As the Crow Flies

Chapter 29

"You're a little bastard," remains my first memory. I was five and three-quarters at the time and the words were being shouted by a small girl on the far side of the playground as she pointed at me and danced up and down. The rest of the class stopped and stared, until I ran across and pinned her against the wall.

"What does it mean?" I demanded, squeezing her arms.

She burst into tears and said, "I don't know. I just heard my mum tell my dad that you were a little bastard."

"I know what the word means," said a voice from behind me. I turned round to find myself surrounded by the rest of the pupils from my class, but I was quite unable to work out who had spoken.

"What does it mean?" I said again, even louder."

"Give me sixpence and I'll tell you."

I stared up at Neil Watson, the form bully who always sat in the row behind me.

"I've only got threepence."

He considered the offer for some time before saying, "All right then, I'll tell you for threepence."

He walked up to me, thrust out the palm of his hand, and waited until I'd slowly unwrapped my handkerchief and passed over my entire pocket money for the week. He then cupped his hands and whispered into my ear, "You don't have a father."

"It's not true!" I shouted, and started punching him on the chest. But he was far bigger than me and only laughed at my feeble efforts. The bell sounded for the end of break and everyone ran back to class, several of them laughing and shouting in unison, "Daniel's a little bastard."

Nanny came to pick me up from school that afternoon and when I was sure none of my classmates could overhear me I asked her what the word meant. She only said, "What a disgraceful question, Daniel, and I can only hope that it's not the sort of thing they're teaching you at St. David's. Please don't let me ever hear you mention the word again."

Over tea in the kitchen, when nanny had left to go and run my bath, I asked cook to tell me what "bastard" meant. All she said was, "I'm sure I don't know, Master Daniel, and I would advise you not to ask anyone else."

I didn't dare ask my mother or father in case what Neil Watson had said turned out to be true, and I lay awake all night wondering how I could find out.

Then I remembered that a long time ago my mother had gone into hospital and was meant to come back with a brother or sister for me, and didn't. I wondered if that's what made you a bastard.

About a week later nanny had taken me to visit Mummy at Guy's Hospital but I can't recall that much about the outing, except that she looked very white and sad. I remember feeling very happy when she eventually came home.

The next episode in my life that I recall vividly was going to St. Paul's School at the age of eleven. There I was made to work really hard for the first time in my life. At my prep school I came top in almost every subject without having to do much more than any other child, and although I was called "swot" or "swotty," it never worried me. At St. Paul's there turned out to be lots of boys who were clever, but none of them could touch me when it came to maths. I not only enjoyed a subject so many of my classmates seemed to dread but the marks I was awarded in the end of term exams appeared always to delight my mum and dad. I couldn't wait for the next algebraic equation, a further geometric puzzle or the challenge of solving an arithmetic test in my head while others in the form sucked their pencils as they considered pages of longhand figures.

I did quite well in other subjects and although I was not much good at games I took up the cello and was invited to join the school orchestra, but my form master said none of this was important because I was obviously going to be a mathematician for the rest of my life. I didn't understand what he meant at the time, as I knew Dad had left school at fourteen to run my great-grandfather's fruit and vegetable barrow in Whitechapel, and even though Mum had gone to London University she still had to work at Number 1 Chelsea Terrace to keep Dad "in the style to which he'd become accustomed." Or that's what I used to hear Mum telling him at breakfast from time to time.

It must have been around that time that I discovered what the word "bastard" really meant. We were reading King John out loud in class, so I was able to ask Mr. Saxon-East, my English master, without drawing too much attention to the question. One or two of the boys looked round and sniggered, but this time there were no pointed fingers or whispers, and when I was told the meaning I remember thinking Neil Watson hadn't been that far off the mark in the first place. But of course such an accusation could not be leveled at me, because my very first memories had involved my mum and dad being together. They had always been Mr. and Mrs. Trumper.

I suppose I would have dismissed the whole memory of that early incident if I hadn't come down to the kitchen one night for a glass of milk and overheard Joan Moore talking to Harold the butler.

"Young Daniel's doing well at school," said Harold. "Must have his mother's brains."

"True, but let's pray that he never finds out the truth about his father." The words made me freeze to the stair rail. I continued to listen intently.

"Well, one thing's for certain," continued Harold. "Mrs. Trentham's never going to admit the boy's her grandson, so heaven knows who'll end up with all that money."

"Not Captain Guy any longer, that's for sure," said Joan. "So perhaps that brat Nigel will be left the lot."

After that the conversation turned to who should lay up for breakfast so I crept back upstairs to my bedroom; but I didn't sleep. Although I sat on those steps for many hours during the next few months, patiently waiting for another vital piece of information that might fall from the servants' lips, the subject never arose between them again.

The only other occasion I could recall having heard the name "Trentham" had been some time before, when the Marchioness of Wiltshire, a close friend of my mother's, came to tea. I remained in the hall when my mother asked, "Did you go to Guy's funeral?"

"Yes, but it wasn't well attended by the good parishioners of Ashurst," the marchioness assured her. "Those who remembered him well seemed to be treating the occasion more as if it were a blessed release."

"Was Sir Raymond present?"

"No, he was conspicuous by his absence," came back the reply. "Mrs. Trentham claimed he was too old to travel, which only acted as a sad reminder that she still stands to inherit a fortune in the not too distant future."

New facts learned, but they still made little sense.

The name of "Trentham" arose in my presence once more when I heard Daddy talking to Colonel Hamilton as he was leaving the house after a private meeting that had been held in his study. All Daddy said was, "However much we offer Mrs. Trentham, she's never going to sell those flats to us."

The colonel vigorously nodded his agreement, but all he had to say on the subject was, "Bloody woman."

When both my parents were out of the house, I looked up "Trentham" in the telephone directory. There was only one listing: Major G. H. Trentham, MP, 19 Chester Square. I wasn't any the wiser.

When in 1939 Trinity College offered me the Newton Mathematics Prize Scholarship I thought Dad was going to burst, he was so proud. We all drove up to the university city for the weekend to check my future digs, before strolling round the college's cloisters and through Great Court.

The only cloud on this otherwise unblemished horizon was the thunderous one of Nazi Germany. Conscription for all those over twenty was being debated in Parliament, and I couldn't wait to play my part if Hitler dared to plant as much as a toe on Polish soil.

My first year at Cambridge went well, mainly because I was being tutored by Horace Bradford who, along with his wife, Victoria, was considered to be the pick of the bunch among a highly talented group of mathematicians who were teaching at the university at that time. Although Mrs. Bradford was rumored to have won the Wrangler's Prize for coming out top of her year, her husband explained that she was not given the prestigious award, simply because she was a woman. The man who came second was deemed to have come first, a piece of information that made my mother puce with anger.

Mrs. Bradford rejoiced in the fact that my mother had been awarded her degree from London University in 1921, while Cambridge still refused to acknowledge hers even existed in 1939.

At the end of my first year I, like many Trinity undergraduates, applied to join the army, but my tutor asked me if I would like to work with him and his wife at the War Office in a new department that would be specializing in code-breaking.

I accepted the offer without a second thought, relishing the prospect of spending my time sitting in a dingy little back room somewhere in Bletchley Park attempting to break German codes. I felt a little guilty that I was going to be one of the few people in uniform who was actually enjoying the war. Dad gave me enough money to buy an old MG, which meant I could get up to London from time to time to see him and Mum.

Occasionally I managed to grab an hour for lunch with him over at the Ministry of Food, but Dad would only eat bread and cheese accompanied by a glass of milk as an example to the rest of his team. This may have been considered edifying but it certainly wasn't nourishing, Mr. Selwyn warned me, adding that my father even had the minister at it.

"But not Mr. Churchill?" I suggested.

"He's next on his list, I'm told."

In 1943 I was made up to captain, which was simply the War Office acknowledging the work we were all doing in our fledgling department. Of course, my father was delighted but I was sorry that I couldn't share with my parents our excitement when we broke the code used by the German U-boat commanders. It still baffles me to this day why they continued to go on using the four-wheel enigma key long after we'd made our discovery. The code was a mathematician's dream that we finally broke on the back of a menu at Lyons Corner House just off Piccadilly. The waitress serving at our table described me as a vandal. I laughed, and remember thinking that I would take the rest of the day off and go and surprise my mother by letting her see what I looked like in my captain's uniform. I thought I looked rather swish, but when she opened the front door to greet me I was shocked by her response. She stared at me as if she'd seen a ghost. Although she recovered quickly enough, that first reaction on seeing me in uniform became just another clue in an ever more complex puzzle, a puzzle that was never far from the back of my thoughts.

