She straightened and demanded coldly: “And our things? Are policemen protecting them?”
He glanced at her, then went on with what he was doing. “It will serve no purpose,” he murmured, “to be hysterical about them.”
A drawstring of anger tightened the woman’s mouth. She spoke slowly and quietly.
“Robin...when are we going to get them back?”
He delayed his answer as if to mark his contempt for the question.
“When?” she prompted, curtly.
Again a pause. Cork-Bradden finished squeezing a tiny bead of glue to the pared spine of the yellow feather. He applied the feather with loving delicacy to the twine-bound shank of a fish hook. To his wife he said:
“As I have tried to make clear more than once, everything the man extorted will be brought back here in due course. But there are certain precautions to be taken first. I do not wish to sound critical”—and here, the note of weariness became more pronounced—“but to continue harping upon an already perfectly well understood situation could begin to sound a little vulgar.”
“Vulgar?” Mrs Cork-Bradden repeated, icily.
“Just the tiniest bit, yes.” He twice looped twine to secure the yellow wing of the fly, then peered about the desk top. “You haven’t seen my razor blade, have you?”
“I should never have supposed,” said his wife, “that a little vulgarity would offend anyone so richly endowed with the common touch as to enjoy screwing the village scrubber.”
Mr Cork-Bradden sorted among the objects near at hand until the blade came to light. He began planing wisps of cane from the fly’s body. “It wounds me, my dear, to learn after all this time that it was not sexual displacement but simple snobbery that lay behind your disapproval of poor Bernadette.”
Chapter Eleven
Leonard Palgrove scuttled from table to table in the Old Mill Restaurant and satisfied himself that Mrs Gordon, the help, had set all eighteen places right-handedly and remembered to put plastic protection beneath the table linen on table four, reserved for Mr Winston Gash’s party. He checked the provisioning of the bar, made sure that the front door was unbolted, and hastened to the kitchen.
Mrs Gordon, a solid, big-boned woman, whose short-sightedness compelled her to squint at the task in hand with an expression of deep anxiety and mistrust, was thawing out frozen scallops in a saucepan: scallops were to be what the menu termed “Off-we-Goes” that evening.
“Make sure they’re done enough,” commanded Mr Palgrove, in passing. Mrs Gordon scowled at his back and turned up the gas to blow-torch ferocity. It was turned down again by Cynthia Palgrove, who had just come from the pantry with a tray of frozen steaks.
“Mester says that...” Mrs Gordon began.
“Sod the mester,” Mrs Palgrove advised. She put the tray on the table, made a quick count of the pieces of meat, and departed. Mrs Gordon smiled to herself and burrowed beneath her pinafore to scratch her armpit.
Mrs Palgrove made her own table tour. She replaced five forks, two spoons and a knife, and re-polished three of the wine glasses.
“Now what’s wrong? I’ve been round once.”
Leonard had donned his Jolly Miller kit. He now was wearing breeches, white stockings, buckled shoes and a kind of night cap in red wool.
Instead of a waiters napkin, there was draped on his arm a sack with FLOUR in big black letters.
“Everything’s fine,” Cynthia said to him, sweetly. She bent to re-arrange some of the stuffed sacks on the two millstones that served as seating in the space before the bar.
Mrs Palgrove was not dressed as the Jolly Millers wife. She made no personal concessions to the element of uninhibited make-believe that she considered important to a restaurant’s profitability. “Fun” in Cynthia’s vocabulary was an adjective, never a noun.
“Who’s the unlucky girl that Spence is bringing?” Palgrove inquired.
His wife lifted one shoulder a fraction to indicate indifference. The shoulder had an end-of-summer tan; it was lean but elegant. She wore a dress of such deep cleavage that it resembled a long pair of partly drawn curtains, with a glimpse of navel at the bottom of the V, like the eye of an inquisitive neighbour, peeping out.
“They reckon,” said Leonard, “that it’s that bint who used to shack up with Rich Dick. She’s supposed to be after his place on the Hunt Committee.”
“A night with Spence would be a high price.”
“One with Winnie would be a bloody sight worse.”
Mrs Palgrove winced. She checked from where she stood that there was on every table a salt hopper and its companion model of a mill that dispensed pepper when its wheel was rotated.
Quietly, she said: “Talking of Rich Dick and his lady friend...” and paused, meaningfully, while still eyeing the tables.
“Yes, love?” The Jolly Miller was attentive, obliging, not knowing quite how he might serve.
His wife continued to look away from him, across the room.
“The little painting of Mummy’s?”
“Ah, the little milkmaid thing. Sure. Yes, I hadn’t forgotten, sweetheart.”
“The little Corot,” Mrs Palgrove said, with quiet emphasis. “And you’d better not have forgotten.”
The Miller wanted to say “Christ!” but managed not to. He put out one hand, sighed, tugged at his fun hat. “It was only a loan. I told you. And she knows it was a loan. Look, I could hardly barge in and snatch it straight after the buggers funeral, could I? Don’t worry. I’ll not forget.”
“I was talking to Edgar today.”
“Edgar?”
“Harrington. He called to make the booking for tonight. And he mentioned that he’s been making an inventory for the Zoe woman.”
Palgrove looked suddenly anxious. “You didn’t...”
“I didn’t pump the man, if that’s what you’re worried about. But you can see what will happen next, can’t you?”
He shrugged, sulkily.
“She is going to lose no time in collecting her winnings,” said Cynthia. “And in cash.”
“Cash?”
A ripple of impatience crossed the woman’s face. “She’ll put the lot up for sale before anyone gets around to challenging her right to it. God, you’re—“
“I’ll try and have a word with her tonight,” Palgrove promised. “But it won’t be easy.”
“No, it won’t,” said his wife, without sympathy. She peered into the imitation cottage loaf on the bar counter, then glanced at Leonard’s hurt-boy face. “More ice.”
His look of wounded resentment deepened. She remained looking at him, speculatively at first, then teasingly, almost fondly.