“Well done, sir,” said Mr. Clubb. “To aid Mr. Cuff and myself in the preparation of our inventory, can you tell us if you keep certain staples at Green Chimneys?”
“Staples?” I said, thinking he was referring to foodstuffs.
“Rope?” he asked. “Tools, especially pliers, hammers, and screwdrivers? A good saw? A variety of knives? Are there by any chance firearms?”
“No firearms,” I said. “I believe all the other items you mention can be found in the house.”
“Rope and tool chest in the basement, knives in the kithen?”
“Yes,” I said, “precisely.” I had not ordered these barnies to murder my wife, I reminded myself; I had drawn back from that precipice. By the time I went into the executive dining room for my luncheon, I felt sufficiently restored to give Charlie-Charlie that ancient symbol of approval, the thumbs-up sign.
3.
When I returned to my office the screen had been set in place, shielding from view the detectives in their preparations but in no way muffling the rumble of comments and laughter they brought to the task. “Gentlemen,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard behind the screen-a most unsuitable affair decorated with a pattern of alternating ocean liners, martini glasses, champagne bottles, and cigarettes-“you must modulate your voices, as I have business to conduct here as well as you.” There came a somewhat softer rumble of acquiescence. I took my seat to discover my bottom desk drawer pulled out, the folder absent. Another roar of laughter jerked me once again to my feet.
I came around the side of the screen and stopped short. The table lay concealed beneath drifts and mounds of yellow legal paper covered with lists of words and drawings of stick figures in varying stages of dismemberment. Strewn through the yellow pages were the photographs, loosely divided into those in which either Marguerite or Graham Leeson provided the principal focus. Crude genitalia had been drawn, without reference to either party’s actual gender, over and atop both of them. Aghast, I leaned over and began gathering up the defaced photographs. “I must insist…” I said. “I really must insist, you know…”
Mr. Clubb immobilised my wrist with one hand and extracted the photographs with the other. “We prefer to work in our time-honoured fashion,” he said. “Our methods may be unusual, but they are ours. But before you take up the afternoon’s occupations, sir, can you tell us if items on the handcuff order might be found in the house?”
“No,” I said. Mr. Cuff pulled a yellow page before him and wrote handcuffs.
“Chains?” asked Mr. Clubb.
“No chains,” I said, and Mr. Cuff added chains to his list.
“That is all for the moment,” said Mr. Clubb, and released me.
I took a step backwards and massaged my wrist, which stung as if from rope burn. “You speak of your methods,” I said, “and I understand that you have them. But what can be the purpose of defacing my photographs in this grotesque fashion?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Clubb in a stern, teacherly voice, “where you speak of defacing, we use the term enhancement. Enhancement is a tool we find vital to the method known by the name of Visualisation.”
I retired defeated to my desk. At five minutes before two, Mrs. Rampage informed me that the Captain and his scion, a thirty-year-old inheritor of a great family fortune named Mr. Chester Montfort d’M____________________, awaited my pleasure. Putting Mrs. Rampage on hold, I called out, “Please do give me absolute quiet, now. A client is on his way in.”
First to appear was the Captain, his tall, rotund form as alert as a pointer’s in a grouse field as he led in the taller, inexpressibly languid figure of Mr. Chester Montfort d’M____________________, a person marked in every inch of his being by great ease, humour, and stupidity. The Captain froze to gape horrified at the screen, but Montfort d’M____________________ continued round him to shake my hand and say, “Have to tell you, I like that thingamabob over there immensely. Reminds me of a similar thingamabob at the Beeswax Club a few years ago, whole flocks of girls used to come tumbling out. Don’t suppose we’re in for any unicycles and trumpets today, eh?”
The combination of the raffish screen and our client’s unbridled memories brought a dangerous flush to the Captain’s face, and I hastened to explain the presence of top-level consultants who preferred to pitch tent on-site, as it were, hence the installation of a screen, all the above in the service of, well, service, an all-important quality we…
“By Kitchener’s moustache,” said the Captain. “I remember the Beeswax Club. Don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the night Little Billy Pegleg jumped up and…” The colour darkened on his cheeks, and he closed his mouth.
From behind the screen, I heard Mr. Clubb say, “Visualise this” Mr. Cuff chuckled.
The Captain recovered himself and turned his sternest glare upon me. “Superb idea, consultants. A white-glove inspection tightens up any ship.” His veiled glance toward the screen indicated that he had known of the presence of our ‘consultants’ but, unlike Gilligan, had restrained himself from thrusting into my office until given legitimate reason. “That being the case, is it still quite proper that these people remain while we discuss Mr. Montfort d’M____________________‘s confidential affairs?”
“Quite proper, I assure you,” I said. “The consultants and I prefer to work in an atmosphere of complete cooperation. Indeed, this arrangement is a condition of their accepting our firm as their client.”
“Indeed,” said the Captain.
“Top of the tree, are they?” said Mr. Montfort d’M____________________.
“Expect no less of you fellows. Fearful competence. Terrifying competence.”
Mr. Cuff’s voice could be heard saying, “Okay, visualise this.” Mr. Clubb uttered a high-pitched giggle.
“Enjoy their work,” said Mr. Montfort d’M____________________.”
“Shall we?” I gestured to their chairs. As a young man whose assets equalled four or five billion dollars (depending on the condition of the stock market, the value of real estate in half a dozen cities around the world, global warming, forest fires, and the like) our client was a catnip to the ladies, three of whom he had previously married and divorced after siring a child upon each, resulting in a great interlocking complexity of trusts, agreements, and contracts, all of which had to be re-examined on the occasion of his forthcoming wedding to a fourth young woman, named like her predecessors after a semiprecious stone. Due to the perspicacity of the Captain and myself, each new nuptial altered the terms of those previous so as to maintain our client’s liability at an unvarying level. Our computers had enabled us to generate the documents well before his arrival, and all Mr. Montfort d’M____________________ had to do was listen to the revised terms and sign the papers, a task which generally induced a slumberous state except for those moments when a prized asset was in transition.