Heil Harris!

colonel never sings first world war songs.
    “What the bloody hell’s going on?” he demanded as he fell through the door. “Don’t you people know that it’s half past three?”
    There were twenty or thirty people in the officers’ mess, half of them apparently policemen, and one of them dead. He was under a white sheet in the middle of the floor.
    “Colonel Hayburn?” asked a superintendent. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident. One of your men has been murdered.”
    “One of my men?” he mumbled. “What was he doing in the officers’ mess?”
    “A captain, actually. Name of Flamborough. Did you know him?”
    “Course I did. I’m the colonel. Knew old Freddie well. How did he cop it?”
    “I’m afraid he was strangled.”
    “Silly bugger. How can you strangle someone — I mean, he must have lost a fight or something. Unless he was drunk. I want a full report on this incident.” Emma sidled away while he was talking to the superintendent. She had seen the debonair character lounging in the corner with Cynthia and smoking a panatella. She was looking forward to meeting him.
    But he looked up as she approached. “Mrs. Peel,” he said superfluously, “we’re needed.”
     

Girl in a hot pink dress
     
    Steed looked up from the dining table and smiled. “While you’ve been living, going to parties in fancy dress and gadding about with Colonel Haystack, I’ve been doing a little research.”
    Emma nodded patiently. “The name is Hayburn. And I still don’t understand how you were on the scene of the crime last night.”
    “I stumbled across the Werewolves when a despatch rider was killed down the lane. And the more I thought about it,” he said complacently, “the more dubious it seemed. Sol pottered about. I spoke to his commanding officer, who denied knowing what a Werewolf was, and that convinced me that he knew quite a bit. After all, ask most innocent people what is a Werewolf and they’ll start telling you about the Caucasian legend, night of the full moon, Mr. Hyde stuff. Whereas Colonel Hayseed said he didn’t know anything.”
    “Hayburn.” Emma tucked into the food and let him continue with the explanations. It kept him happy. He was turning into a man of logic and intellect since he began writing his history of the second world war. “I say,” she interrupted suddenly, “you could call your book Intelligence Is Not Enough.”
    “Mrs. Peel, your Squab a la Soleil will be getting cold.” He sipped a glass of white wine and the frown was replaced by a contented smile. “I had these hens specially sent up from Cornwall on Monday. No other birds are quite the same.”
    “Delicious,” she pronounced. “The nice thing about your hospitality is that the food is always excellent. This old house is draughty, I expect it’s damp, and you have to walk about on your knees to avoid the beams. But the food is always superb.”
    Steed looked around with injured pride. “I had the House & Garden people down here last week. They were vastly impressed. I told them that next Christmas I shall roast an ox over the fire.” He nodded impressively. “Of course, I didn’t show them the garden. Some aspects of the all-round man are not in my nature.”
    “You should get a man in,” said Emma.
    “I suppose so. But I regard those weeds as a challenge. One of these weekends, I tell myself, I shall buy a spade or whatever one needs and I shall attack the indiscipline of nature and restore order. It would be admitting defeat to hire a man.”
    When the four course lunch was finished they retired to the sitting room for brandy and coffee. Steed glanced through the files from the Jubilee Street headquarters and clucked from time to time. While she waited Emma browsed through the books and blew dust off the porcelain. Steed had a woman, three mornings a week, but she didn’t do very much polishing. Two days’ washing up, probably, and God knows how much laundry, followed by a quick sweep round if there was time. Emma smiled at the abridged Gibbon on the desk beside Carlyle’s History of the French devolution. Steed was finding out how history should be written. The thunderous phrase and the mighty rebuke to dead statesmen.
    “Tonight there was a sensation,” Steed suddenly read aloud. “A colour supplement girl in a multicoloured camel coat and a hot pink dress broke up the meeting. She jeered at the fascists for being negative. Afterwards she drank the colonel under the table