Off the Record (7 page)

‘But there’s the happy Mr Dunbar.’

‘I’m blowed if I know what he’s so happy about.’ Rackham ran his hand round his chin. ‘Leave it with me. I don’t know what I can do, but I can look at the files again. You never know, they might suggest something.’

Steve Lewis and Gerry Carrington looked up as Molly came in to the study. ‘I wondered if you had finished?’ she asked with a smile. She glanced at the clock. ‘Would you like to join us for dinner, Gerry?’

For the last five weeks, Gerry Carrington had been a regular visitor at the flat. Steve, after that surprisingly acute moment of insight, never mentioned his fears again. Not that, thought Molly, looking at her big, fair-haired husband affectionately, there was anything to be jealous about. She’d allowed herself to be silly about Gerry, which was stupid of her. It didn’t stop Gerry being as pleasant, as rumpled and as undoubtedly brilliant as ever, but it didn’t mean anything to her now. He was simply Steve’s cousin and friend. That was it, she told herself, stamping on the odd wayward contradiction her mind threw up.

Steve welcomed her acceptance of Gerry with frank relief. Gerry was, according to Steve, the only man on earth who could change Professor Carrington’s work from a heap of wood and wires and reams of indecipherable diagrams into a useable machine. And, if only they could negotiate a deal with Dunbar, that machine would make Otterbourne’s profitable again. The two men had been working since lunchtime. They were meeting Dunbar tomorrow, and Steve hoped that would result in a concrete deal.

Gerry Carrington stood up. ‘I won’t stop for dinner, thanks. It’s very kind of you, but no. I think I’d like an early night.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘By jingo, I’m tired.’

‘You’re not the only one, old man,’ said Steve, trying not to yawn in turn. He stood up from the table, stretching his shoulders. ‘Still, I think we’ve got something concrete to show Dunbar. That was a very worthwhile session, Gerry.’ He glanced at the papers on the table. ‘I’ll go through these this evening and put our ideas in some sort of order. I want to check the figures with Ragnall but, with any luck, we’ve got a workable scheme to present to Dunbar tomorrow.’ He walked to the sideboard. ‘Have a drink before you go, Gerry,’ he said hospitably. ‘Sherry for you, Molly?’

‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the glass from him. ‘I’m glad it’s gone well. What are you going to say to Mr Dunbar?’

Steve and Gerry exchanged looks and laughed. ‘We’re going to tell him he can’t have it all his own way,’ said Gerry. He tapped the folder with his forefinger. ‘With these plans I can produce a commercial model but I’m jolly well not going to unless Dunbar puts some more money on the table.’ He let out a worried breath. ‘I can’t tell you how wary I feel about Dunbar. The last few times I’ve met him he’s been unbearable.’

Steve looked at him quickly. ‘So you’ve noticed that, have you?’

Gerry Carrington nodded. ‘It’s unmistakable. He’s horribly smug about something. Maybe he thinks he can get one over on me, but I’ve told him I’m not going to be bound by that disgraceful contract he signed with my poor father. He’s got something up his sleeve, but I don’t know what. I don’t trust him.’

‘I don’t trust him either, but what I want to ensure is that once Dunbar
has
got the machine, he doesn’t simply up and sell his firm to one of the big boys such as H.M.V. or Victrola. Otterbourne’s hasn’t had a new product for years. We need your machine, Gerry,’

Molly wrinkled her forehead, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. No one seems to like Mr Dunbar so why doesn’t Gerry simply make the machine and sell it to us? Or to H.M.V. or whomever,’ she added. She looked at Gerry. ‘I’d rather you sold it to us, of course, but I suppose you can sell it to anyone you like.’

‘Because Dunbar’s got the original model,’ said Gerry. ‘It belongs to him. Unfortunately, there’s no two ways about that. There’s also a question of patents. Dunbar got my father to take out a patent on certain important components that I’ve used. And, although I could say that the two machines are different, the lawyers would have a field day arguing about it in court. Besides that,’ he added, in a different voice, ‘I want people to know it was my father’s machine.’ His voice was very quiet and Molly’s heart gave an unexpected little tug. ‘It was his machine, you know. I’ve tidied it up and made it useable, but he was the brains behind it. He lived for his work and I’d like him to be remembered for that.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘Incidentally, talking about my father, I had a letter from Colonel Willoughby about him a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t got round to replying. I’ve been busy, I know, but I can’t really think what to say.’

