The Proprietor's Daughter

by Lewis Orde

  “I want anti-immigration propaganda distributed. Each envelope contains a hundred posters. Share them among your men, ten posters each. Get them up everywhere. And tape these behind a few of the posters.” Venables’s thin face broke into a smirk as he handed out packets of razor blades. “These will make sure that whoever rips down our posters has something to remember.”

  Brian opened his envelope and looked at one of the posters. Two faces were caricatured, one Negro, the other Asian — an Indian or a Pakistani. Bold capitals announced: “Niggers and Wogs Steal British Jobs!” At the bottom of the poster, two words were printed in tiny type: “British Brigade.”

  Carrying the envelopes and razor blades, the ten young men filed out of the basement. Brian reached the front door of Patriot House and looked toward the street sign where he had chained his motorcycle. Leaning against the sign, waiting for him, was Ginger. Brian slipped the envelope to his weaker left hand. His strong right hand gripped the crash helmet, ready to use it as a weapon, as he had done before. He strode right up to Ginger.

  “You waiting for me?”

  Ginger raised his hands in front of his face. “Don’t hit me, please. I don’t want to be your enemy. I want to be your friend. That’s why I came here tonight, when I heard there was to be a commanders’ meeting. I wanted to see you.”

  “You want to be my friend, do you?” Brian’s voice was full of mockery as he recognized the situation. He was probably the first person ever to beat the living daylights out of Ginger. In doing so, he had transformed the bully from an enemy into an ally. “And just what makes you think I need an ugly lump of blubber like you for a friend?”

  Ginger’s voice changed to a pleading whine. “I want to be in your group. I’m good. I won’t let you down.”

  Brian’s instincts were to lay into Ginger again, but a calm voice of reason restrained him. Ginger was the only person who could cause trouble for him. With Ginger under his supervision, the threat was removed. “All right, I’ll get you switched to my group. But you’d better do right by me.” Without another glance at Ginger, Brian unchained the motorcycle, kicked it into life, and roared away.

  He went from the meeting to Katherine’s home, arriving there at eight-fifteen. He told her about the encounter with Ginger, and Katherine agreed that Brian’s wisest course was to take Ginger into his group. The matter of the booby-trapped hate posters was more difficult to resolve.

  “I can take responsibility for putting out my group’s quota of posters,” Brian said. “That way, I can leave out the blades, and no one will ever know. But what about the other nine groups? If we don’t do something, the hospitals will be running out of needles and thread.”

  Katherine knew exactly what to do. Perhaps Gerald Waller would not agree with her, but there were times when the public’s safety was more important than an exclusive story. She addressed large envelopes to the editors of all the London dailies and to radio and television news directors. Each envelope contained one of the hate posters, a razor blade with tape covering the edges, and a note explaining the booby trap.

  “Deliver these right now,” Katherine told Brian. “Radio and television first, then the papers.”

  Brian telephoned from his grandfather’s home at eleven o’clock to say that he had completed his assignment. By then, Katherine already knew. With Franz, she had watched the ten o’clock news. The second item had concerned the posters. Some had already appeared on trees and fences; so far, one man had slashed his fingers tearing them down. Holding up the flyer Brian had delivered, the newscaster said: “Police are urging everyone to use caution when removing these posters. Razor blades are taped to the back of many. Serious injuries may result.” The newscaster finished off the item by saying that the posters were the responsibility of a previously unknown group called the British Brigade.

  The next morning, stories of the booby-trapped posters were carried in all the London dailies. The Eagle’s report was no different. Like its competition, the Eagle could only guess at the background of the British Brigade. Brian’s confrontation, and subsequent truce, with the fat young man named Ginger was too recent to risk demonstrating that the Eagle had an inside track.

  “Your grandson’s a hero,” Katherine told Archie when she entered his elevator. “He tipped me off to those posters, and I passed the word to everyone else.”

  Archie nodded. “Sometimes, Miss Eagles, I think it’s too bad that we’re a civilized country. Lynch law is the only way to deal with that kind of mob. Raid their headquarters and string everyone up from the nearest lamppost.”

  “Sometimes, Archie, I’m horrified to find myself thinking that way as well.”