The next clue came in the bottom line of an obituary, to which I wasn't paying much attention until I discovered that a Mrs. Trentham would be coming into a fortune; not an important clue in itself, until I reread the entry and learned that she was the daughter of someone called Sir Raymond Hardcastle, a name that allowed me to fill in several little boxes that went in both directions. But what puzzled me was there being no mention of a Guy Trentham among the surviving relatives.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't been born with the kind of mind that enjoyed breaking codes and meddling with mathematical formulas. But somehow "bastard," "Trentham," "hospital," "Captain Guy," "flats," "Sir Raymond," "that brat Nigel," "funeral," and Mother turning white when she saw me dressed in a captain's uniform seemed to have some linear connection. Although I realized I would need even more clues before logic would lead me to the correct solution.

Then suddenly I worked out to whom they must have been referring when the marchioness had come to tea all those years before, and told Mother that she had just attended Guy's funeral. It must have been Captain Guy's burial that had taken place. But why was that so significant?

The following Saturday morning I rose at an ungodly hour and traveled down to Ashurst, the village in which the Marchioness of Wiltshire had once lived—not a coincidence, I concluded. I arrived at the parish church a little after six, and as I had anticipated, at that hour there was no one to be seen in the churchyard. I strolled around the graveyard checking the names: Yardleys, Baxters, Floods, and Harcourt-Brownes aplenty. Some of the graves were overgrown with weeds, others were well cared for and even had fresh flowers at the head. I paused for a moment at the grave of my godmother's grandfather. There must have been over a hundred parishioners buried around the clock tower, but it didn't take that long to find the neatly kept Trentham family plot, only a few yards from the church vestry.

When I came across the most recent family gravestone I broke out in a cold sweat:

And so the mystery had come literally to a dead end, at the grave of the one man who surely could have answered all my questions had he still been alive.

When the war ended I returned to Trinity and was granted an extra year to complete my degree. Although my father and mother considered the highlight of the year to be my passing out as senior Wrangler with the offer of a Prize fellowship at Trinity, I thought Dad's investiture at Buckingham Palace wasn't to be sneezed at.

The ceremony turned out to be a double delight, because I was also able to witness my old tutor, Professor Bradford, being knighted for the role he had played in the field of code-breaking—although there was nothing for his wife, my mother noted. I remember feeling equally outraged on Dr. Bradford's behalf. Dad may have played his part in filling the stomachs of the British people, but as Churchill had stated in the House of Commons, our little team had probably cut down the length of the war by as much as a year.

We all met up afterwards for tea at the Ritz, and—not unnaturally—at some point during the afternoon the conversation switched to what career I proposed to follow now the war was over. To my father's abiding credit he had never once suggested that I should join him at Trumper's, especially as I knew how much he had longed for another son who might eventually take his place. In fact during the summer vacation I became even more conscious of my good fortune, as Father seemed to be preoccupied with the business and Mother was unable to hide her own anxiety about the future of Trumper's. But whenever I asked if I could help all she would say was: "Not to worry, it will all work out in the end."

Once I had returned to Cambridge, I persuaded myself that should I ever come across the name "Trentham" again I would no longer allow it to worry me. However, because the name was never mentioned freely in my presence it continued to nag away in the back of my mind. My father had always been such an open man that there was no simple explanation as to why on this one particular subject he remained so secretive to such an extent, in fact, that I felt I just couldn't raise the subject with him myself.

I might have gone years without bothering to do anything more about the conundrum if I hadn't one morning picked up an extension to the phone in the Little Boltons and heard Tom Arnold, my father's right-hand man, say, "Well, at least we can be thankful that you got to Syd Wrexall before Mrs. Trentham." I replaced the headset immediately, feeling that I now had to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all and what's more, without my parents finding out. Why does one always think the worst in these situations? Surely the final solution would turn out to be something quite innocuous.

Although I had never met Syd Wrexall I could still remember him as the landlord of the Musketeer, a pub that had stood proudly on the other end of Chelsea Terrace until a bomb had landed in the snugbar. During the war my father bought the freehold and later converted the building into an up-market furnishing department.

It didn't take a Dick Barton to discover that Mr. Wrexall had left London during the war to become the landlord of a pub in a sleepy village called Hatherton, hidden away in the county of Cheshire.

I spent three days working out my strategy for Mr. Wrexall, and only when I was convinced that I knew all the questions that needed to be asked did I feel confident enough to make the journey to Hatherton. I had to word every query I needed answered in such a way that they didn't appear to be questions; but I still waited for a further month before I drove up north, by which time I had grown a beard that was long enough for me to feel confident that Wrexall would not recognize me. Although I was unaware of having seen him in the past, I realized that it was possible Wrexall might have come across me as recently as three or four years ago, and would therefore have known who I was the moment I walked into his pub. I even purchased a modern pair of glasses to replace my old specs.

I chose a Monday to make the trip as I suspected it would be the quietest day of the week on which to have a pub lunch. Before I set out on the journey I telephoned the Happy Poacher to be sure Mr. Wrexall would be on duty that day. His wife assured me that he would be around and I put the phone down before she could ask why I wanted to know.

During my journey up to Cheshire I rehearsed a series of non-questions again and again. Having arrived in the village of Hatherton I parked my car down a side road some way from the pub before strolling into the Happy Poacher. I discovered three or four people standing at the bar chatting and another half dozen enjoying a drink around a mean-looking fire. I took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered some shepherd's pie and a half pint of best bitter from a buxom, middle-aged lady whom I later discovered was the landlord's wife. It took only moments to work out who the landlord was, because the other customers all called him Syd, but I realized that I would still have to be patient as I listened to him chat about anybody and everybody, from Lady Docker to Richard Murdoch, as if they were all close friends.

"Same again, sir?" he asked eventually, as he returned to my end of the bar and picked up my empty glass.

"Yes, please," I said, relieved to find that he didn't appear to recognize me.

By the time he had come back with my beer there were only two or three of us left at the bar.

"From around these parts, are you, sir?" he asked, leaning on the counter.

"No," I said. "Only up for a couple of days on an inspection. I'm with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food."

"So what brings you to Hatherton?"

"I'm checking out all the farms in the area for foot and mouth disease."

"Oh, yes, I've read all about that in the papers," he said, toying with an empty glass.

"Care to join me, landlord?" I asked.

"Oh, thank you, sir. I'll have a whisky, if I may." He put his empty half-pint glass in the washing-up water below the counter and poured himself a double. He charged me half a crown, then asked how my findings were coming along.

"All clear so far," I told him. "But I've still got a few more farms in the north of the county to check out."

"I used to know someone in your department," he said.

"Oh, yes?"

"Sir Charles Trumper."

"Before my time," I said taking a swig from my beer, "but they still talk about him back at the ministry. Must have been a tough customer if half the stories about him are true."

"Bloody right," said Wrexall. "And but for him I'd be a rich man."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. You see, I used to own a little property in London before I moved up here. A pub, along with an interest in several shops in Chelsea Terrace, to be exact. He picked the lot up from me during the war for a mere six thousand. If I'd waited another twenty-four hours I could have sold them for twenty thousand, perhaps even thirty."

"But the war didn't end in twenty-four hours."

"Oh, no, I'm not suggesting for one moment that he did anything dishonest, but it always struck me as a little more than a coincidence that having not set eyes on him for years he should suddenly show up in this pub on that very morning."

Wrexall's glass was now empty.

"Same again for both of us?" I suggested, hoping that the investment of another half crown might further loosen his tongue.

"That's very generous of you, sir," he responded, and when he returned he asked, "Where was I?"

"'On that very morning . . .'"

"Oh, yes, Sir Charles—Charlie, as I always called him. Well, he closed the deal right here at this bar, in under ten minutes, when blow me if another interested party didn't ring up and ask if the properties were still for sale. I had to tell the lady in question that I had just signed them away."

I avoided asking who "the lady" was, although I suspected I knew. "But that doesn't prove that she would have offered you twenty thousand pounds for them," I said.

"Oh, yes, she would," responded Wrexall. "That Mrs. Trentham would have offered me anything to stop Sir Charles getting his hands on those shops."

"Great Scott," I said, once again avoiding the word "why?"

"Oh, yes, the Trumpers and the Trenthams have been at each other's throats for years, you know. She still owns a block of flats right in the middle of Chelsea Terrace. It's the only thing that's stopped him from building his grand mausoleum, isn't it? What's more, when she tried to buy Number 1 Chelsea Terrace, Charlie completely outfoxed her, didn't he? Never seen anything like it in my life."

