Read Online The Dog Who Came in from the Cold by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online

could be obsessive-compulsive together, in a companionable way, sharing bottles of hand steriliser, or, if they wished to avoid possible cross-infection—and what obsessive-compulsive would not wish to avoid
that—
having his and hers bottles, carefully set out on the dressing table, lined up, of course, so that the edges of the bottles were in a perfect straight line.
    After this unplanned meeting with Berthea, Caroline set out again on her trip to the shops. She had a great deal to mull over, and when she returned to the flat she found that there was even more to wonder about. There was a note, slipped under the door, addressed to her.
I am having a little gathering tonight
, she read,
just a few people who belong to a society of which I’m a member. Would you care to join us downstairs? Tea and sandwiches. 6:30, for about an hour
. And it was signed,
Basil (Wickramsinghe)
.

14. Basil Wickramsinghe Throws
a Little Party
    S HORTLY AFTER C AROLINE RETURNED home from her unsettling cup of tea with Berthea Snark, a thin, rather dowdy-looking woman somewhere in her mid-thirties made her way to the front door of Corduroy Mansions, peered at the list of flats and their corresponding bells, and rang one. Within the building the bell sounded in the flat on the ground floor.
    Basil Wickramsinghe, accountant and High Anglican, moved to his window and discreetly peered out. By craning his neck and standing far enough back he could just see who was calling upon him. There were some callers he did not like to receive and whose ringing would be ignored—local politicians soliciting votes being at the head of that list, just above so-called market researchers. Or his distant cousin, Anthony, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, with whom he had very little in common and who invariably outstayed his welcome. Today, however, he was expecting visitors—quite anumber of them—and he could see that this was the advance guard in the shape of Gillian Winterspoon, who was coming early to help him with the sandwiches.
    Gillian Winterspoon was the sort of woman who in the language of marriage banns would be called “a spinster of this parish.” She had met Basil during an advanced professional training weekend at the Great Danes Hotel near Maidstone; a weekend during which they had both wrestled with the intricacies of the latest taxation regulations affecting non-residents. It was exotic stuff as far as they both were concerned; neither had any involvement with the heady world of non-resident taxation—or non-taxation, as Basil so wittily called it during the tea break after the first session—but both needed the credit that attendance on the course brought and which the Institute of Chartered Accountants quite rightly required of its members lest any of them become cobwebby.
    “I’d call all this the non-taxation of non-residents,” quipped Basil, “leading to non-revenue.”
    Gillian Winterspoon, who had found herself standing next to him at the tea break, nervously scanning the assembled accountants to see if any of them might conceivably talk to her, had seized upon this remark with delight.
    “That’s terribly funny,” she said. “You’re right. No taxation with non-representation. Perhaps we should all throw our tea into the Medway.”
    Basil smiled at her. He appreciated both the compliment to his humour and the reference to the Boston Tea Party. He introduced himself, and she reciprocated. Each was relieved to find a friend in this room of others who appeared to know one another so well.
    At the end of the weekend they were sitting next to one another at every session. Gillian was delighted to have found a man who appeared to enjoy her company—not a reaction she had encountered in many men, alas—and for his part, Basil found her mild manner undemanding. He was nervous of women and did nothave a great deal of confidence in that sphere, especially when he found himself with high-powered woman accountants power-dressed in