Appleby's Answer Read Online Free PDF Page B

address. Simply tell him, as if purely for amusement, of this rather odd encounter on your way up to town. And let him draw his own conclusions. Even if he no longer runs all the policemen, he might drop a word somewhere, so that discreet enquiries would be made. Yes – I believe it is really your duty to do just that. Otherwise, quite dreadful things may happen. The Killings at Kandahar . Crime at a Crammer’s . The Witness from Wilts .’ Miss Vanderpump produced what the poet Meredith would have called a volley of silvery laughter. ‘My dear, you must forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am hopelessly in thrall to the Comic Spirit. There was a star danced, you know, and under that I was born.’
    Miss Pringle gathered up her evening-cloak, and made no reply. She was telling herself that she had quite forgotten how really silly Barbara Vanderpump was. And of her afternoon’s adventure she was sorry that she had told her a thing.
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    It was the first of London’s evening rush-hours, and their taxi made only a tedious stop-go progress towards the Café Royal. Fortunately the Comic Spirit had suspended its overlordship of Miss Vanderpump – perhaps the better to put her through her paces in more brilliant company later on. Miss Pringle thus had leisure to look around her, and she was far from feeling impatient merely because their progress was rather slow. She had made her home of recent years in a retired situation (but where there was a good vicar) near Worcester, and a visit to London was really like a child’s treat. It was only that , of course, because it was infrequent – and this made her glad that she had decided against living in the capital. A London home would require money – really a lot of money – and it was still only on her own modest scale that she could think of herself as affluent now. Of course if one was famous, and not just established (although ‘established’ was a comfortable word, and not to be despised), it would be another matter…
    They were in Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was like going through a ‘scenic’ railway in a Brobdingnagian fun-fair. The multicoloured neon signs flickered rapidly on and off, leaving the most bewildering after-images on the retina; other brilliant lights pursued each other helter-skelter in circles and squares and oblongs and elaborate arabesques. One of the theatres kept on flashing the name of some currently successful playwright very rapidly in green and red and blue – first in one colour and then another. Childishly, Miss Pringle shut her eyes and tried to see the same lights announcing PRISCILLA PRINGLE with equal abandon. Although she didn’t achieve a very convincing image, the thought was an exciting one, all the same. It remained with her, intoxicatingly, as the taxi wove its way down Haymarket and up to Piccadilly Circus, and came to a halt.
    â€˜They don’t advertise us like that!’ she said a little breathlessly, as she jumped out.
    â€˜Us?’
    â€˜Novelists.’
    â€˜Advertisements don’t sell novels.’ Miss Vanderpump prided herself on understanding publishing. ‘What does, nobody knows.’
    â€˜Advertisements like those might.’ Miss Pringle gestured in the direction from which they had come, although she had to interrupt fumbling in her bag for coins in order to do so.
    â€˜It wouldn’t pay, you dear goose.’ Miss Vanderpump’s laughter, at its most argentine, startled the large man in a top hat who was holding open the door of the taxi. ‘Perhaps we ought to turn playwrights. The idea of costume drama has always attracted me. But wouldn’t you say that large success is a little vulgar?’
    â€˜One would at least wish to avoid notoriety,’ Miss Pringle replied judiciously.
    And the two ladies repaired to their banquet.

 
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    Appleby at sixty had to keep on reminding himself that sixty it was. He no