Free The Best of British Crime omnibus by Andrew Garve, David Williams, Francis Durbridge

the talking was over, resolutions were put and carried with the customary unanimity and the delegation, having earned its supper, was taken off to a banquet at the Moscow Soviet. I went back to the hotel and tried, without much success, to interest Jeff in the proceedings. He said he had to draw the line somewhere and he drew it at Communist ‘peace’ meetings.
    The next day was a busy one for all of us. First thing in the morning we accompanied Mrs Clarke and Perdita and a strong VOKS contingent to a new housing estate. Mrs Clarke asked an enormous number of questions and took copious notes for the report she would be making to her Co-op women. Perdita hung back rather superciliously and preferred to talk to Mirnova. Halfway through the morning we linked up with Cressey and Tranter and toured a chocolate factory. Jeff had by now become converted to the view that these visits were worth while, for when the delegates were carrying on their interviews with the help of Tanya and Mirnova, we managed to have some useful chats with isolated Russians who in the ordinary way wouldn’t have dared to open their mouths to foreigners.
    On the Tuesday we were all taken out in limousines to a collective farm on the Mozhaisk chaussee. It was a sunny day with only about ten degrees of frost, and walking around in the sparkling snow was most enjoyable. Mullett was very hearty, and in the course of the morning drank seven glasses of warm milk to show goodwill. Then, at about four in the afternoon, we were invited to one of those enormous Russian meals where the unwary eat steadily for an hour and are just sitting back with a sigh of repletion when the main course is brought in. Some of the delegates were beginning to have a slightly congested look, but they could still break into an argument at the least provocation. At our end of the table a warm discussion developed about a case, reported in that day’s Komsomolskaya Pravda , of a boy – a member of the Young Communists – who had won public acclaim by denouncing his father as a ‘social fascist.’ Thomas was all for it – ‘the cause must come first,’ was his view – and so was Perdita. Schofield made some remarks which suggested that he thought moral considerations almost irrelevant against the general background of the cosmic plan. Mullett hummed and hawed, but was inclined to agree that it was impossible to have too much ‘Socialist vigilance’ in a revolutionary period. Mrs Clarke also favoured what she called ‘vigilance,’ but for children to spy on parents was apparently not in the Co-op tradition and she didn’t hold with it. Bolting looked as though he didn’t care much either way. He seemed to find the whole delegation mildly entertaining.
    After the meal, we were joined by a group of spruce young collective farmers, male and female, including a boy with a balalaika. By now we were all very mellow. There was a lot of singing, and then the indefatigable Russians cleared a space for dancing and we really let ourselves go. There was one extremely handsome girl – a dark Don Cossack – who danced some of her native folk dances with enormous zest. She was later monopolised by Bolting, and from what I could see as the air grew thicker and the fumes headier, he was making fast progress with her. He was a man, evidently, who enjoyed the good things of life.
    The bonhomie of that evening didn’t last. Relations between the two women in the party were becoming increasingly strained, and by the third day Waterhouse, who was now almost as intrigued by the human side of the delegation as I was myself, was prepared to lay odds on an early and violent breach. The atmosphere was particularly threatening on the Wednesday, when Perdita had to spend the morning with Mrs Clarke going over a crèche and the afternoon interviewing a Heroine-Mother who had won a medal for producing ten children. The climax came in the