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“Good,” said Lady Maud, “I will institute proceedings for divorce at once and you will stop the motorway or face the consequences. And don’t you dare to set foot on my property again. I will have your things sent down to you.” She took out the dummy. “Have you anything to say?”
“If I do manage to stop the motorway will you guarantee to let me have the photographs and negatives back?”
“Of course,” said Lady Maud, “we Handymans may have our faults, but breaking our promises isn’t one of them.” She stuffed the dummy back into his mouth and tied it behind his head. Then, having removed his glasses, she adjusted his bo
On the staircase they met Mrs Forthby in a dither. “You didn’t do anything horrid, did you?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Lady Maud assured her, “just got him to sign a document consenting to divorce.”
“Oh dear, I do hope he isn’t too cross. He gets into such terrible tantrums.”
“Come, come, Na
“Yes, you’re quite right,” said Mrs Forthby. “But it’s very difficult. It’s not in my nature to be unkind.”
“And before I forget, here’s a little honorarium for your assistance.” Lady Maud produced a cheque from her bag but Mrs Forthby shook her head.
“I may be a silly woman and not very nice but I do have my standards,” she said. “And besides I’d probably forget to cash it.” She went upstairs a little wistfully.
“That woman,” said Lady Maud as they drove to Paddington to catch the train to Worford, “is far too good for Giles. She deserves something better.” On the way they stopped to post the share transfers to Messrs Schaeffer, Blodger and Vaizey.
Chapter 20
By the time they reached Handyman Hall it was two o’clock in the morning but the park was well lit. Under the floodlights men were busily engaged in erecting the fencing posts and already one side of the park was fenced in. Lady Maud drove round to have a look and congratulated Mr Firkin, the manager, on the progress.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay the bonus,” he told her. “At this rate we’ll be finished in ten days.”
“Make it a week,” said Lady Maud. “Money’s no problem.” She went into the house and up to bed well content. Money was no object now. In the morning she would withdraw every pe
Whatever happened now she was safe and so was the Hall. “Fight fire with fire,” she thought and lay in bed considering the strange set of circumstances that had turned her from a plain, simple home-loving woman, a Justice of the Peace and a respectable member of the community, into a blackmailer dealing in obscene photographs and extorting signatures under threat of torture. Evidently the blood of her ancestors who had held the Gorge (by fair means and foul) against all comers still ran in her veins.
“You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” she murmured, and fell asleep.
In Mrs Forthby’s flat one of the eggs in question lay in his frilly bo
A little of what Sir Giles fancied wasn’t doing him any good at all. Besides, eight hours wasn’t a little. As the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hours Sir Giles’ thoughts turned from murder to the more lurid forms of slow torture and in between he tried to think what the hell to do about Maud. There didn’t seem anything he could do short of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds, resigning from all his clubs, realizing his assets and taking a quick trip to Brazil where the extradition laws didn’t apply. And even then he wasn’t sure he had any assets to realize. At about four in the morning it dawned on him that some of those pieces of paper he had signed had looked remarkably like share transfer certificates. At the time he hadn’t been in any shape to consider them at all carefully. Not that he was in any better shape now but at least the threat of following Edward the Second to an agonizing death had been removed. Finally exhausted by his ordeal he fell into a semi-coma, waking every now and then to consider new and more awful fates for that absent-minded old sot in the next room.
Mrs Forthby woke with a hangover. She staggered off the sofa and ran a bath and it was only when she was drying herself that she remembered Sir Giles.
“Oh dear, he will be cross,” she thought, and went through to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. She carried the tray through to the bedroom and put it down on the bedside table. “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine,” she said cheerfully and untied the straps. Sir Giles spat the dummy out of his mouth. This was the moment he had been waiting twelve hours for but there was no rising and shining for Sir Giles. He slithered sideways off the bed and crawled towards Mrs Forthby like a crab with rheumatoid arthritis.
“No, no, you naughty boy,” said Mrs Forthby horrified at his colour. She rushed out of the room and locked herself in the bathroom. There was no need to hurry. Behind her Sir Giles was stuck in the bedroom door and one of his legs had attached itself inextricably to a standard lamp.
In his office at the Regional Pla
“We’ve flushed the old cow out with that dynamiting,” he said.
“We’ve done what?” said Hoskins.
“She’s coming to see me this morning. I want you to be present.”
Hoskins had his doubts. “I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “And anyway, we haven’t started dynamiting yet.”
“But the task force has moved in, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, though I do wish you wouldn’t call it a task force. All this military jargon is getting on my nerves.”