As the Crow Flies

“I think that’s precisely what the board would wish you to do,” confirmed the chairman, as he checked around the table. “Well, if there’s no other

business, I declare the meeting closed.”

Once the meeting had broken up, the colonel took Crowther and Hadlow on one side. “I don’t like the sound of this flats business at all. An offer coming out of the blue like that requires a little more explanation.”

“I agree,” said Crowther. “My instinct tells me that it’s Syd Wrexall and his Shops Committee trying to stop Charlie taking over the whole block before it’s too late.”

“No,” said Charlie as he joined them. “It can’t be Syd because he doesn’t have a car,” he added mysteriously. “In any case, Wrexall and his cronies would have reached their limit long before two thousand five hundred pounds.”

“So do you think it’s an outside contractor?” asked Hadlow, “who has his own plans for developing Chelsea Terrace?”

“More likely to be an investor who’s worked out your long-term plan and is willing to hang on until we have no choice but to pay the earth for them,” said Crowther.

“I don’t know who or what it is,” said Charlie. “All I’m certain of is that we’ve made the right decision to outbid them.”

“Agreed,” said the colonel. “And Crowther, let me know the moment you’ve closed the deal. Afraid I can’t hang about now. I’m taking a rather special lady to lunch at my club.”

“Anyone we know?” asked Charlie.

“Daphne Wiltshire.”

“Do give her my love,” said Becky. “Tell her we’re both looking forward to having dinner with them next Wednesday.”

The colonel raised his hat to Becky, and left his four colleagues to continue discussing their different theories as to who else could possibly be interested in the flats.

Because the board meeting had run on later than he anticipated the colonel only managed one whisky before Daphne was ushered through to join him in the Ladies’ Room. She had, indeed, put on a few pounds, but he didn’t consider she looked any the worse for that.

He ordered a gin and tonic for his guest from the club steward, while she chatted about the gaiety of America and the heat of Africa, but he suspected that it was another continent entirely that Daphne really wanted to talk about.

“And how was India?” he eventually asked.

“Not so good, I’m afraid,” said Daphne before pausing to sip her gin and tonic. “In fact, awful.”

“Funny, I always found the natives rather friendly,” said the colonel.

“It wasn’t the natives who turned out to be the problem,” replied Daphne.

“Trentham?”

“I fear so.”

“Hadn’t he received your letter?”

“Oh, yes, but events had long superseded that, Colonel. Now I only wish I had taken your advice and copied out your letter word for word warning him that if the question were ever put to me directly I would have to tell anyone who asked that Trentham was Daniel’s father.”

“Why? What has caused this change of heart?”

Daphne drained her glass in one gulp. “Sorry, Colonel, but I needed that. Well, when Percy and I arrived in Poona the first thing we were told by Ralph Forbes, the Colonel of the Regiment, was that Trentham had resigned his commission.”

“Yes, you mentioned as much in your letter.” The colonel put his knife and fork down. “What I want to know is why?”

“Some problem with the adjutant’s wife, Percy later discovered, but no one was willing to go into any detail. Evidently the subject’s taboo—not the sort of thing they care to discuss in the officers’ mess.”

“The unmitigated bastard. If only I—”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Colonel, but I must warn you that there’s worse to come.”

The colonel ordered another gin and tonic for his guest and a whisky for himself before Daphne continued.