The Key Read Free Page A

GEORGE RENDAL leaned forward.
    ‘Your part of the world, isn’t it?’
    Major Garth Albany said, ‘Yes, sir – I used to spend my holidays there. My grandfather was the Rector. He’s dead now – he was pretty old then.’
    Sir George nodded.
    ‘One of the daughters still lives in Bourne, doesn’t she? She’d be your aunt?’
    ‘Well, a kind of step. The old man got married three times, and two of them were widows. My Aunt Sophy isn’t really any relation, because she’s the first widow’s daughter by her first marriage. Her name’s Fell – Sophy Fell. My father was the youngest of the family—’ He broke off, laughed, and said, ‘I’m not awfully firm on the family history really, but I did spend my holidays at Bourne until my grandfather died.’
    Sir George nodded again.
    ‘You’d know pretty well everyone in the village and round about.’
    ‘I used to. I expect there are a good many changes.’
    ‘How long is it since you were there?’
    ‘My grandfather died when I was twenty-two. I’m twenty-seven. I’ve been down two or three times to see Aunt Sophy – only once since the war.’
    ‘Villages don’t change very much,’ said Sir George. ‘The boys and girls will be off in the Services and the factories, but it’s the old people who are the village. They’ll remember you, and they’ll talk because they remember you. They won’t talk to a stranger.’
    He sat back a little in his writing-chair and sent a very direct glance across the plain, solid table – a man in his fifties, smart and well set-up, with dark hair grey on the temples. He held a pencil between the second and third fingers of his right hand and set it twirling.
    Garth Albany said quickly, ‘What do you want them to talk about?’
    The direct glance dwelt on him. ‘Ever hear of a man called Michael Harsch?’
    ‘I don’t think so—’ Then, with a quick frown, ‘I don’t know – I seem to have seen the name somewhere—’
    Sir George’s pencil twirled. ‘There’s going to be an inquest on him at Bourne tomorrow.’
    ‘Yes – I remember. I saw the name in the papers, but I didn’t connect it with Bourne. I’d have taken more notice if I had. Who was he?’
    ‘The inventor of harschite.’
    ‘Harschite – that’s why I didn’t connect him with Bourne. I didn’t know he was dead. There was a paragraph about this stuff harschite – about a fortnight ago. Yes, that was it – harschite – some sort of explosive.’
    Sir George nodded. ‘If we’d any sense or logic we’d take the man who wrote that paragraph and the editor who passed it and shoot them out of hand. Here we’ve been going on like cats on hot bricks about the damned stuff, and out comes a footling penny-a-lining paragraph and gives the show away.’
    ‘It was pretty vague, sir – I can’t say I got much out of it.’
    ‘Because you didn’t know enough to put two and two together. But someone did, and so there’s an inquest on Michael Harsch. You see, we had been in touch with him for some time. He was a refugee – Austrian-Jewish extraction. I don’t know how much Jew, but enough to queer his pitch in Germany. He got away about five years ago. His wife and daughter weren’t so lucky. The daughter was sent to a concentration camp, where she died. The wife was turned out of her house in the middle of a winter’s night and never got over it. He got away with his brains and practically nothing else. I saw him because he had an introduction from old Baer. He talked to me about this stuff of his. He swore it would knock spots out of anything we’d got. Frankly, I thought it was a fairy tale, but I liked the man, and I wanted to oblige old Baer, so I told him to come back. That was four years ago. He used to come back once a year and report progress. I began to believe in the stuff. I went down, and he showed me what it could do. It was terrific. But there was a snag. The stuff was unstable – too easily affected by weather conditions