Десмонд Бэгли - The Spoilers

And what about June? Where did she come into all this? He thought of his daughter as he had once known her — gay, light-hearted, carefree. There was nothing he had not been prepared to give her, from the best schools to good clothes by fashionable designers, parties, continental holidays and all the rest of the good life.

Everything, except myself, he thought remorsefully.

And then, unnoticed in the interstices of his busy life, a change had come. June developed an insatiable appetite for money; not, apparently, for the things money can buy, but for money itself. Hellier was a self-made man, brought up in a hard school, and he believed that the young should earn their independence. What started out to be calm discussions with June turned into a series of flaming rows and, in the end, he lost his temper and then came the break. It was true what Warren had said; he had thrown out his daughter without making an attempt to find the root cause of the change in her.

The theft of the silver from his home had only confirmed his impression that she had gone bad, and his main worry had been to keep the matter quiet and out of the press. He suddenly realized, to his shame, that the bad press he was likely to get because of the inquest had been uppermost in his mind ever since he had seen Inspector Stephens.

How had all this happened? How had he come to lose first a wife and then a daughter?

He had worked — by God, how he had worked! The clapperclawing to the top in an industry where knives are wielded with the greatest efficiency; the wheedling and dealing with millions at stake. The American trip, for instance — he had got on top of those damned sharp Yanks — but at what cost? An ulcer, a higher blood pressure than his doctor liked and a nervous three packets of cigarettes a day as inheritance of those six months.

And a dead daughter.

He looked around the flat, at the light-as-air Renoir on the facing wall, at the blue period Picasso at the end of the room. The symbols of success. He suddenly hated them and moved to another chair where they were at his back and where he could look out over London towards the Tudor crenellations of St James’s Palace.

Why had he worked so hard? At first it had been for Helen and young June and for the other children that were to come. But Helen had not wanted children and so June was the only one. Was it about then that the work became a habit, or perhaps an anodyne? He had thrown himself whole-heartedly into the curious world of the film studios where it is a toss-up which is the more important, money or artistry; and not a scrap of his heart had he left for his wife.

Perhaps it was his neglect that had forced Helen to look elsewhere — at first surreptitiously and later blatantly — until he had got tired of the innuendoes and had forced the divorce.

But where, in God’s name, had June come into all this? The work was there by then, and had to be done; decisions had to be taken — by him and by no one else — and each damned decision led to another and then another, filling his time and his life until there was no room for anything but the work.

He held out his hands and looked at them. Nothing but a machine, he thought despondently. A mind for making the right decisions and hands for signing the right cheques.

And somewhere in all this, June, his daughter, had been lost. He was suddenly filled with a terrible shame at the thought of the letter Warren had told him about. He remembered the occasion now. It had been a bad week; he was preparing to carry a fight to America, and everything had gone wrong so he was rushed off his feet. He remembered being waylaid by Miss Walden, his secretary, in a corridor between offices.

‘I’ve a letter for you from Miss Hellier, Sir Robert. She would like to see you on Friday.’

He had stopped, somewhat surprised, and rubbed his chin in desperation, wanting to get on but still wanting to see June. ‘Oh, damn; I have that meeting with Matchet on Friday morning — and that means lunch as well. What do I have after lunch, Miss Walden?’

She did not consult an appointment book because she was not that kind of secretary, which was why he employed her. ‘Your plane leaves at three-thirty — you might have to leave your lunch early.’

‘Oh! Well, do me a favour, Miss Walden. Write to my daughter explaining the situation. Tell her I’ll write from the States as soon as I can.’

And he had gone on into an office and from there to another office and yet another until the day was done — the 18-hour working day. And in two more days it was Friday with the conference with Matchet and the expensive lunch that was necessary to keep Matchet sweet. Then the quick drive to Heathrow — and New York in no time at all — to be confronted by Hewling and Morrin with their offers and propositions, all booby-trapped.

The sudden necessity to fly to Los Angeles and to beat the Hollywood moguls on their own ground. Then back to New York to be inveigled by Morrin to go on that trip to Miami and the Bahamas, an unsubtle attempt at corruption by hospitality. But he had beaten them all and had returned to England with the fruits of victory and at the high point of his career, only to be confronted by the devil of a mess because no one had been strong enough to control Matchet.

In all that time he had never once thought of his daughter.

The dimming light concealed the greyness of his face as he contemplated that odious fact. He sought to find excuses and found none. And he knew that this was not the worst — he knew that he had never given June the opportunity of communicating with him on the simple level of one human being to another. She had been something in the background of his life, and the knowledge hurt him that she had been something and not someone .

Hellier got up and paced the room restlessly, thinking of all the things Warren had said. Warren had seemed to take drug addiction as a matter of course, a normal fact of life to be coped with somehow. Although he had not said so outright, he had implied it was his task to clear up the mess left by the negligence of people like himself.

But surely someone else was to blame. What about the profit-makers? The pushers of drugs?

Hellier paused as he felt a spark of anger flash into being, an anger which, for the first time, was not directed against himself. His was a sin of omission, although not to be minimized on that account. But the sin of commission, the deliberate act of giving drugs to the young for profit, was monstrous. He had been thoughtless, but the drug pedlars were evil.

The anger within him grew until he thought he would burst with the sheer agony of it, but he deliberately checked himself in order to think constructively. Just as he had not allowed his emotions to impede his negotiations with Matchet, Hewling and Morrin, so he brought his not inconsiderable intellect to bear unclouded on this new problem. Hellier, as an efficient machine, began to swing smoothly into action.

He first thought of Warren who, with his special knowledge, was undoubtedly the key. Hellier was accustomed to studying closely the men with whom he dealt because their points of strength and weakness showed in subtle ways. He went over in his mind everything Warren had said and the way in which he had said it, and seized upon two points. He was certain Warren knew something important.

But he had to make sure that his chosen key would not break in his hand. Decisively he picked up the telephone and dialled a number. A moment later he said, ‘Yes, I know it’s late. Do we have that firm of investigators still on our books? They helped us on the Lowrey case... Good! I want them to investigate Dr Nicholas Warren MD. Repeat that. It must be done discreetly. Everything there is to know about him, damn it! As fast as possible... a report in three days... oh, damn the expense!... charge it to my private account.’