  Katherine lunched with her father that day at the Adler’s store. Instead of eating in the crowded restaurant, they sat at a specially prepared table for two in Roland’s office. Over the meal, Katherine told her father what she had not told Gerald Waller or anyone else at the Eagle. “I passed up an exclusive story to save a lot of pain for people.”

  “You did the right thing, Kathy. With Brian on the inside, you’ll get other opportunities for glory.”

  “Just as long as Gerry never finds out that I tipped off everyone else.”

  Roland grimaced. Owner of the Eagle or not, the last thing he relished was another fight with its editor.

  The telephone rang. Roland, having told his secretary that he did not want to be disturbed, glanced sharply at it. It rang again. Katherine could see the annoyance in her father’s face as he lifted the receiver from the cradle.

  “I thought I said I was busy.” He listened for a moment. The anger softened. His forehead creased in concern. “The police? Of course I’ll speak to them.”

  Katherine got up and walked toward her father. The look on his face worried her. So did the tone in his voice.

  “Hello? Yes, this is Roland Eagles. Who am I speaking to? Inspector Ross? Yes . . . yes, that’s the correct address. I see. Yes . . . just a moment.” Roland turned to Katherine. He jammed the receiver to his ear with his shoulder, which allowed him both hands free to hold her. “They couldn’t get you at the paper, Kathy, so they rang here. Who’s at the house?”

  Fear gnawed at Katherine’s stomach. “Franz, of course. And the temporary housekeeper and attendant. Anne Blyton and Harry Foster. Why?”

  “What about Joanne and Henry?”

  “They’re at school. What is it?”

  Roland held his daughter tightly. “The house is on fire. The police say an explosion started it.”

  Roland and Katherine took a taxi to Chalk Farm station, where Katherine had left the silver Porsche. From there, they zipped in and out of traffic, sometimes at speeds of twice the legal limit, until Katherine sent the Porsche flashing down the street in which she lived, screeching to a halt ten yards short of the crowd that had gathered. By the time Roland climbed out of the Porsche, Katherine was already forcing her way through the crowd, barely able to believe the scope of the disaster.

  Fireman played their hoses valiantly on the house, but there was little they could do. The slate roof had collapsed. The interior of the house had fallen in on itself. Floors, ceilings, and interior walls were reduced to rubble. Only structural walls remained up-right. The windows were gone, blown out by scorching heat. Flames licked hungrily around blackened window frames. In the driveway, crushed beneath a huge portion of fallen masonry, was the Jaguar sedan.

  Roland caught up with Katherine as she tried to shove her way past a police constable controlling the crowd. “Let me through!” she screamed. “That’s my house! My husband’s in there! He’s an invalid! Please let me through!”

  “Sorry, miss.” The constable looked around for help, before this woman with the wild blue eyes could tear herself free of his grasp and race into the smoking shell of the house.

  “Kathy . . . Kathy . . . Kathy . . .” Roland took her from the policeman, and, oblivious to the ring of faces surrounding them, held her very tightly. In his comforting embrace, her rigid bo
dy turned pliant; resistance became surrender.

  Another police officer approached. “Mr. Eagles? We spoke before. I’m Inspector Ross. Is this Mrs. Kassler?”

  Katherine pulled her face away from her father’s shoulder. “My husband . . .?”

  “I’m afraid we couldn’t get him out. There must have been a tremendous explosion inside the house. Gas, perhaps. We’ll know more later. By the time the alarm was given, the downstairs part of the house was an absolute inferno. Your Mr. Foster —”

  “Who?” Katherine asked.

  “Foster. Harry Foster. Describes himself as a temporary attendant for your husband —”

  Again, Katherine cut off the inspector. “He’s not inside?”

  “No. Mr. Foster and a woman named Anne Blyton were out of the house when the fire started. They’re standing over there.” The inspector pointed a finger toward an ambulance that waited ominously on the far side of the crowd.

  Katherine followed the inspector to the ambulance. Anne Blyton was sitting on a stool given to her by one of the ambulance attendants; by her feet was a shopping cart which held two bags full of groceries. Harry Foster stood next to her, one hand on her shoulder while he stared absently toward the shattered house. When Katherine stood in front of him, he shook his head slowly, like a man incapable of understanding.

