The No. 2 Global Detective Read Free Page B

door.
    â€˜Come!’ cried the Dean, clearly relieved. Claire harrumphed and took a step back, subsiding with a rumbling sigh into one of the chesterfields, her back to the door just as it opened. In came a willow wand of a man clutching a small pile of leather-bound books.
    â€˜Dean—’ the man began in a high querulous voice, ignoring Tom and walking into the Dean’s study with quick dainty steps. ‘Dean, I weally must pwotest at this term’s we-allocation of pigeon holes—’
    The Dean was in no mood to hear his protestations.
    â€˜Yardley,’ he said. ‘This is hardly the time. I’ve asked you here to meet our newest member of staff: Tom Hurst. Tom is joining us to help out with Tran and Path, aren’t you, Tom? And you know Claire, of course. Tom, this is Professor Yardley, Lecturer in Formalist Fiction and Socio-Political Critique.’
    Yardley – wearing a well-cut brown suit, a yellow waistcoat and, almost inevitably, to Tom’s eyes, a mulberry bow-tie – stopped mid-stride and, with hardly a glance at Tom, he pulled a sickly and wholly unconvincing smile of joy at seeing Claire.
    â€˜Claire—’ he began, his voice thick with treacle.
    â€˜It won’t work, you know, Yardley!’ Claire barked. ‘I’ll not lecture from RUBBISH.’
    â€˜Wubbish?’ said Yardley. ‘I hardly know what you’re talking about, Claire.’
    â€˜Your book. The one that should never have been published. I know you want me to set it as a course text but I won’t, you know, because it’s
wubbish
. It’s bunkum. You UNDERSTAND me, man?’
    Yardley gaped a couple of times, struggling for breath, before withdrawing a folded square of canary-yellow linen from his breast pocket and dabbing at his bulbous brow. Before he was required to come back with a face-saving answer, there was a soft knock on the door and in came a battered trolley on which some tea things tinkled gently on its top shelf. Behind it shuffled an elderly woman in a housecoat.
    â€˜Here we are,’ she said, more to herself than anyone else. Her voice was grandmotherly and Tom was sure he could smell roses.
    â€˜Oh not those BLOODY old fairy cakes again!’ barked Claire from her position on the chesterfield. The tea lady – her face the shape of a scone, including dabs of flour on one cheek – looked up in surprise. Her periwinkle-blue eyes began to water.
    â€˜But I made them myself,’ she stammered.
    â€˜I thought you might’ve,’ Claire said. ‘They’re horrible. Disgusting. Why don’t YOU BUY SOME IN?’
    â€˜Claire,’ began the Dean. ‘Steady on. Please.’
    â€˜I tell it like it is, Dean, you should know that by now. Her cakes – I don’t like to call them fairy cakes, in the company of Yardley here – are dis-GUSTIN’’
    â€˜Well, Mrs Robinson, I will certainly have one of your cakes. I think they are delicious.’
    The Dean helped himself as Mrs Robinson poured the tea. She was snivelling slightly, and a drop of something clung to the end of her nose, threatening to fall into someone’s teacup. Yardley came and stood beside Tom.
    â€˜She can be wather abwasive,’ he said, referring, Tom guessed, to Claire.
    â€˜Yes,’ agreed Tom. ‘So I see.’
    â€˜I wonder if you have read my latest work? The Pwototype and its Successive Wepwoductions: Magnum P.I., Higgins and the Poly-Industwial in Cwime Fiction Today?’
    Tom shook his head.
    â€˜Pity,’ said Yardley, drifting away.
    Once again there was a knock at the door.
    â€˜Only us!’ cried a bright-voiced girl as she popped her head around the door, a ponytail of gathered blonde hair swinging gaily around her chin. She was flushed from the cold or exercise and someone seemed to be playfully pushing her in from behind. Tom saw she was wearing old-fashioned tennis clothes. Behind her