A Meeting of Minds Read Free Page B

clicked, that Bob-the-Builder took the girl for a Weyman too. Which made Beattie feel quite warm inside for a moment. Undeservedly, though. Not that she was gonna correct him and give him the girl’s real name; not without Rosemary’s say-so. Anyway, leave it the way it was.
    â€˜Then downstairs front, in the one-bedroom flats, it’s a Miss Barnes, who’s a schoolteacher. She’s on the east side, and Major Phillips on the west.’
    Beattie watched him make a note, slide his carpenter’s pencil back above his ear and close his notebook. ‘You’ll stop for a bite of lunch, won’t you?’ she invited. ‘There’ll be just the two of us. The young folks are going out.’
    That was the first time Z set eyes on Frank Perrin, later to be encountered often enough in Beattie’s kitchen at the new house. After he’d left, the old lady had made quite a show of wiping down the draining-board after washing-up. ‘Nice feller, ain’t he?’ she demanded over-casually. ‘Got very good taste.’
    â€˜He must have. So watch yourself, Beattie. Unless he’s a widower or a respectable bachelor.’

    The corners of the old lady’s mouth puckered. ‘Ain’t that one of them fancy things you told me about? “Respectable bachelor”?’
    â€˜Oxymoron?’ Z laughed. ‘You’re getting cynical, Beattie.’
    Â 
    They took up residence on the first Saturday in August, sharing a self-drive van for the few items of furniture they intended keeping. Max Harris and an off-duty constable from the local nick came along to handle their heavy stuff.
    On the Sunday Paul Wormsley took possession of the ground-floor flat opposite Beattie’s, his belongings arriving in a plain white van and delivered by a trio of large, uncommunicative men in brown overalls. Wormsley himself remained seated in his sand-coloured, three-year-old Peugeot with all windows lowered, and declined Beattie’s offer of refreshments. When the move was completed he sidled in, blinking through round, heavy-framed lenses which, together with his thick, centre-parted hair, gave the impression of a slightly bewildered barn owl.
    The Winters were due the following morning, Monday being when Greenvale Garden Centre remained closed to the public for restocking, after the locust invasion of horticultural enthusiasts over the weekend. A Pickfords’ van was only the second vehicle to follow them in, sandwiched between the electrician and gas-fitter.
    The purchasers of the two downstairs front flats arrived later in the same week. Miss Marjorie Barnes, who was the plump Deputy Headmistress of the local girls’ secondary school, arrived in a self-drive van and shared all the humping and lumping of modern black ash, chrome and smoked-glass furniture with a large, simple-seeming man who wore a butcher’s apron.
    Major Phillips, tall, thin and silver-haired, with a weathered face that resembled grainy teak, was driven by a smaller and slightly younger, straight-backed individual whom he addressed as ‘corporal’. Their transport was an ancient
Triumph convertible, bright yellow. They too declined Beattie’s offer of refreshments, set up camp in the empty rooms and drank milky tea prepared on a camper’s stove until the removals van appeared, closely followed by the electrician.
    Both new people promptly disappeared into their respective domains after dismissing their assistants, the corporal leaving, with a smart salute, on a Vespa which had materialised from inside the pantechnicon. The following day a garage delivered Miss Barnes’s freshly valeted green Rover.
    There was the expected delay in connecting everyone’s telephones, but by Friday of the following week things had settled to surface normality. Only one of the seven apartments remained empty: that of the upper floor rear.
    â€˜Them ‘Ubbles ‘ave gom and let me down,’