LITMIR.BIZ

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windows and ornamental ceilings. Today, twenty years later, he still felt pleasure in all these features as he walked up the front steps and into the reception hall.

      The offices were on two floors, with a third floor given over to stockrooms, and a basement that had once housed a gigantic boiler but was now virtually unused. No reason why the basement couldn’t be transformed into a stockroom and the third floor turned into an additional office, together with a staff rest-room and extra toilet facilities.

      He walked slowly along the corridor to his office, pondering various possibilities. A few moments later there was a tap at the door and his secretary, Miss Tapsell, came in with the morning post. She was a short, stocky woman in her forties, resolutely settled into spinsterhood. She always looked neat and businesslike in a dark tailored suit and white blouse; her greying brown hair was parted in the centre and drawn smoothly back into a French pleat.

      She had worked at Elliott Gilmore since leaving school. Gavin had first met her on the day his father brought him into the office. He had never known her in any other garb or with any other hairstyle, although the grey was a recent feature. She had been his father’s secretary and Gavin had been delighted to inherit her; she was loyal, hardworking and conscientious.

      She had already been in the building for half an hour this morning, she always came in early. She was still bristling slightly from one of her set-tos with the office cleaner, a lady whom she suspected of skimping her work, arriving late and leaving early.

      But none of this appeared on Miss Tapsell’s face now, as she came into Gavin’s office; her manner, as always, was calm and precise. She wouldn’t dream of troubling Mr Gavin with such a trifling matter, she would get it sorted out herself in good time.

      When Gavin had dealt with the post he went through the agenda for the afternoon’s meeting with Miss Tapsell. ‘A couple of points I’d better mention to Roche first,’ he said when they had finished. ‘Give him time to mull them over before the meeting. Get him on the phone for me, will you?’

      The town of Martleigh was a good deal smaller than Cannonbridge but prosperous enough, with more than one long-established and solidly-based local industry. The Martleigh branch of Elliott Gilmore occupied the ground floor of a newish office block near the town centre.

      Stephen Roche sat at his desk, studying a file of papers. He was in his late thirties, no more than average height, with a strong, wiry build. He had a broad, unlined forehead, eyes of a clear pale amber, sharply intelligent.

      He always got to his office early, was often the first to arrive. He stayed in lodgings in Martleigh during the week, returning at weekends to his house on the edge of Cannonbridge. When he had first been sent to Martleigh twelve months ago he had commuted daily from Cannonbridge; he found the journey, twenty-two miles each way, just about tolerable.

      But within a couple of months extensive roadworks, long promised, often postponed, were finally begun along a sizable stretch of the carriageway, causing unpredictable and time-consuming delays morning and evening. After a few weeks of being late for appointments and tensing himself every afternoon for the drive home with its lengthy queues and maddening hold-ups, Roche decided to abandon the struggle and look for digs in Martleigh. ‘It won’t be for long,’ he told his wife. The Ministry officials were confident the traffic would be flowing normally long before Christmas.

      But there was industrial trouble in the late summer, and then, when that had been at last resolved, a spell of severe weather, early and prolonged, in the autumn, with all the consequent delays and interruptions to schedules. It would probably now be Easter or even later before the giant machines clattered away for the last time.

      Roche glanced up now from his papers and his gaze fell on the plain silver frame that held a photograph of his wife. It stood on his desk, a little to one side, next to the potted plant that his secretary kept assiduously fed and watered. The photograph showed the head and shoulders of a young woman with an unsmiling look, large, well-set eyes, hair simply cut, with a slight wave, Roche frowned. His secretary must have moved the photograph when she attended to the plant; it was a little out of its usual place.

      The phone rang suddenly on his desk. He picked up the receiver and heard Gavin Elliott’s voice. As he listened to the details of the afternoon’s agenda he stretched out a hand and replaced the photograph in its exact customary spot, where Annette’s eyes would meet his own whenever he glanced up from his work.

      The Friday afternoon meeting finished a little earlier than usual. It was just after four when the three men in their dark suits came out of Gavin’s office, followed by Miss Tapsell who had as usual been taking notes.

      Gavin would stay on at his desk for another hour or two but Howard was going straight home, and so was Stephen Roche. Both men always cleared up in their own branches on Friday morning; the traffic and the distances involved, particularly in Roche’s case, made it not worth returning there after the meeting. Gavin stood for a few moments chatting to the other two before turning back into his office.

      Miss Tapsell glanced at the three of them as she went off along the corridor. Roche with his sharp eyes and long foxy muzzle; the two half-brothers, alike only in their height, inherited from their father. Howard had also inherited Matthew’s solid build and heavy shoulders, but he had his mother’s light brown hair, her blue eyes and regular features. Good-looking enough in his way, Miss Tapsell used to think years ago, though beginning now to let himself go.

      Always the cautious one, Howard, always wanting everything in writing, everything hedged against, triply guaranteed. Beside him Gavin looked far more handsome, with his slim build, the striking colouring he had inherited from his mother. More adventurous than his half-brother, always prepared to take a reasonable risk, but still with sound business instincts.

      The two men seemed to be getting on a good deal better than Miss Tapsell had dared hope when Howard first returned to the firm; there had been moments when she had feared it had been a bad mistake. She liked to think that Matthew would have been pleased to see them together in the firm at last, on such easy, friendly terms.

      Gavin went back into his office and Howard and Roche went out through a rear door into the car park. Howard made some comment on the mild weather and then went off to his car, a sleek, expensive saloon. He raised a hand as he moved out, past Roche stepping into his own vehicle, small and neat, nippy in traffic.

      Roche drove out into the side-street and headed for the eastern edge of town. His house, Greenlawn, was a detached Edwardian villa standing in a large secluded garden that gave the property an air of rural tranquillity.

      The afternoon was still washed over with pale sunshine as Roche halted the car and got out to open the gate. He ran the car up the sloping drive and brought it to rest by the front door. He took a suitcase and hand-grip from the boot and let himself into the house. He stood in the hall for a moment, listening.

      No sound inside the house, no stir of movement. Only the echoes of this false spring, with its summer-seeming sounds, the far-off slam of a car door, voices calling, the cries and laughter of children in some distant park, the muted bark of a dog, the hum of traffic from a trunk road half a mile away.

      He went up the stairs and paused by the landing window. He set down his cases and stood looking out at the rear garden. At the far end, on the edge of the shrubbery, he could see the tall slender figure of his mother-in-law, Mrs Sparrey. She held a wooden trug, she was looking down at Annette who was on her knees close by, digging up a clump of some early-flowering plant. Annette levered up the plant and reached up to put it in the trug, no doubt for her mother to carry back to her own garden ten miles away.

      Annette began an attack on another plant. Her chestnut hair swung forward, gleaming in the sunlight. Mrs Sparrey turned her head and glanced back at the house. Roche could see the olive of her cheek, the carefully coiffured lines of her steel-grey hair, strikingly curled back from her face in an elaborate sweep that nothing, not even the most unruly wind, ever seemed able to disturb.

      He picked up his cases and went along to the main bedroom. As he set the cases down he caught sight of himself in the dressing table mirror. A head of thick straight hair, very fair in childhood but now

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