Mummy put down her cup. ‘If Tony Lloyd marries this woman in Palma .’
‘He will,’ said Johnson, removing his pipe from his mouth. ‘We checked up on that. The liaison has gone on for years, they have a child, as a matter of fact. Lloyd was afraid it would put out Gil and Janey, and the woman was afraid of cramping Lloyd’s style. If things go well out there just now, I imagine he’ll move her and the child in.’
Mummy’s face remained perfectly amiable.
‘It’ll throw Janey onto your market, darling. No more pouring vodka martinis for Russians.’
“The Russians,’ said Derek suddenly. ‘Were they ?’
‘They were,’ Johnson said, ‘in Spain on a perfectly innocent errand, but of course, would hardly miss the chance of examining the goods. I’m quite sure Austin gave them a good look at the machinery while they were all in the gallery, and they were able to report back to Moscow that the exhibition should be given every possible welcome in the course of its European tour. That was all they wanted: they couldn’t possibly have smuggled out anything quite so bulky. And since the real secrets were in the assembly and the content of the metal, no real harm has resulted. You think a good deal, don’t you, of your work?’
‘Yes,’ said Derek. ‘It’s satisfying. I’m not a big, forceful character. I like a quiet life.’
‘You haven’t had much of a quiet life recently,’ Johnson said. ‘I don’t see that either of your parents could have done any better than you did. Didn’t you enjoy it at all?’
‘Bits of it,’ said Derek, and his mouth gave a twitch.
I didn’t catch Mummy’s eye. I felt, rightly or wrongly, that another problem was on its way to solution.
‘And what about Sarah?’ Johnson said. ‘Have you been casting the runes? What will you do with your money?’
‘Big joke,’ I said, and pulled my fingernails out of my mouth. I was trying to grow them, but Lord Luck hadn’t helped. Lucky day for all money transactions, it had said. But you will need to take family matters a little more seriously.
I said, with gloom: ‘Four pounds ten in the bank, and a week’s half-rent owing to Flo.’
‘Daddy’s money, sweetheart,’ said my mother. ‘He left you all his money. He knew Derek could earn all he needed.’
I fixed my eyes on Janey’s collection of woven straw skulls, and they stared back, their long black and red wigs dangling beneath them.
Wait. Of course. Spy money. He’d offered Derek five thou.
I said: ‘Enough for a flat?’
‘Yup.’
‘Enough for a car? Maybe an E-type?’
‘I hear these are looked on as a little bit common, She-she,’ said my mother. ‘I believe souped-up Minis are said to be groovy, if the rod doesn’t snap. But anyway, you can get it. Maybe not a mink coat every year, and you can’t join Annabel’s, but a nice comfortable existence. You can give up your cooking.’
‘Oh.’
It had seemed to me that I could never give up cooking, except by marrying money. All the other things I was good at were unmarketable, except to a husband. And even cooking, I knew, would never bring me the income I needed, to live in the way my friends did, without cadging to do it.
I thought about it, and I made a sudden, peculiar discovery.
I said: ‘But I like cooking, you know. I like to organise people and help them and sort of give them surprises. I’ll maybe just keep it on.’
‘Do you suppose,’ Johnson said, ‘that you are one of the few mixed-up brats of this world whose morals will actually improve with a large gift of money? What about Gilmore?’
‘I will thank you,’ said Mummy, rising and feeling for a cheroot, ‘to lay off young Gilmore. I have him in hand.’
I got up, too. ‘What do you mean, you have him in . . .?’
‘I mean,’ said Mummy, coldly, ‘that I am placing my business interests, such as they are, in that young man’s hands, and I am going to see that he works at them. He has the makings of a real fine executive, if he would keep his mind off sex and fast cars and tennis. I don’t wish him disturbed.’
I stood, with my hands hanging by my sides.
‘You’ve moved over from poets?’
‘You can have them,’ said Mummy.
‘You’re welcome,’ she added.
I stared at her.
‘Why? A loss leader to inveigle me into the business?’
‘What business?’ said Mummy.
‘A partnership,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Join her, Sarah. Together, you and your mother will fell your men like a two-handed chain saw.’
