The False Inspector Dew

6

The sign on the flower shop door said "closed". The blinds were down. The till was cleared and the money put away in the safe. Alma was performing her last duty of the day, assembling the bouquet that a fortunate bride would carry into church next morning. Her mind was so full of Walter Baranov that she had almost forgotten it. Her unsteady fingers snapped the head off a carnation as she wired it. She reached for another.

She was more excited than nervous. He had taken her completely by surprise, simply walking into the shop like that. It was as amazing and romantic as the arrival of Everard Monck at the desert encampment during Stella's unhappy honeymoon in The Lamp in the Desert. What Walter had said may not have amounted to much, but the fact that he had come had told her all she needed to know. He cared enough to have found out where she worked.

He must have gone to extraordinary trouble. She had not mentioned the flower shop to him before. She had not made any reference to it on the form she had filled in for the nurse. Walter — she had already discarded his surname in her thoughts — had located the address and he had come to find her: after one missed appointment. He could not have told her more clearly that he desired her. He was a married man, and it made no difference. He wanted her more than his wife.

She was flattered and intrigued and aroused. She was gripped by the sort of recklessness that was so often the making or undoing of women in books. She had always promised herself that in a situation like this she would take her chance with destiny. She would be spirited, vivacious, zestful, exuberant — all those dazzling adjectives that were applied to heroines.

But she had not performed too well at the start. She had been tongue-tied when he had come into the shop. She needed to cultivate confidence. She was secure in the knowledge that she was paramount in Walter's life, so there was no reason to behave like a nervous schoolgirl. She would resist the wild impulse to go looking for his house tonight with the scrapbook he had so conspicuously left on the counter. She would wait till her lunch hour tomorrow and take it to the surgery.

Tonight she was going to take it home and look at it.