  “Why was Mr. Kassler left alone? You were paid to be with him the entire time. Why weren’t you in the house just now?”

  “Kathy . . .” Roland stepped between his daughter and Foster. “Don’t blame the poor man because he wasn’t burned to death.”

  “He told me to go out of the house, Mrs. Kassler,” Foster said. “Your husband practically ordered me to get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Anne here” — Foster patted Edna’s replacement on the shoulder — “had gone shopping, you see. Taken the basket and gone walking to the High Street. Five minutes after she’d gone, Mr. Kassler got all panicky. He said he’d forgotten to tell Anne to buy some marmalade.”

  “Marmalade?”

  “You’d specifically asked him to tell Anne, that’s what your husband said, Mrs. Kassler. I didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone, but he told me it was all right.”

  “I never mentioned marmalade to him,” Katherine protested.

  Roland took over. “Why didn’t you drive? It’s at least a ten-minute walk to the shops.”

  “I wanted to drive, sir, but Mr. Kassler told me not to. He said Mrs. Kassler had told him that the Jaguar wasn’t working properly, and should be fixed before it was driven again.”

  Another denial came from Katherine, but her voice was little more than a whisper now, as though she understood some awful, damning truth. “I told him no such thing. . . .”

  “What happened then?” Roland asked.

  “I went off after Anne, like Mr. Kassler told me. It took me half an hour of looking around the shops to find her. When we got back, the fire engines were here. The house was ablaze, and there was nothing anyone could do to help poor Mr. Kassler.”

  Roland drew Katherine off to one side. “You’ll stay with me in Stanmore. We’ll go there now. Later on, I’ll go with Arthur Parsons to collect the children from their schools. I’ll take care of everything, Kathy.”

  “What about Edna and Jimmy? They’re due back from Spain in a couple of days. I was supposed to meet them at the airport. Who’s going to meet them now? And what will they say when they hear about this?”

  Roland was astounded that Katherine would even think about Edna and Phillips. Then again, perhaps it was best that her mind did jump around like that. There would be enough time later for her to dwell solely on grief.

  She stepped back from Roland and ran trembling hands down the brown suede jacket and cream silk dress she wore. Voice shaking, she said: “The only clothes I have are on my back. How can I possibly wear these to my husband’s funeral?”

  Roland held her again, and kept hold of her until she stopped shivering.

  *

  Franz Kassler’s badly burned body was pulled from the ruins of the house later that day. Flesh and skin were welded to the steel frame of the wheelchair which had been his prison for the final year of his life.

  An inquest was held. Harry Foster gave evidence how Franz had virtually ordered him out of the house. Foster, Anne Blyton, and Katherine each testifed that they had not smelled gas in the house on the morning of the fire. Nonetheless, there had been a leak; investigators had pinpointed it as causing the explosion which had led to the fierce, unquenchable blaze. The coroner summed up. A paralyzed man alone in a house, a gas leak. “The tragic finale,” intoned the coroner, “of a life already heavily blighted by misfortune.” He issued a verdict of accidental death, and Katherine silently thanked him for his generosity.

  Roland’s enormous house in Stanmore, as a rule so empty and full of echoes with just three people living there, suddenly seemed too small. Katherine slept in her old bedroom. Henry and Joanne took two more rooms. And Jimmy Phillips and Edna, when they returned from Spain, shared another.

  Roland had gone with Arthur Parsons to meet the returning honeymooners. On the journey, he had told them the news. Edna had begun to sob, while Phillips sat up straight, manfully sniffing back tears. The instant they reached the house, they rushed inside to find Katherine, flinging their arms around her and crying out how sorry they were. At one point, Phillips had even blamed himself for the tragedy. “If I’d been there,” he’d told Katherine, while Edna nodded her head in slow, tearful agreement, “I wouldn’t have left Mr. Kassler on his own. Never!”

  And Katherine, who, as the widow, was entitled to expect comfort from other people, had found herself consoling Edna and Phillips.

