LITMIR.BIZ

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her husband and daughter were more or less over theirs. Not that any of them referred to the ailment as a cold, the Pictons didn’t believe in colds. They spoke of the body’s attempt to throw off accumulated poisons, they dosed themselves with herbal concoctions and fruit juices. But however they referred to it and however they treated it, the malady seemed to affect them in very much the same way as less enlightened sections of the populace.

      In the middle of the radio’s calm recital of slowdowns and hold-ups, lay-offs and lock-outs, run-downs and snarl-ups, Leonard’s ear caught the words Wall Street. He sat arrested in the act of lifting his cup to his lips and listened with fixed attention. He began to frown fiercely. An overnight fall in Wall Street, sudden and sharp, acute concern in Tokyo, fears in London of what the day might bring.

      Olive slid a sidelong glance at her husband. He drained his cup and banged it down on its saucer. He began to chew the inside of his lips, to make a series of grimaces, staring down at the tablecloth with its bold pattern of blue and white checks.

      ‘Is that bad?’ Emily asked with sharp interest. ‘When Wall Street falls?’

      He jerked his head up. ‘It’s bad for me. But there are plenty of folk that’ll make a fancy profit out of it.’ He frowned even more fiercely. ‘At my expense – and the expense of others like me.’

      Olive gave a sudden violent succession of sneezes and dabbed at her nose. ‘More coffee?’ she asked but Leonard shook his head. He pushed back his chair. Time to be gathering up his books and papers, pumping up his tyres. All three of them rode bicycles; Leonard regarded the private motor-car as the invention of the devil.

      Emily folded her napkin again and jumped up from the table. She ran cut of the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom. She ran a comb through her long tawny hair, gleaming from regular washing in rainwater drawn from the butt outside the back door. She tied her hair back with a ribbon and tugged on a woollen cap. No need for a scarf on this fine morning, so mild for late February.

      As she thrust an arm into the sleeve of her anorak her keen ears caught a sound, the gate of the adjacent property, Eastwood, singing under the touch of a hand. Mrs Cutler, most probably, the Eastwood daily woman, arriving for her morning stint. But it was just possible it might be someone else, some harbinger of novelty or excitement.

      She darted across to the window overlooking the front garden and the road, and saw that it was indeed Mrs Cutler, plump and puffing after her ride from the village. She had dismounted from her ancient bicycle and was wheeling it up the Eastwood drive.

      Emily picked up her satchel and ran downstairs. Her father had vanished about his own concerns but her mother came with her to the door and stood for a moment administering her usual hotchpotch of reminders and admonitions.

      Emily nodded energetically to register hearing and heeding. She sprang on her bicycle and rode off down the garden path. She jumped off to open the gate and then with a last wave sprang on again and sped away up the road towards Littlebourne school.

      In the garden next door Mrs Cutler didn’t bother hoisting herself up again on to her bicycle in order to negotiate the drive. She had reached an age at which it was less trouble to push the bike up to the house than to jerk herself on to the saddle for the sake of a few minutes. There was no rush. Her employer, Mr Elliott, was an easy-going young man, a bachelor, thank goodness, far easier to work for than any married woman with a falcon eye for dust and smears of grease – and the married woman’s habit of glancing at the clock when the door opened to admit her cleaning woman.

      Take it all round, Mrs Cutler thought, by no means for the first time, Mr Elliott and I suit each other very well. The best part of a year now since she’d started working at Eastwood; he didn’t bother her and she didn’t bother him. She’d worked for enough finicky and whimsical employers in her time to be keenly appreciative of that, to know its rarity and value.

      Fifteen years now since her husband had died, five years since the last of her children left home. She was as happy and contented as she had ever been, certainly as well-off. No tetchy husband to run round after, no sulky, uncooperative teenagers to argue with. She moved her head in satisfaction at the thought.

      She reached the house, a handsome Edwardian dwelling, and wheeled her bicycle round to the rear; she propped it up inside a garden shed.

      Gavin Elliott was upstairs in the bathroom when he heard Mrs Cutler let herself in at the back door. She didn’t have a key; Gavin unlocked the door for her when he first went downstairs in the morning.

      He peered at his face in the mirror above the washbasin. His skin was always pale but this morning it looked even paler than usual, in marked contrast to the blue-black of his hair, thick glossy hair he had inherited from his mother. He had a slight headache but he scarcely registered that; he often woke in the mornings with a mild headache. He was in the habit of drinking a fair amount of wine with his dinner, followed by brandy, a glass or two of whisky later. He stuck out his tongue before the mirror, pulled a face and measured himself a dose of health salts which he drank at a single gulp.

      Back in his bedroom he pulled on the jacket of his dark, conservatively cut suit. He was tall and slimly built, and looked even slimmer in his business clothes. He was thirty-one years old, head now of the family firm of Elliott Gilmore, investment brokers and financial consultants, which had its main office in Cannonbridge. He had inherited the business three years ago on the death of his father, Matthew Elliott.

      He paused in front of the wardrobe mirror and adjusted the set of his jacket, picked up a clothes brush and passed it over the fine smooth cloth. His father had been a stickler for a smart businesslike appearance, in his own person as well as in the person of everyone he employed, and Gavin, who had loved and admired his father, adhered to the old tenets. He crossed to the dressing table and took his wallet, his watch and keys from a small drawer.

      His head was beginning to feel better. He went rapidly downstairs, calling out a cheerful greeting to Mrs Cutler, a ritual enquiry after her health, as he went into the kitchen to snatch a piece of crispbread and swallow a cup of coffee. Mrs Cutler was busy in the sitting room but he didn’t bother to stick his head round the door, nor did she bother to come to the sitting room door to answer him.

      ‘I’m all right,’ she called back, ‘but I don’t know for how long. I reckon I’m starting one of these nasty colds that are going round, I’ve got a bit of a throat this morning.’ She continued to work as she spoke. She removed a little porcelain group from the top of a Georgian bureau and set it carefully down, out of harm’s way. She began rubbing vigorously at the mahogany surface with a chamois leather. There were a lot of nice things in the room and in the house generally; she liked that, she liked working among nice things, enjoyed keeping them looking their best.

      She carefully dusted the group – a shepherd and shepherdess with a pair of lambs at their feet – and replaced it in its correct position. Mr Elliott had inherited a lovely lot of porcelain from his mother, she seemed to have made a hobby of collecting it, but unlike some folk Mrs Cutler had worked for, who kept everything valuable locked away in cabinets, young Mr Elliott kept his treasures openly on display, to be enjoyed every day by himself and others.

      She stood back and looked critically at the bureau, gave a nod of satisfaction and turned her attention to a Regency card table. She rubbed assiduously at the beautiful dark-veined rosewood; she knelt to deal more effectively with the intricately carved base, every line of her short stubby figure expressing energetic dedication to the task of bringing up the soft mellow shine. Her cheeks took on a rosy glow, her iron-grey hair began to stick stiffly out in wisps.

      She paused for an instant as the phone rang in the front hall, then she resumed her vigorous polishing; it wasn’t her duty to answer the phone when Mr Elliott was in the house.

      In the kitchen Gavin swiftly despatched the last fragments of his crispbread and drained his coffee before going at a rush into the hall to pick up the receiver. He smiled as he recognized the high girlish tones at the other end.

      ‘Charlotte! Hello!’ he said with pleasure. He had met Charlotte Neale at a charity ball in the late autumn. She seemed to like him and he was quite

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