Spearfield's Daughter by Jon Cleary Read Free Book Online Page B

column, a waste basket of trivia. This story might turn out to be no more than trivial, but she did not want it reduced to a short paragraph before she had written it. “I’ll do it as a feature or nothing.”
    â€œYou have cheek, Miss Spearfield. Okay, go ahead, but I promise you nothing. If it’s any good, it’ ll need pictures.”
    â€œIf it’s any good, you’ll be rushing round there to take pictures.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œAh, that would be telling, Mr. Brearly.”
    He chuckled. “You Aussies never trust us Poms, do you? When can I have it?”
    She rugged herself up against the January cold. She wore her fake fur coat and her fake fur hat, all that she could afford, but she had enough style to make fake look like an endangered species. She did her best to look elegant; or at least not too unrefined to be knocking on the door of the rich, albeit about-to-be-evicted rich. The house in Curzon Street was itself elegant, a town house built in the days of gracious living and leisurely pursuits when society was not divided into halves, the rich and the poor, but into two per cent and them. The two per cent had lived hereabouts, standing on their doorsteps and turning west to breathe the then country air of Hyde Park, turning east to get a nose-wrinkling sniff of them. Cleo was surprised to find that the small brass knocker on the front door was shaped like a woman’s breast. She put that down to the whim of some eighteenth-century blade who had, at least, had the taste not to ornament his door with a pair of knockers.
    A maid opened the door and Cleo told her she was from the Daily Examiner. “I should like to see Miss St. Martin—either of them.”
    â€œMiss St. Martin, both of them, never have visitors without an appointment.” She shut the door in Cleo’s face.
    Cleo stood there unperturbed. She had had doors shut in her face before; if journalists were not so nimble, they would be recognizable by their broken noses. Then, as she went down the few ice-covered steps to the frozen pavement, a taxi drew up at the kerb. An elderly woman in a mink coat and hat got out and immediately skidded across the pavement towards Cleo, who stepped out and threw her arms round her. Both of them thumped up against the iron railings that stopped people, on days like this, from plunging headlong into the basement area. They stood there in their furs, clutching each other like a couple of lesbian bears. Then Cleo burst out laughing.
    â€œWe must look a great pair. Just as well we didn’t finish up on our bottoms.”
    The old lady straightened her hat, which had fallen down over one eye, and clung gingerly to the railings. “Thank you, my dear. I wonder if you would give this money to the driver, please? I dare not trust myself on that ice again.”
    Cleo paid the taxi driver, who had remained in his seat watching the performance: he was one of them. Then she went back and helped the elderly woman up the steps to the front door. “Would you be Miss St. Martin? I’d like to talk to you, if you could spare me a few minutes. I’m Cleo Spearfield, from the Daily Examiner. ”
    Miss St. Martin suddenly lost her warm smile, as if the ice had run up her thin legs and frozen any hospitality she might have been about to offer. “I’m grateful to you for saving me from a nasty fall, Miss Spearfield. But I never talk to newspaper people.”
    â€œMiss St. Martin, I understand you’re about to lose the lease on this house, where you’ve lived all your life. I think that’s scandalous and so does my editor.” She was becoming proprietary towards the Examiner; there was no one in sight to deny her. “Perhaps we could help you in your fight against your landlord’s callousness.”
    Something like a gleam of humour suddenly appeared in Miss St. Martin’s eye. She put her key in the door, opened it and stepped