In the Teeth of Adversity (6 page)

I felt a bit like reeling myself. This was going to be worse than I had expected – and I had expected the worst.

“Oh, yes, I can, Endicott. And I wouldn't advise you to try to stop me. There's absolutely nothing you can do. My decision is final.”

“No.” Zayle looked helplessly from Gerry to me. “No ... it's impossible.”

I saw, with a cold and deadly clarity, just why Zayle had stopped by for us. He had no intention of breaking the news to her himself. He was waiting for one of us to do it. I looked at Gerry. I'd done my fair whack for the day – let him start earning his own chunks of silver amalgam.

“
Nothing
is impossible,” Adele Zayle said coldly. “Least of all this.”

“Actually, Mrs. Zayle,” Gerry said, “I'm afraid it is. I'm sorry, but there's been an accident. Mr. Meredith –”

“He's dead, Adele.” Zayle could not conceal his triumph. “Tyler's dead.”

“Nonsense!” But she went white and cold as marble. “That can't be true. I was talking to him just after lunch. He answered the telephone himself. He was perfectly all right then.”

“It happened sometime this afternoon,” I said.

“No one can be quite sure when. After the autopsy, the police might –”

“Autopsy? Police?” She glared from one to another of us. “That doesn't sound like an accident. It was – murder?”

I kept silent. After what I had seen, I didn't want to answer that question. I waited for Zayle to deny it, hoping he could sound convincing. I'd like to be convinced myself.

He didn't say anything. He just kept staring at his wife with that odd expression in which there was more than a trace of satisfaction and triumph.

“You did it!” she accused. “If Tyler's dead, then you killed him. Why are you here? Why haven't the police arrested you? Unless – ?” She looked hopefully at Gerry and me.

“No,” I denied quickly. We might look fairly official, flanking Zayle as we were, but I hoped we didn't look as though we had him in custody. “No, we're public relations consultants.”

“You needn't look so smug,” Adele flared at her husband. “You're not going to get away with it.”

Before either of us could guess what she was going to do, she stepped forward, put both hands against Zayle's chest and shoved. Then, without looking back, she snatched up her suitcase and walked off.

We caught him just in time. Off balance, he teetered over the track in front of the oncoming train, while we each pulled desperately at an arm. One concerted heave, and we had him back on the safety of the platform while the train slid past.

“Oh, dear,” he said, looking after his departing wife. “I was afraid she'd be upset.”

Neither he nor she looked behind at the platform bay, where steel wheels ground against steel rails over the spot where his body would have been lying if we hadn't been quick enough.

“Let that be a lesson to you, old boy.” Over Zayle's head, Gerry said to me warningly, “Always beware of redheads – especially smouldering redheads.”

Our brush with a hot-tempered redhead seemed to have put Gerry in a thoughtful frame of mind where what's laughingly known as “the weaker sex” were concerned. At any rate, he actually spent the evening in the flat and was on tap at roll call in the morning. Consequently, we got a fair amount of work accomplished before little Penny, our secretary, arrived just after lunch, having spent her morning in secretarial school.

I was on the telephone, assuring an eager journalist that I would definitely let him know if the rumour about one of our clients turned out to be true. While miming to Penny that yes-I-was-all-right and no-the-dentist-hadn't-hurt-very-much, I made a mental note to check with said client and discover, if possible, what the hell was actually going on.

Before I disentangled myself, Penny was sitting down typing out a couple of press releases for Gerry. Foolishly thinking the coast was clear, I wandered over to the files to check the last known address of the peripatetic client in question.

That was when Penny answered the phone and betrayed that I was in.

“Yes,” I heard her say, “he's right here.” She extended the receiver to me with her most sympathetic look. “Mr. Zayle for you,” she murmured.

I took the phone; it was too late to do anything else. I should have cut off the reporter and clued her in as soon as she appeared. What did alienating one of the major dailies matter, compared to being trapped like this?

“Perkins here,” I admitted.

“You've got to
do
something,” the frantic voice greeted me, without wasting time on pleasantries. “The police are coming back, Father's in one of his moods again, Adele has locked herself in her room, I've had reporters on the phone, and my nurse is still out sick.
Do something.”

