Page 85 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

I shrugged. “You are clever, Miss Lesley. It is ‘Miss,’ I presume?”
She blushed again. “Yes.”
I looked at my watch. “Well, I do have an appointment upstairs in
a few minutes, so you’ll have to excuse me. Please tell me what I can
do to be of assistance.”
“Are you going back to my brother’s house?”
“Undoubtedly. It may take a while to unearth that book.”
“Then, please, while you’re looking, could you keep an eye out for
anything resembling a holographic last will and testament? You know
what that is?”
“Of course.”
“I know it’s wrong of me to ask you to—to remove it from the
house without her permission, but...” She left the sentence hanging.
I patted her hand. “Don’t worry. You can rely on me.”
“Oh, thank you!” She handed me a card with a telephone number
written neatly in ink. “Please call me as soon as you find it!”
“If I find it,” I began, but she was already off the stool and
heading for the door, turning once to blow me a kiss. I gulped down
the last of my coffee and exited a moment later, not forgetting to give
the proprietress a particularly bland and nonchalant glance on the
way out.
It was almost four o’clock when I disembarked from the
hiccupping decrepit elevator and pushed open the heavily-varnished
door emblazoned ‘Mallard Books.’ Jean Poole, the receptionist and
Fletcher Mallard’s eyes and ears among the office staff, took one look
at me and jerked her thumb toward the executive suite.
“He wants to see you.” Words which ordinarily would have
turned my innards to aspic—but that was long ago, in the morning..
Now I was a major player in the company’s affairs, a confidant of the
boss himself.
I sauntered confidently into Mallard’s office, barely stopping to
knock. He looked up from his accounting reports, a pair of half-
round bifocals lodged just above the fleshy part of his nose. “Well,
O’Bleakley: how did it go?”
“Not bad, sir. You would not believe the mess in his house. But I
have a plan, and if that manuscript is in there, I will find it.” Exuding
confidence (and/or perspiration) I related the afternoon’s encounters
with Art Lesley’s ex-wife and sister.

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