Bertie and the Tinman by Peter Lovesey

Author:Peter Lovesey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction / Mystery
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2019-01-29T19:14:11+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Yes, thirteen—the unlucky number. When I arrive at a dinner party, I always count the places at the table. If they number thirteen, I call for my coat. In practice this hardly ever happens, because Francis Knollys advises my hostess in advance that thirteen will not be tolerated any more than crossed knives or spilled salt. I won’t have my mattress turned on a Friday, either.

These superstitions of mine may sound ludicrous to some, yet there’s no denying that Chapter Thirteen contains an unpleasant shock. I mention this for the benefit of readers of a delicate disposition.

But I must not anticipate . . .

I left London for Sandringham on Sunday, 28 November, and put myself in a thunderous mood by purchasing a copy of Reynolds’s News (why do I punish myself?) to read on the train. You wouldn’t think the birth of an innocent child (my dear sister’s) a subject for political comment, but then you underesti­mate the socialist propagandists. “The Queen has now thirty-one grandchildren,” observed the writer, “and the people are of the opinion that this is more than a sufficient number of paupers of the royal and expensive sort. A much more joyful thing to the people than the birth of this boy would have been to hear that his father had fallen into some sort of useful occupation and was in a position to provide for the progeny he sends into the world.” What vindictive drivel! Who are they to voice the opinions of the people any more than I? I screwed up the disgusting rag and tossed it out of the window and picked up the British Medical Journal instead.

Lest anyone suspect that I have morbid interests, let me hasten to declare that I am not a regular reader of the medical press. I happened to have a copy with me that was more than a week old. Francis Knollys had slipped it into my attaché case with the suggestion that I would find something of interest inside, and I had not troubled with it until then. It turned out to be a comment on Fred Archer’s suicide. Speaking of the alleged typhoid that afflicted the jockey, it read, “This disease is so associated in the minds not only of the public, but the medical profession, with prostration and low, muttering delirium that the fact that acute delirium with delusions, usually of a suicidal character, some­times comes on during the early stage, will be new to many.” I trust that the irony of this piece is not lost on my readers; more support, if any were needed, that the tragedy was not medical in origin.

At Sandringham on Monday morning, I commended Knollys on finding the piece. The trouble he’d taken to bring it to my attention was, I had decided, an indication on his part that he now accepted my involvement in the matter, even if he could not wholeheartedly support it. I asked him what engagements I had this week. Before he answered, I added, mindful of Myrtle, “.

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