I took a deep breath.

“Are you there? Can you hear me? I said –”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I said. “I heard you.”

“Well, what are you going to do?” he demanded.

I took another deep breath and, discarding the first few answers that rose to the tip of my tongue, tried for a balanced, soothing tone. “We” – I wasn't going to go into this alone – “we'll be over as soon as we can make arrangements about the office. Will that suit you?”

“I suppose it will have to,” he said petulantly. “But be quick about it, can't you? What am I supposed to do, here by myself, carrying a double work load, without even a nurse –”

“As soon as we can.” I eased the receiver back into the cradle and met Penny's bright, expectant gaze. It gave me an idea about the easiest-solved of Zayle's problems.

“What are your feelings,” I asked her, “about dentists?”

“
Ee-yick!”
she replied, like any right-minded individual.

“I don't mean going to them,” I corrected. “I mean working for them – being subleased, as it were. For a nice little bonus, of course,” I added hastily. Gerry and I might be forfeiting our quids for the pro quos, but Penny wasn't included in the arrangement. We ought to be able to bill for her time – if she was willing.

“Oh, I don't mind
that,”
she agreed cheerfully. “It's only the other end of the drill I object to.”

“Right,” I said, reaching for my all-too-thin notecase. “Grab a taxi and get over to Zayle, Zayle and Meredith. Tell Zayle you'll stand in for his nurse, and Gerry and I will be along as soon as we clear up a couple of odds and ends.”

The waiting room was crowded by the time we arrived in mid-afternoon. Some of yesterday's contingent appeared to be there, with a smattering of new faces. Morgana Fane was absent – and who could blame her? After yesterday's experience, she had my complete sympathy if she elected to go through the rest of her life toothless. It was only fortunate that she hadn't realized how close to the Pearly Gates those pearly teeth had brought her.

While the receptionist was grappling uncertainly with basic facts (“Endicott Zayle is expecting us – No, we're not patients – He'll want us to go straight up – It's quite in order”), Penny strode into the waiting room, looking brisk and medical in a starched white coverall.

“Next,” she announced crisply. The word was enough to make me shudder. Our Penny seemed to have donned a bloodless professionalism with the starched uniform. It made her less Our Penny.

“Oh, Mr. Perkins.” She discovered me as she would have discovered a stranger loitering too near the silver. “Mr. Zayle says you're to wait in his private sitting room with Mr. Tate. Upstairs.” She flicked her eyes heavenward momentarily, then narrowed them on the next victim.

“Oh, Mr. Johnson.” She swooped on a reluctant patient, sniffing suspiciously. “You're to come right up. Mr. Zayle says he hopes you haven't been naughty and stopped for a drink before you came – you
know
you're a bleeder.”

Gerry and I exchanged chastened glances and followed Penny and her victim up the narrow stairs.

“At the top of the next flight,” she called back encouragingly to us, shepherding the unfortunate Mr. Johnson ahead of her. “Mr. Zayle will be along as soon as he can.

“No, not you, Mr. Johnson.” She caught her reluctant patient by the arm as he swerved to try to follow us up the second flight of stairs. “Mr. Zayle is waiting for
you
right in here.”

Looking back, I could see that she was ushering the patient into Tyler Meredith's surgery. It gave me a start for a moment, then I realized that, of course, Zayle was having to double up on the work with his partner dead and no time to arrange for a locum. It was understandable that he would be using both surgeries. He had sometimes done it in the past, when his partner was taking a holiday. Many's the time I'd been given an injection and left until it took effect, while Zayle darted into the next office to work on another patient whose injection had been given earlier and whose jaw had reached the required state of numbness.

The lounge on the next floor was unexpectedly cozy, with a blazing fire and a tea trolley waiting beside it. I wondered if Adele had come out of her sulk enough to decide to play hostess. The room was empty, though. We went in and sat down.

“Do you suppose we're intended to help ourselves?” Gerry was eyeing a plate of sandwiches and another of cakes nearly as greedily as I was. Lunch had been on the skimpy side.

