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Authors: John Gardner
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Suzie. She wondered if this was at the root of the problem.
Cathy and Dennis Free were banished to quarters in the rear of the hotel, but Tommy said all four of them would lunch together in the large dining room. “One-ish.” He told them. The others, at The Blue Boar, would have to fend for themselves.
While Tommy was welded to the telephone in his room, giving instructions and talking to Scotland Yard, Suzie was content to slip away and join Cathy Wimereux for a pre-lunch glass of sherry in the long Coffee Room: the place where she had taken tea with Tommy on their visit back in August.
For the first time that day Suzie relaxed and found herself pouring out her reasons for joining the Met, talking about her rise to a responsible position in the Reserve Squad.
She had joined the Metropolitan Police almost in a fit of pique. In the late 1930s her beloved father had died in a road accident within sight of his Georgian house, Larksbrook, outside Newbury. With his death the spoiled idyll of Suzie’s pampered middle class life came close to destruction. A year later, her mother, Helen, announced she was going to marry for a second time, her choice being the totally unsuitable ‘Galloping Major’ as Suzie and her sister Charlotte called the portly, strutting, fussy little Ross Gordon-Lowe DSO.
Charlotte was already away from home, married with two children – one of them gravely handicapped – and Suzie, goaded by her dislike of her mother’s new husband, and after a furious row with him, took the easy way out by enlisting in the Met (“I can always arrest the little bugger”). She rose quickly through WPC to a posting with CID as a Woman Detective Sergeant, and from there to Tommy Livermore’s Reserve Squad, discovering on the way that she had been earmarked for promotion by an unlikely cabal of senior officers with an eye to what would most benefit the force in future years.
Cathy already knew about the events of Christmas 1940 when Charlotte had tragically died, the children now cared for by Helen and the odious Gordon-Lowe.
Now in spite of some pointed questions, Suzie did not go into the details of her long affair with Tommy Livermore, and the fact that she shared her London bolthole in Upper St Martin’s Lane, with her boss. Suzie, however, got the impression that Cathy already knew most of the details of that side of her life and merely wanted them confirmed.
It was only when Tommy and Dennis Free arrived for lunch that she realised how Cathy had quietly loosened her tongue and drawn out her life story with a minimum of fuss, proving that Cathy Wimereux was a skilled and cunning copper: one to be watched, Suzie thought.
At just before one o’clock they sat down to lunch under the careful ministrations of the head waiter – in fact the only waiter – the saturnine Harris who, after he’d served the first course, told Tommy the manager would like a word.
“I’m free at the moment if he’d like to interrupt my lunch.” Tommy snapped as Harris removed his soup plate. Like the Demon King in pantomime the manager – a short, plump man in need of a haircut, and with a moustache that seemed to be wearing him instead of vice versa – arrived in the dining room just as Tommy looked at the menu to identify what had been set before him by way of an entrée. The menu said Jambon Extraodinaire.
“It certainly is most extraordinaire,” Tommy muttered as the manager gave a small cough to indicate he was there, shifting from foot to foot beside Tommy’s chair.
“Yes?” Tommy barked and the manager coughed again.
“Detective Inspector Livermore…?” he began and Cathy raised her head, ruffled as though she had visible hackles rising rapidly. “Detective Inspector?” she all but shouted, while small spots of crimson appeared on Suzie’s cheeks: she never could stand public unpleasantness and they both knew the Detective Inspector error would illicit rage from Tommy.
“Detective Chief
Cathy and Dennis Free were banished to quarters in the rear of the hotel, but Tommy said all four of them would lunch together in the large dining room. “One-ish.” He told them. The others, at The Blue Boar, would have to fend for themselves.
While Tommy was welded to the telephone in his room, giving instructions and talking to Scotland Yard, Suzie was content to slip away and join Cathy Wimereux for a pre-lunch glass of sherry in the long Coffee Room: the place where she had taken tea with Tommy on their visit back in August.
For the first time that day Suzie relaxed and found herself pouring out her reasons for joining the Met, talking about her rise to a responsible position in the Reserve Squad.
She had joined the Metropolitan Police almost in a fit of pique. In the late 1930s her beloved father had died in a road accident within sight of his Georgian house, Larksbrook, outside Newbury. With his death the spoiled idyll of Suzie’s pampered middle class life came close to destruction. A year later, her mother, Helen, announced she was going to marry for a second time, her choice being the totally unsuitable ‘Galloping Major’ as Suzie and her sister Charlotte called the portly, strutting, fussy little Ross Gordon-Lowe DSO.
Charlotte was already away from home, married with two children – one of them gravely handicapped – and Suzie, goaded by her dislike of her mother’s new husband, and after a furious row with him, took the easy way out by enlisting in the Met (“I can always arrest the little bugger”). She rose quickly through WPC to a posting with CID as a Woman Detective Sergeant, and from there to Tommy Livermore’s Reserve Squad, discovering on the way that she had been earmarked for promotion by an unlikely cabal of senior officers with an eye to what would most benefit the force in future years.
Cathy already knew about the events of Christmas 1940 when Charlotte had tragically died, the children now cared for by Helen and the odious Gordon-Lowe.
Now in spite of some pointed questions, Suzie did not go into the details of her long affair with Tommy Livermore, and the fact that she shared her London bolthole in Upper St Martin’s Lane, with her boss. Suzie, however, got the impression that Cathy already knew most of the details of that side of her life and merely wanted them confirmed.
It was only when Tommy and Dennis Free arrived for lunch that she realised how Cathy had quietly loosened her tongue and drawn out her life story with a minimum of fuss, proving that Cathy Wimereux was a skilled and cunning copper: one to be watched, Suzie thought.
At just before one o’clock they sat down to lunch under the careful ministrations of the head waiter – in fact the only waiter – the saturnine Harris who, after he’d served the first course, told Tommy the manager would like a word.
“I’m free at the moment if he’d like to interrupt my lunch.” Tommy snapped as Harris removed his soup plate. Like the Demon King in pantomime the manager – a short, plump man in need of a haircut, and with a moustache that seemed to be wearing him instead of vice versa – arrived in the dining room just as Tommy looked at the menu to identify what had been set before him by way of an entrée. The menu said Jambon Extraodinaire.
“It certainly is most extraordinaire,” Tommy muttered as the manager gave a small cough to indicate he was there, shifting from foot to foot beside Tommy’s chair.
“Yes?” Tommy barked and the manager coughed again.
“Detective Inspector Livermore…?” he began and Cathy raised her head, ruffled as though she had visible hackles rising rapidly. “Detective Inspector?” she all but shouted, while small spots of crimson appeared on Suzie’s cheeks: she never could stand public unpleasantness and they both knew the Detective Inspector error would illicit rage from Tommy.
“Detective Chief
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