…

It was not more than twenty minutes since I’d walked in the door after attending the funeral, and then the wake, for my parents who had died in a motor vehicle accident in the south of France.

I’d met a man I’d never seen before who had given me an ancient envelope before he disappeared, in which there was a note and a copy of my father’s will.

The family solicitor, Lawrence Wellingham, who had attended the funeral and who told me he did not have a current will, had visited me not long after I got home, a man who had told me that anyone who said my parents had died, other than from an accident was to be ignored.

With the will had been a letter, my father saying if he died in an accident, it was likely not an accident, and to contact a man called Albert Stritching.

Then, not five minutes after Lawrence Wellingham left, Albert Stritching called.

It was a series of events that defied explanation.

After a few moments to get over the shock of hearing the name so soon, I said, “The same Albert Stritching my fathers said I needed to talk to if anything happened to him?”

“He left you a note?”

“Were you the person at the funeral who handed me the envelope?”

“I didn’t know there was a funeral.  What man?”

“About 70, grey hair, beard, blue Italian suit, brown shoes, the shoes seemed an odd addition.  Tie was old school, Eton, I think.

“Sir Percival.  We all went to school together, a long time ago.  He was what you might call, your father’s boss, mine too for that matter, when I worked in the same department.”

“What did my father, and you, do?”

“That is a long story.  We need to meet, as soon as possible.  What I can tell you, for now, is that you need to be careful.  Do you have anyone with you?”

“No.”

“I assume you are currently at your father’s house?”

“Yes.”

“OK.  Stay there, and I’ll send someone over, just to make sure you’re safe.  Her name is Genevieve, one of our personal protection officers.  Her identification code is your father’s middle name.  You do know it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  Don’t answer the phone, or the door till she gets there.”

It was odd to think that trouble would come to what my father often referred to as hallowed ground.  The house was his sanctuary, a place no one knew about, a place he never invited anyone but family.  Not even close friends.

The thought, or notion, that trouble could visit here was preposterous.

And yet…

I heard the sound of a high-powered motorcycle from the distance, slowly getting louder until it stopped not far from my front door.  Peering through the front window from behind the curtains, I saw a figure dismount, take off the helmet and shake out a lot of blonde hair.

She looked too young to be in personal protection.

Carrying the helmet in one hand, she came up the path to the front door and knocked.

I left the door shut and yelled out, “Who are you?”

“I was sent by Albert Stritching.  My name is Genevieve.”

I opened the door a fraction, leaving the safety chain attached.

“The identification code?”

“Alwyn.”

I closed the door, removed the chain, and opened it for her to pass.  A look down the path to see if anyone was following her, which there was not, and I shut it.

“Anyone call or ring,” she asked, looking around the room.

It was old and musty smelling because it rarely got any sunlight.  The fire I’d lit earlier in the morning before going out, was slowly reviving after I’d put some more wood on the embers.  In another half hour, the temperature in the room would be above freezing.

“No.  What happens now?”

“I stay until Mr Stritching arrives, sometime tomorrow.  In fact, I have been assigned to mind you for the next few days.  All I can tell you is that it is possible your life is in danger.  And your parents were murdered.  We don’t yet know by whom, or why.  I assume your father didn’t tell you what he was doing?”

“Other than going on a well-earned, his words, holiday with my mother, no.”

“I assume you don’t normally stay in this house.”

“Not normally, but I have for the past three and a half months while they were away.  I sometimes house-sit for them.  My father told me that when he got back, we would talk about the future.  I guess that’s impossible now.”

“Didn’t leave anything to read in case of his untimely demise?”

The girl was asking a lot of questions for someone who was supposed to be a bodyguard.  Was she more than that, like another fixer for the same organisation my father now appeared to work for?

“No.”

“Anything at all?”

I decided then and there I was not going to tell this person anything, especially about the note.  “Nothing.  Had the police not come to inform me, they would still be travelling in Europe somewhere, blissfully unaware, a state I’m beginning to wonder may never return.

“Mind if I have a look around, see how secure the place is?”

“Sure.  If you’re staying, there’s a choice of three rooms on the left side of the corridor.  Mine is on the right.”

The notion that I could be in danger seemed to me to be a little over the top.  I had no contact with my father over anything concerning his business.  In fact, I knew very little about his business, being told back then, that he was independently wealthy, whatever that meant, and was free to pick whatever projects he felt like doing.

He was also a diplomat, because we spent time in various countries all over Europe, mostly, and several in Africa because of his fascination with the old British colonies in Tanzania, Uganda, what was once Rhodesia, Nigeria and a few others.  Those appointments were hard on our mother, and I suspect, contributed to her early death.

After that, she often complained about recurring bouts of ‘jungle sickness’, though later I suspected had a lot to do with an alcohol problem.

I had been spending a lot of time in the study/library, a very large room on the ground floor that backed onto the rear garden, with a large veranda with windows floor to ceiling.  The library consisted of thousands of books on every aspect of the British Commonwealth, from when it was East India Company, through the British Empire, to a token amalgamation of sometimes hostile countries.

My father had been working on a book, and he had left notes, exercise books filled with scribbling, scrapbooks with newspaper clippings, some about himself, a ream of typewritten chapters of which some read like a memoir, others like the ramblings of a lecturer.

It was a project, now that he was gone, that I was considering taking up and finishing, perhaps as his legacy.

Oddly, there was not one word of any extracurricular activities, the sort of stuff that would fill a spy novel.

I was just reading a chapter on Uganda, Idi Amin, and a proposal to Princess Anne when I heard a loud bang.  Then another, closer to the study, coming from what I thought was outside the front of the house.

Cautiously I approached the door and peered out.

I could see Genevieve, gun in hand, sweeping for … what?

“Stay in the study,” she said.

I heard her go out the front door and close it behind her.

Five minutes, there were several more gunshots, then silence.

A minute later the front door opened, and I heard what sounded like someone falling on the floor.  I went out, then to the front of the house where, inside the door, there was what looked like a man lying still on the floor, blood stains beside it.

A few seconds after that Genevieve came in and closed the door.  “We have a problem.”  She had a phone to her ear, waiting.  Then, “Send the cleaners.  They sent two assassins, got the Professor, and I got them.  The Professor needs medical help as soon as possible.”

That was the extent of the call.  She looked at me.  “You got a medical kit,”

“Yes.”  I went back to the study and got what was a briefcase with a red cross on it.  It was more sophisticated than the usual medical kit a house would have.  It was more suited to a doctor’s surgery.

I brought it to her.  She had the man lying on his back, and I could see who it was.

The man at the funeral who gave me the yellow envelope.

…

© Charles Heath 2023