Free Murder Offstage by L. B. Hathaway Page A

with the
silver office tea-pot and some mismatched cups.
    ‘Peace offering?’
    Thrown, Posie looked at Len in panic. He came into the room
anyway.
    ‘What about my client?’ she said, rising from her chair and
hurtling out to the waiting room. But there was no-one there. The Times lay neatly folded on the low coffee-table with a stack of other magazines and
journals. Posie bolted out onto the landing, and scoured the dark winding
stairs below. No-one. She hurried into Babe’s office.
    ‘Did a gentleman, about forty, come in here just now? With
messy hair? Did you see him?’
    Babe stared dumbly back, and shook her head.
    ‘I sure ain’t seen no-one, Miss, and that’s the God-honest
truth. Swear on it. No-one’s been in all morning, except Mr Irving, of course.’
    ‘Fine. Thank you,’ Posie muttered. How very strange. But
maybe this was what real-life clients did. Perhaps he had realised he needed to
be somewhere else? Perhaps his lunch-break was coming to an end? Perhaps he was
late for his tennis practice?
    Back at her desk, Len had poured the tea. He was standing at
her window looking out over the grey rooftops. A flock of pigeons were whirling
around the offices in great droves.
    ‘They think it’s spring, poor beggars,’ he indicated, sipping
his tea. ‘Look how lightly they fly.’
    Posie glowered at him, and took her own cup. He came and sat
down and faced her.
    ‘I want to clear the air, Po. I know you saw me last night
and it breaks my heart to think that you might be imagining something which
didn’t happen. Which doesn’t exist .’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she snapped at
him, ignoring the desperate look of pleading; the troubled green eyes which
sought out her own. Even now he was heart-flippingly lovely.
    ‘I saw you with my own eyes. With her . Don’t try and
tell me that what I saw didn’t happen, didn’t exist. And anyway,’ she added,
meeting his eyes for a brief second, ‘don’t feel you have to explain it to me
anyway. What you do in your spare time or who you spend it with is none of my
business.’
    Then Len did something he had never done before.
    He reached out across the desk and took Posie’s hand in his.
An action which caused a shock-wave of energy to tingle down her spine. She
bristled, still angry, but she let him hold onto her hand.
    ‘Of course you saw me. With Babe. But it’s not what it
looked like, that’s all. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t what I wanted . She
came to me in my office last night about six, all sad and doe-eyed, telling me
she’d been let down by some fellow at the last minute. She had a pair of
tickets to the theatre, and would I like to come with her? I felt sorry for her
I suppose. She seemed on the verge of tears.’
    ‘She looked pretty happy to me when I saw you both.’ Posie
said coldly.
    ‘Yes, well. She seemed to recover pretty quickly when I told
her I’d come along; I’d had my own plans cancelled earlier, anyway. She dashed
off and smartened herself up with a lot of jewellery and then invited me to a
pre-theatre supper on the Strand, at Simpson’s.’
    ‘ Simpson’s! ’ Posie practically shouted. Simpson’s was
a very good, very expensive restaurant much in favour with the bright young
things, and by people who wanted to be seen around the place. ‘On her salary?’
    ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ said Len, frowning. ‘I said thank
you all the same, but maybe we could grab a quick cone of fish and chips just
off Shaftesbury Avenue if she was feeling peckish. Quicker. Cheaper.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘So we did. It was a bit awkward really. Us standing there
gobbling away on the street corner, with her in her posh fur coat. Everyone was
staring at us. Babe kept drinking too. She’d brought a hip flask and every
couple of minutes she was swigging away. Goodness knows what it was; strong
stuff though by the state she managed to get herself into. And then, to make
matters worse, this poor chap came