Spy hook: a novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

load for the washing machine.”
    That produced the flicker of a grin. She leaned closer to me and said, “After you find out how much dirty laundry the children have every day, you won’t be worrying about filling up the machine: you’ll be looking for a place where you can get washing powder wholesale.” She sipped some apple juice with added vitamin C. “You’ve got a nanny for the children. You’ll have that nice Mrs. Palmer coming in every day to tidy round. I’ll be back every weekend: I don’t know what you are worrying about.”
    “I wish you’d be a little more realistic. Cambridge is a damned long way away from Balaklava Road. The weekend traffic win be horrendous, the railway service is even worse and in any case you’ll have your studying to do.”
    “I wish I could make you stop worrying,” she said. “Are you ill? You haven’t been yourself since coming back from Washington. Did something go wrong there” “If I’d known what you were going to do I would have made different plans.”
    “I told you. I told you over and over.” She looked down and continued to eat her winter salad as if there was no more to be said. In a way she was right. She had told me time and time again. She’d been telling me for years that she was going to go to Cambridge and get this honours degree in PPE that she’d set her heart on. She’d told me so many times that I’d long since ceased to give it any credence. When she told me that she’d actually resigned I was astounded.
    “I thought it would be next year,” I said lamely. “You thought it would be never,” she said curtly. Then she looked up and gave me a wonderful smile. One thing about this damned business of going to Cambridge. It had put her into an incomparably sunny mood. Or was that simply the result of seeing me discomfited?
    It was Gloria’s evening for visiting parents. Tuesday she had an evening class in mathematics, Wednesday economics and Thursday evening she visited her parents. She apportioned time for such things, so that I sometimes wondered if I was one of her duties, or time off.
    I stayed working for an extra hour or so until there was a phone call from Mr. Gaskell, a recently retired artillery sergeant-major who’d taken over security duties at reception. “There is a lady here. Asking for you by name. Mr. Samson.” The security man’s hoarse whisper was confidential to the point of being conspiratorial. I wondered if this was in deference to my professional or social obligations.
    “Does she have a name, Mr. Gaskell?”
    “Lucinda Matthews.” I had the feeling that he was reading from the slip that visitors have to fill out.
    The name meant nothing to me but I thought it better not to say so. “I’ll be down,” I said.
    “That would be best,” said the security man. “I can’t let her upstairs into the building. You understand, Mr. Samson?” “I understand.” I looked out of the window. The low grey cloud that had darkened the sky all day seemed to have come even lower, -and in the air there were tiny ffickcrs of light; harbingers of the snow that had been forecast. Just the sight of it was enough to make me shiver.
    By the time I’d locked away my work, checked the filing cabinets and got down to the lobby the mysterious Lucinda had gone.
    “A nice little person, sir,” Gaskell confided when I asked what the woman was like. He was standing by the reception desk in his dark blue commissionaire’s uniform, tapping his fingers nervously upon the pile of dog-eared magazines that were loaned to visitors who spent a long time waiting here in the draughty lobby. “Well turned-out; a lady, if you know my meaning.”
    I had no notion of his meaning. Gaskell spoke a language that seemed to be entirely his own. He was especially cryptic about dress, rank and class, perhaps because of the social no-man’sland that all senior NCOs inhabit. I’d had these elliptical utterances from Gaskell before, about all kinds of