Читать книгу The Villa in Italy - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 14

The newsroom at the Sketch was a blaze of lights on a dark morning, and a hive of activity and noise, with phones ringing, messenger boys running in and out, and people having shouted conversations with one another across the room.

‘Mr Slattery,’ said a brassy blonde in a tight skirt, as the swing doors opened and Giles Slattery came in. ‘Telephone message. Your bird’s flown the coop.’

‘Mrs Meldon?’

‘Yes.’

Giles Slattery swore.

The blonde, who had heard much worse, took no notice. ‘Her char says she’s gone to the country, to her family in Yorkshire. Jim’s checking that end.’

‘Tell Jim to see what he can find out, but my bet is that she hasn’t gone home. Doesn’t get on too well with Mummy and Daddy right now; they adore Richie Meldon and are very angry with her.’

‘The Meldons are in Scotland,’ called out a lissome young man, who was perched on a window sill and twirling a pencil in his fingers. ‘Staying with those rich cousins of theirs, the Lander-Husseys. There are a few lines about it in William Hickey’s column this morning.’

Giles Slattery hooked his mac on the hatstand and tossed his trilby on to a dusty head of Karl Marx that some office wag had placed on top of a filing cabinet. He sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk.

Where could she have gone? he said to himself. His mouth screwed up at one side as he thought. ‘Put Sam on to checking the ferries. Since she’s driving, she could be anywhere, but I have a hunch she’s heading abroad. Easier for her to hide out on the Continent, out of reach of hubby and the press, that’s what she’ll think. Well, she thinks wrong.’

Slattery rammed one of his thin cigars into his mouth. He struck a match and lit it, then shook out the match and dropped it on the floor.

‘Tell Sam to get on to that airstrip in Kent, what’s it called? Lydd. You can fly your car over to France from there, if you’ve got the money. She’ll have gone to Paris; these bloody women escaping from their husbands always head for Paris. God damn the woman for slipping through our fingers. And get me Mr Meldon on the phone.’

‘Is he back in the country?’

‘How the hell should I know? Just get him, okay?’