Tompkins listened hard and indicated the words were coming from two different directions. He pulled a face before gesticulating they should go back down the stairs.
“None of those voices are female,” he whispered, “I am loathed to find out who is speaking.”
The front door was being rattled and people were shouting. There were footsteps in the hall below.
“We have to go up,” said Filly. Tompkins shook his head and looked down. A figure was heading towards the door. Tompkins tip-toed after the man and just before he got to the door, Tompkins slammed him into the wall, with his head suffering a sickening blow on the light-blue wallpaper just below a picture of a benevolent looking Margaret Thatcher. The man fell unconscious and Tompkins dragged him face down to block the doorway. He looked around and saw the door where the man had come from.
“Tomcat, who is that?” asked Filly from the stairs.
“I think it’s one of Rev Green’s friends, I wonder if there are any more in the room where he came from,” replied Tompkins quietly, “I think it’s the study in which case it locks from the outside and the key is in the lock. That’s a mistake, woof!”
He raced across and closed the door turning the key and putting it in his pocket. Someone in the room knocked on the door, but it was too late. The door was solid oak and designed to keep people out. It suited Tompkins’s needs for the moment.
Filly came to stand by Tompkins and they looked at each other. Tompkins was about to say something when a voice said:
“Well, well, if it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. Tomcat, how the devil are you both?”
Tompkins turned and spied the Rev Green and a man he didn’t know standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“The Rev Green and I presume Mr. Steeple?” he said.
Julian Worker Fiction Writing 