"But that must have been years ago," I said. "Amazing how people go on bearing grudges for so long."

"You're right, because to my knowledge this one's been going on since the early twenties, ever since her posh son was seen walking out with Miss Salmon."

I held my breath.

"She didn't approve of that, no, not Mrs. Trentham. We all had that worked out at the Musketeer, and then when the son disappears off to India the Salmon girl suddenly ups and marries Charlie. And that wasn't the end of the mystery."

"No?"

"Certainly not," said Wrexall. "Because none of us are sure to this day who the father was."

"The father?"

Wrexall hesitated. "I've gone too far. I'll say no more."

"Such a long time ago, I'm surprised anyone still cares," I offered as my final effort before draining my glass.

"True enough," said Wrexall. "That's always been a bit of a mystery to me as well. But there's no telling with folks. Well, I must close up now, sir, or I'll have the law after me."

"Of course. And I must get back to those cattle."

Before I returned to Cambridge I sat in the car and wrote down every word I could remember the landlord saying. On the long journey back I tried to piece together the new clues and get them into some sort of order. Although Wrexall had supplied a lot of information I hadn't known before he had also begged a few more unanswered questions. The only thing I came away from that pub certain of was that I couldn't possibly stop now.

The next morning I decided to return to the War Office and ask Sir Horace's old secretary if she knew of any way that one could trace the background of a former serving officer.

"Name?" said the prim middle-aged woman who still kept her hair tied in a bun, a style left over from the war.

"Guy Trentham," I told her.

"Rank and regiment?"

"Captain and the Royal Fusiliers would be my guess."

She disappeared behind a closed door, but was back within fifteen minutes clutching a small brown file. She extracted a single sheet of paper and read aloud from it. "Captain Guy Trentham, MC. Served in the First War, further service in India, resigned his commission in 1922. No explanation given. No forwarding address."

"You're a genius," I said, and to her consternation kissed her on the forehead before leaving to return to Cambridge.

The more I discovered, the more I found I needed to know, even though for the time being I seemed to have come to another dead end.

For the next few weeks I concentrated on my job as a supervisor until my pupils had all safely departed for their Christmas vacation.

I returned to London for the three-week break and spent a happy family Christmas with my parents at the Little Boltons. Father seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been during the summer, and even Mother appeared to have shed her unexplained anxieties.

However, another mystery arose during that holiday and as I was convinced it was no way connected with the Trenthams, I didn't hesitate to ask my mother to solve it.

"What's happened to Dad's favorite picture?"

Her reply saddened me greatly and she begged me never to raise the subject of The Potato Eaters with my father.

The week before I was due to return to Cambridge I was strolling back down Beaufort Street towards the Little Boltons, when I spotted a Chelsea pensioner in his blue serge uniform trying to cross the road.

"Allow me to help you," I offered.

"Thank you, sir," he said, looking up at me with a rheumy smile.

"And who did you serve with?" I asked casually.

"The Prince of Wales Own," he replied. "And you?"

"The Royal Fusiliers." We crossed the road together. "Got any of those, have you?"

"The Fussies," he said. "Oh, yes, Banger Smith who saw service in the Great War, and Sammy Tomkins who joined up later, twenty-two, twenty-three, if I remember, and was then invalided out after Tobruk."

"Banger Smith?" I said.

"Yes," replied the pensioner as we reached the other side of the road. "A right skiver, that one." He chuckled chestily. "But he still puts in a day a week at your regimental museum, if his stories are to be believed."

I was first to enter the small regimental museum in the Tower of London the following day, only to be told by the curator that Banger Smith only came in on Thursdays, and even then couldn't always be relied on. I glanced around a room filled with regimental mementoes, threadbare flags parading battle honors, a display case with uniforms, out-of-date implements of war from a bygone age and large maps covered in different colored pins depicting how, where and when those honors had been won.

As the curator was only a few years older than me I didn't bother him with any questions about the First World War.

I returned the following Thursday when I found an old soldier seated in a corner of the museum pretending to be fully occupied.

"Banger Smith?"

The old contemptible couldn't have been an inch over five feet and made no attempt to get up off his chair. He looked at me warily.

"What of it?"

I produced a ten-bob note from my inside pocket.

He looked first at the note and then at me with an inquiring eye. "What are you after?"

"Can you remember a Captain Guy Trentham, by any chance?" I asked.

"You from the police?"

"No, I'm a solicitor dealing with his estate."

"I'll wager Captain Trentham didn't leave anything to anybody."

"I'm not at liberty to reveal that," I said. "But I don't suppose you know what happened to him after he left the Fusiliers? You see, there's no trace of him in regimental records since 1922."

"There wouldn't be, would there? He didn't exactly leave the Fussies with the regimental band playing him off the parade ground. Bloody man should have been horsewhipped, in my opinion."

"Why . . . ?"

"You won't get a word out of me," he said, "Regimental secret," he added, touching the side of his nose.

"But have you any idea where he went after he left India?"

"Cost you more than ten bob, that will," said the old soldier, chuckling.

"What do you mean?"

"Buggered off to Australia, didn't he? Died out there, then got shipped back by his mother. Good riddance, is all I can say. I'd take his bloody picture off the wall if I had my way."

"His picture?"

"Yes. MCs next to the DSOs, top left-hand corner," he said, managing to raise an arm to point in that direction.

I walked slowly over to the corner Banger Smith had indicated, past the seven Fusilier VCs, several DSOs and on to the MCs. They were in chronological order: 1914—three, 1915—thirteen, 1916—ten, 1917—eleven, 1918—seventeen. Captain Guy Trentham, the inscription read, had been awarded the MC after the second battle of the Marne on 18 July 1918.

I stared up at the picture of a young officer in captain's uniform and knew I would have to make a journey to Australia.

Chapter 30

"When were you thinking of going?"

"During the long vacation."

"Have you enough money to cover such a journey?"

"I've still got most of that five hundred pounds you gave me when I graduated—in fact the only real outlay from that was on the MG; a hundred and eighty pounds, if I remember correctly. In any case, a bachelor with his own rooms in college is hardly in need of a vast private income." Daniel looked up as his mother entered the drawing room.

"Daniel's thinking of going to America this summer."

"How exciting," said Becky, placing some flowers on a side table next to the Remington. "Then you must try and see the Fields in Chicago and the Bloomingdales in New York, and if you have enough time you could also—"

"Actually," said Daniel, leaning against the mantelpiece, "I think I'll be trying to see Waterstone in Princeton and Stinstead at Berkeley."

"Do I know them?" Becky frowned as she looked up from her flower arranging.

"I wouldn't have thought so, Mother. They're both college professors who teach maths, or math, as they call it."

Charlie laughed.

"Well, be sure you write to us regularly," said his mother. "I always like to know where you are and what you're up to."

"Of course I will, Mother," said Daniel, trying not to sound exasperated. "If you promise to remember that I'm now twenty-six years old."

Becky looked across at him with a smile. "Are you really, my dear?"

Daniel resumed to Cambridge that night trying to work out how he could possibly keep in touch from America while he was in fact traveling to Australia. He disliked the thought of deceiving his mother, but knew it would have pained her even more to tell him the truth about Captain Trentham.

Matters weren't helped when Charlie sent him a first-class ticket for New York on the Queen Mary for the exact date he had mentioned. It cost one hundred and three pounds and included an open-ended return.

Daniel eventually came up with a solution. He worked out that if he took the Queen Mary bound for New York the week after term had ended, then continued his journey on the Twentieth Century Limited and the Super Chief across the States to San Francisco, he could pick up the SS Aorangi to Sydney with a day to spare. That would still give him four weeks in Australia before he would have to repeat the journey south to north, allowing him just enough time to arrive back in Southampton a few days before the Michaelmas term began.

As with everything on which Daniel embarked, he spent hours of research and preparation long before he even set off for Southampton. He allocated three days to the Australian High Commission Information Department in the Strand, and made sure he regularly sat next to a certain Dr. Marcus Winters, a visiting professor from Adelaide, whenever he came to dine at Trinity High Table. Although the first secretary and deputy librarian at Australia House remained puzzled by some of Daniel's questions and Dr. Winters curious as to the motives of the young mathematician, by the end of the Trinity term Daniel felt confident that he had learned enough to ensure that his time wouldn't be wasted once he had set foot on the subcontinent. However, he realized the whole enterprise was still a huge gamble: if the first question he needed to be answered yielded the reply, "There's no way of finding that out."

