into your own hands.’
‘I don’t exactly aim to lynch anyone.’
‘What, then?’
I hesitated. ‘There’s something I ought to check. I think I’ll do it today. After that, if I’m right, I’ll make a loud fuss.’
‘Slander actions notwithstanding?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s infuriating.’
‘What are you going to check?’ he asked.
‘Telephone tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you.’
Charlie, like Allie, asked before he left if I would show him where I made the toys. We went down to the workshop and found Owen Idris, my general helper, busy sweeping the tidy floor.
‘Morning, Owen.’
‘Morning, sir.’
‘This is Mr Ganterfield, Owen.’
‘Morning, sir.’
Owen appeared to have swept without pause but I knew the swift glance he had given Charlie was as good as a photograph. My neat dry little Welsh factotum had a phenomenal memory for faces.
‘Will you want the car today, sir?’ he said.
‘This evening.’
‘I’ll just change the oil, then.’
‘Fine.’
‘Will you be wanting me for the parking?’
I shook my head. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Very good, sir.’ He looked resigned. ‘Any time,’ he said.
I showed Charlie the machines but he knew less about engineering than I did about banking.
‘Where do you start, in the hands or in the head?’
‘Head,’ I said. ‘Then hands, then head.’
‘So clear.’
‘I think of something, I make it, I draw it.’
‘Draw it?’
‘Machine drawings, not an artistic impression.’
‘Blue prints,’ said Charlie, nodding wisely.
‘Blue prints are copies… The originals are black on white.’
‘Disillusioning.’
I slid open one of the long drawers which held them and showed him some of the designs. The fine spidery lines with a key giving details of materials and sizes of screw threads looked very different from the bright shiny toys which reached the shops, and Charlie looked from design to finished article with a slowly shaking head.
‘Don’t know how you do it.’
‘Training,’ I said. ‘Same way that you switch money round ten currencies in half an hour and end up thousands richer.’
‘Can’t do that so much these days,’ he said gloomily. He watched me put designs and toys away. ‘Don’t forget though that my firm can always find finances for good ideas.’
‘I won’t forget.’
‘There must be a dozen merchant banks,’ Charlie said, ‘all hoping to be nearest when you look around for cash.’
‘The manufacturers fix the cash. I just collect the royalties.’
He shook his head. ‘You’ll never make a million that way.’
‘I won’t get ulcers, either.’
‘No ambition?’
‘To win the Derby and get even with Jody Leeds.’
I arrived at Jody’s expensive stable uninvited, quietly, at half past midnight, and on foot. The car lay parked half a mile behind me, along with prudence.
Pale fitful moonlight lit glimpses of the large manor house with its pedimented front door and rows of uniform windows. No lights shone upstairs in the room Jody shared with Felicity, and none downstairs in the large drawing-room beneath. The lawn, rough now and scattered with a few last dead leaves, stretched peacefully from the house to where I stood hidden in the bushes by the gate.
I watched for a while. There was no sign of anyone awake or moving, and I hadn’t expected it. Jody like most six-thirty risers was usually asleep by eleven at the latest, and telephone calls after ten were answered brusquely if at all. On the other hand he had no reservations about telephoning others in the morning before seven. He had no patience with life-patterns unlike his own.
To the right and slightly to the rear of the house lay the dimly gleaming roofs of the stables. White railed paddocks lay around and beyond them, with big planned trees growing at landscaped corners. When Berksdown Court had been built, cost had come second to excellence.
Carrying a large black rubber-clad torch, unlit, I walked softly up the drive and round towards the horses. No dogs barked. No all-night guards sprang out to ask my business. Silence and peace bathed the whole place undisturbed.
My breath, all the same, came faster. My heart thumped. It would be bad if anyone caught me. I had tried reassuring myself that Jody would do me no actual physical harm, but I hadn’t found myself convinced. Anger, as when I’d stood in the path of the horsebox, was again thrusting me into risk.
Close to the boxes one could hear little more than from a distance. Jody’s horses stood on sawdust now that straw prices had trebled, and made no rustle when they moved. A sudden equine sneeze made me jump.
Jody’s yard was not a regular quadrangle but a series of three-sided courts of unequal size and powerful charm. There were forty boxes