Shattered Dreams (2 page)

Determined to shake off her worries for now, she straightened
her shoulders and, with no firm idea of where she should go, turned
to the left and began to walk.

At
first, she did what she would have done back at Cambley Hamden, and
nodded and smiled at people as she passed them, even though she
didn’t know who they were. Unsurprisingly, the locals in Tooting
Mallow glared back at her as though she had committed some sort of
cardinal sin, and hurried past warily. By the time she reached the
end of the road, she gave up all attempts to be nice, and didn’t
even bother to look at anyone.

Eventually, she neared the end of the road, and stood at the
crossroads for several long moments while she contemplated what to
do now. Houses stretched in all directions, and there were no clear
street signs, or anything, to tell her where she was. It would take
her forever to find the Rectory in Bennington Green, if she didn’t
manage to find someone to help her.

Someone,
somewhere, must be prepared to help her, surely to
goodness?

After
what had happened in the coaching inn, she was a little reluctant
to ask anything from anyone, but it was going to be dark soon, and
she simply couldn’t bear the thought of being outside, all alone in
this hostile environment.

With no
help in sight, she slowly began to walk down the road to the right
of her. Thankfully, she eventually came across two elderly ladies
who had stopped in the middle of the path to gossip.

Tilly
decided to seize the opportunity, and approached them.

“
Please, could you help me?” she asked rather
hesitantly.

The
women stopped talking, and turned to look at her. Tilly shivered.
Their eyes, while not altogether hostile, were not friendly either.
Still, they were the only people around who didn’t seem in a hurry
to go anywhere and, unless she was going to throw herself into the
path of a speeding carriage in an attempt to get it to stop so she
could plead for help, she had no choice but to ask the ladies for
assistance.

“
I am trying to find Bennington Green. Can you tell me which
way to go? I am new to the area, you see.”

“
I wouldn’t be telling anyone around here that, ducky,” one of
the women tittered. She threw a ribald look at her friend, and they
grinned toothlessly at each other for a minute before the woman
closest to Tilly pointed toward the hill behind them.

“
Bennington Green’s up that way. Top of the hill, turn
right.”

“
Thank you.”

Tilly
turned around and studied the long road up the hill behind her, and
struggled not to cry. Behind her, the women had resumed their chat,
and had seemingly forgotten all about her. Tilly didn’t bother to
interrupt them again, not even to say thank you. Right now, she
wasn’t sure whether she would be able to get the words past the
sudden lump in her throat.

She
slowly began to walk up the hill, painfully aware that dread
suddenly dogged her every step.

She
hated to admit it, especially given that there was nothing she
could do to change the situation, but Tooting Mallow was not a nice
place to be.

She
rather suspected that her decision to accept this
once-in-a-lifetime offer of employment had, in fact, been the
biggest mistake of her life.

Harrington ‘Harry’ Tingay threw the letter back onto the desk
with a sigh of disgust.

If it wasn’t one thing going wrong at the moment; it was
another
, he mused with a snort.

He
turned his attention back to the book on his lap and studied the
numbers in his financial ledger again, this time a little more
closely.

Unless
he had started to lose his grip on reality, someone had tampered
with his accounts. A careful attempt had been made to erase all
trace of the numbers he had written in the book yesterday. A small
blob of ink now sat where the number four had previously been
written, and above it was a neatly scripted number three. Although
a decent enough attempt had been made to make the new entry look
like his writing, Harry knew that there had been no blobs of ink in
his book at all when he had closed the ledger the last time he used
it.

If this
ledger had contained details of his personal finances, he would
have lost his temper by now, and had his butler, Dandridge, and his
housekeeper wife, out of the house before he sent for the
magistrate.

Thankfully, the ‘accounts’ in the fake ledger were part of
his current investigation for the Star Elite. The sole purpose of
the book was to gather the evidence he needed to confirm that his
supposed housekeeper; Roberta Dandridge, and her wastrel butler
husband; Charles Dandridge, were fraudsters who stole from their
employers.

Thankfully, his trap appeared to have worked.

He
tossed the ledger back onto the desk in disgust, and shook his
head. How anyone could do such a thing and consider, for one
moment, that they wouldn’t get caught was simply astounding. He
couldn’t quite believe that they had been so blatant about the
changes they had made to the book. It was either extremely
arrogant, or the desperate act of someone who needed to get their
hands on some cash, and quickly.

A part of him struggled to believe that they would be so
obvious about what they were doing. A blob of ink in a book? Surely
to goodness they didn’t think he was
that
blind, did they? The idea
annoyed the hell out of him, to the point that he just had to prove
to himself that his suspicions were correct, and his eyes weren’t
deceiving him.

Could the Dandridges’ really be
that
stupid?

Once he
had closed and locked the study door, he made his way over to the
safe, which sat in the wall on one side of the fireplace. He
carefully withdrew the small notebook, which was an exact copy of
the ledger on his desk, and sat down to compare it to the newly
adjusted accounts.

At least
one whole pound had been skimmed off the fictitious records in the
last week alone. Not much by a wealthy man’s standards, but it was
a heck of a lot of money to someone as poorly paid as a
housekeeper.

Over the
course of time, if the Dandridges’ continued to skim funds off the
accounts like this; they would net themselves a tidy income, in
addition to their normal wages. That didn’t take into account the
money they would make once they had pawned the numerous household
ornaments that had started to disappear from around the
house.

It was a
very profitable enterprise really; if it wasn’t so damned
blatant.