‘Colonel Willoughby?’ repeated Steve. ‘Uncle Maurice, you mean?’

‘Yes. I don’t know what to make of it. It was a very stiff and proper letter. He said he offered his sympathies. As he loathed my father, I’m not so sure he was offering anything of the sort.’

Steve grinned. ‘He’s a ferocious old devil but his bark’s worse than his bite. He expects life to be conducted on military lines. I’m quite fond of him in an odd sort of way. You’ve never met him, have you, Gerry?’

‘No. The family quarrel goes back years.’

‘What was it about?’ asked Steve. ‘I never knew the details.’ He paused, delicately. ‘Faults on both sides, perhaps?’

Gerry laughed ruefully. ‘Not really. I know the guv’nor could quarrel with virtually anyone but this wasn’t down to him. My grandfather was a Lithuanian. He was terribly clever but as poor as church mouse. After my grandmother died he found it a real struggle to look after my father. He worked for Sir Josiah Carrington, who owned a string of coal mines. He saved him a fortune by improving his pumping engines and Sir Josiah, as a reward, more or less adopted my father.’ He grinned. ‘Unfortunately, from my point of view, Sir Josiah had very strict views about inherited wealth. He left all his money to found Carrington Hall, Cambridge, but he did provide for my father’s education and bestowed his surname on him.’

‘So your name isn’t really Carrington at all?’ asked Molly. For some reason, that disturbed her. It seemed dishonest, somehow, to have one name and call yourself another.

A spark of resentment showed in Gerry’s eyes. ‘It’s the name I’ve always used. The family name has about nineteen syllables in it, so I don’t intend to change. Part of the trouble was that my father looked so foreign and the Willoughbys don’t marry foreigners. When my mother
did
marry my father, all hell broke loose. My mother’s name was scored out of the family Bible and so on and so forth. I can’t think why the colonel wrote to me.’

‘A sense of duty?’ suggested Steve.

‘Maybe.’ Gerry rolled his whisky round his tongue. ‘In a way, I suppose it was good of him to write. I really must reply. Did you say he was ill?’

‘He’s been ill,’ said Molly. ‘He came back from India a few months ago. The change of climate got to him and he nearly went under with bronchitis. He wrote to me, too.’ She hadn’t cared for that resentful look and wanted to restore the fellow-feeling between them. ‘I didn’t like his letter at all. Stiff and proper were about the kindest things that could be said for it. I’ve never met him, either, Gerry, and, quite frankly, after that letter, I don’t really want to.’

Steve looked at Molly’s disapproving face and laughed. ‘Don’t take it to heart so. He must have been stumped for something to say. A man like Uncle Maurice loathes publicity and he would have hated seeing the news splashed all over the papers.’

Gerry finished his whisky. ‘None of us exactly enjoyed it. I don’t suppose it’ll be forgotten for a long time yet.’ He looked at the clock and smothered another yawn. ‘I’d really better be going. I’ll see you tomorrow, Steve.’

‘Steve,’ said Molly thoughtfully, after Gerry had gone. ‘Did you know Gerry’s name wasn’t really Carrington?’

‘But it is Carrington,’ he said, puzzled. ‘He told us so. I knew about his Lithuanian granddad, if that’s what you mean.’ He pulled her to him. ‘Don’t be such a goose. It isn’t important.’

‘No,’ said Molly. ‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’

In the bedroom of his bungalow in the village of Stonecrop Ash, Oxfordshire, Colonel Maurice Willoughby, late of the First Battalion, The Bedfordshires, folded up the newspaper – a careful reading of
The Evening Standard
was part of his inflexible nightly routine – and, leaving it on the bedside table, got ready for the night.

He was relieved to see there was nothing about that fool, Otterbourne or that lunatic, Carrington, in the paper. He had known Carrington (not that that was his real name, of course!) would come to a bad end.

Neither of his sisters had shown the slightest sense or respect for family tradition in the men they’d married. All the Willoughbys had been service people as long as anyone could remember. It was ingrained in them. Agatha’s marriage to Walter Lewis, a City type, had been just about acceptable, but Edith had married Carrington in the teeth of her father’s horrified disapproval. By jingo, that had been a scene and a half but Edith had inherited the family streak of stubbornness and no mistake. Colonel Willoughby stroked his moustache into place with a wry smile. He couldn’t help admire that in a way. It showed spirit, at least. There was nothing admirable about the Otterbourne’s of this world. These fellers who set themselves up to change the world were all the same: starry-eyed dreamers, socialists and hypocrites, the lot of them.

