The Killing of Katie Steelstock Read Online Free Page A

votes.”
    “I was talking to old Playfair the other day,” said Gonville. “Jack Playfair. He was one of the squadron leaders in Number Six Group. He’s in charge of the Recruit Training Centres at Horsham. He said the first thing these recruits ask about when they come in is money. What’s the pay? Any special allowances they can wangle? What about free issues? The next thing is leave. They haven’t been inside ten minutes before they’re thinking of getting out again.”
    “The first leave I got,” said Vigors, “was in 1941. One week in two years.”
    “It was a bit different during the war,” said Mariner. “Though I can’t help thinking a year or two of active service would do all these young gentlemen a power of good. Sometimes it makes me sick to look at them. Slouching along, with their hair down to their shoulders and their hands in their pockets. What they need is a sergeant major right behind them with a swagger stick.”
    “It’s not their appearance I mind so much,” said Vigors, “as the fact that they know it all. The other day a young fellow in our office – not even qualified, mind you – had the nerve to tell me that he thought we oughtn’t to act for a man because he was dishonest. I explained to him, quite gently, that it was a solicitor’s job to act for people who were in trouble—”
    “And that half your clients were crooks anyway.”
    “Well, not quite half,” said Vigors. “It’s about time we filled those glasses up again, isn’t it? The same again all round, Sam. And have one yourself.”
     
    Young Noel Vigors and his wife, Georgie, were one of the few married couples who were dancing together. They were both good performers. Noel was saying, “I saw Dad sloping off into the bar with George Mariner and Gerry Gonville. I bet they’re hard at it, yackety-yack, yackety-yack, down with the young, up with the old and what they all did in the war.”
    “Your father was a gunner, wasn’t he?”
    “North Africa and Italy. Quite a respectable sort of war. Better than old George, who spent all his time in the R.A.S.C. dishing out spam and toilet paper to the troops. Not as good as Gerry, of course. They didn’t hand out D.S.O.’s and D.F.C.’s for nothing.”
    It was odd, thought Georgie, how the precise way in which a man happened to have behaved forty years before still seemed to make such a lot of difference forty years later.
    She said, “It’s difficult not to agree with some of the things they say. I only wish they wouldn’t say them quite so often.” She caught sight of the Reverend Bird, who had been cornered by Roseabel Tress and had a glazed look in his eye. She said, “I’ll tell you one thing. It never really seems to work if you try too hard with the young. I do believe the current generation are as shy and as fly as any we’ve ever produced. Look at Dicky Bird. He spends hours every day trying to gain their confidence and organise them and entertain them. But he hasn’t persuaded a single one of the boys to sing in his choir.”
    “Maybe they haven’t got voices.”
    “Then why do nine or ten of them go along once a week to Jonathan’s house and sing songs there? They’re talking of putting on a concert.”
    “Perhaps it’s because Jonathan never bothers to be nice to anyone except small boys.”
    “Or maybe it’s because he’s got a guitar. He’s a wizard performer with it.”
    “Oh? How do you know?”
    “Someone told me,” said Georgie vaguely.
     
    “You should be out there dancing,” said Jack Nurse. “When you’re as old as your mother and me you can sit around and watch the others. Not when you’re eighteen.”
    “Nineteen,” said Sally automatically. She realised that she ought to be as fond of her father as she had been when she was nine, but she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep it up. “Besides, there’s no one worth dancing with.”
    “Mickey Havelock.”
    “He’s just a kid. And please don’t