So far,
the notes within the safe hadn’t been pilfered, but he knew it was
only a matter of time before his butler, Dandridge, found his way
inside and helped himself. Harry was confident that Dandridge’s
grubby little fingers would be unable to resist the lure of the
twenty or so crisp, one pound notes Harry had carefully,
deliberately, left visible on his desk for Dandridge to see. Those
notes were now safely stashed, temptingly, inside his
safe.

Now all
he had to do was wait, and see how the Dandridges’ planned to get
their hands on the cash inside.

Was
Dandridge used to breaking into safes? Was he planning to force
Harry to open it for him? Harry almost wished that he would; he
looked forward to the resultant confrontation. As a man of action,
it was irritating to have to sit and wait for Dandridge to make the
first move, but that was part of Harry’s job; to watch the enemy
and wait for the right moment to ensure they met with the stern
hand of justice.

Harry
wished that his good friend, and colleague, Barnaby Stephenson was
there. He needed somebody at his back that he could rely on. He had
worked with his friend on investigations just like this on many
occasions in the past, and trusted the man with his life. It was a
relief to know that his friend was already on his way but, as far
as Harry was concerned, each moment that he had to live by himself,
under the same roof as the Dandridges’ could be another step toward
the graveyard; especially with Roberta Dandridge cooking his
meals.

Movement
outside the window caught his attention, and he watched Charles
Dandridge, his butler, hurry toward the back of the
house.

He had
no doubt that Dandridge had just watched him open the safe, but had
he been able to see the numbers Harry had entered? Harry frowned at
that, and tried to think of an alternative place to hide his small
notebook of evidence. For the time being though, he returned it to
the safe and quickly locked the door. He would have to move it as
some point so that when Dandridge did get inside the safe, he
wouldn’t steal Harry’s precious evidence too.

Right
now, Harry had the serious matter of the letter to contend
with.

He had
just resumed his seat at his desk, and was about pick the letter up
to read it again, when there was a knock on the door. He glanced up
with a frown. Rather than instruct the butler to enter, he took a
moment to pour himself a large brandy, then opened the door
himself.

“
What?” He snapped, and frowned at Dandridge from his position
in the doorway.

“
Would sir like anything?”

“
Besides to be left alone, you mean?” Harry growled. “No,
thank you. I will ring the bell if I need anything. Have you
polished the silver?”

“
The silver?” Dandridge replied, clearly confused.

Harry
shook his head and wondered how the man hoped to fool anyone into
thinking he was a butler if he never carried out any of the
butler’s duties. Even though larger houses didn’t require the
butler to polish the silver, in Harry’s house it was part of the
butler’s job.

“
The silver. You are employed here to undertake some of the
housekeeping duties along with your wife. That means one of you has
to polish the bloody silver. I take it from the blank look on your
face that you haven’t. Get on with it,” he snapped.

He
didn’t bother to give the butler time to reply before he stepped
back and slammed the door in his face.

“
Jesus,” he swore as he settled into his chair behind his
desk.

He took
a moment to savour his brandy and calm his temper before he studied
the letter again. The solicitor’s letter, which had arrived only an
hour ago, informed him of the demise of one of his cousins and, as
a result, Harry had inherited a large house, along with its
contents, and acres upon acres of land in Cumbria.

Did he
want a house? Did he need a house?

He
sighed and stared out of the window. He enjoyed his job, he really
did but, of late, had started to realise that he had missed out on
a lot of the good things life had to offer.

Was he
ready to settle down though?

When the
landscape outside didn’t provide him with any comfort, he turned
his attention to the flickering flames within the fire.

At four
and thirty, he had started to wonder whether he had reached the
time in his life when he should do something else. If he was
honest, it would be nice to spend his evenings with a woman in his
arms. He wanted someone to talk to; to share his life with. Someone
he could confide in, and share life’s daily trials and tribulations
with. If he was really honest, he would like a child of his own; a
son or daughter he could bounce on his knee and watch grow
up.

Was all
of that possible though given what he did for a living?

Now that
the war had ended, the Star Elite had turned their considerable
skills to thwarting the rather determined efforts of England’s
criminal element. The missions they got involved with were still
wide-ranging and complex, but also required many hours of arduous
undercover work.

Unfortunately, some of the smaller jobs were now a little
mundane and, while he still enjoyed putting the criminals behind
bars, he had started to feel a little unchallenged.

Gathering evidence to ensure the arrest of thieving servants
was just more of the same routine work for Harry, who really rather
wished that he was somewhere else, doing - something else. It was
only the knowledge that he was doing a favour for his boss, Sir
Hugo that kept him in Tooting Mallow. However, he had no idea where
he really would prefer to be because he had no home to call his
own, and nothing else to do right now.

He
propped his boots up on the desk and leaned back in his chair while
he contemplated his current situation.

Several
weeks earlier, Sir Hugo had reported that one of his aunts had been
targeted by thieves in the form of two people whom she had employed
as servants in the months before her death. It had only been when
Sir Hugo had checked his aunt’s household accounts, and completed
an inventory of the house contents after her death, that he had
realised the figures listed in the financial ledgers didn’t tally
with the cash that should have been in the house, and several
ornaments and pictures were missing.

It had
quickly become evident that nearly fifty pounds had been carefully
removed from the house, in one way or another, over a period of
several months. A shilling here and there; a whole pound somewhere
else; a vase from the sitting room; a picture frame from one of the
guest bedrooms. Some of the ornaments had been pawned and,
thankfully, found in pawn shops nearby. The description of the
person who had pawned the items had, unfortunately, matched his
aunt’s butler, Charles Dandridge.