Four days after the students had gone down and he had completed his supervision reports, Daniel was packed and ready. The following morning his mother arrived at the college to drive him to Southampton. On the journey down to the south coast he learned that Charlie had recently applied to the London County Council for outline planning permission to develop Chelsea Terrace as one gigantic department store.

"But what about those bombed-out flats?"

"The council has given the owners three months to proceed with an application to rebuild or they have threatened to issue a compulsory purchase order and put the site up for sale."

"Pity we just can't buy the flats ourselves," said Daniel, trying out one of his non-questions in the hope that it might elicit some response from his mother, but she just continued to drive on down the A30 without offering an opinion.

It was ironic, Daniel reflected, that if only his mother had felt able to confide in him the reason Mrs. Trentham wouldn't cooperate with his father she could have turned the car around and taken him back to Cambridge.

He resumed to safer territory. "So how's Dad hoping to raise the cash for such a massive enterprise?"

"He can't make up his mind between a bank loan and going public."

"What sort of sum are you talking about?"

"Mr. Merrick estimates around a hundred and fifty thousand pounds."

Daniel gave a low whistle.

"The bank is happy enough to loan us the full amount now that property prices have shot up," Becky continued, "but they're demanding everything we own as collateral including the property in Chelsea Terrace, the house, our art collection, and on top of that they want us to sign a personal guarantee and charge the company four percent on the overdraft."

"Then perhaps the answer is to go public."

"It's not quite that easy. If we were to take that route the family might end up with only fifty-one percent of the shares."

"Fifty-one percent means you still control the company. "

"Agreed," said Becky, "but should we ever need to raise some more capital at a future date, then further dilution would only mean we could well lose our majority shareholding. In any case, you know only too well how your father feels about outsiders being given too much of a say, let alone too large a stake. And his having to report regularly to even more non-executive directors, not to mention shareholders, could be a recipe for disaster. He's always run the business on instinct, while the Bank of England may well prefer a more orthodox approach."

"How quickly does the decision have to be made?"

"It should have been settled one way or the other by the time you get back from America."

"What about the future of Number 1?"

"There's a good chance I can knock it into shape. I've the right staff and enough contacts, so if we're granted the full planning permission we have applied for I believe we could, in time, give Sotheby's and Christie's a run for their money."

"Not if Dad keeps on stealing the best pictures—"

"True." Becky smiled. "But if he goes on the way he is now, our private collection will be worth more than the business—as selling my van Gogh back to the Lefevre Gallery proved only too cruelly. He has the best amateur's eye I've ever come across—but don't ever tell him I said so."

Becky began to concentrate on the signs directing her to the docks and finally brought the car to a halt alongside the liner, but not quite so close as Daphne had once managed, if she remembered correctly.

Daniel sailed out of Southampton on the Queen Mary that evening, with his mother waving from the dockside.

While on board the great liner he wrote a long letter to his parents, which he posted five days later from Fifth Avenue. He then purchased a ticket on the Twentieth Century Limited for a Pullman to Chicago. The train pulled out of Penn Station at eight the same night, Daniel having spent a total of six hours in Manhattan, where his only other purchase was a guidebook of America.

Once they had reached Chicago, the Pullman carriage was attached to the Super Chief which took him all the way to San Francisco.

During the four-day journey across America he began to regret he was going to Australia at all. As he passed through Kansas City, Newton City, La Junta, Albuquerque and Barstow, each city appeared more interesting than the last. Whenever the train pulled into a new station Daniel would leap off, buy a colorful postcard that indicated exactly where he was, fill in the white space with yet more information gained from the guidebook before the train reached the next station. He would then post the filled-in card at the following stop and repeat the process. By the time the express had arrived at Oakland Station, San Francisco, he had posted twenty-seven different cards back to his parents in the Little Boltons.

Once the bus had dropped him off in St. Francis Square, Daniel booked himself into a small hotel near the harbor after checking the tariff was well within his budget. As he still had a thirty-six-hour wait before the SS Aorangi was due to depart, he traveled out to Berkeley and spent the whole of the second day with Professor Stinstead. Daniel became so engrossed with Stinstead's research on tertiary calculus that he began to regret once again that he would not be staying longer, as he suspected he might learn far more by remaining at Berkeley than he would ever discover in Australia.

On the evening before he was due to sail, Daniel bought twenty more postcards and sat up until one in the morning filling them in. By the twentieth his imagination had been stretched to its limit. The following morning, after he had settled his bill, he asked the head porter to mail one of the postcards every three days until he returned. He handed over ten dollars and promised the porter that there would be a further ten when he came back to San Francisco, but only if the correct number of cards remained, as precisely when he would be back remained uncertain.

The senior porter was puzzled but pocketed the ten dollars, commenting in an aside to his young colleague on the desk that he had been asked to do far stranger things in the past, for far less.

By the time Daniel boarded the SS Aorangi his beard was no longer a rough stubble and his plan was as well prepared as it could be, given that his information had been gathered from the wrong side of the globe. During the voyage Daniel found himself seated at a large circular table with an Australian family who were on their way home from a holiday in the States. Over the next three weeks they added greatly to his store of knowledge, unaware that he was listening to every word they had to say with uncommon interest.

Daniel sailed into Sydney on the first Monday of August 1947. He stood out on the deck and watched the sun set behind Sydney Harbour Bridge as a pilot boat guided the liner slowly into the harbor. He suddenly felt very homesick and, not for the first time, wished he had never embarked on the trip. An hour later he had left the ship and booked himself into a guest house which had been recommended to him by his traveling companions.

The owner of the guest house, who introduced herself as Mrs. Snell, turned out to be a big woman, with a big smile and a big laugh, who installed him into what she described as her deluxe room. Daniel was somewhat relieved that he hadn't ended up in one of her ordinary rooms, because when he lay down the double bed sagged in the center, and when he turned over the springs followed him, dinging to the small of his back. Both taps in the washbasin produced cold water in different shades of brown, and the one naked light that hung from the middle of the room was impossible to read by, unless he stood on a chair directly beneath it. Mrs. Snell hadn't supplied a chair.

When Daniel was asked the next morning, after a breakfast of eggs, bacon, potatoes and fried bread, whether he would be eating in or out, he said firmly, "Out," to the landlady's evident disappointment.

The first and critical call was to be made at the Immigration Office. If they had no information to assist him, he knew he might as well climb back on board the SS Aorangi that same evening. Daniel was beginning to feel that if that happened he wouldn't be too disappointed.

The massive brown building on Market Street, which housed the official records of every person who had arrived in the colony since 1823, opened at ten o'clock. Although he arrived half an hour early Daniel still had to join one of the eight queues of people attempting to establish some fact about registered immigrants, which ensured that he didn't reach the counter for a further forty minutes.

When he eventually did get to the front of the queue he found himself looking at a ruddy-faced man in an open-necked blue shirt who was slumped behind the counter.

"I'm trying to trace an Englishman who came to Australia at some time between 1922 and 1925."

"Can't we do better than that, mate?"

"I fear not," said Daniel.

"You fear not, do you?" said the assistant. "Got a name, have you?"

"Oh, yes," said Daniel. "Guy Trentham."

"Trentham. How do you spell that?"

Daniel spelled the name out slowly for him.

"Right, mate. That'll be two pounds." Daniel extracted his wallet from inside his sports jacket and handed over the cash. "Sign here," the assistant said, swiveling a form round and placing his forefinger on the bottom line. "And come back Thursday."

"Thursday? But that's not for another three days."

"Glad they still teach you to count in England," said the assistant. "Next."

Daniel left the building with no information, merely a receipt for his two pounds. Once back out on the pavement, he picked up a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald and began to look for a cafe near the harbor at which to have lunch. He selected a small restaurant that was packed with young people. A waiter led him across a noisy, crowded room and seated him at a little table in the corner. He had nearly finished reading the paper by the time a waitress arrived with the salad he had ordered. He pushed the paper on one side, surprised that there hadn't been one piece of news about what was taking place back in England.

As he munched away at a lettuce leaf and wondered how he could best use the unscheduled hold-up constructively, a girl at the next table leaned across and asked if she could borrow the sugar.

"Of course, allow me," said Daniel, handing over the shaker. He wouldn't have given the girl a second glance had he not noticed that she was reading Principia Mathematica, by A. N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell.

"Are you a mathematics student, by any chance?" he asked once he had passed the sugar across.

