The Package Included Murder by Joyce Porter Page B

get right down to it.’
    The Hon. Con nodded her agreement. ‘That’s what’s wrong with the world these days,’ she pointed out sourly. ‘Too many chiefs and not enough indians.’ As one of nature’s chiefs, she spoke with feeling.
    â€˜We tried to save,’ explained Tony Lewcock, examining the tip of his cigarette with apparent interest, ‘ but it was bloody uphill work. It’s one thing earning good money at the bench, but you need bloody thousands to put down on the smallest sort of business. Before long you find yourself beginning to think again, don’t you? And the prospect of having a dirty great mortgage tied round our necks for the next ninety years didn’t help, either.’
    The Hon. Con rolled her eyes in exasperation. Really, how the poor went on about money!
    â€˜Then,’ Jim Lewcock broke in wistfully, ‘we had ourselves a bit of luck.’
    â€˜Yes,’ agreed his brother, without bitterness, ‘I crooked my bloody back at work.’
    The Hon. Con’s eyes popped. ‘You call that luck?’
    In the heat of the moment jim Lewcock forgot the precariousness of his situation and patted the Hon. Con on the knee. ‘The compensation, love!’ he explained. ‘Prove it’s the firm’s fault and you’re sitting bloody pretty! And our solicitor – the trade union one I was telling you about – he’s no doubts at all. Tone’s accident, he says, was definitely due to negligence on the part of Bromberg & Sons and he personally was going to see to it that they paid through the nose. And I’m talking in thousands, you know. Well, why not? Our Tone here’ll never be fit for a proper day’s work again.’
    â€˜He looks perfectly healthy to me,’ said the Hon. Con firmly.
    â€˜Not on your life!’ objected Jim Lewcock. ‘He’ll never be able to do the sort of job he did before he ricked himself. Besides,’ – he couldn’t repress a triumphant grin – ‘there’s no bloody law that says you’ve got to rupture yourself for the bosses, is there?’
    This kind of revolutionary talk was usually like a red flag to the Hon. Con but she couldn’t be bothered with questions of industrial loyalty just at the moment. ‘ Here,’ she demanded, ‘have I got this straight or do my ears deceive me? You’ – she jabbed an accusing finger at Tony – ‘have allegedly damaged your back in some kind of sordid industrial accident. As a result, you and your blooming trade union lawyer are claiming some vast sum in compensation. And it is with the money thus fraudulently extracted from your employers that you intend to set yourselves up in the garage business. Right?’
    â€˜I don’t go much on calling it fraudulent,’ objected Tony Lewcock. ‘My back plays me up something cruel some days.’
    â€˜But not badly enough,’ the Hon. Con pointed out, licking her lips as she delivered the coup de grace, ‘ to stop you enjoying a pretty strenuous holiday.’
    â€˜We told you – we was intending to be sunning ourselves on a bloody Spanish beach,’ objected Jim Lewcock. ‘Casting a friendly eye over the birds. It’d have done poor Tone’s back a power of good. It’s not our fault that we’ve got lumbered with this bloody endurance test.’
    â€˜What,’ said the Hon. Con, ‘ would your employers – or the compensation tribunal – say if they knew that he’ – she jerked a thumb at Tony – ‘was hopping around Russia like a two-year-old?’
    â€˜They wouldn’t say nothing!’ snarled Jim Lewcock. ‘Nothing! Why should they? Even the bloody labouring classes are entitled to a bloody holiday once in a bloody blue moon.’
    â€˜They’re not entitled to swindle people by claiming to be sicker than they actually are!’ retorted the