In the Teeth of Adversity Read online

  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.

  “Disgraceful!” Sir Malcolm snarled. “A young man like you – why aren’t you in uniform?”

  “I thought I was,” Gerry said. “We can’t all be in the pinstripe-and-bowler brigade, you know.”

  “What brigade?” General Sir Malcolm snapped to attention, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I don’t know them. Are they part of the regular army?”

  “No, just regular civilians,” Gerry said. He looked from me to Penny and back again. “What is this, anyway?”

  “Ah, tea!” Endicott Zayle entered, rubbing his hands together in unconscious imitation of his father. “Just what I need right now. Very strong, no sugar, please.”

  “What about your patients?” I asked.

  “Oh, they won’t want any,” he chuckled. “Neither of them could close their lips over the rim of a cup at this moment – Oh, oh, I see what you mean. No, they’re all right. Just relaxing while the procaine takes effect. They’ll never miss me for a few minutes. Each one will think I’m with the other.” He gnawed into a chicken sandwich with zest, accepting the cup of tea Penny had poured for him.

  “By the way,” he said to her. “You might take a tray along to my wife, if you would. Just leave it outside her door, knock, and go away.” It sounded as though it were a regular routine. “She’ll take it in when she’s ready.”

  “Locked her in her room again, have you?” Sir Malcolm stopped brooding over Gerry, transferring his attention to his son. “Best place for her. Stop her from running after that other fella. And in your own house, too. I always said your Cynthia needed a strong hand – stronger than you have.”

  “Father,” Endicott Zayle said, in some anguish, “Cynthia was my mother.”

  “No need to talk like that, m’boy.” Sir Malcolm stiffened in offence. “She is your wife, you know. I thought she was a bit long in the tooth when you married her, but you made her Mrs. Zayle. Bite the bullet, m’boy, and live with it, but we won’t have that sort of remark around here. Gentlemen don’t speak about ladies in that manner, especially their wives.”

  “Adele is my wife,” Zayle said feebly, as though conscious he was fighting the rearguard action to a losing battle.

  “Flighty little piece.” Sir Malcolm slipped smoothly from one reputation to another. “Always running after that fella. Mistake to have him in the house – I always said so.”

  Wisely, Penny disappeared with a tray. It would be nice if I could do the same, but duty forbade. “Have the police come back yet?” I asked.

  “Police?” Sir Malcolm whirled to face me. “What police?”

  “You remember, Father,” Endicott said wearily. “They were here yesterday.”

  “About that blackout curtain again, eh? I warned you it wasn’t secure enough. Have the whole damned blitzkrieg around our necks, if you aren’t careful.”

  I noted with interest that he had slipped from one war to another, mixing them as easily as he had mixed the ladies in his past. He was, perhaps, even more confused than I had bargained for. It was pointless then to read up on World War I, as I had intended doing if we were to spend much time in the Zayle ménage. Obviously, the only thing to do was to try to follow General Sir Malcolm Zayle – at a respectful distance – through whichever time belt he was straying at any given moment. A skimming knowledge of history, plus a generous dollop of child psychology, might be all that was necessary. The main thing was to swim with the tide, rather than try to struggle against it, as Endicott Zayle was doing right now.

  “Father,” he said urgently, “you must remember – it was only yesterday –”

  Sir Malcolm looked at him coldly. “I have an excellent memory,” he stated.

  I agreed with him there. It was one of the best memories I had ever encountered, although a bit too selective for practicality. I was glad it was Endicott’s problem, and not mine.

  “They came about Tyler, Father.”

  “Tyler? Tyler – who?”

  Endicott groaned, and I couldn’t blame him. He inhaled deeply and seemed about to pursue the subject further when the door opened.

  “Look who’s here!” Penny popped her head inside, announcing the newcomer with more enthusiasm than formality. She skipped to one side, with a flourish of her hand, like the conjurer’s assistant in a magic act.

  I could have done without the cute little trick she had conjured up. Our old acquaintance, the ailurophobe policeman, walked through the doorway and stopped short at seeing Gerry and me. It was obvious that the sight of us had given him pause – and a very nasty pause, at that.

  After a second, he moved forward again. “I thought she looked familiar,” he said, “but a young girl like that might have changed her job.” She, his tone implied, was young enough to reform.

  “Hello,” I said. It was very original, but I doubted that he would appreciate sterling wit. Not from me, certainly – and he didn’t look enthusiastic about anyone else in the room, either.

  He walked over to me, frowned, and reaching out, removed a couple of short shining hairs from my shoulder. “Still got that cat, I see,” he observed.

  “I’ll give her your love,” I said.

  He grunted and turned away. This brought him face-to-face with Gerry, which he evidently didn’t consider any improvement. He nodded and turned again. This time he was in front of Sir Malcolm; he seemed to feel he could face him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t mutual.

  “Young man.” Sir Malcolm rose, giving the impression of towering over him. “Why aren’t you in uniform?”

  “I’m plainclothes – C.I.D. If you’d like to see my warrant card –”

  “Young slackers!” Sir Malcolm looked to his son. “Why must we have these people in the house? They’re a disgrace to King and Country!”

  “Please, Father.” Endicott Zayle started forward. “Why don’t you go up to your quarters? This has nothing to do with you –”
<
br />   “It has everything to do with me, if you’re encouraging slackers and –”

  Endicott had his father by one arm. I closed in and took the other arm. Together, we managed to extract him from the room without actually using force and get him upstairs to the austere bachelor quarters he occupied at the top of the house.

  Chapter 6

  When we returned to the sitting room, we found that the gentleman from the C.I.D. had made a start on his case by questioning Gerry. Since Gerry hadn’t been present yesterday, this hadn’t improved the shining hour very much, and both were in a rather disgruntled state.

  “You were here at the time,” he greeted me accusingly.

  “Not at the time, no,” I disclaimed heartily. “I arrived afterwards. He was dead when we found him.”

  “Do you know when he died?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know you arrived afterwards?”

  It was a question I would rather not think about. In fact, I knew from past experience, he wasn’t going to ask me many questions I would be happy to think about. It was unfortunate that our past experience wasn’t farther back in the past. He obviously hadn’t had time to take a philosophical view of it.

  “You don’t need me right now, do you?” Endicott Zayle asked. “I have patients waiting.” He backed hopefully toward the door, without waiting for a reply.

  “I’ll want to see you later. As soon as my sergeant gets the car parked, we’ll want to go over a few points from yesterday.”

  “Yesterday ...?” Endicott Zayle said weakly, giving the impression that yesterday was more remote to him than the distant world his father lived in. I couldn’t blame him. I’d be just as glad to forget yesterday myself.

  “Meanwhile, I believe you said your wife was returning from a holiday last night. I’d like to speak to her now, if I might. That is,” he added, as Endicott looked stricken, “if she’s here.”

  “Oh, oh, yes, she’s here. But I don’t know – I mean, she’s not feeling very well – I don’t think –” Considering that his wife was the guilty party, Endicott was putting on a performance that would have made lesser mortals than a policeman immediately suspicious. “She’s unavailable,” he ended up, with sudden firmness.