The Throwback

Mrs Flawse, following Professor Yudkin's advice in reverse, added sugar to her list of dietetic poisons and having pressed Mr Flawse to another egg or some more pork crackling, served sweets, cakes and biscuits that consisted almost entirely of sugar. Mr Flawse's energy increased enormously and when not sitting in his study he strode across the fell with renewed vigour. Mrs Flawse watched his progress in despair and her own increased weight with alarm. It was all very well trying to poison the old man by over-indulgence but she had to share the same diet and it didn't agree with her. Finally, in a last desperate effort, she encouraged him to hit the port bottle. Mr Flawse followed her advice cheerfully and felt all the better for it. Mrs Flawse fortified the port decanter with brandy and Mr Flawse, whose nose for a fine wine was acute, recognized the addition and congratulated her on her ingenuity. 'Gives it more body,' he declared. 'I wonder I hadn't thought of it before. Definitely more body.'

Mrs Flawse silently cursed but had to agree. Port with more than its normal quota of brandy did have more body On the other hand so did she, and her dresses were begi

'I wish you'd keep the creature out of the kitchen,' she told Mr Dodd irritably.

'Aye and me with her I dare say,' said Mr Dodd. 'You'd be hard put to it to keep yoursel' warm without my going down the drift mine for coal. If you di

Mrs Flawse had no intention of going down the drift mine to dig coal and said so.

'Then the dawg stays,' said Mr Dodd.

Mrs Flawse promised herself to see that the collie didn't, but Mr Dodd's habit of feeding the beast himself prevented her from putting ground glass in the dog's food. All in all it was a trying summer for Mrs Flawse and she found herself uncharacteristically yearning for the bleak winter ahead. She would have more opportunity for making things uncomfortable at the Hall.

Lockhart had already succeeded at Sandicott Crescent. Having dispatched Little Willie, the Pettigrews' dachshund, to that afterlife about which the Wilsons now had no doubts, he was able to move more easily about the gardens and the bird sanctuary on his solitary expeditions. Mr Grabble, whose wife he had seen in Mr Simplon's arms, was the European manager for a firm of electronics engineers and regularly went abroad. It was during his absences that Mrs Grabble and Mr Simplon kept what Lockhart called their trysts. Mr Simplon left his car two streets away and walked to the Grabble house; when he had finished trysting he went back to the car and drove home to Mrs Simplon at Number 5. Further investigation revealed that Mr Grabble had left an emergency number in Amsterdam where he could always be reached should need arise. Lockhart discovered this by the simple expedient of unlocking the front door to Number 2 with the late Mr Sandicott's key and consulting the Grabbles' bureau and telephone directory. Accordingly, on a hot afternoon in June, he went to the trouble of sending a telegram to Mr Grabble in Amsterdam recommending him to return home at once as his wife was dangerously ill, too ill in fact to be moved from the house. Having signed it in the name of a fictitious doctor Lockhart quietly shi

Mrs Simplon emerged from the front door at the very same moment as the Vicar, driven as much by the Misses Musgraves' curiosity as by any desire to interfere in a domestic disaster, came out of Number 4. His collision with a naked Mr Simplon who had taken his courage in both hands and was scampering back to his own house had at least the merit of explaining exactly what and whom her husband had been doing in the Grabble house. Not that she needed much telling. Mr Grabble was singularly lucid on the subject. The Rev. Truster was less well-informed. He had never met Mr Grabble in the flesh and naturally supposed that the naked man cowering on the ground at his feet was a si

'My dear man,' said the Vicar, 'this is no way to conduct your domestic life.'

Mr Simplon was fully aware of the fact. He stared frantically up at the Rev. Truster and clutched his scrotum. Over the road his wife went indoors and slammed the front door.

'Your wife may have done all the things you say she's done but to beat a woman is the act of a cad.'

Mr Simplon thoroughly agreed but was spared the need to explain that he had never so much as laid a finger on Mrs Simplon by the crash of breaking french window and the emergence of a large and very heavy piece of Waterford glass. Mrs Grabble, in fear for her life, was fighting back to some effect. Mr Simplon took the opportunity to get to his feet and rush across the road to Number 5, a progress that took him past the Ogilvies, the Misses Musgrove and the Pettigrews, none of whom he knew at all intimately but who now knew him by rather more than the cut of his coat. As he stood under the mock-Georgian portico of his front door and beat on the Cupid-head knocker with one hand while pressing the bell with his elbow at the same time, Mr Simplon knew that his reputation as a consultant engineer was at an end. So was Mrs Simplon's tolerance. Her husband's constant absences and lame excuses had combined with her own sexual frustration to leave her a bitter woman. She had emerged to save what she could of her marriage but at the sight of her husband cowering naked in front of a clergyman had decided to end it. And not with a whimper.

'You can stay out there till hell freezes over,' she shouted through the letter box at her nearest, 'but if you think I'm letting you into my home ever again you've got another think coming.'