Free The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L. C. Tyler

‘They’re probably from when she and Rupert split up. Maybe she was marking things that were hers and that Rupert was not to take. Somewhere in Rupert’s new flat there are probably rows of books with green pentagons on them.’
    ‘That’s possible,’ said Elsie, crestfallen.
    ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said.
    ‘Still, it does at least confirm that she had been planning her departure. You don’t pack three cases for a suicide. She had definite plans to go somewhere and to look smart when she got there. And where are the cases now, eh?’ demanded Elsie.
    ‘Where indeed?’ I asked.
    ‘So, what next?’ Elsie asked briskly.
    ‘Next I have to visit the bank,’ I said. ‘And you are on your way back to Hampstead.
    ‘No buts, Elsie. Thanks for bringing the contract down – I’m grateful. For the next couple of hours however I have to look like an executor, and an apprentice detective at my heels will not be required.’
    Elsie haggled a bit and, as a concession, I agreed in my capacity as executor that she could raid the kitchen for any chocolate that Geraldine might have left behind.
    ‘Well, she won’t be needing it wherever she is,’ said Elsie.
    ‘Where she is, it would probably melt,’ I said.
    It is rarely necessary to lie to one’s agent, but in this case I had been a little economical with the truth. I had for example not one but a number of visits that I wanted to pay without Elsie’s running commentary in the background. The first was only a few hundred yards away, and required the keys that I had located in the ex-chocolate box.
    Standing in the pigeon droppings and old newspapers at street level, I was able to confirm that I had reached my destination by means of a small sign attached to the wall of a nondescript fifties industrial building: ‘Geraldine Tressider (Property Division) 3 rd Floor’. It was unclear, as with so much that she did, why occupying part of this grimy con-crete-and-plate-glass eyesore on a noisy main road had appealed to Geraldine as part of her business strategy. The other identifiable occupants were a casting agency and a firm classifying itself as ‘import-export’, though what it imported and what it exported was not specified. The street door proved to be unlocked and, since there was no lift, I climbed the three flights of unswept stairs to Geraldine’s Corporate Headquarters.
    Once inside the office, it was evident that what Geraldine had been saving on rent, she had allocated to furnishings. In the larger, starkly white, outer office, there were comfortable modern chairs upholstered in black leather, and a large curving desk with a new computer on it. Suspiciously pristine, almost certainly empty, bright red box files and some reference books were carefully spaced on well-polished wood-and-steel shelving. On an oval coffee table rested the current editions of two or three glossy magazines. The leaves of the obligatory office plant gleamed as though they had been oiled. Post lay neatly stacked in an in-tray. Only the lack of any human activity spoiled the air of quiet efficiency. The inner office – Geraldine’s sanctum – was a repeat of this on a smaller scale, with cherry-wood blinds to hide the uninspiring view of the buildings across the road and a small green Buddha sitting Elsie-like, fat and self-satisfied, on a low corner table.
    I knew what I needed and, as had happened at the flat, it took only a short time to locate what passed for Geraldine’s financial records. They confirmed what was becoming a consistent story: the company had no assets to speak of. I was just trying to decide whether to undertake a more thorough search of the office when I heard a key in the lock. Just for a moment I had a vision of Geraldine waltzing through the door as if nothing had happened, then the improbability of this struck me and I sprang to my feet.
    I emerged from the inner office just in time to see a pimply young man, hands occupied with a carton of