didn’t realize she was so fragile, miss.’
‘She’s not. I don’t know why this is so hard on her.’
Salter left. Dean of Women overreacts to routine questioning, he thought. I wonder why?
It was a long time since Salter had gone home for lunch. From the early days of their marriage he associated it with ‘nooners’, making love in the daytime, preferably on the floor. Did the young officers still do that? He and Annie had not done it for years, but now as she stood at the sink he put his arms round her waist and squeezed her in something more than a friendly hug. She twisted in his arms and looked at him, startled and worried, but game. ‘If you want,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have to turn the pot down to simmer.’
‘Fuck the pot,’ Salter whispered, and hugged her close. ‘All right,’ she said. He let her go. ‘We’ll save it,’ he said.
‘Who have you been questioning today?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Just an old bag who looks after the morals of young ladies. You are the one who turns me on.’
Over their soup and sandwiches, he talked. He came finally to the Dean of Women.’
‘She’s hysterical, and she’s lying, because she’s frightened, I think,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know why. I don’t think she’s a villain.’
‘Then why is she so upset?’
‘I’ll find out. Whatever it is, it is something to do with Summers.’
Before he left, Annie asked him about the holidays. He felt like being gracious. ‘Make whatever arrangements you like,’ he said. ‘The boys will be happy, and I don’t have a better proposal.’
‘What’s got into you lately, Charlie?’
‘I’m busy,’ he said, and opened the front door. As he stepped out he almost walked into a small dark-haired woman in an apron who began screaming at him.
‘You Mr Salter?’ she asked. ‘Come quick. Lady I work for gonna be killed. Come quick.’
Annie reappeared from the kitchen. ‘It’s Rosa. Mrs Canning’s cleaning lady. Quick, Charlie. Something must be wrong.’
It was one of the penalties of being a policeman.
Salter and Annie followed the cleaning lady at a trot across three front yards to Mrs Canning’s house. There in the kitchen they found her, standing terrified in the corner, clutching her two young children. ‘He’s upstairs,’ she said. ‘In the front bedroom.’
Salter climbed the stairs cautiously to the second floor and went along the hall to the front bedroom. The door was closed, and Salter shouted through it without getting a response. Then he threw the door open and stood back. Nothing happened. Salter moved to the doorway and looked around the room. All the curtains had been drawn so that there was only a gloomy orange light to see by, but it did not take much light to see that the room had been wrecked. The bedroom was also used as a study, and the floor was two feet deep in books and all the other bric-à-brac—clocks, mirrors, ashtrays, lamps—that had formerly stood on the tables and shelves. In the big double bed, under the covers, was a young giant, his eyes open, watching Salter.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘You are trespassing,’ the boy said. ‘This is my room.’
Salter left, closing the door behind him, and called down the stairs to Mrs Canning. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘He says that’s his room.’
‘It’s my room. Mine and Albert’s. This is my house. He just appeared half an hour ago asking if I was running a baby farm. He’s got bathing trunks on.’ Mrs Canning was nearly demented. ‘I had to keep talking until Rosa came back. I’ve never seen him before.’
Annie said from beside her, ‘He must be mad, Charlie. Be careful.’
‘Phone Frank,’ Salter said. ‘Tell him what’s happening. Tell him we need a car and two big men. I’ll stay here.’
While they were waiting for help, Mrs Canning calmed down a bit and suggested where the intruder might have come from.
‘We rent the third floor to a girl at the CBC,’ she said. ‘He must have been up there and come down when she left this morning.’
‘Phone her,’ Salter said.
In a minute it was confirmed. He had arrived from Europe the day before and had been given a bed for the night on the third floor. He had seemed very tired, but the girl had not noticed anything strange about him.
Very quickly the squad car arrived, bringing not only two constables but Gatenby himself. ‘You don’t mind, do you, boss?’ he asked like a child pleading to be allowed up late. ‘I haven’t been outside the office for months.’
The assault party formed up in the hallway on the second floor. Salter explained the situation and the two officers pulled out their guns, causing the women on the stairs to make frightened noises, but they only emptied the shells into their pockets and re-holstered the weapons. One of the constables said something to Salter, and he turned to his wife.
‘They won’t hurt him,’ he said. ‘But they might have to hold him tight, or even handcuff him so that they don’t get hurt. You’d better go back into the kitchen.’
They got ready to move down the hall, and Gatenby stopped them. ‘Let me have a go, first,’ he said. ‘I might be able to talk to him.’
The others looked doubtful, but Gatenby pleaded. ‘Is there a dressing-gown in the room, lady?’ he called down the stairs.
‘On the door,’ she said.
‘Right you are.’ Gatenby turned to the others. ‘Come and get me if I holler,’ he said with a wink, and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
There was a murmuring of voices from inside the room. One of the constables asked Salter, ‘You sure he’s all right, sir? He seems a bit old for this kind of thing.’
‘I don’t know what the hell he’s up to,’ snapped Salter, ‘We’ll give him five minutes, then we’ll go in.’
But in another minute Gatenby reappeared with the boy, dressed now in a tiny striped robe. Gatenby had his arm around his shoulers and was talking to him soothingly, like an old granny. ‘Here we go, then. We’ll just go downstairs, won’t we, that’s it. Out to the car, and we’ll take you where we can get you all fixed up.’
Salter led the way and opened the door of the squad car as Gatenby talked the boy into the seat, closing it gently behind him.
‘All yours, lads,’ he said. ‘Take him down to the Comical College. Don’t shout at him.’
The policeman looked at each other and at Salter, who shrugged. ‘Take him away, lads,’ he said.
Salter and Gatenby drove back in silence for a few blocks, then Salter said, ‘All right, Frank. What the fuck did you do in