  Roland had also been the one to inform the children. On the afternoon of the fire, Arthur Parsons had driven him in the old green Bentley first to Joanne’s school, and then on to the school Henry attended. From there, Parsons was to drive to a nearby park, where Roland would tell the children about their father. Henry never gave his grandfather the opportunity to break the news in such a peaceful setting. As the limousine pulled away from his school, Henry said, “Where’s the Jaguar? Where’s the woman who’s taken Edna’s place? Why did you come for us?” And finally, the inevitable: “What’s wrong?”

  Parsons had stopped the car there and then. Roland sat between the two children in the back of the Bentley, arms around their shoulders.

  “There’s been a terrible accident,” he explained as gently as he could. “A fire.”

  “Mummy . . .?” Henry asked fearfully.

  “Your mother is at my home. But your daddy . . .” Roland squeezed the fragile shoulders tighter, just as he had done to Katherine when the first shadow of the tragedy had fallen across them. “Your daddy could not get out of the house.”

  “Is he dead?” Joanne asked in a shrill voice.

  “I’m afraid so.” Dead seemed such a strange word to come from the mouth of a five-year-old. . . .

  A week after the fire, Franz was buried. Katherine wore a black suit and a broad-brimmed hat with a half veil. None of the clothes were of her choosing. Sally Roberts had simply gone through the women’s clothing section of Adler’s and taken what she thought was necessary for the immediate future. That future included a funeral. Later, when she felt up to it, Katherine could begin to replace the extensive wardrobe that had fed the flames in Hampstead.

  The funeral took place on a sunny July afternoon that was more in keeping with strawberries and cream, and Centre Court at Wimbledon, than death. Flanked by her father and Sally, Katherine stood at the graveside and listened to the priest convey Franz’s immortal soul into God’s hands.

  After a couple of minutes, her eyes drifted from the coffin, resting on planks across the open grave, to Edna and Jimmy Phillips, who stood at the front of the large crowd attending the funeral service. Edna had a crumpled white handkerchief in her right hand, with which she kept dabbing her eyes. Next to Edna, wearing his custo
mary black jacket and striped trousers, stood Arthur Parsons; his wife, Peg, was at Roland’s home in Stanmore, caring for Henry and Joanne.

  Katherine allowed her gaze to sweep on. Eagle Newspapers was well represented. In turn, she locked eyes with Erica and Cliff Bentley, Gerald Waller, and Lawrie Stimkin. Standing slightly apart from the group were Archie Waters and his grandson, Brian.

  At the back of the crowd, Katherine spotted another face she knew from Fleet Street. All she could see of Raymond Barnhill was his head and shoulders. He was wearing a tie and a dark jacket. Had he accessorized it with blue jeans or corduroy trousers? Their eyes met. He sent a wan smile across the crowd and the open grave. His mouth opened and formed two silent words: “Hi, friend.” Katherine read his lips and inclined her head a fraction of an inch in recognition.

  Beyond the crowd was the cemetery parking lot. As Katherine looked, a chauffeur-driven maroon Rolls Royce pulled into a vacant spot. Before the chauffeur could help, John Saxon opened the rear door and stepped out. He half-walked, half-ran toward the crowd at the graveside, as though embarrassed at being late. He came to a breathless stop beside Raymond Barnhill. The two men gave each other the kind of forced smile that only total strangers at a funeral exchange.

  Katherine’s gaze returned to the coffin. Had she been wrong? Had Franz’s death been an accident, as the coroner had decided? Or had she been right? God only knew, Franz had reason enough to end his life. How tired he must have been of the crippled body that had entrapped his active spirit.

  Or had there been another reason? Had he killed himself, not because he was sick of being disabled, but to free Katherine, to allow her to enjoy a rich life without being chained to a handicapped man she refused to desert?

  The service finished. People lined up to wish Katherine well for the future. Most she answered with a simple “Thank you for coming.” To those who were close, she was more receptive.

  Raymond Barnhill was not wearing jeans, Katherine noticed, when the American journalist stood in front of her. A dark brown suit hung well on his trim frame. “Sorry to hear about your husband, Katherine. Must have been one hell of a shock.”