‘No, Jarrod, nothing like that! A ward—a kid, you know!’
‘You mean like I’ve been made guardian to some kid?’ Jarrod looked astounded.
‘Something like that!’ Matt grinned. ‘Quaint, isn’t it?’
Jarrod swallowed his whisky at a gulp, and ordered another. ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, Matt. Come on, let’s have it. From the top!’
Matt twisted his glass round in his fingers. ‘It’s quite simple, really, Jarrod. Some old guy has made you his granddaughter’s guardian, till she’s twenty-one. Or eighteen, maybe. I’m not too sure about that.’
Jarrod was growing impatient. ‘What old guy?’ he asked shortly.
Matt looked amused. ‘A man called Jeffrey Robins. He died a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Jeffrey Robins!’ Jarrod looked blank. ‘Do I know him—or should I say—did I know him?’
Matt shook his head. ‘Unlikely,’ he replied, ‘he was a foreman in the Bridchester warehouse for forty years before he died.’
Jarrod breathed down his nose hard. ‘Matt, I’m warning you——’
Matt laughed. ‘Hold it, Jarrod, don’t blame me! It’s not my pigeon. Your father knows all about it. He used to know Jeffrey Robins.’
‘At last! The first bit of information. How did my father know him?’
‘Well, I believe they began in the textile trade together, years ago, but when J.K. left to start his own company, they lost touch. Then in the war they met again, and I believe it was during the early fifties when your father moved the head office to London they lost touch again.’
‘I still don’t understand, Matt. If J.K. knew him so well, why didn’t he make my father this kid’s guardian? And where are her own parents, anyway?’
Matt accepted his second whisky. ‘Well, it’s like this, you see, Jarrod, old man Robins made the chairman of Kyle Textiles his granddaughter’s guardian. He wasn’t to know your father would have to retire and give the chairmanship over to you when he was only fifty-eight.’
Jarrod stubbed out his cigar savagely. ‘My God!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That was eight years ago!’
‘Yes, well, like I said, he was out of touch. I don’t suppose he expected to die so suddenly—after all, he was only sixty-eight himself.’
‘I see.’ Jarrod thrust his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat. ‘What a goddamned situation! And what about this kid’s parents? Where are they?’
‘Her mother died in childbirth, and the father got himself killed in an earthquake in South America. He worked for an insurance agency or something.’
‘Ah!’ Jarrod nodded, chewing his lip thoughtfully. ‘Oh well, come on, Matt. You can tell me more on our way to town.’
Outside the warm brilliance of the airport buildings a chilly fog had descended, making a damp January evening even more dismal. Jarrod turned up the collar of his coat, and glanced cheerfully at Matt. ‘I guess I should have stayed away longer. Who in hell would want to come back to London from Jamaica at this time of the year? I must be crazy!’
Matt allowed Jarrod to slide behind the wheel of the huge Mercedes that awaited them. ‘You know fine you can’t keep away,’ he remarked dryly. ‘It’s in your blood: high finance, boardrooms, mergers, take-overs; you name it, you can do it!’
Jarrod shrugged, turning the car expertly on to the main thoroughfare. ‘You make me sound like a machine,’ he remarked wryly.
Matt grinned, glancing out of the windows at the heavy gloom, illuminated by the orange glow of fog-lamps. ‘You’re far from that, Jarrod, thank God!’ he said, with enthusiasm. ‘Sometimes your father would say—too far!’
Jarrod gave a short laugh. ‘Jealousy, that’s all, Matt. The old man was never able to settle for a quiet life. He’d love to have been born thirty years later.’
Matt laughed now. ‘Oh yes, one of the jet set, eh? Dolly birds, fast cars, the dolce vita!’
‘Something like that,’ agreed Jarrod, pressing his foot down on the accelerator. ‘Tell me about the child now. What is she like?’
Matt shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t seen her. I only know she’s still at school.’
Jarrod raised his eyes heavenward. ‘And what does the old man say we do?’
‘I think he’s waiting for you to come home to discuss it. He wanted to bring you back sooner, but I persuaded him you needed a holiday.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jarrod dryly. ‘That’s what I was wondering about. It’s not like J.K. to hold back on me. He doesn’t usually pull his punches.’
‘No, well, anyway, you’ll hear all about it soon enough. He expects you to drive up to Malthorpe tonight.’
‘Does he? Yes, well, maybe I’ll take a rain check on that,’ said Jarrod, swinging round a jay-walking pedestrian.
‘Do you think you should? You know—his blood-pressure——’
‘All right, all right,’ muttered Jarrod impatiently. ‘All right, Matt, we’ll just call at the apartment and leave my things for Hastings, What a life! Six weeks in Jamaica, and within an hour of arriving back in this country I feel as though I’ve never been away.’
Malthorpe in the Forest was in Yorkshire, a comfortable village not far from the textile mills of Leeds and Bradford where the Kyle empire had had its source. Now, with factories in most of the larger countries of the world, it was an international organisation whose head office was in London. Jarrod’s father had founded the business before the Second World War and even he had had no idea of the impact his materials, carpets and designs would have on the rest of the world.
Jarrod and Matt arrived at the outskirts of Malthorpe late in the evening of the same day. J.K., as Jarrod’s father was always called, liked the kind of country squireship he had assumed upon buying the old country home of the Malthorpe family, all of whom were now only remembered by the gravestones in the cemetery beside the village church. Malthorpe Hall was large and sprawling, without much elegance of design outside. Its part-Georgian façade had been added to by succeeding generations without much discrimination and in consequence it now belonged to no period. Inside, Jarrod’s father had installed every kind of modern convenience. The large rooms suited his expansive personality, and he had spared nothing to make it the most talked about house in the district, much envied and admired by his friends and acquaintances. It stood in thickly wooded grounds, which stretched for some distance across the fields that gave on to the open moors. A high fence prevented would-be sightseers from getting too close, and as Jarrod approached its entrance he was forced to stop and identify himself to Hedley, the lodge-keeper.
‘Well, we’re in,’ he remarked dryly to Matt, as the car sped up the dark tree-lined drive. ‘It gets a little more like Fort Knox every time I come!’
‘Your father is afraid someone will steal his precious antiques,’ said Matt, as Jarrod brought the car to a halt in the gravelled courtyard before the front doors. ‘And every new piece he gets adds to his collection.’
‘And to his nerves,’ said Jarrod, sliding out of the car. ‘God, it’s cold! Have you had any snow yet?’
‘No, not yet. And it’s not that cold, Jarrod. It’s not even freezing, or you wouldn’t have been able to go as fast as you did on the motorway.’
‘Want a bet?’ asked Jarrod, mockingly, as the doors opened and light flooded out on to them. ‘Hello, Morris. On cue as ever!’
The uniformed butler bowed