Free Charters and Caldicott by Stella Bingham

back to you, Charters?’
    â€˜What? Oh, indeed,’ said Charters, loyally if equally unconvincingly responding to this verbal kick on the ankle.
    â€˜Not a message, then?’ Snow asked.
    â€˜Well, farewell message after a fashion,’ said Caldicott.
    â€˜No, I meant a message asking you two to do whatever he would have done himself if he’d made it back to the UK.’
    â€˜Contact the Soviet Embassy, I suppose,’ said Charters derisively. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Inspector. As Mr Caldicott says, it’s no more than a catchphrase.’
    â€˜What does it mean?’
    â€˜It means... Mr Caldicott remembers better than I,’ said Charters, cravenly passing the buck.
    â€˜Doesn’t mean anything, really,’ said Caldicott. ‘It was just what he used to say when he had his dry martini, wasn’t it, Charters?’
    â€˜That’s it. Mix Well and Serve.’
    â€˜Sort of like “Cheers”?’ Snow asked.
    â€˜Or “Chin chin”,’ said Caldicott.
    â€˜Or “Bottoms up”,’ said Charters.
    â€˜Or “First today”,’ the inspector offered. Charters and Caldicott frowned. Their kind of catchphrase belonged to the officers’ mess, whereas this one was distinctly public bar. ‘Mix Well – I thought dry martinis were supposed to be shaken not stirred.’
    â€˜Colonel Beevers, Inspector, had no affinity with James Bond,’ said Caldicott firmly.
    Inspector Snow locked his briefcase and stood up. ‘No, rather the reverse.’
    Charters and Caldicott hurried their unwanted and embarrassing guest out of the library and down the grand staircase. ‘Still, as I say, the espionage end of all this isn’t really my baby,’ said Snow, pausing to straighten a portrait on the wall. ‘There’ll be someone in touch with you about that end. And I warn you, gentlemen, when those lads get cracking they make the Murder Squad look like a game of Twenty Questions.’
    Charters and Caldicott exchanged anxious glances. They could almost hear the cell door clanging shut behind them. They propelled Inspector Snow across the lobby, past the ever-watchful eye of Venables who was pretending to read a newspaper and out onto the steps. But just as they hoped to be rid of him, Snow stopped. ‘You’ll be going to the funeral?’
    â€˜Shall we?’ Charters looked at Caldicott.
    â€˜I hadn’t thought. What’s the form?’
    â€˜The form of what?’ Snow asked.
    â€˜When peripherally involved with murder. Is it usual to pay one’s respects to the unfortunate victim?’
    Snow gave him an odd look. ‘It is if you’re friends of the family.’
    Embarrassment, plus the fear that a fellow member, descending the Club steps, may have overheard some of this, threw Charters and Caldicott into confusion. Worse still, another member, about to enter the Club, stopped to talk to the departing member only a few feet from where Charters, Caldicott and Snow were standing.
    Caldicott gave the pair a hideous, glassy smile. ‘Quite,’ he said desperately.
    â€˜I’ll send you the details,’ said Snow.
    â€˜Do. Most grateful.’ To allay the imagined suspicions of his fellow Club members, Caldicott went on more loudly, ‘Well, goodbye, Snow, old chap.’
    â€˜Cheerio, Snow,’ said Charters, backing him up.
    To their immense relief, Snow nodded and seemed about to take his leave at last. Then he turned back again with yet another final thought. ‘Tell me, had Colonel Beevers quarrelled with his daughter, do you happen to know?’
    â€˜Not to my knowledge,’ said Charters. ‘It’s some years since we actually met, of course.’
    â€˜I’ll tell you why I ask. As you were saying, Mr Caldicott, he was a great hoarder. There must be enough snapshots in that trunk to fill a dozen family albums.’
    â€˜I