him out of the Mayflower and into his runabout, and we set off with a jolt to a destination undisclosed.
‘How about I choose not to go bald?’ It amused him in a bitter sort of way.
‘Not a choice.’
We were heading east, Swindon behind us, Wantage, according to the signposts, ahead. Long before we reached there, however, Dart put his foot on the brake and swerved in through some open gates set in a stone wall. Up a short driveway he came to a halt in front of a large house built of smooth grey bricks with bands of smooth pink bricks and inset patterns of smooth yellowish bricks, all in all (to me) an eyesore.
‘I was brought up here,’ Dart said encouragingly. ‘What do you think of it?’
‘Edwardian,’ I said.
‘Near enough. Last year of Victoria.’
‘Solid, anyway.’
A turret. Big sash windows. A conservatory. Affluent middle-class display.
‘My parents rattle around in it now,’ Dart said frankly. ‘They’re out, by the way. Father was going to meet Mother from the racecourse. They won’t be back for hours.’ He pulled a bunch of keys out of the ignition and stood up out of the car. ‘We can get in round the back,’ he said, sorting out one key. ‘Come on.’
‘No breaking and entering?’
‘Later.’
At close quarters the walls were still repulsive and also slippery to the touch. The path round to the rear was edged with gloomy evergreen shrubs. At the back of the house, a red brick extension had been added to provide bathrooms: brown-painted drains zig-zagged over the exterior, an invitation to ice. Dart unlocked a brown-painted door and let us into the bowels (well, literally) of the house.
‘This way,’ he said, marching past a cloakroom and other plumbing, briefly glimpsed through half-open doors. ‘Through here.’ He pushed aside a swing door which led from utility to opulence; to the black-and-white tiled floor of a large entrance hall.
We made our way across this to a polished door and into a cluttered oak-panelled room whose chief eyecatchers were endless pictures of horses; some, in oil paintings, hanging thickly on the walls with individual lights on the frames, some in black-and-white photographs in silver frames standing on every surface, some on book jackets. Horse-head bookends supported leather-bound classics like The Irish R.M. and Handley Cross. A silver fox held down papers on a busy desk. Silver and gold coins were displayed in collections. A hunting crop lay casually coiled on a broken-springed chair. Copies of Horse and Hound and Country Life filled a magazine rack to overflowing.
‘Father’s sanctum,’ Dart said unnecessarily. He strolled unconcernedly across the room, skirted the desk and the large chair behind it, and stopped beside a section of panelling which he said was a cupboard door always kept carefully locked by his parent.
‘The racecourse plans are inside,’ Dart said. ‘How about opening it?’
‘Your father wouldn’t approve.’
‘I dare say not. Don’t tell me you’re going all moral and starchy. You pretty well said you could do it.’
‘This is too personal.’
I went round beside him, however, and bent to take a closer look at the lock. All that was to be seen from the outside was an inconspicuous keyhole: without Dart’s knowledge of its existence the door itself would have remained more or less invisible, particularly as a painting of a meet with huntsman and foxhounds adhered on it, to make it indistinguishable from the walls around.
‘Well?’ Dart asked.
‘What does its key look like?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, is it a small short key, or one with a longish narrow shaft with a clump of wards on the end?’
‘A long shaft.’
I straightened up and gave him the bad news.
‘I’ll not touch it,’ I said. ‘Won’t the key be somewhere in this room?’
‘I tried to find it for years in my teens. No good at all. How about a bit of force?’
‘Absolutely not.’
Dart fiddled around with things on the desk. ‘What about this paper-knife? Or this?’ He held up a long buttonhook. ‘It isn’t as if we’re going to steal anything. Just to take a look.’
‘Why does your father have the plans locked up?’
Dart shrugged. ‘He’s secretive by nature. It takes such a lot of energy to be secretive. I can never be bothered.’
The lock was an old and undoubtedly simple warded-bit key job, probably surface-mounted on the inside of the door. The keyhole itself was about an inch from top to bottom, a healthy size that made picking it a cinch. Failing a filed-down key, two wires would have been enough. I was