Synopses of ‘Johnson Johnson’ Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Ibiza Surprise
Life in Ibiza can be glorious and fast, especially for those who have money. Sarah Cassells is an intelligent girl and has many admirers. Having completed her training as a chef, she hears of her father’s violent death on the island, and refuses to believe it when told it was suicide. She becomes involved with a series of people who might be able to shed some light on events, including her brother who is an engineer for a Dutch firm from whom a secret piece of machinery has been stolen. As Ibiza prepares to celebrate an annual religious festival events become more convoluted and macabre. Sarah has choices to make; none are simple, but fortunately Johnson Johnson, the enigmatic portrait painter and master of mystery sails in on his yacht ‘Dolly’. Together they may get at the truth, but with murder, espionage and theft all entwined within the tale, there are constant surprises for the reader - and for Sarah!
Moroccan Traffic
The Chairman of Kingsley Conglomerates is conducting negotiations, which are both difficult and somewhat dubious, in Morocco. He is accompanied by executive secretary Wendy Helmann. However, there are soon distractions when unorthodox Rita Geddes appears on the scene. Wendy discovers that there is much more at stake than the supposed negotiations, and finds herself at the centre of kidnappings, murder, and industrial espionage. Explosions, a car chase across the High Atlas out of Marrakesh and much more follows. Of course, the prior arrival of portrait painter Johnson Johnson is in many ways fortuitous, but he has some ghosts of his own to lay.
Operation Nassau
Dr. B. McRannoch is in the Bahamas with her father who has moved there from Scotland because of asthma. She is a savvy and tough young lady who shows much independence of mind and spirit. However, when Sir Bart Edgecombe, a British agent who has been poisoned with arsenic falls ill on his way back from New York, she becomes involved in a series of events beyond her wildest imagination. Drawn into an espionage plot where there are multiple suspects and characters, it is only the inevitable presence of Johnson Johnson that saves the day. As with all of the Johnson series, nothing is quite as straightforward as it at first seems, and there are many complicating factors to grip the reader as well as the added bonus of another exotic location.
Roman Nights
Ruth Russell, an astronomer working at the Maurice Frazer Observatory, is enjoying herself in Rome – that is, until her lover, Charles Digham, a fashion photographer and writer of obituary verses, has his camera stolen. The thief ends up as a headless corpse in the zoo park tolleta. Johnson Johnson, enigmatic portrait painter, spy and sleuth, is in Rome to paint a portrait of the Pope and is therefore on hand to investigate in one of Dunnett’s usual thrilling and convoluted plots that grips the reader from cover to cover. There is something far more deadly at stake than just the secrets of a couture house …
Rum Affair
This mystery is told from the point of view of the ‘Bird’; Tina Rossi, a famous coloratura soprano who arrives to sing at the Edinburgh Festival, only to find a murder victim in a cupboard, whilst at the same time her lover, top scientist Kenneth Homes, has gone missing. Saved from the long arm of the law by Johnson Johnson, a world renowned portrait paint
er and enigmatic solver of mysteries, Tina joins him on a yacht race to the Hebrides - there are connections anyway as Homes was conducting top secret research in the area. Here, though, there is yet more trouble and the mystery deepens as Johnson’s yacht ‘Dolly’ nears the island of Rum, where it turns into a race for life rather than prize money. This is the first title in the Johnson Johnson series and in common with the remainder involves an intricate plot and solution which is far from immediately obvious.
Split Code
Joanna Emerson, a trained nursery nurse, is hired as a nanny, albeit reluctantly, to the infant heir of a cosmetics fortune. She then becomes caught up in a complex kidnap plot. She is also an expert in codes and her purpose is to gain an insight into the opposition plan? But how does kidnapping further anyone’s interests? Commencing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the story moves quickly through locations, as with many of Dunnett’s stories. On this occasion Joanna ends up on a crippled yacht off the coast of Yugoslavia. As always, both behind and aside from the plot and it’s inevitable conclusion is enigmatic portrait painter, yachtsman and former spy, Johnson Johnson. Bullets are flying, most of them in Joanna’s direction. Just how can this end?
Tropical Issue
Rita Geddes is a dyslexic makeup artist whose appearance seems to change with the weather. She is called to Johnson Johnson’s apartment, which he has let to a friend who wishes to use his studio, to fix the makeup of the famous Natalie Sheridan. However, Johnson, who is seemingly recovering from an accident, which turns out to be a murder attempt, is also present - as is it seems a mysterious figure seen by security outside of the apartment. What follows is murder, mystery and mayhem, with Johnson and his yacht Dolly, as always, at the centre. The reader will not be involved in second guessing a simple plot, however, as it is as intricate as fast moving, and far from a straightforward ‘whodunit’. The journey through this gripping story also moves from London to Madeira and the West Indies with equal pace.
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Dorothy Dunnett, An Ibiza Surprise: Dolly and the Cookie Bird; Murder in the Round
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