"Yes," she said, not looking back in his direction.

"I only asked," said Daniel, feeling the question might have been construed as impolite, "because I teach the subject."

"Of course you do," she said, not bothering to turn round. "Oxford, I'm sure."

"Cambridge, actually."

This piece of information did make the girl glance across and study Daniel more carefully. "Then can you explain Simpson's Rule to me?" she asked abruptly.

Daniel unfolded his paper napkin, took out a fountain pen and drew some diagrams to illustrate the rule, stage by stage, something he hadn't done since he'd left St. Paul's.

She checked what he had produced against the diagram in her book, smiled and said, "Fair dinkum, you really do teach maths," which took Daniel a little by surprise as he wasn't sure what "fair dinkum" meant, but as it was accompanied by a smile he assumed it was some form of approval. He was taken even more by surprise when the girl picked up her plate of egg and beans, moved across and sat down next to him.

"I'm Jackie," she said. "A bushwhacker from Perth."

"I'm Daniel," he replied. "And I'm . . ."

"A Pom from Cambridge. You've already told me, remember?"

It was Daniel's turn to look more carefully at the young woman who sat opposite him. Jackie appeared to be about twenty. She had short blond hair and a turned-up nose. Her clothes consisted of shorts and a yellow T-shirt that bore the legend "Perth!" right across her chest. She was quite unlike any undergraduate he had ever come across at Trinity.

"Are you up at university?" he inquired.

"Yeah. Second year, Perth. So what brings you to Sydney, Dan?"

Daniel couldn't think of an immediate response, but it hardly mattered that much because Jackie was already explaining why she was in the capital of New South Wales long before he had been given a chance to reply. In fact Jackie did most of the talking until their bills arrived. Daniel insisted on paying.

"Good on you," said Jackie. "So what are you doing tonight?"

"Haven't got anything particular planned."

"Great, because I was thinking of going to the Theatre Royal," she told him. "Why don't you join me?"

"Oh, what's playing?" asked Daniel, unable to hide his surprise at being picked up for the first time in his life.

"Noel Coward's Tonight at Eight-thirty with Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliott."

"Sounds promising," said Daniel noncommittally.

"Great. Then I'll see you in the foyer at ten to eight, Dan. And don't be late." She picked up her rucksack, threw it on her back, strapped up the buckle and in seconds was gone.

Daniel watched her leaving the cafe before he could think of an excuse for not agreeing to her suggestion. He decided it would be churlish not to turn up at the theater, and in any case he had to admit he had rather enjoyed Jackie's company. He checked his watch and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon looking round the city.

When Daniel arrived at the Theatre Royal that evening, a few minutes before seven-forty, he purchased two six-shilling tickets for the stalls then hung around in the foyer waiting for his guest—or was she his host? When the five-minute bell sounded Jackie still hadn't arrived and Daniel began to realize that he had been looking forward to seeing her again rather more than he cared to admit. There was still no sign of his lunchtime companion when the two-minute bell rang, so Daniel assumed that he would be seeing the play on his own. With only a minute to spare before the curtain went up, he felt a hand link through his arm and heard a voice say, "Hello, Dan. I didn't think you'd turn up."

Another first, he had never taken a girl to the theater who was wearing shorts.

Daniel smiled. Although he enjoyed the play, he found he enjoyed Jackie's company during the interval, after the show and then later over a meal at Romano's—a little Italian restaurant she seemed acquainted with even more. He had never come across anyone who, after only knowing him for a few hours, could be so open and friendly. They discussed everything from mathematics to Clark Gable, and Jackie was never without a definite opinion, whatever the subject.

"May I walk you back to your hotel?" Daniel asked when they eventually left the restaurant.

"I don't have one," Jackie replied with a grin, and throwing the rucksack over her shoulder added, "so I may as well walk you back to yours."

"Why not?" said Daniel. "I expect Mrs. Snell will be able to supply another room for the night."

"Let's hope not," said Jackie.

When Mrs. Snell opened the door, after Jackie had pressed the night bell several times, she told them, "I hadn't realized there would be two of you. That will mean extra, of course."

"But we're not—" began Daniel.

"Thank you," said Jackie, seizing the key from Mrs. Snell as the landlady gave Daniel a wink.

Once they were in Daniel's little room, Jackie removed her rucksack and said, "Don't worry about me, Dan, I'll sleep on the floor."

He didn't know what to say in reply, and without uttering another word went off into the bathroom, changed into his pajamas and cleaned his teeth. He reopened the bathroom door and walked quickly over to his bed without even glancing in Jackie's direction. A few moments later he heard the bathroom door close, so he crept out of bed again, tiptoed over to the door and turned out the light before slipping back under the sheets. A few more minutes passed before he heard the bathroom door reopen. He closed his eyes pretending to be asleep. A moment later he felt a body slide in next to his and two arms encircle him.

"Oh, Daniel"—in the darkness Jackie's voice took on an exaggerated English accent—"do let's get rid of these frightful pajamas." As she pulled at the cotton cord on his pajama bottoms, he turned over to protest, only to find himself pressed up against her naked body. Daniel didn't utter a word as he lay there, eyes closed, doing almost nothing as Jackie began to move her hands slowly up and down his legs. He became utterly exhilarated, and soon after exhausted, unsure quite what had taken place. But he had certainly enjoyed every moment.

"You know, I do believe you're a virgin," Jackie said, when he eventually opened his eyes.

"No," he corrected. "Was a virgin."

"I'm afraid you still are," said Jackie. "Strictly speaking. But don't get worked up about it; I promise we'll have that sorted out by the morning. By the way, next time, Dan, you are allowed to join in."

Daniel spent most of the next three days in bed being tutored by a second-year undergraduate from the University of Perth. By the second morning he had discovered just how beautiful a woman's body could be. By the third evening Jackie let out a little moan that led him to believe that although he might not have graduated he was no longer a freshman.

He was sad when Jackie told him the time had come for her to return to Perth. She threw her rucksack over her shoulder for the last time, and after he had accompanied her to the station Daniel watched the train pull away from the platform as she began her journey back to Western Australia.

"If I ever get to Cambridge, Dan, I'll look you up," were the last words he remembered her saying.

"I do hope so," he said, feeling there were several members of Trinity High Table who would have benefited from a few days of Jackie's expert tuition.

On Thursday morning Daniel reported back to the Immigration Department as instructed, and after another hour's wait in the inevitable queue, handed his receipt over to the assistant who was still slumped across the counter wearing the same shirt.

"Oh, yes, Guy Trentham, I remember. I discovered his particulars a few minutes after you'd left," the clerk told him. "Pity you didn't come back earlier."

"Then I can only thank you."

"Thank me, what for?" asked the assistant suspiciously.

Daniel took the little green card the assistant handed to him. "For three of the happiest days of my life."

"What are you getting at, mate?" said the other man, but Daniel was already out of earshot.

He sat alone on the steps outside the tall colonial building and studied the official card. As he feared, it revealed very little:

Daniel soon located Manley Drive on the city map which Jackie had left with him, and took a bus to the north side of Sydney where he was dropped off in a leafy suburb overlooking the harbor. The houses, although fairly large, looked a little run-down, leaving Daniel with the impression that the suburb might at some time in the past have been a fashionable area.

When he rang the bell of what could have been a former colonial guest house, the door was answered by a young man wearing shorts and a singlet. Daniel was coming to accept that this was the national dress.

"It's a long shot, I know," Daniel began, "but I'm trying to trace someone who may have lived in this house in 1922."

"Bit before my time," said the youth cheerily. "Better come in and talk to my Aunt Sylvia—she'll be your best bet."

Daniel followed the young man through the hall into a drawing room that looked as if it hadn't been tidied for several days and out onto the verandah, which showed indications of having once been painted white. There seated in a rocking chair was a woman who might have been a shade under fifty but whose dyed hair and over-made-up face made it impossible for Daniel to be at all sure of her age. She continued to rock backwards and forwards, eyes closed, enjoying the morning sun.

"I'm sorry to bother you—"

"I'm not asleep," said the woman, her eyes opening to take in the intruder. She stared suspiciously up at him. "Who are you? You look familiar."

"My name is Daniel Trumper," he told her. "I'm trying to trace someone who may have stayed here in 1922."

She began to laugh. "Twenty-five years ago. You're a bit of an optimist, I must say."

"His name was Guy Trentham."

She sat up with a start and stared straight at him. "You're his son, aren't you?" Daniel went ice cold. "I'll never forget that smooth-tongued phony's face if I live to be a hundred."

