31st Of February by Julian Symons Page A

with it?”
    He held up Valerie’s letter upside down, and some distance away from Jean.
    “I’m sure, Mr Anderson.”
    “And it wasn’t lying on the desk when you brought in the mail?” She shook her head. “How do you know? It might have been put under another paper. That’s possible, isn’t it?”
    A tide of colour went up from Jean Lightley’s neck into her face. “Yes,” she whispered, “but I don’t think so.”
    “Now look, Jean, this is important. Are you sure you didn’t see anybody come into my room between half past nine and the time I came in this morning?”
    “I didn’t, Mr Anderson,” she said. “But of course I wasn’t watching the door. I passed up and down the corridor though.” She sounded doubtful.
    “All right, Jean.” He remembered the calendar. “Has that magic calendar of mine been behaving itself?”
    “Yes,” she whispered. She almost bumped into Charlie Lessing at the door in her eagerness to get out. The copywriter looked after her.
    “What’s on your mind?” Anderson asked. “And by the way, where were you at nine forty-five this morning?”
    Lessing looked” injured. “I was at the BM historically researching into the history of shaving. The old English was ‘sceafan,’ perhaps derived from the Latin ‘scabere,’ which means scratch, or the Greek ‘skapto’ which means dig. ‘We’re not going to sceafan any more’–yes?”
    “No.”
    “A shaving tool was first known in the twelfth Egyptian dynasty,” Lessing said imperturbably, “and became common in the eighteenth. ‘The Egyptians had a word for shaving – modern man uses Depilo.’”
    “Don’t keep calling it Depilo, that’s no good. Have you seen Mr Divenga?”
    Lessing grimaced and spread out his hands. “Depilo? De pillow? Ain’t that what you sleep on, no? So there’s nothing to history, eh? Out, damned history.”
    “Keep it up your sleeve. But I don’t think we’ll ever get past VV. Let’s look at that list of names Greatorex has made.”
    “Some of them aren’t bad.”
    They bent over the list. “All these portmanteau names are no good,” Anderson said. “Can’t be patented. And things like Secshave are no good either. But we might put forward –” The house telephone rang and he picked it up. VV’s voice said:
    “Hey presto.”
    “What’s that?”
    Gleefully the voice repeated: “Say hey presto.”
    “Hey presto.”
    “No no. Say ‘Hey presto’ – can you see that at the top of an eight-inch triple? ‘Say Hey Presto – and forget about shaving.’ ‘Say Hey Presto for a silk-smooth jawline.’ ‘Say Hey Presto and no more cottonwool.’”
    “Cottonwool?”
    “After you’ve cut yourself shaving.” VV’s voice was faintly dubious. “Perhaps that one’s a bit obscure. But you see the possibilities. I think we’ve really got something with Hey Presto, don’t you?”
    “I thought we were out for humanity, not humour.”
    VV chuckled happily. “This is human and magical at the same time. Think it over, boy. Then come in and see me.”
    Anderson put down the telephone, and began methodically to tear up the sheet of paper containing Greatorex’s names. Reverton’s square head was poked round the door, for once pipeless. He said with mild interest: “Copy Department having fun tearing up copy?”
    “VV’s had a brainwave. He’s found a name for our anti-shave preparation. Hey Presto.” Decisively Anderson tore the sheet of paper across again, and dropped it in the wastepaper basket. “There go about a hundred ideas for names.”
    Reverton’s square face and Lessing’s round one both looked serious. “It’s got something,” Lessing said.
    “‘Say Hey Presto – and forget about shaving.’” Anderson was ironic.
    “Yes, I can see that,” Reverton said. They were his highest words of praise. “You don’t like, Andy?”
    “It’s not whether I like it – though I think it stinks. But it’s just exactly the line he told us not to work