Close Quarters
“PLUTARCH.
‘Even a straw,’ concluded the Dean, ‘will show you which way the wind is blowing. And as there’s never smoke without fire—’ ‘Nor bricks without straw,’ agreed Sergeant Pollock of the Criminal Investigation Department pleasantly. ‘Let’s have all the facts.’ Uncle and nephew faced each other across the table in the Dean’s library-cum-study. It was a pleasant room – tolerant, not over-academic. Marcus Aurelius and Jeremy Bentham looked down from adjacent shelves. Benjamin Disraeli, the Dean’s large black cat, reclined across the round patch of sunlight which fell on the carpet and watched the two men with a deceptive leer.
He was a knowing animal, incredibly wise in the ways of mankind, and he realised that these two beings – apparently addressing themselves briskly to the work in hand – were really engaged in the age-old pursuit of summing each other up, as he himself had summed up many a possible ally or potential rival in his moonlight rhodomontades and dark witches’ sabbaths.
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