Read Online Split Code by Dorothy Dunnett - Free Book Online Page B

into the pail and finding a loo brush returned to the pan for some undesirable baling and excavating.
    It wasn’t a Harrington square but a whole nappy, presumably Grover’s, which reluctantly swam from the recess. It brought with it an assortment of unappetizing debris, including a headache powder wrapper, some bits of wood and a couple of assorted sepia scrolls I identified, after a moment’s brief speculation, as portions of a burst rubber dummy.
    Not to let Bunty down, I wrapped the dummy remains and concealed them. The bits of wood and the paper I set aside while I dabbled the nappy. More wood floated up.
    There really wasn’t enough water left in the loo pan to rinse with and I wasn’t going to flush it a second time. I was bringing out Grover’s potty when I noticed that most of the splinters were coloured. I put down the potty, fished the rest of the wood from the loo and put all the bits side by side on the vinyl. They were only fragments, but you could guess, fitted together, they might have made the whole of a very small painting. A painting on wood. A painting of eyes, nose, feet, fingers and something which could have been also a halo.
    I returned, deep in thought, to the potty and held it under the bath tap, my mind still on the picture. A very old picture. One I felt I had seen before. Perhaps because Simon Booker-Readman had some very like it stored in his overflow basement.
    The fact was, it wasn’t a picture: it was an ikon. And Simon Booker-Readman, according to rumour, had just lost an ikon, an old one.
    This one, for example?
    Then, should I call Bunty?
    I didn’t have to. As I held it under the tap, Grover’s potty burst into song. Bunty opened the door. I turned off the tap. The potty, jingling busily, completed its modest recital:
    ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
    Half a pound of treac. . . cle.
    Mix it up, and make it nice,
    Pop! goes the wea . . . sel.’
    ‘Hullo,’ said Bunty. ‘You’ve found Grover’s musical potty. I say, you’ve got the nappy out of the loo.’
    ‘And the other things,’ I said. ‘What do you do, empty your coat pockets into the lavatory pan?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ said Bunty simply. ‘What’s all that, for God’s sakes?’
    I spread out the fragments of unhygienic wood on some loo paper. ‘Someone’s bust up a picture. Grover?’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Bunty with cursory sympathy. ‘Bloody kid. Wrap it up and I’ll shove it down the disposal chute. Or his father’ll lecture him silly. Where is he, anyway?’
    ‘Grover’s with his grandfather,’ I said. I gave her the bundle of chippings. ‘How’s the scene with the parents?’
    Bunty said vaguely, ‘Oh, I explained it all.’ She watched me wash my hands with a cake of Chanel No. 5 that matched the talc in the night nursery and must have tripled Bunty’s aura in the Park, whatever its virtues in cases of nappy-rash.
    ‘You explained the gin and orange?’ I said.
    ‘No problem,’ said Bunty. ‘I said you and Hugo had shared a light refreshment. Hugo’ll back us both up. You must meet him some time. He practically lives here.’
    With difficulty, I remembered that Hugo Panadek was Eisenkopp’s Design Director, and a good boy whom Bunty had kissed, according to Grover. I said, ‘Look, with you and Beverley Eisenkopp in the house, what that man needs is a sedative, not new introductions. What does he design anyway, apart from subterfuges?’
    ‘Never heard of them,’ said Bunty, who had no pretensions. ‘He’s Father Eisenkopp’s toy designer. Didn’t I tell you Comer manufactured toys?’
    ‘No,’ I said. I hadn’t seen a toy in the place apart from the plastic butterflies. ‘You mean I’m going to be sued for criminal assault by the irate mogul of a toy empire?’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Bunty placidly. ‘Come and see. I told him you’d just saved Sukey’s life. Grover’s always trying to do Sukey in. He tried to take off her head once with the can opener. This is where the