Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds. Simon Tolkien

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       CHAPTER 7

      Four miles away on the other side of the river, in the offices of Parker, Johnson and Hughes, Solicitors, in Battersea High Street, Ava fidgeted in the uncomfortable hard-backed chair that she’d been sitting in for more than an hour. She’d been finding it increasingly hard to control her irritation ever since she’d found out from the senior partner, Mr Parker, that her father had been a much wealthier man than she had ever suspected. At the start of the interview, he had produced a bulging file containing a portfolio of blue-chip investments, a well-endowed savings account, and the title deeds not only for the flat in Gloucester Mansions, but for two houses in south London that were rented out on long leases. Albert had been a miser. That was exactly the right word for it, thought Ava. He could easily have paid someone to look after him, just as he could have set her up independently long before she’d felt forced to marry an unsuitable man in order to escape his clutches. But he had chosen to hoard his money instead. For a moment Ava was glad he was dead, thinking he’d got exactly what he deserved, but then she was seized with shame. She remembered his body hurtling through the air and smashing down on the floor at her feet. No one deserved to die that way.

      She glanced over at her husband, transferring her irritation in his direction. He’d dressed for the appointment in the same black suit he’d worn to the funeral, but Ava had been married to him long enough to know that behind his lugubrious expression he was rubbing his hands with glee. It was obvious that he couldn’t wait to get his hands on the money.

      She looked at her watch. It was already half past eleven and she was going to be late for her meeting with Seaforth. She’d signed all the documents they needed her signature for. Getting to her feet, she excused herself and then practically ran from the room. She stumbled at the door, almost falling over in her rush to get outside, but Bertram hardly seemed to notice – too busy pawing over his inheritance, she thought once she’d got outside; calculating his ill-gotten gains.

      The journey took forever – the bus diverted by an unexploded bomb; the Tube train halted for an age in the tunnel outside Leicester Square station while Ava tried to distract herself by reading the front pages of the newspapers and magazines that the other passengers were absorbed in all around her. Grim headlines on the Daily Mail and the Daily Express: invasion warnings, build-up of German shipping in Channel ports, Home Guard on high alert; a photograph of a Wellington bomber over Berlin on the cover of the Picture Post, caught in a cone of arcing searchlights; advertisements on the cover of the Illustrated London News – Vapex for colds … Nufix for hair health and grooming … Bermaline bread is a perfect food.

      What would happen if the Germans really did come? Ava wondered. Would there still be Vapex, Nufix, and Bermaline bread? Would Bertram still be counting her father’s money? Would Alec and Seaforth be put up against a wall and shot? Of course they would. The Germans were Nazis. Everyone knew the stories of what they’d done in Poland and France – raping women, hanging people from gallows in public squares. Ava shut her eyes hard, blacking out her evil thoughts, praying for the train to move.

      Finally it meandered into the station. Everyone was getting out – she had no idea why. She pushed her way through the crowd that was moving in a grey, pent-up stream towards the steps and ran across Leicester Square and into Coventry Street, dodging between bicycles and pedestrians and flocks of pigeons. There’d been bombing here too. A department store on the opposite side of the street had been half burnt out and looked like a charred skeleton with blackened walls and gaping windows and rust-orange soot spattering its white front like blood, while inside, wax models lay like abandoned corpses on the sagging floor. But all around, life was continuing more or less as usual, and she hurried on past restaurants and cinemas and neon lights to the end of the street, arriving outside the Corner House panting for breath.

      It was a huge building, far bigger than she remembered it, rearing up through rounded classical columns to what seemed like an imitation Greek temple on the roof. She rushed through the food hall and up the stairs to the first floor, where she stopped in her tracks at the entrance to the main restaurant, blinking in the dazzle of the lights, disoriented by the cacophony of sound. The noise was tremendous. Hundreds of people were talking and eating, competing for volume with an eight-piece orchestra playing dance music on a dais over by the far window. It had been nothing like this when she came here with Bertram before the war and accepted his proposal over two cups of lukewarm tea. Unless they had been in one of the other restaurants СКАЧАТЬ