1972 - Just a Matter of Time (25 page)

‘You mustn’t feel sad,’ he said gently. ‘Why be sad?’

‘Put on a tape,’ Mrs. Morely-Johnson said. ‘You are young. You don’t understand sadness.’

He hesitated for a moment, then went into the living room and looked impatiently at the boxes of tapes on the bookshelf. What had Sheila done with that tape? he wondered. Thrown it away? Cleaned it? Was she planning blackmail? He thought of the future days, the weeks and the months ahead while he waited for a telephone call. He took the top box from the pile, slid out the spool and threaded it on the recorder.

The clear, limpid notes of a Bach Fugue filled the living room.

As he left the penthouse, he told himself that perhaps after all it would work out all right. Sheila had gone. Maybe she would forget him. What he didn’t know, of course, was that the damaging tape, labelled The Appassionato Sonata had been within reach of his hand.

Sooner or later, Mrs. Morely-Johnson would ask her next companion-help to put this tape on the recorder.

It was just a matter of time.