A spell in India would have sorted him out pretty damn quickly.
Juldi
as they used to say.
Juldi!
It meant quickly. Damn quickly. There was no one he knew now who would understand the word, he thought wistfully. No one who could understand his longing for those days of purpose and discipline, of an ordered world shot through with the intense heat and dazzling colours of India. No, there were very few friends left and not much family to speak of. Carrington’s son – he was still waiting for a reply to his letter – and Stephen, of course. He sighed.

Although Stephen was a likable boy with a decent war record, he lacked the spirit, the grit, of the men he’d known in India. He smiled grimly. This truly was a new world with new ways. He didn’t, he thought, as he drifted into sleep, care much for it.

It was the noise that woke him. He stirred uneasily in his bed, drifting on the edge of sleep. The noise, a stealthy, creaking noise, sounded again. With the sense of danger very near, the need for action pulled him towards wakefulness. He mumbled the word
khitmagar
, but his khitmager and all the servants belonged to another Maurice Willoughby, a younger Maurice Willoughby, who had lived half a world away in India.

‘Koi hai?’
Is anyone there? He said it out loud, abruptly shaking off sleep. He sat up in bed, wincing as he jarred his knee. Arthritis and all the discomforts of old age flooded back. There was someone in the next room. For a moment his hand went to the bell, then hesitated. If he rang the bell, what would happen? Not a rush of able-bodied menservants excitedly offering help, but Mrs Tierney, the housekeeper, sleepy and worried, asking what was the matter. No. He was the only man in the house. It was his house and his responsibility and he had never shirked responsibility.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, listening. There was definitely someone in the next room. Damnit, hadn’t he been told? ‘There’s been a spate of burglaries in the villages roundabout, sir,’ Horrocks, the village constable had said only last week, looking over the gate into the garden. ‘Make sure your windows and doors are properly fastened. You can’t be too careful.’

He reached for his dressing gown and his walking stick. There it was again! He was being robbed, by Gad. Robbed! A cold anger started to grow. He wasn’t a rich man and that some thief should feel free to simply take what he had was beyond belief.

He didn’t light the oil lamp. There was no point giving the beggars any more warning than he had to. In the dim gleam from the wedge of moonlight that fell across the carpet, he half-saw, half-felt his way to the chest of drawers and took out an electric torch and his heavy service revolver. He slipped the torch into his dressing-gown pocket and opened the door into the hall of the bungalow as quietly as possible. He intended to creep out but with one hand holding the door handle and the other his revolver, his stick slipped out from under his arm, just missed the runner of carpet, and clattered to the wooden floor.

Colonel Willoughby drew his breath in with a gasp, waiting for a shout, a thump, a sound of alarm from the dining room. Nothing happened. Slowly, and with one hand against the wall for support, he reached down and retrieved his stick. He’d got away with it, he thought with grim satisfaction. He’d show them. He’d catch Constable Horrocks’ burglars for him. No village thief was going to get the better of
him
. Now for the dining room. He’d didn’t have an elaborate plan of action. No, the simpler the better. He’d swing back the door, switch on the torch and shout, ‘Hands up!’ If that didn’t stop their little games he would be very much surprised. His stick was a nuisance, but he’d manage.

He paused for a moment outside the dining-room door to get his breath back, then, grasping the revolver firmly, lent his stick against the wall, pushed open the door and clicked on his torch. In the brief glow of the electric bulb he saw the burglar’s eyes, gleaming above the scarf wrapped round his chin. Hiding was he? He’d show the feller, by Gad!

The Colonel lunged forward and pulled away the scarf, desperate to see his enemy. The stranger’s face contorted in savagery and, for the first time, the Colonel felt a jolt of fear. He felt the crunch of intense pain, then his world disappeared in a jagged sheet of light.

H
ugo Ragnall stepped into the hallway of the flat in Mottram Place, took off his hat and coat, handed them to Connie, the maid, who was waiting patiently to hang them up and, concealing a yawn, adjusted his tie in the mirror. ‘Where’s Mr Lewis, Connie?’