LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

down by Ms. Stuckenberg.

      "Don't be so foolish."

      "Or Alcoholics Anonymous pushing booze."

      "Trina…"

      "Or Gamblers Anonymous running bingos."

      "This is ridiculous."

      "Or Girl Guides selling chocolate cookies."

      "Trina… the Girl Guides do sell chocolate cookies," Ms. Stuckenberg shot back.

      "Well, they shouldn't. What kind of message does that send to impressionable young girls with weight issues and zits? No wonder teen suicides are on the rise. Maybe I should help them with their fundraising as well."

      "I wish you would," Ms. Stuckenberg muttered through clenched teeth, adding, loudly, "Have you got any other bright ideas?"

      Idea number twenty-eight, "the guinea pig Olympics," was dismissed without debate, and the twenty-ninth, "the Kidneymobile international marathon," was only adopted because it was already seven-thirty in the evening and several of the members were dozing off.

      "As long as you're prepared to do all the work," Ms. Stuckenberg opined without troubling the group, "I don't see why we shouldn't adopt this idea."

      "Thank goodness," Trina muttered, knowing that her thirtieth and final idea — totally naked ballroom dancing — was unlikely to get much applause.

      By the time Daphne closes the door to Minnie's flat and walks with Bliss back to his car with her head down, it has started raining again in Westchester.

      "I wonder if it will ever brighten," she says with an eye towards the leaden sky, but Bliss knows where her mind really is, and she confirms it a second later as she climbs into the passenger seat. "I still can't really take it in, David. It's a bit like getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking."

      "Superintendent Donaldson has invited us to dinner…" starts Bliss, hoping to cheer her, but she shakes her head.

      "You go. I think I'd rather have a bit of time to myself if you don't mind."

      "Okay. I'll drop you at home, and I'll try not to be too late. I have to get back to the office first thing; if I know Edwards he's already interviewing my replacement."

      Dinner with Superintendent Donaldson at the Mitre Hotel is, like all meals with the great man, akin to culinary mountaineering, a point emphasized by the senior officer himself when he polishes off the entire bowl of bar nuts while awaiting the menu. "If it's there, eat it. That's what I say."

      Mike Mainsbridge of the Transport Police has joined his fellow officers with the apparent aim of discussing tactics in the ongoing investigation, but he shows more interest in picking up tips on treasure hunting as he quizzes Bliss over his celebrated discovery of treasure in the Mediterranean Sea.

      "What's the chance of finding more of the stuff?" he asks with an air of indifference that fails to disguise the fact that he may be planning an early retirement. "I mean, how did it get there, and how would someone actually go about searching for more? Where would someone start?"

      "Personally, I think I'll start with the deep-fried double-cream Brie," interjects Donaldson, and Bliss is also working on his choices as he deliberates whether or not to reveal details, to explain that a bunch of renegade Nazi officers had fooled the world near the end of the war by pretending to dump several tons of stolen Jewish gold into Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps, when in fact they had loaded their loot into ancient Roman wine amphorae and sunk them off the craggy coast of a Corsican island.

      "The breeze just happened to be blowing my way, I guess," says Bliss cryptically, knowing that his discovery had been predicated on the direction of the notoriously fickle Mediterranean winds. But Mainsbridge wants specifics. "Yeah. But how did you work it out?"

      "Ah. You'll just have to wait for the book to come out," laughs Bliss, and refuses to be drawn further as he scans the menu.

      "So you are going to write it, then?" Donaldson queries, but Bliss shrouds his plans with vagueness. "Who knows? I'll probably get around to it one day."

      "Why not now?" asks Mainsbridge doggedly.

      Because, though Bliss is loath to admit it publicly, a certain female by the name of Daisy LeBlanc would rather he keep her family's skeletons in a securely locked armoire. And Daisy, pronounced "Dizzy" in her Gallic tongue, is one person in the world whom Bliss would rather not disappoint at present.

      "I hear you've got something going with a little French…" says Donaldson with a wink, leaving the sentence in the air.

      "How the hell…" Bliss shoots back, then realizes that Daphne has been at work. "Go on," he laughs heartily, "call her a frog. Yes, if you must know. As Daphne said to me recently, I may not be a spring chicken, but I've had an offer."

      Daisy's very tempting offer, to throw up her life as a French real estate agent to become Mrs. Chief Inspector Bliss, has been on the table for more than a month, but any delaying tactics on Bliss's part have been more to do with his contemplation of becoming Mr. Provençal Real Estate than a desire to fob her off.

      Since his celebrated discovery he could leave the police force, and England, at any time and find fortune in his fame by chronicling his adventures, or so he is told. But first he has an obligation to redeem himself in the eyes of his colleagues by putting the skids under the universally despised Chief Superintendent Edwards.

      Bliss's promotion to Chief Inspector, touted as a reward for his discovery of the missing treasure, had, he knows, roots that reached much deeper into the murky political underworld of the police force, and he is well aware that Chief Superintendent Edwards had a hand in the decision. "Always keep a dangerous dog on a very short leash," Edwards once told him, and he was convinced he had drawn Bliss's teeth by giving him a plum job with an office down the hall from his own.

      "Interpol Liaison Officer," said the freshly painted sign on Bliss's door, and he was well aware of the jealous scuttlebutt amongst some of those in the junior ranks who weren't privy to his motives. "So Edwards walked, then," one of his colleagues said sourly after Bliss failed to show up at the disciplinary hearing that should have got the megalomaniacal Chief Superintendent off everyone's back.

      "Just give it time, Bill," Bliss replied, knowing that, while Edwards might have escaped on this occasion, he was still firmly attached to the other end of the leash.

      Daphne's house lights are spilling onto the darkened street as Bliss arrives after midnight. That's very unusual, he is thinking, having expected her to be in bed, but as he steps out of his car he's almost flattened by a musical din.

      The third movement of Elgar's "Enigma Variations" is playing so loudly on Daphne's record player that she fails to hear Bliss at the door, and he's finally forced to bang on the window. It takes her almost a minute to answer, and he immediately senses a problem as she leans heavily on the door jamb.

      "David… I maybe… What? What is it?" she asks, seeing his look of concern. "What… What're you looking at me like that for?"

      "Are you all right, Daphne?" he wants to know as he escorts her to the living room and turns down the music.

      "Yes. Well, let's just… um… Well, there's a letter from Minnie."

      "Perhaps you should sit down," he says, and reaches out to guide her.

      "I'm all right… I can manage. Thank you," she says curtly, and firmly throws off his hand.

      "I know."

      "Well, don't push, then… You don't need to push… I'm perfectly capable…"

      "Just come over here and sit down," he tries again.

      "You're pushing. Don't push… D'ye wanna scotch?"

      "No…"

      "There's some gin," she starts, then exclaims, "Oops!" as she loses her balance while reaching for the empty bottle. "Hold tight, Chief Inspector!" she yells as she falls against him. "Lower the gangplank — I'm coming aboard."

Скачать книгу