Free Carver's Quest by Nick Rennison Page B

kind of outfit ideally suited to a private enquiry agent. Enquiry agents, he assumed, needed to blend into the background. Perhaps Jinkinson’s flamboyant taste in clothing went
some way towards explaining why, to judge by the shabby state of his office, he was not a very successful enquiry agent. And yet this was the man to whom Creech had paid all those guineas. Where,
Adam wondered, had all that money gone? Not, it seemed, on the decoration of his professional premises.
    As Jinkinson continued to snore, Adam looked about the office. It had, like its owner, seen better days. There was little in the way of furniture beyond a desk and a chair. To the left, a black
mark on the ceiling indicated where a gas lamp had once been. The decoration consisted of two engravings on the walls. To Adam’s left was a gloomy Dutch pub scene. Almost certainly, he
decided, it was entitled
Boors Carousing
. The boors, three of them, all had pipes clamped in their mouths and were caught in the act of smacking their thighs as an indication of
drink-fuelled abandon. On the opposite wall, a Spanish hidalgo stared haughtily at the viewer from the frame of his portrait. The overall effect of the two images was profoundly depressing. Looking
back at the stout toper behind the desk, Adam noticed him open first one bleary eye and then the other, and struggle into something approaching consciousness. Jinkinson eventually looked at his
visitor as if he had been half expecting him to come calling.
    ‘You have the air of a varsity man, sir,’ he said, loudly but irrelevantly.
    ‘I was up at Cambridge for a few terms,’ Adam acknowledged.
    ‘Ah, Cambridge, Cambridge!’ Jinkinson now had a dreamy look on his face, as if remembering happy days spent punting along the Cam to Grantchester. ‘Always fancied myself as a
Trinity man. But it was not to be. The streets of London have been my alma mater. Or should I say, my not so alma mater? Not such a nourishing mother at all, sir. London can be a cruel parent,
indeed.’
    Having said this, the ageing dandy seemed to have shot his conversational bolt. His eyes slowly closed and he began to nod off once more. Adam was about to cough to claim his attention but
Jinkinson suddenly jerked back to life and stared sternly at him.
    ‘What can I do for you, young man?’ he asked. He appeared to be under the impression that he had never seen Adam before in his life.
    ‘I am looking for a Mr Jinkinson, and I presume that you are he.’
    ‘Presumption correct, sir.’ The man attempted a polite bow to his visitor but his paunch and his position in his chair conspired to produce no more than a vague shifting of his bulk.
‘You see before you the wreck of the human being that goes by the name of Herbert George Jinkinson. And you, sir? You are…?’
    ‘My name is Carver. I have learned of your name and your address through a mutual acquaintance: Mr Samuel Creech.’
    To say that Jinkinson was startled by the introduction of Creech’s name, Adam decided, would have been a gross understatement. He seemed poleaxed by it. The blood drained from his face. A
look of apparently intense pain twisted his features.
    ‘Are you unwell, Mr Jinkinson?’
    ‘It is no matter, sir.’ Jinkinson struggled manfully to regain his composure. ‘I am suffering from a derangement of my interior. No more than that, I can assure you. Would you
believe that no food save a small milk pudding has passed my lips in the last twenty-four hours, and yet a storm still rages in the inner man?’ He patted briefly at his sizeable stomach as if
to calm the tempest. ‘A Mr Creech, you say? I believe I have some small recollection of the name.’
    Jinkinson’s elaborate pantomime of a man struggling to retrieve a memory hidden in the furthest recesses of his mind was a performance worthy of the stage of the Lyceum.
    ‘Ah, yes. I have it. A gentleman who lives out of town. Dulwich, perhaps? Or was it Herne Hill? I seem to remember I