Mr Campion's Visit by Mike Ripley

Author:Mike Ripley [Mike Ripley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Staff Appraisals

On entering what Mr Fowler had described as the professor’s ‘inner sanctum’ – a tiny, windowless office, its door sandwiched between two humming green cabinets – Campion recalled how he had often remonstrated with his contemporaries who claimed that because of the fashion for long hair ‘you couldn’t tell the boys from the girls these days’. Now he found himself guilty of a similar, but reverse, ridiculous simplification, for when the two figures working at a tiny metal desk turned to see who had entered, one of the faces to greet him was female.

‘We were told someone would be coming to check up on us,’ said Nigel Honeycutt. ‘Thought it might be the coppers again. This is Tabitha King, one of our geologists.’

‘We’ve met,’ said Campion with a short bow. ‘In fact, we’re neighbours.’

‘We are?’

Tabitha King’s brown trouser suit and short-back-and-sides haircut had momentarily fooled Campion, and when she and Honeycutt rose from their plastic chairs and stood side by side, he noticed that even wearing sensible shoes she towered over her fellow scientist.

‘Sort of. I am temporarily housed in one of the pyramids, but further down the Valley of the Kings in Durkheim. Convenient for the library, but miles away from the pleasure beach and donkey rides.’

He edged his way into the cramped space, carefully placing his feet between the piles of green computer printouts, until he could get a good view of the desk which was covered in loose sheets of white paper to a depth of three or four inches. Some of the sheets were handwritten, some typed, and Campion thought that in the middle of that snowstorm of paper he could just make out the outline of a portable typewriter. The shelves above the desk were equally frosted with loose papers, but also textbooks, badly folded maps and various rock samples ranging from ping-pong to rugby ball in size, several of them balanced rather precariously.

‘And I am not here to check up on you,’ he continued, ‘rather I wanted to make sure that the professor’s magic algorithm was safe and secure, though to be honest I wouldn’t recognize it if it jumped up and bit me in the leg.’

Tabitha King took a half-pace back and turned sideways to give Campion a better view of the desktop. ‘Well, there it is. Help yourself.’

‘Really? I’ve seen neater burglaries. What exactly am I looking at?’

‘Pascual’s rough notes and first drafts of a paper explaining his algorithm,’ said Honeycutt. ‘We’re trying to make sense of it, so we can submit it for publication and peer review.’

‘So you’re writing a posthumous scientific paper.’

‘I know what you’re thinking!’ snapped Tabitha.

‘I’m rather glad someone does,’ Campion said disarmingly.

‘You think we’re stealing the professor’s work. We most categorically are not. If anything, we’re protecting his legacy.’

Honeycutt waded in to Tabitha’s defence, not that, to Campion, the woman needed defending.

‘The paper will be in Pascual’s name which, being honest, carries far more weight than either of ours. We will take credit only as editors, along with the translator.

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