In a couple of minutes, it was all quiet again. Derek pulled up outside the New Brooms office at the other end of the street, went inside and greeted Hazel, who said he had missed a good sideshow. “I could hear every word, right down here,” she said. “Betsy and Ted were at it again, with Dot joining in.”
“Women!” said Derek. “At least you’re a rational person, Hazel. I don’t often come in here, but it’s always calm and pleasant. You’re a good girl, and Lois is lucky to have you.”
“Thanks,” said Hazel. “How can I help? I guess you don’t want a cleaner for your office!”
“No, we’ve got Gran, who is a law unto herself. No, I’ve been working in town, and wondered if you’d got an evening paper? I like to check the football results, and the man on the corner has sold out.”
Hazel reached across her desk, and produced the paper. “It is delivered every day,” she said. “Half the time nobody looks at it. You take it, Derek. You’re welcome.”
By the time he reached home, tea was laid on the kitchen table, and he eyed the chocolate sponge set in pride of place.
“Lois in?” he asked Gran. She nodded, and said her daughter was at last being sensible and was reading the evening paper in the front room by the fire.
“Ah, well that makes two evening papers. I got one from Hazel. I’ll tell Lois tea’s ready, shall I?”
The chocolate sponge was a shadow of its former self by the time tea was finished, and Gran said she’d be surprised if any of them could eat supper. “You’d better go and sit by the fire and let it sink,” she said, and Lois and Derek dutifully went through.
They had been settled only a few minutes when Lois said with a chuckle, “Oh my God, Derek, have you seen this?”
He looked over the top of his paper, and saw Lois’s smiling face. “What are you talking about, me duck? Oh, that paint job. If it was meant to be a practical joke, it’s not funny. I didn’t read all of it.”
Lois shook her head dumbly, choking with suppressed laughter. Then she spluttered, “Page four, halfway down. The report about goings-on at the Tresham General Hospital,” she said. “I expect this’ll cause some trouble. It’s not funny really, but, well, read it . . .”
Derek found the page, and read on. “Nasty,” he said, unamused. “But it could have been worse. Sounds like a bit of a revenge prank, harmless but nasty. Could’ve happened to you, what with your ferretin’ an’ that.”
Lois got to her feet. “Don’t be ridiculous, Derek. That unkind joke was only possible because Pettison was helpless and couldn’t fight back. Anyway, I have to make a telephone call. Back in a minute, and don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
Forty-six
Early in the morning, the telephone at Meade House had begun to ring, and it had gone on intermittently until well after breakfast.
“I reckon the whole world read yesterday’s evening paper!” said Lois, after an amusing talk with Mrs T-J, who said she felt ashamed to find the Pettison story funny, but that he really had it coming to him. “Strange, isn’t it, how wide he had cast his net,” she said. “Lots of people have come out of the woodwork, apparently, claiming to have been tricked by him into parting with sums of money, small and large.”
“Have you heard from Cowgill?” Derek asked Lois now. “He’ll have something to say, you bet.”
“No, but I’m giving him a call later, on a different matter entirely.”
“Not that different,” said Gran.
Lois said nothing. She had to admit that she had no real need to ring Cowgill, but she was curious to have more details about Pettison. It would affect what else had to be done in identifying his suppliers. Would the business of importing poor little animals continue? Without his presence, would Justin or Betsy take over? And how important was he, anyway, in the dangerous network of dealers?
She wondered how the red-paint story, in considerable detail, had got out from the hospital, which would surely be anxious to make as little as possible of it. That a man with evil intent had got into the private wing of the new hospital extension was bad enough. But that he had got out again without being challenged was a very serious matter.
Now, in her office and busy with New Brooms business, the thought came back to her. Who had given the story to the newspaper? She picked it up again, and looked for a byline. No name. At the start of the story, it was anonymously “by our reporter.”
She looked up the number, dialled, and asked for a girl who was one of her son Jamie’s girlfriends. “Diana in the newsroom, please,” she said.