“Maybe, but why should ’e come pokin’ round ’ere pryin’ into your little affairs-deecur?”
“My what?”
“Sorry, sir, but that’s what a French maid I once knew called ’em. Flirtations, sir. Mashes.”
“Smith, have you been drinking?”
“Me, sir?”
“Well, explain yourself. I never flirted with a woman in my life.”
“That’s what I told ’im, sir. ‘My master’s a regular saint,’ says I, ‘a sort of middle-aged ankyrite.’ But Mr. White ’e wouldn’t ’ave it at no price. ‘Come now, Smith,’ says ’e, ‘your guv’nor’s pretty deep. ’E’s a toff, ’e is, an’ knows lots of lydies—titled lydies.’ ‘Very like,’ says I, ‘but ’e doesn’t mash ’em.’ ‘Then what price that lydy who called for ’im in a keb afore ’e went away? An’ who’s ’e gone to Monte Carlo with?’ This was durin’ your absence, sir.”
“Go on, Smith. Anything else?”
“Well, sir, that rather flung me out of my stride, as the sayin’ is, as I ’ad seen the lydy in question. An’ Mr. White ’as a nasty way of putting you on your oath, so to speak. But I never owned up.”
Claude laughed.