Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Read Free Page A

the door and was gone.

CHAPTER TWO
    11.11 AM —11.35 AM
    W ith the banging of the door behind Phil, the door also banged on Miss Pettigrew’s exhilarating feeling of adventure, romance and joy. She felt suddenly tired, inefficient and nervous again. She had only been allowed the privilege of seeing romance for a short time, but it was not really her portion in life. Now all the practical, terrifying worries of her daily life poured back into her mind. She was now the applicant for a post and Miss LaFosse her possible employer. She would never learn who Phil was, or what his last name was, or why Miss LaFosse so urgently wanted him away when she so obviously enjoyed his kisses.
    She pushed back a wisp of straying hair with shaking fingers and gathered herself together for the always terrifying ordeal of stating her negligible qualifications.
    “About…” began Miss Pettigrew with an attempt at firmness.
    Miss LaFosse swooped down on her and caught her hands.
    “You’ve saved my life. How can I thank you! You’ve saved more than my life. You’ve saved a situation. I was utterly lost without you. I never could have got him away myself. I can never repay you.”
    The remembrance of stern dictums, “To succeed, seize opportunity when it knocks,” came into Miss Pettigrew’s mind. With the last remnants of her courage she began feebly, “But you can…”
    Miss LaFosse didn’t hear her. She began to speak urgently and dramatically, but Miss Pettigrew could see that laughter lit the backs of Miss LaFosse’s eyes as much as to say she quite realized she was hopeless but hoped Miss Pettigrew would humour her.
    “Is your pulse fluttering?” asked Miss LaFosse. “Is your eyesight excellent?”
    Miss Pettigrew’s pulse was fluttering, but she thought, “One lie today, why not two?”
    “My pulse is not fluttering,” said Miss Pettigrew, “And my eyesight is excellent.”
    “Oh!” said Miss LaFosse in great relief. “I knew you were the calm kind. Mine is, so I know I’m too agitated to see. You know the way it is in detective books. You’ve cleared everything away, or think you have, then the detectives go around snooping and they discover a pipe or analyse some ash and find it’s cigar ash and then they say, ‘Ha! So you smoke a cigar now, do you, miss?’ And you’re done for.”
    “I see,” said Miss Pettigrew, not seeing at all, completely bewildered, and with visions of policemen, sergeants, detectives, descending on Miss LaFosse’s flat.
    “No you don’t. I must explain everything. Nick’s coming this morning. At least I’m perfectly certain he’ll come, just to try and catch me out. He’s wickedly jealous.”
    She explained this with the kind of tone that said, “There, I’ve told all, confessed all. Now I’m completely at your mercy, but I know you won’t fail me.”
    Miss Pettigrew, completely submerged in unknown waters, did her best to surmount the waves.
    “You mean another young man is coming this morning?” she questioned faintly.
    “That’s it,” said Miss LaFosse in relief. “I knew you’d understand. Will you clear everything away, every single thing down to hair castings, that might faintly hint another man has been present.”
    The waters nearly went over Miss Pettigrew’s head, but she managed a weak, faltering voice.
    “The safest course would be not to let him in.”
    “Oh. I couldn’t do that.”
    “Why not?” questioned Miss Pettigrew in surprise.
    “I’m sort of afraid of him,” said Miss LaFosse simply.
    “If,” said Miss Pettigrew with brilliant courage, “if you are afraid of this young man, I…I will go to the door for you and say very firmly you are ‘not at home ‘.”
    “Oh dear!” Miss LaFosse wrung her hands. “But I don’t think he’ll knock. You see he’s got a key. He’ll just walk in. And I couldn’t in any case. He pays the rent, you know. You see how it is.”
    “I see,” said Miss Pettigrew in a small voice. She did see.