The Victoria Vanishes(4)
I’m not going without a fight, May thought, shoving the letter into his pocket and striding off through the blustering rain towards the Charing Cross Road.
3
* * *
END TIMES
Arthur Bryant blotted the single sheet of blue Basildon Bond paper, carefully folded it into three sections and slid it into a white business envelope. He pressed the adhesive edges together and turned it over, uncapping his marbled green Waterman fountain pen. Then, in spidery script, he wrote on the front:
For the attention of:
Raymond Land
Acting Temporary Chief
Peculiar Crimes Unit
Well, he said to himself, you’ve really done it this time. You can still change your mind. It’s not too late.
Fanning the envelope until the ink was thoroughly dry, he slipped it into the top pocket of his ratty tweed jacket, checked that his desk was clear of work files and quietly left the office.
Passing along the gloomy corridor outside, he paused before Raymond Land’s room and listened. The sound of light snoring told him that the unit’s acting chief was at home. Usually Bryant would throw open the door with a bang, just to startle him, but today he entered on gentle tiptoe, creeping across the threadbare carpet to stand silently before his superior. Land was tipped back in his leather desk-chair with his mouth hanging open and his tongue half out, faintly gargling. The temptation to drop a Mint Imperial down his throat was overpowering, but instead, Bryant simply transferred his envelope to Land’s top pocket and crept back out of the room.
The die is cast, he told himself. There’ll be fireworks after the funeral this afternoon, that’s for sure. Bryant was feeling fat, old and tired, and he was convinced he had started shrinking. Either that or John was getting taller. With each passing day he was becoming less like a man and more like a tortoise. At this rate he would soon be hibernating for half the year in a box full of straw. He needed to take more and more stuff with him wherever he went: walking stick, pills, hearing-aid batteries, pairs of glasses, teeth. Only his wide blue eyes remained youthful. I’m doing the right thing, he reminded himself. It’s time.
‘Do you think he ought to be standing on a table at his age?’ asked the voluptuous tanned woman in the tight black dress, as she helped herself to another ladleful of lurid vermilion punch. ‘He needs a haircut. Funny, considering he has hardly any hair.’
‘I have a horrible feeling he’s planning to make some kind of speech,’ Raymond Land told Leanne Land, for the woman with the bleached straw tresses and cobalt eye make-up who stood beside him in the somewhat risqué outfit was indeed his wife.
‘You’ve warned me about Mr Bryant’s speeches before,’ said Leanne. ‘They tend to upset people, don’t they?’
‘He had members of the audience throwing plastic chairs at each other during the last “Meet the Public” relationship-improving police initiative we conducted.’
They were discussing the uncanny ability of Land’s colleague to stir up trouble whenever he appeared before a group of more than six people. Arthur Bryant, the most senior detective in residence at London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, was balanced unsteadily on a circular table in front of them, calling for silence.
As the room hushed, Raymond Land nudged his wife. ‘I don’t think your dress is entirely appropriate for the occasion,’ he whispered. ‘You’re almost falling out of it.’
‘My life-coach says I should be very proud of my breasts,’ she countered. ‘So why shouldn’t I look good at a party?’
‘Because it’s a wake,’ hissed Raymond. ‘The host is dead.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Bryant bellowed so loudly that his hearing aid squealed with feedback. ‘This was intended to be a celebration of our esteemed coroner’s retirement, but instead it has become a night of sad farewells.’
The table wobbled alarmingly, and several hands shot out to steady the elderly detective. Bryant unfolded his spectacles, consulted a scrap of paper, then balled it and threw it over his shoulder. He had decided to speak from the heart, which was always dangerous.
‘Oswald Finch worked with the Peculiar Crimes Unit from its inception, and planned to retire on this very night. Everyone had been looking forward to the bash. I had personally filled the morgue refrigerator with beer and sausage rolls, and we were planning a big send-off. Luckily, I was able to alter the icing inscription on his retirement cake, so it hasn’t gone to waste. “The funeral baked meats did aptly furnish forth the marriage tables”, only the other way around, and with retirement substituted for marriage.’