In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page B

talking to is keen on. As it says in The Salesman’s Handbook , “The haberdasher gets the golfer’s trade by talking, not of buttons, but of Braid.” Isn’t that right, sir?’
        He appealed to a quiet, dark man in plus-fours.
        ‘Very smart,’ said the latter, smiling. ‘And apt,’ he added, with a glance at his own golf clubs leaning against the counter. Mr Egg permitted himself a modest smirk.
        ‘Well,’ said Mr Bowles, ‘from a business point of view, you’re dead right. In a place like this you’ve got to keep on the right side of them you live by. And so I told Hughie Searle only yesterday.’
        Mr Egg nodded. The Twiddleton Mills were a very small factory, reproducing only a limited output of the superior homespun known as Twiddleton Tweeds; but Twiddleton was a very small town, and the Mills formed the axis about which its life revolved.
        ‘Who’s Hughie Searle?’ demanded Mr Egg.
        ‘Best goal the Twiddleton Trojans ever had,’ replied Mr Bowles. ‘Born and bred in the town, too. But he got across Mr Robbins over that business about young Fletcher, and he’s been dropped out of the team. I don’t say it’s fair, but you can’t blame the committee. They’re all business men and they’ve got to eat out of Robbins’s hand, as you might say. And I told Hughie, Bill Fletcher might be a friend of his, but there’s two sides to every question, and when it comes to language and threats to a gentleman in Mr Robbins’s position, you can’t hardly expect him to pass it over.’
        ‘No,’ said Mr Charteris, the quiet man, suddenly, ‘unless you take the view that footballers should be picked on their form as players, and not for personal considerations.’
        ‘Ah!’ said Mr Bowles, ‘but that’s what Vicar would call a counsel of perfection. People talk a lot about the team spirit and let the best side win, but if you was to sit in this bar and listen to what goes on, it’s all spite and jealousy, or else it’s how to scrape up enough money to entice away some other team’s centre-forward, or it’s complaints about favouritism or wrong decisions, or something that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The game’s not what it was when I was a lad. Too much commercialism, and enough back-biting to stock an old maids’ tea-party.’
        ‘What happened to Bill Fletcher, by the way?’ asked the quiet man.
        ‘Chucked up his job and left the town,’ said the landlord. ‘I think he’s gone to live with his father at Wickersby. They’re still using that invention of his, whatever it was, up at the Mills, and they do say it saves them a lot of money, and he wasn’t rightly done by. But Mr Entwistle told me Fletcher hadn’t a leg to stand on, according to the terms of the contract, and being a solicitor, he should know.’
        ‘The way of an inventor is hard in this country,’ said the quiet man.
        ‘Very likely, sir,’ agreed Mr Bowles. ‘I never had no turn that way myself, and perhaps it’s just as well. Ah! Good evening, Mr Edgar. Your dad was in here a few minutes back and left a message as he’d changed his mind and gone back to the Mills and he’d be obliged if you’d go and see him up there right away.’
        ‘Oh, did he?’ said the young man who had just come in. He was a tall, loose-limbed, loose-lipped youngster, somewhat showily dressed, and appeared to have been drinking rather more than was good for him. ‘Give us a double whisky, Bowles, and look here, if anybody asks you, I didn’t come in here, and I never got the Governor’s message. See?’
        ‘Very good, Mr Edgar,’ said the landlord, with a surreptitious wink at Monty. He eyed Edgar Robbins thoughtfully, as though gauging his capacity, seemed to decide that he could just take a double whisky without overflowing, and fulfilled the order. Edgar put the drink down at a gulp, glanced at the clock, which marked twenty minutes to eight,