Sublime

It might make things easier if he went down to London again and found Marlowe. Report in, like a good soldier. But he swore he wouldn’t work for Marlowe again. Not after Malaya.

Marlowe’s already here, standing on the grass. Wearing his hat and his long grey raincoat, even in this hot weather. He updates his wardrobe once every hundred years or so. It used to be doublets and pantaloons. Then it became tailcoats and powdered wigs. Since the First World War it’s been brogues, briefcase, three-piece suit. Now he’s smoking a

largish sum was missing (not three figures but four, according to a lady with blue hair who worked in the telephone room) and they’d got it back, nearly all of it, and they’d stuck a lien on his pension. Others said they didn’t believe it—if Alec had wanted to rob the till, they said, he’d know better ways of doing it than fiddling with HQ