Free Split Code by Dorothy Dunnett

toys are.’
    She had led the way back to the day nursery, which was a large over-warm room with armchairs, TV and spotless vinyl tiles patterned like games boards. Half of one wall was blackboard and the other half pinboard, covered with bits of paper scrawled on by Grover. All the other wall space, apart from the windows, was patterned with numbers, letters, animals and friezes from Disneyland. Bunty pressed a stud and the Lady and the Tramp slid aside, revealing a cavernous cupboard crammed with teddies, pandas, elephants and dogs in flare-resistant plush with safety-locked noses and eyes.
    Grover’s wall let down in sections to show a complete electric railway, a farm, an Apache fort and a theatre with puppets and scenery. He had dress-up clothes and plasticine and planes and board games and jigsaws. Elsewhere there was a typewriter, a record player, paper, brushes, crayons, pencils and big pots of paint.
    The last cupboard revealed party games, balloon packs and masks. Also a life-sized gorilla, angularly disposed on a shelf, who climbed down and embraced Bunty with vigour. ‘Hugo!’ said Bunty crossly. The monkey hair, I think, had caught on her earrings.
    I was thinking of Scimmia and other, associated recollections when the gorilla took its head off and turning, embraced me without warning also. His head, emerging from the gorilla’s neck, was bald and heavy-jowled, and he had large, long-lashed eyes, a moustache and versatile eyebrows which looked, at present, pained.
    ‘Miss Joanna is uptight!’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘And in me reposes your reputation! Beautiful girl, you will smile: or I shall tell my friend Comer that this bottle of gin, you have brought and consumed all by yourself.’
    ‘In two glasses?’ I said.
    ‘Don’t be silly, Hugo,’ said Bunty. She was still cross. ‘Comer’ll bend his shape.’
    ‘Dear Bunty,’ said the gorilla. ‘Any change in Comer’s shape cannot but be for the better. Miss Joanna, what are you doing with the Booker-Readmans, who are so correct, and never have any fun unless it is approved by Society?’
    ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said; though I would. ‘At any rate, they’re not having much fun at the moment. Bunty, I’ve remembered something. Mr Booker-Readman has just lost his most valuable ikon.’
    Nobody fainted.
    ‘His what?’ said Bunty, brightening.
    ‘Ikon, my illiterate beauty,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘Its absence will only damage the handsome Simon in his pocket, and perhaps in his magnificent ego.’ He turned to me, unzipping his gorilla. ‘How sad for him. I am delighted to hear it. How was it taken?’
    ‘It wasn’t,’ I said. ‘He left it in a taxi. Bunty, that thing in the loo was an ikon.”
    The plucked eyebrows remained arched under the brown vermicelli ball of her hair. ‘It wasn’t,’ said Bunty. ‘That was a picture. You said so.’
    ‘Please?’ said Hugo. Bunty produced the fragments, and he examined them. ‘This is an ikon.’ He gazed fondly at Bunty. ‘You wicked girl. You have placed Mr Booker-Readman’s ikon down the lavatory?’
    ‘You think that’s it?’ said Bunty. She looked, undistressed, at the moist heap on the paper and then calmly bundled it all up again and held it out to me. ‘God knows who bust it, but you’d better let Sultry Simon have a look at it. If it isn’t his, then forget it.’
    I opened my mouth to demur. It might be valuable. It might belong to the Eisenkopps, parents or grandfather. Then I thought of what it would do to Grover, and changed what I was going to say. ‘All right, I’ll take it. I’ve got to leave anyway. I’m due a feed in a moment.’
    ‘Listen, Jo,’ Bunty said.
    ‘You are hungry?’ said Hugo Panadek.
    ‘Benedict Booker-Readman is hungry,’ I said. Last time Rosamund made up the feeds, the sod. cit. tablets blocked all the holes in the teats.
    ‘Listen,’ said Bunty again. ‘I’ve got a day off on Friday.’
    ‘I’m working,’ I said.
    ‘I know