The truth was no longer possible to deny, even to himself.

"So have you come back after all these years to clear up his debts?"

"I don't understand—" said Daniel.

"Scarpered with nearly a year's rent owing, didn't he? Always writing to his mother back in England for more money, but when it came I never saw any of it. I suppose he thought that bedding me was payment enough, so I'm not likely to forget the bastard, am I? Especially after what happened to him."

"Does that mean you know where he went after he left this house?"

She hesitated for some time, looking as if she was trying to make up her mind. She turned to look out of the window while Daniel waited. "The last I heard," she said after a long pause, "was that he got a job working as a bookie's runner up in Melbourne, but that was before—"

"Before?" queried Daniel.

She stared up at him again with quizzical eyes.

"No," she said, "you'd better find that out for yourself. I wouldn't wish to be the one who tells you. If you want my advice, you'll take the first boat back to England and not bother yourself with Melbourne."

"But you may turn out to be the only person who can help me."

"I was taken for a ride by your father once so I'm not going to wait around to be conned by his son, that's for sure. Show him the door, Kevin."

Daniel's heart sank. He thanked the woman for seeing him and left without another word. Once back on the street he took the bus into Sydney and walked the rest of the journey to the guest house. He spent a lonely night missing Jackie while wondering why his father had behaved so badly when he came to Sydney, and whether he should heed "Aunt Sylvia's" advice.

The following morning Daniel left Mrs. Snell and her big smile, but not before she had presented him with a big bill. He settled it without complaint and made his way to the railway station.

When the train from Sydney pulled into Spencer Street Station in Melbourne that evening, Daniel's first action was to check the local telephone directory, just in case there was a Trentham listed, but there was none. Next he telephoned every bookmaker who was registered in the city, but it was not until he spoke to the ninth that Daniel came across anyone to whom the name meant anything.

"Sounds familiar," said a voice on the other end of the line. "But can't remember why. You could try Brad Morris, though. He ran this office around that time, so he may be able to help you. You'll find his number in the book."

Daniel looked up his number. When he was put through to Mr. Morris, his conversation with the old man was so short that it didn't require a second coin.

"Does the name 'Guy Trentham' mean anything to you?" he asked once again.

"The Englishman?"

"Yes," Daniel replied, feeling his pulse quicken.

"Spoke with a posh accent and told everyone he was a major?"

"Might well have done."

"Then try the jailhouse, because that's where he finished up." Daniel would have asked why but the line had already gone dead.

He was still shaking from head to toe when he dragged his trunk out of the station and checked into the Railway Hotel on the other side of the road. Once again, he lay on a single bed, in a small dark room, trying to make up his mind whether he should continue with his inquiries or simply avoid the truth and do as Sylvia had advised, take the first boat back to England.

He fell asleep in the early evening, but woke again in the middle of the night to find he was still fully dressed. By the time the early morning sun shone through the window he had made up his mind. He didn't want to know, he didn't need to know, and he would return to England immediately.

But first he decided to have a bath, and a change of clothes, and by the time he had done that he had also changed his mind.

Daniel came down to the lobby half an hour later and asked the receptionist where the main police station was located. The man behind the desk directed him down the road to Bourke Street.

"Was your room that bad?" he inquired.

Daniel gave a false laugh. He set off slowly and full of apprehension in the direction he had been shown. It took him only a few minutes to reach Bourke Street but he circled the block several times before he finally climbed the stone steps of the police station and entered the building.

The young duly sergeant showed no recognition when he heard the name of "Trentham" and simply inquired who it was who wanted to know.

"A relation of his from England," replied Daniel. The sergeant left him at the counter and walked over to the far side of the room to speak to a senior officer seated behind a desk, who was patiently turning over photographs. The officer stopped what he was doing and listened carefully, then appeared to ask the sergeant something. In response the sergeant turned and pointed at Daniel. Bastard, thought Daniel. You're a little bastard. A moment later the sergeant returned to the front desk.

"We've closed the file on Trentham," he said. "Any further inquiries would have to be made at the Prison Department."

Daniel almost lost his voice, but somehow managed, "Where's that?"

"Seventh floor," he said, pointing up.

When he stepped out of the lift on the seventh floor, Daniel was confronted by a larger-than-life poster showing a warm-faced man bearing the name Hector Watts, Inspector-General of Prisons.

Daniel walked over to the inquiry desk and asked if he could see Mr. Watts.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No," said Daniel.

"Then I doubt—"

"Would you be kind enough to explain to the inspector-general that I have traveled from England especially to see him?"

Daniel was kept waiting for only a few moments before he was shown up to the eighth floor. The same warm smile that appeared in the picture now beamed down at him in reality, even if the lines in the face were a little deeper. Daniel judged Hector Watts to be near his sixtieth birthday and, although overweight, he still looked as if he could take care of himself.

"Which part of England do you come from?" Watts asked.

"Cambridge," Daniel told him. "I teach mathematics at the university."

"I'm from Glasgow myself," Watts said. "Which won't come as a surprise to you, with my name and accent. So, please have a seat and tell me what I can do for you."

"I'm trying to trace a Guy Trentham, and the Police Department have referred me to you."

"Oh, yes, I remember that name. But why do I remember it?" The Scotsman rose from his desk and went over to a row of filing cabinets that lined the wall behind him. He pulled open the one marked "STV," and extracted a large box file.

"Trentham," he repeated, as he thumbed through the papers inside the box, before finally removing two sheets. He returned to his desk and, having placed the sheets in front of him, began reading. After he had absorbed the details, he looked up and studied Daniel more carefully.

"Been here long, have you, laddie?"

"Arrived in Sydney less than a week ago," said Daniel, puzzled by the question.

"And never been to Melbourne before?"

"No, never."

"So what's the reason for your inquiry?"

"I wanted to find out anything I could about Captain Guy Trentham."

"Why?" asked the inspector-general. "Are you a journo?"

"No," said Daniel, "I'm a teacher but—"

"Then you must have had a very good reason for traveling this far."

"Curiosity, I suppose," said Daniel. "You see, although I never knew him, Guy Trentham was my father."

The head of the prison service looked down at the names listed on the sheet as next of kin: wife, Anna Helen, (deceased), one daughter, Margaret Ethel. There was no mention of a son. He looked back up at Daniel and, after a few moments of contemplation, came to a decision.

"I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Trentham, that your father died while he was in police custody."

Daniel was stunned, and began shaking.

Watts looked across his desk and added, "I'm sorry to have to give you such unhappy news, especially when you've traveled all this way."

"What was the cause of his death?" Daniel whispered.

The inspector-general turned the page, checked the bottom line of the charge sheet in front of him and reread the words: "Hanged by the neck until dead." He looked back up at Daniel.

"A heart attack," he said.

Chapter 31

Daniel took the sleeper back to Sydney, but he didn't sleep. All he wanted to do was get as far away from Melbourne as he possibly could. As every mile slipped by, he relaxed a little more, and after a time was even able to eat half a sandwich from the buffet car. When the train pulled into the station of Australia's largest city he jumped off, loaded his trunk into a taxi and headed straight for the port. He booked himself on the first boat sailing to the west coast of America.

The tiny tramp steamer, only licensed to carry four passengers, sailed at midnight for San Francisco, and Daniel wasn't allowed on board until he had handed over to the captain the full fare in cash, leaving himself just enough to get back to England as long as he wasn't stranded anywhere on the way.

During that bobbing, swaying, endless crossing back to America Daniel spent most of his time lying on a bunk, which gave him easily enough time to consider what he should do with the information he now possessed. He also tried to come to terms with the anxieties his mother must have suffered over the years and what a fine man his stepfather was. How he hated the word "stepfather." He would never think of Charlie that way. If only they had taken him into their confidence from the beginning he could surely have used his talents to help rather than waste so much of his energy trying to find out the truth. But he was now even more painfully aware that he couldn't let them become aware of what he had discovered, as he probably knew more than they did.

Daniel doubted that his mother realized that Trentham had died in jail leaving a string of disgruntled debtors across Victoria and New South Wales. Certainly there had been no indication of that on the gravestone in Ashurst.

As he stood on the deck and watched the little boat bob along on its chosen course under the Golden Gate and into the bay, Daniel finally felt a plan beginning to take shape.

Once he had cleared immigration he took a bus into the center of San Francisco and booked himself back into the hotel at which he had stayed before traveling on to Australia. The porter produced two remaining cards and Daniel handed over the promised ten-dollar note. He scribbled something new and posted them both before boarding the Super Chief.