I hoped Adele wouldn't be long if she was coming. I leaned forward and tested the heat of the teapot with my hand. It was very hot, which augured well for the imminent return of the hostess.

“Let's wait a bit,” I said. “This must just have been brought in. Someone will probably be along in a minute.”

A door at the far side of the room opened immediately. Expecting Adele, I rose to my feet. Gerry had been sitting farther back than I, and when he saw it was only a man, he gave up the struggle to rise. Men, even of advanced age, didn't rate the same courtesies as birds in Gerry's books.

“Ah!” Sir Malcolm strode into the room and snapped me a salute. Out of sheer surprise, I returned it. “At ease, lad.” He sat down, and I took this to mean that I could sit down, too, although I was slightly out-of-date on military protocol. On second thought, I had never been current with the protocol General Sir Malcolm was operating under. I suspected the army had undergone considerable changes in the past forty years.

“Tea, eh? Excellent! Excellent!” He rubbed his hands together in brisk anticipation. “What kind of sandwiches have we?”

“They seem to be” – I checked – “pâté, egg salad, chicken, and ham.”

“Aaah, wonderful housekeeper, that gal. Marvellous how she manages through the shortages. Smartest thing Endicott ever did when he married her. A looker, too.”

“That's true,” Gerry agreed, always glad to weigh in with a connoisseur's opinion, although I could see that part of the statement had him vaguely puzzled.

“What's that?” After one venomous glance upon entering, Sir Malcolm had ignored Gerry. Now he concentrated his attention upon him. He didn't appear to like what he saw.

“I said that's true,” Gerry repeated. “The lady is a looker. She's got a nasty temper, though.”

“Temper? Pah! Spirit!” Sir Malcolm glared at him. “More than you can claim, eh? What's a healthy young man like you doing here? Why aren't you Up Front?”

“Up Front?” Gerry was completely lost. I'd had so much to fill him in on last night, I hadn't got round to the details on Sir Malcolm's hazy grasp of the time of the century. He only knew that the old boy had a couple of idiosyncrasies that would constitute him an unreliable witness. “Is that a new boutique?”

Fortunately, Penny came in just then. “Mr. Zayle sent me up to pour,” she announced, not knowing what a welcome diversion she was creating. We turned to her with relief.

Except Sir Malcolm, although he frowned less sternly at her. “Where's Nurse?” he demanded.

“She's joined up,” Penny said. “I'm too young to go, so I'm taking her place on the home front to relieve her for duty.” She raised her eyes to some red-white-and-blue horizon, sucked in her cheeks, and posed there looking impossibly soulfully noble. I could see that she was fully in the picture.

“Good girl!” Sir Malcolm beamed on her. “With spirit like that in our youth, how can we lose?” he demanded of me.

“We didn't,” I said. Penny's cheeks quivered. Gerry sat there, slowly shaking his head from side to side, as though to clear it – I knew the feeling.

“Are you going to start pouring?” I asked Penny.

“All right.” She reverted to her normal cheerfulness and picked up the teapot.

“Three lumps, m'dear,” Sir Malcolm said. “That is, if the ration's up to it.”

“There's plenty,” Penny said, sugaring it and handing him his cup.
“He
” – she gestured toward me with the teapot before serenely pouring – “doesn't take sugar.” She passed me my sugarless tea with a smile which wasn't quite sweet enough to substitute.

“Excellent,” Sir Malcolm said. “Excellent. We all have to make sacrifices in times like these, eh?”

“
I
,” Gerry said firmly, surfacing enough to realize a fast shuffle was going on, “take three.” As he leaned forward to take the cup, his ruffled cuff, linked with the gilt filigree and diamanté links some hopeful bird had given him, shot out from his sleeve. It was too late to signal to him. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and waited for the explosion. It came almost immediately.

“Young man,” Sir Malcolm thundered, “are those ruffles? And is that” – he leaned forward for a closer, incredulous look – “a
flowered
shirt?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Gerry said brightly. “Yes, to both questions. Seersucker printed with sprigs of forget-me-nots on pale lemon. They had primrose on lilac, but I thought this was subtler.” He was beaming happily, ready to swap sartorial chatter, feeling that he had got onto the old boy's wavelength at last.