for the call and have given you the same kind of snow job over the phone.”
“But how can we find out if we’ve been taken in?”
“Easily enough. Show me the letter. I’ll telephone my British agents and get them to check out the company address and the names of the alleged writers.”
Mother Matilda shook her head. “I do declare, that’s one trick I’d never have thought of in a million years. I still can’t believe Mr. Wardle would do such a thing, though.”
“I’m not saying he did,” said Osbert. “I’m only pointing out the obvious possibilities for fraud. You say the attacks on personnel didn’t start till a month after Wardle arrived. Is he your newest employee?”
“No, we’ve had two more changes since then. Dear old Willie Phee in Brooms and Buckets finally retired, and young Eppie Elias on the raisin belt left to have her baby. We had a lovely party for Willie and gave Eppie a baby shower. We’d been planning them for weeks.”
“And you’ve replaced both Willie and Eppie?”
“Oh yes, right away. We had to.”
“But those two were people you’d been expecting to lose, and they don’t sound as if they were in positions where they’d have the same opportunity for access to the vice presidents as a peel buyer might.”
“No, I have to grant you that,” Mother Matilda agreed. “Also, their places were taken by our own people. Willie’s assistant was moved up to take his place. Edward, his name is. Then Edward’s nephew Throgwold decided there wasn’t much of a future for him at the Scottsbeck car wash, so he applied for Edward’s former job, which we were to glad to give him. Throgwold’s a lovely boy,” she added in parenthesis.
“And Eppie’s cousin Bern’s wife Phillida, who worked for us before she was married, offered to hold Eppie’s job on the raisin line till the baby’s old enough to be left with Eppie’s mother, who’s a perfectly lovely woman and keeps a day nursery; so that worked out just fine. I’ll grant you there might have been something fishy about that legacy of Miss Eagleton’s, but who’s going to start sniffing around to see what’s wrong with ten thousand dollars? So you think Charles caught on to Quimper Wardle, eh, and went after him bullheaded, like the brave soul that he …”
The composure she’d been so rigidly maintaining broke at last. She fumbled wordlessly in her desk drawer for a box of paper handkerchiefs.
“I think Mr. Wardle will bear looking into, at any rate,” Osbert replied gently after Mother Matilda had blown her nose and wiped bitter tears off her eyeglass lenses. “If you’ll give me Wardle’s letters and the address where he’s been living, I’ll see what I can find out and report back to you later in the day. By the way, here are my own references about the security job in case you want to show them to the personnel director. I faked up a couple of letterheads out of the Toronto telephone directory with the help of my home copier.”
That was actually how it had occurred to him that the enigmatic Quimper Wardle might have pulled the same trick with the Worcestershire sauce company, but Mother Matilda didn’t have to know that. She took the letters from him and put them inside a red morocco folder that lay on her desk.
“Thank you, Reginald. I’ll just hang on to these till I see what you come up with at the boardinghouse. No sense going through the fuss and bother of putting you on the payroll if we can get this awful business wrapped up right away.”
“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
Hearing about that emu ranch of Miss Eagleton’s brother’s had been raising the Old Ned with Osbert’s sense of priorities. He loved being Deputy Monk, he sincerely craved to help Mrs. MacVicar’s newfound cousin out of her dreadful predicament. He knew Dittany felt the same way, and he loved working in harmony with the wife of his bosom.
Yet there was the lure of the old Remington. It
“But how can we find out if we’ve been taken in?”
“Easily enough. Show me the letter. I’ll telephone my British agents and get them to check out the company address and the names of the alleged writers.”
Mother Matilda shook her head. “I do declare, that’s one trick I’d never have thought of in a million years. I still can’t believe Mr. Wardle would do such a thing, though.”
“I’m not saying he did,” said Osbert. “I’m only pointing out the obvious possibilities for fraud. You say the attacks on personnel didn’t start till a month after Wardle arrived. Is he your newest employee?”
“No, we’ve had two more changes since then. Dear old Willie Phee in Brooms and Buckets finally retired, and young Eppie Elias on the raisin belt left to have her baby. We had a lovely party for Willie and gave Eppie a baby shower. We’d been planning them for weeks.”
“And you’ve replaced both Willie and Eppie?”
“Oh yes, right away. We had to.”
“But those two were people you’d been expecting to lose, and they don’t sound as if they were in positions where they’d have the same opportunity for access to the vice presidents as a peel buyer might.”
“No, I have to grant you that,” Mother Matilda agreed. “Also, their places were taken by our own people. Willie’s assistant was moved up to take his place. Edward, his name is. Then Edward’s nephew Throgwold decided there wasn’t much of a future for him at the Scottsbeck car wash, so he applied for Edward’s former job, which we were to glad to give him. Throgwold’s a lovely boy,” she added in parenthesis.
“And Eppie’s cousin Bern’s wife Phillida, who worked for us before she was married, offered to hold Eppie’s job on the raisin line till the baby’s old enough to be left with Eppie’s mother, who’s a perfectly lovely woman and keeps a day nursery; so that worked out just fine. I’ll grant you there might have been something fishy about that legacy of Miss Eagleton’s, but who’s going to start sniffing around to see what’s wrong with ten thousand dollars? So you think Charles caught on to Quimper Wardle, eh, and went after him bullheaded, like the brave soul that he …”
The composure she’d been so rigidly maintaining broke at last. She fumbled wordlessly in her desk drawer for a box of paper handkerchiefs.
“I think Mr. Wardle will bear looking into, at any rate,” Osbert replied gently after Mother Matilda had blown her nose and wiped bitter tears off her eyeglass lenses. “If you’ll give me Wardle’s letters and the address where he’s been living, I’ll see what I can find out and report back to you later in the day. By the way, here are my own references about the security job in case you want to show them to the personnel director. I faked up a couple of letterheads out of the Toronto telephone directory with the help of my home copier.”
That was actually how it had occurred to him that the enigmatic Quimper Wardle might have pulled the same trick with the Worcestershire sauce company, but Mother Matilda didn’t have to know that. She took the letters from him and put them inside a red morocco folder that lay on her desk.
“Thank you, Reginald. I’ll just hang on to these till I see what you come up with at the boardinghouse. No sense going through the fuss and bother of putting you on the payroll if we can get this awful business wrapped up right away.”
“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
Hearing about that emu ranch of Miss Eagleton’s brother’s had been raising the Old Ned with Osbert’s sense of priorities. He loved being Deputy Monk, he sincerely craved to help Mrs. MacVicar’s newfound cousin out of her dreadful predicament. He knew Dittany felt the same way, and he loved working in harmony with the wife of his bosom.
Yet there was the lure of the old Remington. It
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