Free The Old English Peep Show by Peter Dickinson Page A

right. Mrs. Singleton was already prodding a minute piece of bird on the other side of the gap.
    â€œYour sergeant tells me that you know more about beer than anyone else in London,” said the Admiral. “I’d value your opinion on this—we brew it ourselves. I believe it’s a shade on the sweet side for the real purist, but we are trying to gratify the perverse palate of our American cousins.”
    Mr. Singleton butted in from the other side of the table.
    â€œI commissioned a little firm in Chicago to market-research the American idea of what English beer ought to taste like.”
    â€œCourages at Alton were very nice to us,” added the Admiral. “They sent a chap over to advise us how to get as near to Harvey’s ideal as we could. I know a couple of chaps on the board, ’smatter of fact.”
    â€œI think it’s horrible,” said Mrs. Singleton, and sipped exaggeratedly from her glass of Burgundy.
    Bodingly, Pibble lifted his tankard, and was surprised: true the beer was too sweet and a bit on the dark side; it was like one of those special brews which a few colleges in ancient universities specialize in, but it wasn’t flat, as they tend to be; it had a creamy sparkle which suggested that the barrel must be in tiptop condition. He said so.
    â€œI’m glad to hear you say that,” said Mr. Singleton. “To be frank, I never let them keep anything left over. We throw away yesterday’s barrel and start on a new one. Brewing’s an extraordinarily cheap process, given the equipment.”
    â€œBut are you sure that’s what you want, Mr. Pibble?” said the Admiral solicitously. “There’s some of Harvey’s plonk if you prefer, or there ought to be another of these”—he pointed to his own half bottle of Pommery—“in the fridge, or you could have some of our excellent water, as dear Judith does.”
    â€œIt’s the nicest water I ever tasted,” said Miss Scoplow. “A marvelous old man brings it up from the spring in two wooden buckets which he carries with a sort of yoke.”
    â€œI’m happy with this, thank you,” said Pibble, wondering which level of the treasure house of police fantasy he should tap to please the Admiral’s lust for gruesome tales. (Scotland Yard has an oral tradition rich enough to keep a college of Opies busy.) He needn’t have bothered, for the old hero seemed set on talking about his lions, which he did with a mild but insistent volubility, often keeping hold of the conversation by simply repeating some tidbit which he had already rolled out. It was during one of these da capos that Pibble revised his opinion of Mrs. Adamson’s lion books, which, when he’d read them, he’d thought had a too-good-to-be-true quality. She must have covered the ground pretty thoroughly, he now saw, since there was nothing in the Admiral’s mellifluous monologue which he didn’t already know. He seized a moment when the hero’s mouth was full to ask him whether he’d enjoyed the books.
    â€œWhat books?” said the Admiral, emphasizing his famous deafness by cupping a curiously lobeless ear.
    â€œElsa!” shouted Mrs. Singleton. It wasn’t exactly a shout, though: she just notched her hound voice up another intensity and produced a word which was still clearly spoken but could have halted a marching regiment. Two more intensities and the windowpanes would have fallen out.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with her?” said the Admiral. “You are never satisfied with your food, Anty, not even in the nursery, I remember. Would you believe it, Superintendent—”
    The door opposite him opened and a little old woman with a crossly crimson face stood there.
    â€œDid I hear you call, Miss Anty?” she said.
    â€œOh, I’m so sorry, Elsa,” said Mrs. Singleton. “I didn’t mean you. We were talking about