“Thank you,” I said, “it’s an excellent cup of tea.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. My name is Cutts, if you should ever be a-wantin’ me. Anybody in these studios will tell you w’ere to find Mrs. Cutts. ’Ere’s Mr. Lathom a’comin’, sir.”
She lurched away as Lathom emerged from his bedroom.
I will admit that the first impression he made upon me was a good one. His appearance was clean, and his manners were pleasant.
“I see Mrs. Cutts has given you a cup of tea,” he said, when he had shaken hands. “Won’t you have a spot of breakfast with me?”
I thanked him, and said I had already breakfasted.
“Oh, I suppose you have,” he answered, smiling. “We’re rather a late crowd in these parts, you know. You won’t mind if I carry on with my eggs and bacon?”
I begged him to use no ceremony, and he produced some eatables from a cupboard.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Cutts,” he shouted. “I’ll do the cooking. This gentleman wants to talk business.”
The noise of a broom in the passage was the only answer.
“Well now, Mr. Harrison,” said Lathom, dropping his breezy manner, “I expect you have come to hear anything I can tell you about your father. I can’t say, of course, how damned sorry I am about it. As you know, I wasn’t there at the time—”
“No,” I said, “and I don’t want to distress you by going into details and all that. It must have been a great shock to you.”
“It certainly was.”