him, teasing. “I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised.”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about, I’m sure,” he said sniffily, looking absurdly dignified for a man presently sheltering under an enormous lavender umbrella; Betsy only laughed.
~*~
The ‘office’ Freddy had spoken of turned to be a whole suite of rooms on the third floor of a rather battered but not wholly disreputable building, sparsely but sufficiently furnished with quietly expensive furniture. Betsy, who had quite expected any relation of Freddy’s to be equally as flamboyant as he was, was almost as shocked as Freddy himself had been to see her drink. The main room had a desk, three green-backed chairs, a small over-stuffed sofa, two fat bookcases and a large bay window which looked out onto Fleet Street proper. Off it was a small but clean bathroom equipped with toilet, sink and shower, a somewhat less small bedroom with a double bed, and a tiny but undoubtedly serviceable kitchenette. Buster sniffed all around, investigated a few likely-looking bold holes, and finally curled up in a corner and went to sleep with a deep sigh that spoke of his intense satisfaction with the whole affair.
“Altogether, it’s really rather good,” she remarked, her hand resting lightly on the soft green back of one of the chairs. “And for free, it’s wonderful. But what on earth are you planning to do with it?”
“Well, yes, that really is somewhat of a puzzler,” Freddy agreed. “As a matter of fact it was just what I was pondering when you happened upon me in that pub, and I rather think I’ve just about got it.”
“Go on,” she prompted encouragingly, preparing her best #7 adoring smile (sycophantic, not too sugary) for deployment in case Freddy had undergone a complete personality transplant in the twelve years since she had last seen him and was no dramatically less fond of his own views than heretofore.
“Well... what about a detective agency?”
Betsy blinked, startled. “...What?”
“What about a detective agency?” he repeated. “You said it yourself, Bets - our time as the Find-Outers really was the only job you’ve ever enjoyed, and frankly I don’t mind admitting that I feel exactly the same way. We used to have a success rate that turned old Clear-Orf green, or rather puce, with envy - if it worked when we were children, why not now we’re adults?”
“What about money?” she objected. “We’d need something to start us up, I should imagine - and I can’t speak for you, but I don’t mind saying I’ve about gone through the last of my savings.”
“Well, for starters I rather think I shall move in here,” Freddy said. “That will reduce my bills somewhat, and then I shall have my deposit back from my current, ah, address. Just think about it, Betsy: we’d set our own hours, make our own rules - and I hardly need state that I can safely be relied upon to keep my hands to myself.”
It was a surprisingly tempting proposition, and Betsy gave it the consideration she felt it deserved. It would, at the very least, put off the moment of returning home to the scolding of her mother and the well-nigh unbearable smugness of her older brother. But if she’d expected Freddy to suggest anything, it certainly hadn’t been this. “Well, I suppose I can just about keep going for a month or two...” she mused. “Much longer than that, though, I should imagine you’ll find me sleeping on your sofa.” She gave him a searching look. “Do you really think we could make something like this work?”
“Oh, I’m certain of it,” Freddy said grandly, waving a grandiose hand. He himself perched half-on, half-off a corner of the desk, heedless of the mess he was making of its careful polish and looking quite at home already. “Don’t tell your brother or Larry I said this, of course, but you and I always were the brains of our bunch - and if it worked once, it’ll work again. What’s old Pip up to these days, by the way?”
“Telling me how to live my life, mainly,” Betsy said, with the faint scowl of the long-suffering. “But he actually gets paid to be a policeman - he’s Detective Sergeant Philip Hilton these days, and don’t I know it.”
“Well, there you are, then,” he said, again waving a hand in a way that would have given Betsy sincere concern for the future of the desk-lamp if there had been one. “If a fathead like your brother can make a living as a detective, why on earth can’t we?”
At that, she had to chuckle. She was pretty sure she’d never entertained such a hare-brained scheme before in her life - but then again, as far as she could see, at this juncture sensible decisions involved a life spent attending tea parties and gossiping with the neighbours, and quite possibly a death surrounded by chintz. “Oh well, if I am to go down in flames anyway, I may as well do it in style. Go on, then, we can but give it a try.”
Freddy gave her a thoroughly gratifying - and, if she was any judge, wholly genuine - beam. “Good-oh!” he exclaimed, bouncing forward from his perch on the desk to shake her hand with such gusto that she was briefly alarmed for its safety. “Partners it is!”
“Partners it is,” she affirmed with a wry smile, before a thought struck. “We ought to have a name, though - something that will make us really stand out when we advertise. What can we use?”
“Oh!” Freddy paused mid-shake. “Oh, yes, I suppose we should rather.” He thought a moment. “Hilton and Trotteville?”
“Trotteville and Hilton sounds better,” Betsy objected. “But it’s a little ... dull. All the other private investigators just go by their surnames, I believe - we want something with rather more flair, I should think. It sounds terribly childish now, but I suppose...”
