Weekend at Thrackley by Alan Melville

Author:Alan Melville [Melville, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781464209727
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2018-05-08T22:21:10+00:00

XV

Jacobson, slightly drunk, was sitting on his bed, clad in a pair of unnecessarily thick flannel pyjamas and reading the sporting page of the Daily Observer when Burroughs opened the door of his bedroom.

“What the hell d’you want at this time of night?” asked Jacobson.

“Have you got the spare bunch of keys, Jacobson? I’ve left my watch in the garage.”

“Why not go on leaving it there?”

“And rely on you waking me up in the morning? No fear. Anyway, I’ll have to open up the garage for the boss coming home.”

“He won’t be home to-night,” said Jacobson, launching an attack on his toe-nails with a large pair of scissors.

“Why not? He phoned, didn’t he? Said he’d be back about one o’clock.”

“When you’ve known Carson as long as I have,” said Jacobson, “you’ll know that if he goes out with a bird he don’t come back the same night. It’s an old Carson custom. Got a pair of sharp scissors on you? These is as blunt as hell.”

“Sorry. Get you a pair from the kitchen, if you like.”

“Doesn’t matter. I wish to blazes there was some women servants in this ruddy house. Wouldn’t need to keep cutting my toe-nails if there was someone to darn my socks.”

“That’s so. What about that key?”

“Over there, on the dressing-table. Bring it back, mind—boss said I wasn’t to give those keys to nobody. Go on, take the whole damned bunch.”

Burroughs, the chauffeur, took the whole damned bunch. He said “Good night” politely enough to Jacobson and received no reply, for the butler had passed from his manicuring operations to the inspection of a coming corn on the big toe of his left foot. So Burroughs slammed the door behind him, and in the same movement as the slamming of the door he inserted what he devoutly prayed to be the right key in the lock of Jacobson’s door, and turned it quietly to the right. Inside the room the butler pulled the sheets up over his body and resumed his reading of April Shower’s chance in the 3.15 at Bogside to-morrow. The boss might be out with what Jacobson referred to as a bird, that damned idiot Burroughs might choose to spend the night looking for watches in garages, the rest of Edwin Carson’s guests might ring for bath salts or hot water bottles or whiskies-and-sodas until they were puce in the face… Jacobson was comfortably installed in his bed and had no intention of leaving that bed. Even if he had had any intentions of the kind, he could scarcely have carried them out. For in the passage outside, Burroughs, the chauffeur, was slowly extracting what had proved to be the correct key from the keyhole. “That’s you settled for the night, you ugly old sinner,” said Burroughs, and dropped the bunch of Thrackley’s keys into his trouser pocket. A very promising start, he thought.

He ran downstairs and let himself out of the house by the French windows which led from the lounge. Better go to the garage, he thought, in case comrade Jacobson became suspicious.

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