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

milk and cheap plastic document case, in the process of trying to close the front door with his elbow. He turned, saw me, gasped, let go of the milk, grabbed it again as it reached waist height, juggled with it for a couple of seconds and dropped the document holder.
    ‘Shit!’ he said. Then he yielded to the inevitable and dropped the milk too.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’ I asked.
    He ignored my enquiry. ‘What are you doing here?’
    I ignored his. ‘I asked you first.’
    He paused. This pattern of questioning was likely to occupy us for most of the day unless one of us changed tack. ‘I’m Darren. Darren Oxtoby. I work for Mrs Tressider – worked, I mean. I’m her assistant. Was.’
    ‘Ethelred Tressider,’ I said. ‘My ex-wife’s executor.’
    ‘Right,’ he said uncertainly. He picked up the milk carton, which fortunately had not burst on impact.
    He was recovering from the shock of finding somebody in what should have been an empty office. I, of course, should not have been shocked to see him: the carefully piled post in the tray, the new magazines, the watered plants should all have told me that the office was continuing to operate after a fashion – quite possibly more efficiently than when Geraldine had been present in person. Perhaps it should always have occurred to me that Geraldine would have employed staff of some sort – half-witted charity cases, almost certainly. After all, it would not have been possible to achieve the sort of losses she usually sustained single-handed. But for some reason I had not pictured this gangly young man with a spotty face and a tendency to perform vaudeville acts with milk cartons. If I was ignorant of his existence, then in all likelihood the police also were. But did he know anything of value?
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’
    His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. For a moment I thought that he was about to do the milk trick again, and I was not sure that the carton would survive a second drop.
    ‘But …’ he said. ‘But … she’s dead.’
    If he had not had the desk behind him, I think he would have tried to back away from me as a dangerous lunatic.
    ‘Not Geraldine,’ I said with some show of justifiable irritation. ‘For God’s sake – I am scarcely expecting to see Geraldine here, am I? Where is Charlotte?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Charlotte Turner. Geraldine’s sister. Isn’t she supposed to be a partner here?’
    ‘Miss Turner? She doesn’t come here. She’s a – what do you call it? – sleeping partner. I’ve spoken to her on the phone, but I’ve never met her.’
    ‘Has she phoned since Geraldine disappeared?’
    ‘Once. I just said that I didn’t know where Mrs Tressider was. It was what I was always supposed to say to people.’ The spotty one shrugged his bony shoulders.
    ‘So Geraldine – Mrs Tressider – didn’t tell Miss Turner where she was planning to go?’
    ‘She can’t have done, can she? Or why would Miss Turner have asked me?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose not. And what did Mrs Tressider tell you?’
    ‘Nothing. Not really. She just said that she wouldn’t be in for a while and to tell people she would get in touch with them when she got back.’
    ‘So she didn’t say where she was going?’
    ‘Switzerland. I think she had some sort of deal lined up there.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yes. Come to think of it she didn’t actually tell me where she was going but I overheard her making the booking. I’d said I could do it, but she said, no, I should get on with my other work. I don’t remember the tickets arriving though – maybe she picked them up herself.’
    ‘And what is the other work that Mrs Tressider said you should get on with?’
    ‘I do some filing. I make coffee sometimes. I answer the phone.’
    ‘I suppose that’s what they call “multi-tasking” in the job adverts.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Nothing. So did Mrs Tressider keep you busy?’
    He laughed. ‘No, not really. I spend a