Late of the Payroll

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Inspector Graham Rase sat back on the green leather sofa that ran along the wainscotted wall. He was in the Reading Room of the Club, itself a part of the Royal Hotel and the closest thing that Southney, the town he lived in, had to a gentleman’s club of the old definition. Not that they had yet been reached by anything of the newer definition, of which he was rather glad he considered, as he watched the air move across the large quiet space of the room before him.

‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ asked Parris, the ancient steward of the sanctum.

‘No, thank you, I must be off soon.’

‘Very well,’ answered the man leaving as quietly as he had arrived.

Grey, as he preferred to be known, had been invited to join upon becoming Acting Inspector, and had retained the membership after being confirmed in that role — a side-benefit, for the bestowing of which, he was almost as grateful to his employers as for giving him the job itself. It was his Superintendent Rose, a Clubman himself, who both promoted and proposed him.

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