With each hour and each day of solitude his ideas continued to develop although it still worried him how much more information his mother must have that he still daren't ask her about. But now at least he was certain that his father was Guy Trentham and had left India or England in disgrace. The fearsome Mrs. Trentham must therefore be his grandmother, who had for some unknown reason blamed Charlie for what had happened to her son.

On arriving in New York Daniel was exasperated to find that the Queen Mary had sailed for England the previous day. He transferred his ticket to the Queen Elizabeth, leaving himself with only a few dollars in cash. His final action on American soil was to telegraph his mother with an estimated time of arrival at Southampton.

Daniel began to relax for the first time once he could no longer see the Statue of Liberty from the stern of the ocean liner. Mrs. Trentham, however, remained constantly in his thoughts during the five-day journey. He couldn't think of her as his grandmother and when the time came to disembark at Southampton he felt he needed several more questions answered by his mother before he would be ready to carry out his plan.

As he walked down the gangplank and back onto English soil he noticed that the leaves on the trees had turned from green to gold in his absence. He intended to have solved the problem of Mrs. Trentham before they had fallen.

His mother was there on the dockside waiting to greet him. Daniel had never been more happy to see her, giving her such a warm hug that she was unable to hide her surprise. On the drive back to London he learned the sad news that his other grandmother had died while he had been in America and although his mother had received several postcards she couldn't remember the name of either of the professors he had said he was visiting so she had been unable to contact him to pass on the news. However, she had enjoyed receiving so many postcards.

"There are some more still on their way, I suspect," said Daniel, feeling guilty for the first time.

"Will you have time to spend a few days with us before you return to Cambridge?"

"Yes. I'm back a little earlier than I expected, so you could be stuck with me for a few weeks."

"Oh, your father will be pleased to hear that."

Daniel wondered how long it would be before he could hear anyone say "your father" without a vision of Guy Trentham forming in his mind.

"What decision did you come to about raising the money for the new building?"

"We've decided to go public," said his mother. "In the end it was a case of simple arithmetic. The architect has completed the outline plan, and of course your father wants the best of everything, so I'm afraid the final cost is likely to be nearer a half a million pounds."

"And are you still able to keep fifty-one percent of the new company?"

"Only just, because based on those figures it's going to be tight. We could even end up having to pawn your great grandfather's barrow."

"And the flats—any news of them?" Daniel was gazing out of the car window for his mother's reaction in the reflection of the glass. She seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"The owners are carrying out the council's instructions and have already begun knocking down what remains of them."

"Does that mean Dad is going to be granted his planning permission?"

"I hope so, but it now looks as if it might take a little longer than we'd originally thought as a local resident—a Mr. Simpson on behalf of the Save the Small Shops Federation—has lodged an objection to our scheme with the council. So please don't ask about it when you see your father. The very mention of the flats brings him close to apoplexy."

And I presume it's Mrs. Trentham who is behind this Mr. Simpson? was all Daniel wanted to say but simply asked, "And how's the wicked Daphne?"

"Still trying to get Clarissa married off to the right man, and Clarence into the right regiment."

"Nothing less than a royal duke for one and a commission in the Scots Guards for the other would be my guess."

"That's about right," agreed his mother. "She also expects Clarissa to produce a girl fairly quickly so she can marry her off to the future Prince of Wales."

"But Princess Elizabeth has only just announced her engagement."

"I am aware of that, but we all know how Daphne does like to plan ahead."

Daniel adhered to his mother's wishes and made no mention of the flats when he discussed with Charlie the launching of the new company over dinner that night. He also noticed that a picture entitled Apples and Pears by an artist called Courbet had replaced the van Gogh that had hung in the hall. Something else he didn't comment on.

Daniel spent the following day at the planning department of the LCC (Inquiries) at County Hall. Although a clerk supplied him with all the relevant papers he was quick to point out, to Daniel's frustration, that he could not remove any original documents from the building.

In consequence he spent the morning repeatedly going over the papers, making verbatim notes of the relevant clauses and then committing them to memory so it wouldn't prove necessary to carry anything around on paper. The last thing he wanted was for his parents to stumble by accident across any notes he had made. By five o'clock, when they locked the front door behind him, Daniel felt confident he could recall every relevant detail.

He left County Hall, sat on a low parapet overlooking the Thames and repeated the salient facts to himself.

Trumper's, he had discovered, had applied to build a major department store that would encompass the entire block known as Chelsea Terrace. There would be two towers of twelve stories in height. Each tower would consist of eight hundred thousand square feet of floor space. On top of that would be a further five floors of offices and walkways that would span the two towers and join the twin structures together. Outline planning permission for the entire scheme had been granted by the LCC. However, an appeal had been lodged by a Mr. Martin Simpson of the Save the Small Shops Federation against the five floors that would bring together the two main structures over an empty site in the center of the Terrace. It didn't take a great deal of hypothesizing to decide who was making sure Mr. Simpson was getting the necessary financial backing.

At the same time Mrs. Trentham herself had been given outline planning permission to build a block of flats to be used specifically for low-rent accommodation. Daniel went over in his mind her detailed planning application which had showed that the flats would be built of rough-hewn concrete, with the minimum of internal or external facilities—the expression "jerry-built" immediately sprang to mind. It wasn't hard for Daniel to work out that Mrs. Trentham's purpose was to build the ugliest edifice the council would allow her to get away with, right in the middle of Charlie's proposed palace.

Daniel looked down to check his memory against the notes. He hadn't forgotten anything, so he tore the crib sheet into tiny pieces and dropped them into a litter bin on the corner of Westminster Bridge, then returned home to the Little Boltons.

Daniel's next move was to telephone David Oldcrest, the resident law tutor at Trinity who specialized in town and country planning. His colleague spent over an hour explaining to Daniel that, what with appeals and counter-appeals that could go all the way up to the House of Lords, permission for such a building as Trumper Towers might not be granted for several years. By the time a decision had been made, Dr. Oldcrest reckoned that only the lawyers would have ended up making any money.

Daniel thanked his friend, and having considered the problem he now faced came to the conclusion that the success or failure of Charlie's ambitions rested entirely in the hands of Mrs. Trentham. That was unless he could . . .

For the next couple of weeks he spent a considerable amount of his time in a telephone box on the corner of Chester Square, without ever once making a call. For the remainder of each day, he followed an immaculately dressed lady of obvious self-confidence and presence around the capital, trying not to be seen but often attempting to steal a glimpse of what she looked like, how she behaved and the kind of world she lived in.

He quickly discovered that only three things appeared to be sacrosanct to the occupant of Number 19 Chester Square. First, there were the meetings with her lawyers in Lincoln's Inn Fields which seemed to take place every two or three days, though not on a regular basis. Second came her bridge gatherings, which were always at two o'clock, three days a week: on Monday at 9 Cadogan Place, on Wednesday at 117 Sloane Avenue and on Friday at her own home in Chester Square. The same group of elderly women appeared to arrive at all three establishments. Third was the occasional visit to a seedy hotel in South Kensington where she sat in the darkest corner of the tea room and held a conversation with a man who looked to Daniel a most unlikely companion for the daughter of Sir Raymond Hardcastle. Certainly she did not treat him as a friend, even an associate, and Daniel was unable to work out what they could possibly have in common.

After a further week he decided that his plan could only be executed on the last Friday before he resumed to Cambridge. Accordingly he spent a morning with a tailor who specialized in army uniforms. During the afternoon he set about writing a script, which later that evening he rehearsed. He then made several telephone calls, including one to Spinks, the medal specialists who felt confident they could have his order made up in time. On the last two mornings—but only after he was sure his parents were safely out of the house—he carried out a full dress rehearsal in the privacy of his bedroom.

Daniel needed to be certain that not only would Mrs. Trentham be taken by surprise but also she would remain off balance for at least the twenty minutes he felt would prove necessary to see the whole exercise through.

That Friday over breakfast, Daniel confirmed that neither of his parents was expected to return home until after six that evening. He readily agreed that they should all have dinner together as he was returning to Cambridge the following day. He hung around patiently waiting for his father to leave for Chelsea Terrace, but then had to wait another half hour before he could depart himself because his mother was held up by a phone call just as she was on her way out. Daniel left the bedroom door open and marched around in endless circles.

At last his mother's conversation came to an end and she left for work. Twenty minutes later Daniel strolled out of the house carrying a small suitcase containing the uniform he had obtained from Johns and Pegg the previous day. Cautiously he walked three blocks in the wrong direction before hailing a taxi.

