Imaginary Latvian Refugee Who Couldn’t Speak English
in George Bellairs’s “The Case of the Famished Parson” (1949)
The bank was a small, low-ceilinged room, simply furnished. A counter, a screen separating the clerks’ desk from the banking part, a cubby-hole for private consultations. The clerk-in-charge was sitting behind the screen drinking a cup of tea and his companion, a guard, was dusting the place.
There wasn’t enough work even for one man and the guard was there to see that nobody ran away with the clerk or the cash. The public side of the screen was covered with posters, like a hoarding.
Buy Savings Certificates. Open a Savings Account; Deposits from £1 upwards. Bankers’ Notice to the Public. Collection of Cheques. Are You Keeping the Roads Safe? Foreign Business Transacted. Boatmen’s National Bank of New York; Travellers’ Cheques Accepted; Sont acceptés ici. Cromwell liked the little bit of French.
“Yes, sir?”
Mr. Topham looked cautiously at Cromwell and his foot drew a little nearer the stud under the counter which operated the alarm-bell hanging on the wall outside. Not that the bell did much good. Last time he trod on the button by mistake the yokels had looked up and said, “Tryin’ out the ’larum,” and gone on with their smoking. All the same, you never know.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Topham? The vicar sent me to see you.”
Cromwell thought that would put Topham at his ease, but it didn’t. The vicar was always sending somebody strange. On the strength of ‘Foreign Business Transacted’ he’d once sent a Latvian refugee who couldn’t speak English and they’d had an awful job getting rid of him. And then last week, he’d introduced an insurance tout, who stayed trying to convince Topham that he might drop dead any minute and leave a suffering wife and family, when all the time Topham wasn’t married. Talked about wise and foolish virgins and having one’s can full of oil in emergencies…
