Decider. Part 33

'Don't be silly. I love it. And besides, Roger says that but for you he'd be halfway out of his job and we'd be sick with worry.'

'Does he think so?'

'He knows it.'

Grateful and partially comforted I left Dart in the kitchen and went over to the bus, and there in the privacy of the cab fed the tape I'd stolen into the tape-playing slot of the radio.

It proved to be a recording of a telephone call made on a cellular phone: the sort of spying that was diabolically easy if one listened on a scanner close to the transmitting and receiving cell.

I'd always had misgivings about the randomness of overheard conversations that had come to public light: what sort of person listened in to other people's privacy day in and day out and taped it all and taped it all, hoping to overhear marketable secrets? Someone apparently had, in this case.

The conversation was between a voice provisionally identifiable as Rebecca's and a man speaking in a south-east accent, not c.o.c.kney, but all glottal stops where 'd's, 't's or 'c's occurred in the centre of words. Stratton came out as 'Stra- on'. Rebecca as 'Rebe-ah'.

'Rebe-ah Stra-on?' said the man's voice.

'Yes.'

'What have you got for me, darlin'?'

'How much is it worth?'

'Same as usual.'

After a short pause, speaking quietly, she said, 'I'm riding Soapstone in the fifth, it's got no chance, it's only half fit. Lay off all you can on Catch-as-Catch, it's jumping out of its skin and they're putting a bundle on it.'

'That's the lot?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks, darlin'.'

'I'll see you at the races.'

'Same place,' the man agreed. 'Before the first.'

The tape clicked and fell silent. I ejected it grimly and returned it to my pocket and, climbing back into the body of the bus, unzipped my trousers and retrieved the glossy photograph and also the packet of dangerous knowledge.

From that I took out the interior, fatter brown envelope and slit it open with a knife. Inside were yet another envelope, white this time, and another short letter from William Stratton, third baron, to his son Conrad, fourth.

It read: Conrad,This grieves me beyond measure. Remember always that Keith, to my despair, tells lies. I sought out knowledge, and now I don't know how to use it. You must decide. But take care.

S.

Apprehensively, I slit open the white envelope and read its lengthier contents and by the end found my hands trembling.

My non-grandfather had shown me a way, once and for all, of dealing with Keith.

I rea.s.sembled the packet in its original order and, finding some sticky-tape, sealed the outside brown envelope so that no one could open it by chance. Then I sat for a while with my head in my hands, realising that if Keith knew what I'd got he would kill me immediately, and also that saving myself from him posed a dilemma I'd never imagined.

Dangerous knowledge. Not dangerous: deadly.

CHAPTER 15.

Dart drove me to Stratton Hays. On the way, using my own mobile phone (anyone listening?) I got through to Marjorie's house and found her at home, forthrightly displeased.

'You didn't come to the meeting!'

'No. Very sorry.'

'It was a shambles,' she said crossly. 'Waste of time. Keith shouted continually and nothing got done. He couldn't ignore the gate receipts, which were excellent excellent, but he's fanatical about selling. Are you sure sure you cannot uncover his debts?' you cannot uncover his debts?'

'Does Imogen know them?' I asked.

'Imogen?'

'If I got her paralytically drunk, would she know anything at all of her husband's affairs?'

'You're disgraceful!'

'I'm afraid so.'

'I wish she did. But don't try it, because if Keith caught you at it...' She paused, then said without pressure, 'Do you take his threats seriously?'

'I have to.'

'Have you thought of... retreat?'

'Yes, I have. Are you busy? I need to tell you a few things.'

She said if I gave her an hour I could come to her house, to which I agreed. Dart and I continued to Stratton Hays, where he parked in the same place as on my first visit and as usual left the key in the ignition.

The great graceful pile, full of forgotten lives and quiet ghosts, stood peacefully in the mottled sunlight, a house built for hundreds, lived in by one.

'What now?' the one said; Darlington Stratton, fifth baron to be.

'We've got almost an hour. Can we look at the north wing?'

'But it's a ruin. I told you.'

'Ruins are my business.'

'I forgot. Well, OK.' He unlocked the rear door and took me again across the vast unfurnished, uncurtained front hall and along a wide windowed pa.s.sage proportioned like a picture gallery, but with bare walls.

At the end of it we came to a heavy door, unpanelled, unpolished and modern, fastened by bolts. Dart wrestled with the bolts and creaked open the door, and we walked into the sort of desolation I went looking for: rotting wood, heaps of debris, saplings growing.

