Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain Read Free

enjoyed appearing naïve. He could never quite make up his mind. Possibly she was both at the same time, or both in alternation. Whatever she was, she was irresistible, so he might as well give up speculating.
    It was he who remembered, as he was leaving, that there was one more person who ought to be notified. The girl wasn’t Terrell’s daughter, of course, she belonged to Chloe’s first marriage, and her father had been a quite distinguished scholar in his provincial way, Professor Henry Barber, the sort of middle-aged, shabby, eccentric, companionable wit for whom young and ambitious actresses fall with a resounding but transitory bang. He’d died when his daughter was twelve years old, which meant she was turned eighteen now. She hadn’t, by all accounts, got on at all well with her first step-father. Took herself off to Oxford, so Chloe said, largely to get away from him; after old Barber’s unpredictable and exciting vagaries, this one’s cool, correct orthodoxy had infuriated her. Newcombe hoped profoundly that the second stepfather was going to be more of a success with her, but the thought of confronting a self-possessed and hypercritical eighteen-year-old frightened him more than he would have liked to admit.
    “I suppose we ought to let Tossa know as soon as possible,” he said. The “we” was partly a deliberate assumption of Chloe’s responsibilities, and partly a pious prayer for harmony.
    “Yes, of course, I’ll call her in the morning. It’s much too late to-night.
She’ll
take it in her stride,” said Chloe sunnily. “She never could bear him.”
     
    Adrian Blagrove came back from his leave on Monday morning, clocked his mechanical way through the Marrion Institute’s defences in depth, and reported prompt at nine to his own office in the secretariat. He had been there no more than three minutes when he was sent for to Sir Broughton Phelps’s office in the most august and sacred recesses of Building One, and acquainted first with the fact of Herbert Terrell’s demise, and then with the probability of his own permanent appointment to the vacancy thus created. Both pieces of information he received with the appropriate awe, gravity and gratification, nicely tempered with a modesty which was far from native to him. Bursting with health and lightness of heart after his fortnight’s holiday, he felt capable of virtuoso performances. This job was what he had wanted for years. The frivolity with which he played his graceful little comedy of accepting it was entirely unconnected with the tenacity with which he would hold fast to it, and the intensity with which he would perform it.
    “The appointment is at present temporary, pending confirmation. You understand that, of course.”
    “Of course!”
    “But if you acquit yourself as well as I believe you will, I can say there’s very little probability of confirmation being withheld. You’ve worked with Terrell, you know his methods and you know the organisation of his office. It’s vital that someone shall be able to step straight into his shoes without a falter in the apparatus or its working. Can you do that?”
    “I think I can. I’ll do my best.”
    He was a lanky but graceful fellow, not as tall as he appeared, but marked everywhere by noticeable length; long hands, long feet, long neck, long face in the best aristocratic tradition. A little like a well-bred horse, but with certain indications that the horse was by a sire with intelligence out of a dam with devilment. He was forty-one, and still a bachelor, in itself a diplomatic achievement, especially in view of the social life he led, and the fact that he was, as the Minister had remarked, old Roderick’s boy, and old Roderick’s only boy, at that.
    “Then you’d better move in at once, and take over. The secretariat is geared to carry your absence a week longer, by which time we shall have made a new appointment there. Well, good luck, Blagrove!”
    “Thank you, sir!”
    He