“Go on, Bets,” he prompted her, when she paused. “Your area of expertise, this, after all.”
“Not quite, actually, but I do happen to have met one or two private eyes.” She fussed with a stray lock of hair for a moment. “Well, what about the Find-Outers?”
“Hmm. It certainly does stand out, you’re right,” Freddy mused. “And using our old name does hold a certain appeal. Oughtn’t we to have outgrown that by now, though?”
“Perhaps - but on the other hand, you must admit that it would make us stand out from everyone else out there.” Betsy felt herself feeling more supportive of her own idea even as she argued it; she’d never been entirely sure how that worked, but it certainly wasn’t the first time it had happened to her. “That could be our - our - ” she snapped her fingers, hunting for the right word - “our niche - all those posh society types who wouldn’t dare consult a nasty rough private dick. ‘When you can’t go to anyone, come to us’: that could be our strap-line.”
“We’ll probably get a lot of missing Pekineses and kleptomaniac maids after the family silver,” Freddy said pessimistically. “But that slogan - that’s got real potential, that has. I like it. Discreet, classy folk who you don’t have to admit at the servants’ door - that’ll be us.”
“Well, what does it matter what cases we take, so long as we get paid to take them?” Betsy tutted. “I’ll retrieve all the pekes and poms and - and Chihuahuas from here to China so long as it pays decently. Anyway, at least it would get us known. I believe I may still have some friends left at whom I haven’t yet thrown a camera - I think I can probably get us some free, or at least cheap, advertising in the Times, or at least the Telegraph, if I ask them nicely.”
“Oh, smashing.” Freddy grinned broadly. “You’re, er, really taking this seriously, then?”
“Of course.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “I’m hardly going to deliberately crash and burn and make a fool of myself while I’m at it, am I? At any rate, not if I have any say in the matter.” She paused, twiddling her hair again. “Besides, I don’t know about you, but I absolutely refuse to slink back to my mother with my tail between my legs and I admit I failed in my attempt to be an independent adult. I simply will not.”
“It isn’t the most appealing prospect in the world for me either, no,” Freddy admitted. “My mother has somehow still clung on to the idea that I am a misunderstood genius, gravely and wantonly abused by this wicked world of ours, and I’m afraid I should hate to disillusion her.”
Betsy laughed. “Gracious. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Frederick Trotteville?”
He pulled a face at her, looking rueful. “Good question, really. I’m pretty certain I was supposed to be a self-made millionaire by now, for one thing.”
“Oh, well, you’ve time yet - and who knows, this could be the thing that finally makes your fortune,” Betsy said consolingly. “Now, what else do you think we need to turn this place into a proper detective agency?”
“Books and notes, for one thing - and lots of them,” Freddy said with a grin. “To make us look busy and important.”
She snorted. “And a telephone, surely? If only so we can look at it gloomily and wonder why it doesn’t ring, as is traditional.”
“You’ve been reading a good deal too many bad detective stories, I think,” Freddy told her. “At least, I jolly well hope you have. “Still, a phone’s not a bad idea - we can put our number in adverts and business cards, so we look professional and like we actually know what on earth we’re doing.”
“Well, my mother keeps telling me I’ve been fooling myself for years, so fooling the rest of the population shouldn’t be too difficult in comparison,” she remarked with a rueful laugh. “Anyway, supposing I can get on to the exchange and find out what our telephone number will be today, I should be able to have us advertising and up and running by... Hmm. Shall we say Friday morning? Monday, at the outside.”
“Friday seems fair, if you can manage it,” he agreed, nodding. “I’ve no contract on my flat, as it happens, so I should be able to move in here by myself. I’ll see to it that we have all the necessary amenities by then, in that case - phone included.”
“You’ll make someone a wonderful mother some day, you know that?” Betsy teased.
“Well, at least one of us will,” he shot back, and promptly missed by millimetres her smack to the back of his head.
“I shall ignore that remark, this once,” Betsy informed him, making a game effort to rise above the jibe despite her failed attempt to commit physical violence, but only half joking as she continued, “But next time I may simply be forced to kill you. Just so you know.”
Fatty gave her a mock salute, laughing with - she felt - rather more smugness than was warranted by the situation. “Duly noted.”
“Glad we got that cleared up,” she said sweetly, picking up her handbag. “Do you think we ought to be getting back? I still need to find something to carry all my office things in, after all - and besides, I believe you still owe me a drink.”
“Right you are,” he assented. “Although actually, I think there may be a box under the kitchen sink you can use.”
He was quite correct, and accordingly five minutes later found the three of them (counting Buster, which they always did) once again dodging fat raindrops on their way back to the pub for a rather long - if very carefully budgeted - lunch.