The Secret of Annexe 3 Read Online Free Page B

single room now available on the ground floor of the semi-completed
annexe. And indeed it
was
a bargain: no workmen; no noise; no real inconvenience whatsoever over these holiday periods – except for that omnipresent mud . . .
    The net result of these difficulties, and of further foul weather in early December, had been that, in spite of daily Hooverings and daily scrapings, many rugs and carpets and stretches of
linoleum were so sadly in need of a more general shampoo after the departure of the Christmas guests that it was decided to put into operation a full-scale clean-up on the 30th in readiness for the
arrival of the New Year contingent – or the majority of it – at lunchtime on the 31st. But there were problems. It was difficult enough at the best of times to hire waitresses and
bedders and charladies. But when, as now, extra help was most urgently required; and when, as now, two of the regular cleaning women were stricken with influenza, there was only one thing for it:
Binyon himself, his reluctant spouse Catherine, Sarah Jonstone, and Sarah’s young assistant-receptionist, Caroline, had been called to the colours early on the 30th; and (armed with their
dusters, brushes, squeegees, and Hoovers) had mounted their attack upon the blighted premises to such good effect that by the mid-evening of the same day all the rooms and the corridors in both the
main body of the hotel and in the annexe were completely cleansed of the quaggy, mire-caked traces left behind by the Christmas revellers, and indeed by their predecessors. When all was done, Sarah
herself had seldom felt so tired, although such unwonted physical labour had not – far from it! – been wholly unpleasant for her. True, she ached in a great many areas of her body which
she had forgotten were still potentially operative, especially the spaces below her ribs and the muscles just behind her knees. But such physical activity served to enhance the delightful prospect
of her imminent holiday; and to show the world that she could live it up with the rest and the best of them, she had wallowed in a long ‘Fab-Foam’ bath before ringing her only genuine
friend, Jenny, to say that she had changed her mind, was feeling fine and raring to go, and would after all be delighted to come to the party that same evening at Jenny’s North Oxford flat
(only a stone’s throw, as it happened, from Morse’s own small bachelor property). Jenny’s acquaintances, dubiously moral though they were, were also (almost invariably) quite
undoubtedly interesting; and it was at 1.20 a.m. precisely the following morning that a paunchy, middle-aged German with a tediously repeated passion for the works of Thomas Mann had suddenly asked
a semi-intoxicated Sarah (yes, just like that!) if she would like to go to bed with him. And in spite of her very brief acquaintance with the man, it had been only semi-unwillingly that she had
been dragged off to Jenny’s spare room where she had made equally brief love with the hirsute lawyer from Bergisch Gladbach. She could not remember too clearly how she had finally reached her
own flat in Middle Way – a road (as the careful reader will remember) which stretches down into South Parade, and at the bottom of which stands a post office.
    At nine o’clock the same morning, the morning of the 31st, she was awakened by the insistent ringing of her doorbell; and drawing her dressing gown round her hips, she opened the door to
find John Binyon on the doorstep: Caroline’s mother (Sarah learned) had just rung to say that her daughter had the flu, and would certainly not be getting out of bed that day – let
alone getting out of the house; the Haworth Hotel was in one almighty fix; could Sarah? would Sarah? it would be well worth it – very much so – if Sarah could put in a couple of extra
days, please! And stay the night, of course – as Caroline had arranged to do, in the nice little spare room at the side, the one