On arrival at the Royal Fusiliers Museum Daniel spent a few minutes checking the picture of his father that hung on the wall. The hair was wavier than his own, and looked from the sepia photo to be a touch fairer. He suddenly feared he might not be able to remember the exact details. Daniel waited until the curator's back was turned, then, despite feeling a tinge of guilt, quickly removed the little photograph and placed it in his briefcase.

He took another taxi to a barber in Kensington who was only too delighted to bleach the gentleman's hair, switch his parting and even to add a wave or two, creating as near as possible a duplicate of the sepia photograph from which he had been asked to work. Every few minutes Daniel checked the changing process in the mirror, and once he believed the effect was as close as could be achieved he paid the bill and left. The next cabbie he directed to Spinks, the medal specialists in King Street, St. James. On arrival he purchased for cash the four ribbons that he had ordered over the phone; to his relief the young assistant did not inquire if he was entitled to wear them. Another taxi took him from St. James to the Dorchester Hotel. There he booked himself into a single room and informed the girl on the desk that he intended to check out of the hotel by six that night. She handed him a key marked 309. Daniel politely refused the porter's offer to carry his case and merely asked for directions to the lift.

Once safely in his room he locked the door and laid the contents of his suitcase carefully on the bed. The moment he had finished changing from his suit into the uniform he fixed the row of ribbons above the left-hand breast pocket exactly as they were in the photograph and finally checked the effect in the long mirror attached to the bathroom door. He was every inch a First World War captain of the Royal Fusiliers, and the purple and silver ribbon of the MC and the three campaign medals simply added the finishing touch.

Having checked over every last detail against the stolen photograph Daniel began to feel unsure of himself for the first time. But if he didn't go through with it . . . He sat on the end of the bed, checking his watch every few minutes. An hour passed before he stood up, took a deep breath and pulled on his long trenchcoat—almost the only article of clothing he had the right to wear—locked the door behind him and went down to the lobby. Once he had pushed his way through the swing doors, he hailed another taxi which took him to Chester Square. He paid off the cabbie and checked his watch. Three forty-seven. He estimated that he still had at least another twenty minutes before the bridge party would begin to break up.

From his now familiar telephone box on the corner of the square Daniel watched as the ladies began to depart from Number 19. Once he had counted eleven of them leave the house he felt confident that Mrs. Trentham must, servants apart, now be on her own, he already knew from the parliamentary timetable detailed in the Daily Telegraph that morning that Mrs. Trentham's husband would not be expected back in Chester Square until after six that night. He waited for another five minutes before he came out of the telephone box and marched quickly across the road. He knew that if he hesitated, even for a moment, he would surely lose his nerve. He rapped firmly on the knocker and waited for what felt like hours before the butler finally answered.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Good afternoon, Gibson. I have an appointment with Mrs. Trentham at four-fifteen."

"Yes, of course, sir," said Gibson. As Daniel had anticipated, the butler would assume that someone who knew his name must indeed have an appointment. "Please come this way, sir," he said before taking Daniel's trenchcoat. When they reached the door of the drawing room Gibson inquired, "May I say who is calling?"

"Captain Daniel Trentham."

The butler seemed momentarily taken aback but opened the door of the drawing room and announced, "Captain Daniel Trentham, madam."

Mrs. Trentham was standing by the window when Daniel entered the room. She swung round, stared at the young man, took a couple of paces forward, hesitated and then fell heavily onto the sofa.

For God's sake don't faint, was Daniel's first reaction as he stood in the center of the carpet facing his grandmother.

"Who are you?" she whispered at last.

"Don't let's play games, Grandmother. You know very well who I am," said Daniel, hoping he sounded confident.

"She sent you, didn't she?"

"If you are referring to my mother, no, she did not. In fact she doesn't even know that I'm here."

Mrs. Trentham's mouth opened in protest, but she did not speak. Daniel swayed from foot to foot during what seemed to him to be an unbearably long silence. His eye began to focus on an MC that stood on the mantelpiece.

"So what do you want?" she asked.

"I've come to make a deal with you, Grandmother."

"What do you mean, a deal? You're in no position lo make any deals."

"Oh, I think I am, Grandmother. You see, I've just come back from a trip to Australia." He paused. "Which turned out to be very revealing."

Mrs. Trentham flinched, but her eyes did not leave him for a moment.

"And what I learned about my father while I was there doesn't bear repeating. I won't go into any details, as I suspect you know every bit as much as I do."

Her eyes remained fixed on him and she slowly began to show signs of recovery.

"Unless, of course, you want to know where they had planned to bury my father originally, because it certainly wasn't in the family plot at Ashurst parish church."

"What do you want?" she repeated.

"As I said, Grandmother, I've come to make a deal."

"I'm listening."

"I want you to abandon your plans for building those dreadful flats in Chelsea Terrace, and at the same time withdraw any objections you may have to the detailed planning permission Trumper's has applied for."

"Never."

"Then I fear the time may have come for the world to be informed of the real reason for your vendetta against my mother."

"But that would harm your mother every bit as much as me."

"Oh, I don't think so, Grandmother," said Daniel. "Especially when the press find out that your son resigned his commission with far from glowing testimonials, and later died in Melbourne in even less auspicious circumstances—despite the fact he was finally laid to rest in a sleepy village in Berkshire after you had shipped the body home, telling your friends that he had been a successful cattle broker and died tragically of tuberculosis."

"But that's blackmail."

"Oh, no, Grandmother, just a troubled son, desperate to discover what had really happened to his long-lost father and shocked when he found out the truth behind the Trentham family secret. I think the press would describe such an incident quite simply as 'an internal feud.' One thing's for certain—my mother would come out smelling of roses, though I'm not sure how many people would still want to play bridge with you once they learned all the finer details."

Mrs. Trentham rose quickly to her feet, clenched both her fists and advanced towards him menacingly. Daniel stood his ground.

"No hysterics, Grandmother. Don't forget I know everything about you." He felt acutely aware that he actually knew very little.

Mrs. Trentham stopped, and even retreated a pace. "And if I agree to your demands?"

"I shall walk out of this room and you will never hear from me again as long as you live. You have my word on it."

She let out a long sigh, but it was some time before she replied.

"You win," she eventually said, sounding remarkably composed. "But I have a condition of my own if I am expected to comply with your demands."

Daniel was taken by surprise. He hadn't planned for any conditions coming from her side. "What is it?" he asked suspiciously.

He listened carefully to her request and, although puzzled by it, could see no cause for any alarm.

"I accept your terms," he said finally.

"In writing," she added quietly. "And now."

"Then I shall also require our little arrangement in writing," said Daniel, trying to score a point of his own.

"Agreed."

Mrs. Trentham walked shakily towards the writing desk. She sat down, opened the center drawer, and took out two sheets of purple-headed paper. Painstakingly she wrote out separate agreements before passing them over for Daniel to consider. He read through the drafts slowly. She had covered all the points he had demanded and had left nothing out including the one rather long-winded clause she had herself insisted upon. Daniel nodded his agreement and passed the two pieces of paper back to her.

She signed both copies, then handed Daniel her pen. He in turn added his signature below hers on both sheets of paper. She returned one of the agreements to Daniel before rising to pull the bell rope by the mantelpiece. The butler reappeared a moment later.

"Gibson, we need you to witness our signatures on two documents. Once you have done that the gentleman will be leaving," she announced. The butler penned his signature on both sheets of paper without question or comment.

A few moments later Daniel found himself out on the street with an uneasy feeling everything hadn't gone exactly as he had anticipated. Once he was seated in a taxi and on his way back to the Dorchester Hotel he reread the sheet of paper they had both signed. He could not reasonably have asked for more but remained puzzled by the clause Mrs. Trentham had insisted on inserting as it made no sense to him. He pushed any such disquiet to the back of his mind.

On arrival at the Dorchester Hotel, in the privacy of Room 309 he quickly changed out of the uniform and back into his civilian clothes. He felt clean for the first time that day. He then placed the uniform and cap in his suitcase before going back down to reception, where he handed in the key, paid the bill in cash and checked out.

Another taxi resumed him to Kensington, where the hairdresser was disappointed to be told that his new customer now wished all signs of the bleach to be removed, the waves to be straightened out and the parting to be switched back.

Daniel's final stop before resuming home was to a deserted building site in Pimlico. He stood behind a large crane and when he was certain no one could see him he dropped the uniform and cap into a rubbish tip and set light to the photograph.

He stood shivering as he watched his father disappear in a purple flame.