Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘Come on, William,’ she said. ‘Bottom. More bottom.’

William looked at her in astonishment. He blushed. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he stuttered.

‘In the sense of courage,’ Marcia said coolly. ‘“Bottom” means courage.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes,’ said Marcia, beginning to unwrap the parcel. ‘You have a perfect right to see what’s in here. What if it’s something . . . ?’

She did not finish. Released from its string binding, the brown paper wrapping fell away to reveal a small, exquisitely executed painting.

Now Marcia finished her sentence. ‘Stolen,’ she half whispered. ‘What if it’s stolen . . .’

It was more of a statement than a question. And when William took the painting from her and began to examine it, he knew that what Marcia feared was surely correct. Eddie had never expressed any interest in art and it was inconceivable that he would have bought a painting, especially a painting so beautiful and so obviously expensive as this.

‘Oh no,’ he groaned, staring at the tiny scene depicted in the painting: the expulsion from Paradise. God, stern as a righteous magistrate, pointed the way; Adam and Eve, chastened and aware now of their nudity, looked back over their shoulders at what they were leaving behind them. It looked a little like the private gardens near a friend’s house in Notting Hill, thought William, but without the signs telling you what the committee decreed you should not do. And we were all expelled, he thought, from something.

‘It must be stolen,’ said Marcia. ‘Why else would Eddie hide it under a pile of sweaters in his wardrobe? And why else would Freddie de la Hay . . . ?’

The tension that had been building up within William now came flooding out. ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous, Marcia,’ he snapped. ‘How could Freddie know that a painting was stolen? He’s only a dog, for heaven’s sake!’

Marcia was not one to be put down in this way. ‘Oh yes?’ she challenged. ‘Then why did he point to it? You saw him - he pointed to it.’

‘He must have smelled something,’ said William. ‘Maybe there’s something on one of those sweaters. Eddie spends time with a young man called Stevie. I’m sure that Stevie smokes all sorts of things. In fact, I’d be highly surprised if he didn’t.’

Marcia’s response to this was to bend down and pick up the pile of sweaters. Separating them, she passed each in turn under Freddie de la Hay’s nose. Each time, the dog sniffed briefly at the wool and then, after appearing to think for a moment, shook his head.

‘There!’ said Marcia triumphantly. ‘You see? Freddie has given the sweaters a clean bill of health.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ said William. ‘Absurd.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Marcia. And with that, she snatched the painting from William and bent down again to hold it in front of Freddie de la Hay’s snout. Almost immediately, the dog stiffened and began to growl. Finally he lifted a paw and pointed at the painting.

‘There!’ said Marcia. ‘That proves it.’

William was perplexed. Freddie de la Hay had certainly reacted to the painting, but what could that mean? Perhaps he had had another job before he had been posted to the sniffer-dog unit at Heathrow airport - perhaps he had worked with the Metropolitan Police’s art squad. Anything, he mused, was possible.

‘I need to think,’ he said. ‘This is getting very confusing. I really need to think.’

‘Of course you do,’ said Marcia soothingly. ‘Of course you do, darling.’

William looked down at Freddie, who gazed back up at him with unambiguous affection. The possibility occurred to him that Freddie de la Hay was merely trying to please; after all, that was what dogs did, and it really was the only possible explanation for Freddie’s behaviour. He turned to Marcia and suggested this, but she discounted it out of hand.

‘Highly unlikely,’ she said.

William said nothing, but thought, what does Marcia know about dogs? The answer, of course, was that Marcia knew nothing. And now she was going to be living with him.

I have a criminal son. I have lost my assistant. My domestic arrangements have been turned upside down. My future, he thought, is markedly crepuscular.

Dee’s Saturday was busy, even if it was not as hectic as William’s single-handed ordeal at the wine shop. The Pimlico Vitamin and Supplement Agency always took a close interest in the latest vitamin stories to appear in the press, since the effect of these was inevitably felt during the week following publication. That Thursday had seen the announcement of the results of a study into vitamin D deprivation in Scotland and she knew that it would result in a run on vitamin D in Pimlico.

This proved to be correct.

‘Three bottles of cod liver oil capsules left,’ said Martin. ‘ Everybody wants it now.’

‘So they should,’ said Dee. ‘But I do wish they’d send us a circular before they made these announcements. Then we could meet demand.’ She paused. ‘Are you taking it yourself?’

Martin shook his head. ‘Should I be?’

Dee looked at him. ‘Your skin’s quite pale,’ she said. ‘Pallid, even. Are you getting enough sunlight?’

‘I thought we shouldn’t,’ said Martin. ‘My dad plays golf with a dermatologist. He says that people shouldn’t be going to Spain and sitting in the sun.’

‘That’s true, but you need some sunlight to manufacture vitamin D. That’s the trouble with people in Scotland. They don’t get enough sunlight what with all that mist. And their diet’s awful too. Look at Glasgow.’

Martin nodded. He was uncertain about Glasgow. The previous week he had been on a train with some Glaswegian football supporters on their way to a friendly. Perhaps their problem had been vitamin D deficiency.

‘Of course, you can get too many vitamins,’ Dee went on. ‘Do you know that if you ate a polar bear’s liver you would die? Did you know that, Martin?’ She made the statement with the air of one giving a warning.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Their livers contain lethal doses of vitamin A. They’re very efficient at making it, polar bears are. They need to be, up there. Poor things. Their ice floes are melting.’

‘And people shoot them,’ Martin observed.

Dee was puzzled. ‘Do they? Or do they just shoot grizzly bears?’

Martin adjusted the position of one of the remaining bottles of cod liver oil on the shelf. ‘I don’t know. But could you sleep at night, if you were a bear, in the knowledge that people were out there, prowling around, hoping to shoot you?’

‘Why do they do it?’ Dee mused. ‘Why does anybody shoot anything for pleasure, Martin? Do you understand it? You, being a man, does it make more sense to you?’

It did not. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But it’s not just men, Dee. There are some women who shoot too. They approve of shooting creatures to death. Ending their lives, which is all they’ve got. Even if they’re just bears, their lives are all they’ve got.’

It was a defence of men that Martin felt he needed to make. Many of the shop’s customers assumed that men did not understand, and Martin resented this. He understood.

Dee did too. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re right. Women can be as bad as men, I suppose. Not normally, of course, but sometimes. They have fewer toxins than men, you know. That makes a big difference to behaviour.’

Martin shifted on his feet. He was not sure that he wanted the conversation to drift onto toxins, but now it was too late. Dee was looking at him with renewed interest.

‘On the subject,’ she said, ‘have you thought about what I said yesterday? About colonic irrigation?’