Free The Chelsea Murders by Lionel Davidson Page B

He had a sort of viola in his arms and he put it down and took her hands.
    ‘You have walked in as if to my dream,’ he said.
    Was she hearing aright? She didn’t want to shake her head and clear it because it was fine the way it was. If it was a dream, this was the kind to have.
    ‘Just now I sat and wondered what you must think of me, if perhaps I have queered my – boats?’
    ‘Pitch,’ Mooney said. God! No. You haven’t, Otto. All yours, the whole pitch.
    She wasn’t rightly certain what else he said. In conjunction with that fantastic twinkle in his eye, slightly triste, absolutely bang-on, and his hair, and his whole God-sent self, he was gently kneading her hands with those unbelievable fingers. What wasneeded was some kind of computer to store, to bank, and then feed back moment after golden moment of it for all her remaining years.
    She didn’t know if it was rash or not, she just damn well invited him to dinner. She wrapped it up somehow, didn’t know what friends he’d made as yet … Shewas only passing, on Press business – And how was that frame that had so interested her?
    He gladly showed her the frame. He had this notion – the newly opened shop had called the paper two or three weeks ago, to milk a bit of publicity – that old picture frames were often finer works of art than those they enclosed. He restored them, and old things generally. He was a very good restorer.
    Oh, boy, and how! Mooney thought, running recklessly across the road towards the library and the restoration of Normanby’s reputation.
    Righto, Normanby! she said to herself. After what you’ve done for me, you’ve got something coming. I’ll see you right, Normanby. I’ll take on the G.L.C., the Government, the U.N., Idi Amin. It’s you and me, Normanby!
    She raced up the two flights like a mountain goat.
    ‘My word, Brenda – your hair!’
    She hadn’t seen the girl lately.
    ‘Don’t you like it?’ Brenda said, nervously touching it.
    ‘Like it? It’s fantastic.’
    ‘Is it? Only nobody’s said anything.’
    ‘Smashing, love. It transforms you.’
    ‘Oh, well,’ Brenda said, transformed, and just stood and breathed for a moment. ‘And I’m going out with a chap tonight,’ she said.
    Mooney well understood that this girl’s basic life urge at the moment was to lay hands on a mirror, but she sped on. ‘I want the listing of Normanby’s old studio – the artist. You’ve got it here somewhere, haven’t you?’
    ‘Yes. In Special Collections. You know where it is.’
    ‘Don’t know if I can find it. Is Frank up there?’
    ‘Not yet. I’ll show you, then. That’s funny,’ Brenda said, leading the way. ‘You’re the second this week for that list. We had a detective in here.’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    Brenda was so sent by her hair she forgot for a moment that somebody had said Mooney wasn’t to know. Then she remembered it was Frank who’d said it, and she had a rude thought about Frank.
    Mooney was so sent by Wertmuller that she didn’t all at once take in what had been said.
    When she did, and between proffering her compact and the odd word on hair, she unravelled what had gone on.
    Later, alone with the list, she sat and quietly marvelled at how things went, when they went for you.
    She thought of heavenly Otto and the job on the Globe , both, less than an hour ago, apparently lost to her.
    She stationed Wertmuller in a portion of her mind convenient for later attention, and bent to the list.
    It took only a few lightning swings round the battlefield to see where the panzers had to go in.
    When she left the library she had the dope on Normanby and some other dope.
    One of the troubles with the Globe , she thought, was that they didn’t know how to treat a girl right. Call her when needed, would they? There were other fish in the sea. She knew how a certain percentage of them, in the region of a hundred per cent, would react to what she had to offer.
    Pow!
    She had no intention of offering yet.