'They took the roof off sixty or more years ago,' Dart said glumly, looking upwards to the sky. 'All those years of rain and snow... the upper floor just rotted and fell in. Grandfather asked the National Trust and the Heritage people... I think they said the only thing to do was to demolish this wing and save the rest.' He sighed. 'Grandfather didn't like change. He just let time run on and nothing got done.'

I clambered with difficulty over a hillock of weathered grey beams and looked along a wide storm-struck landscape flanked by high, still standing, but unb.u.t.tressed stone walls.

'Do be careful,' Dart warned. 'No one's supposed to come in here without hard hats.'

The s.p.a.ce gave me no creative excitement, no desire to restore it. All it did give me, in its majestic proportions, and its undignified death, was an interval of respite, of nerve-calming patience, a deep breath-taking perception of life pa.s.sing, a drawing-in of the faith and industry that had designed and built here four hundred years earlier.

'OK,' I said, stirring and rejoining Dart in the open doorway. 'Thanks.'

'What do you think?'

'Your grandfather was given good advice.'

'I was afraid so.'

He rebolted the heavy door and we returned across the great hall to the rear entrance.

'Can I borrow your bathroom?' I asked.

'Sure.'

He continued on past the door, heading towards his own personal quarters, the ground floor of the south wing.

Here, present life went on very comfortably with carpets, curtains, antique furniture and a fresh polished smell. He led me to the door of his bathroom, a mixture of ancient and modern, a room converted from perhaps a sitting room, with a large free-standing Victorian bath and two new-looking washbasins built into a marble-topped fitment. The surface of the fitment was covered with bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and every variety of snake oil.

Sympathetically I went over to the window, which was curtained in lace, and looked out. Away to the left, Dart's car stood in the driveway. Ahead, lawns and trees. To the right, open gardens.

'What is it?' he said, as I stood there. After a moment, when I didn't move, he came over to stand beside me, to see what I was looking at.

He came, and he saw. He switched his gaze to my face, searching, and without trouble read my thoughts.

's.h.i.+t,' he said.

An appropriate word for a bathroom. I said nothing, however, but walked back the way we had come.

'How did you know?' Dart asked, following.

'Guessed.'

'So what now?'

'Go to Marjorie's house.'

'I mean... what about me? me?'

'Oh, nothing,' I said, 'It's not up to me.'

'But...'

'You were in the bathroom seeing to your hair,' I said. 'And through the window you saw who took your car on Good Friday morning. No one's going to put you to the torture to find out who it was. Just pretend you saw nothing, as you've been doing so far.'

'Do you know... who?'

I half smiled. 'Let's go and see Marjorie.'

'Lee.'

'Come and listen.'

Dart drove us to Marjorie's house, which proved to be unadulterated early Georgian, as well-bred and trim as she was herself. Set four-square in weedless grounds at one end of Stratton village, it had sash windows in disciplined rows, a central front door and a circular driveway reached past gateposts with urns on.

Dart parked near the front door and as usual left the key in the ignition.

'Don't you ever ever lock it?' I asked. lock it?' I asked.

'Why bother? I wouldn't mind an excuse to get a new car.'

'Why not just buy one?'

'One day,' he said.

'Like your grandfather.'

'What? Oh, yes. I suppose I'm like him, a bit. One day. Maybe.'

Marjorie's front door was opened to us by a manservant ('She lives in the past,' murmured Dart) who pleasantly guided us across a hall to her drawing room. As expected, faultless taste there in time-stands-still land, gentle colours overall in dim pinks, green and gold. The window embrasures still held the original shutters, but there were floor-length curtains as well, and swagged valances, and a view of sunlit spring gardens beyond.

Marjorie sat in a wide armchair that commanded the room, very much and always the person in charge. She wore, as often, dark blue with white at the neck, looking doll-like and exquisite and temporarily hiding the tough cookie.

'Sit down,' she commanded, and Dart and I sat near her, I on a small sofa, Dart on a spindly chair Hepplewhite, probably.

'Things to tell me,' she began. 'That's what you said, Lee.'

'Mm,' I said. 'Well, you asked me to find out two things.'

'And on the subject of Keith's finances, you've failed,' she nodded decisively. 'You've already told me.'

'Yes. But... as regards your other a.s.signment...'

'Go on on,' she said, as I stopped. 'I remember exactly. I asked you to find out what pressure that wretched architect was putting on Conrad to get his new stands built.'

Dart looked surprised. 'a.s.signment?' he asked.

'Yes, yes.' His great aunt was impatient. 'Lee and I had an agreement. We shook hands on it. Didn't we?' She turned her head to me. 'An agreement you did not want to break.'

'That's right,' I said.