An Unsuitable Job for a Woman Read Online Free Page B

private telephone here?”
    “In here, please.”
    The woman walked into the inner office, again with no sign that its shabbiness had made any impression on her. She turned to Cordelia.
    “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Elizabeth Leaming and my employer is Sir Ronald Callender.”
    “The conservationist?”
    “I shouldn’t let him hear you call him that. He prefers to be called a microbiologist, which is what he is. Please excuse me.”
    She shut the door firmly. Cordelia, feeling suddenly weak, sat down at the typewriter. The keys, oddly familiar symbols encircled in black medallions, shifted their pattern before her tired eyes, then at a blink clicked back to normality. She grasped the sides of the machine, cold and clammy to the touch, and talked herself back to calmness. Her heart was thudding.
    “I must be calm, must show her that I am tough. This silliness is only the strain of Bernie’s funeral and too much standing in the hot sun.”
    But hope was traumatic; she was angry with herself for caring so much.
    The telephone call took only a couple of minutes. The door of the inner office opened; Miss Leaming was drawing on her gloves.
    “Sir Ronald has asked to see you. Can you come now?”
    Come where, thought Cordelia, but she didn’t ask.
    “Yes, shall I need my gear?”
    The gear was Bernie’s carefully designed and fitted-out scene-of-crime case with its tweezers, scissors, fingerprinting equipment, jars to collect specimens; Cordelia had never yet had occasion to use it.
    “It depends upon what you mean by your gear, but I shouldn’t think so. Sir Ronald wants to see you before deciding whether to offer you the job. It means a train journey to Cambridge but you should get back tonight. Is there anyone you ought to tell?”
    “No, there’s only me.”
    “Perhaps I ought to identify myself.” She opened her handbag. “Here is an addressed envelope. I’m not a white slaver in case they exist and in case you’re frightened.”
    “I’m frightened of quite a number of things but not of white slavers and if I were, an addressed envelope would hardly reassure me. I’d insist on telephoning Sir Ronald Callender to check.”
    “Perhaps you would like to do so?” suggested Miss Leaming without rancour.
    “No.”
    “Then shall we go?” Miss Leaming led the way to the door. As they went out to the landing and Cordelia turned to lock the office behind her, her visitor indicated the notepad and pencil hanging together from a nail on the wall.
    “Hadn’t you better change the notice?”
    Cordelia tore off her previous message and after a moment’s thought wrote:
I am called away to an urgent case. Any messages pushed through the door will receive my immediate and personal attention on return
.
    “That,” pronounced Miss Leaming, “should reassure your clients.”
    Cordelia wondered if the remark was sarcastic; it was impossible to tell from the detached tone. But she didn’t feelthat Miss Leaming was laughing at her and was surprised at her own lack of resentment at the way in which her visitor had taken charge of events. Meekly, she followed Miss Leaming down the stairs and into Kingly Street.
    They travelled by the Central Line to Liverpool Street and caught the 17.36 train to Cambridge with plenty of time. Miss Leaming bought Cordelia’s ticket, collected a portable typewriter and a briefcase of papers from the left-luggage department and led the way to a first-class carriage. She said: “I shall have to work on the train; have you anything to read?”
    “That’s all right. I don’t like talking when I’m travelling either. I’ve got Hardy’s
Trumpet-Major
—I always have a paperback in my bag.”
    After Bishop’s Stortford they had the compartment to themselves but only once did Miss Leaming look up from her work to question Cordelia.
    “How did you come to be working for Mr. Pryde?”
    “After I left school I went to live with my father on the continent. We