by Graham Marks
“Ford, Model T...very dirt and scruff.”
Trey shot a swift peek over his shoulder. “Ah, that black car...what about it?”
“It follow.”
“You sure?”
“Very sure.”
“Can you see who’s in the car – is there a man in a grey suit?”
“I think possible. And other one.”
Trey sunk down in his seat and wondered what on earth to do next as he hadn’t actually worked out what to do if he was right. He went over in his head what he knew: firstly, that the man in the grey suit probably suspected he’d been spotted outside the very first office they’d visited (otherwise why disappear so fast?); and secondly, that as the man hadn’t seen him leave the car with his father, presumably he knew he was still in it. Hunched down, Trey knew he’d feel a whole lot more confident with a snub-nosed gat tucked into his shoulder holster, like a real PI.
It was right then that it occurred to Trey that he had no reason to hide...that it was The Man in the Grey Suit (another great title for a story, which he scribbled down) who was the one who didn’t want to be seen. Remembering the advice of numerous of his favourite detectives he realized that the best thing he could do was act normal and confident, as if he had no idea anything was happening – what the hero in one of the stories he’d read recently had referred to as “lulling ’em into a false sense of security”. And then there was one other thing a good shamus should do – he should make a note of the car’s licence plate for future reference.
“Ahmet – can you see what the number on that car is from where you are?”
Trey watched as Ahmet adjusted the rear-view mirror, and then shook his head. “It hide behind another car.”
There was, then, only one thing for it: he had to get a better view and memorize the number, because he could hardly stand there taking notes. Which meant getting out of the car and walking across the street. What could possibly go wrong? Only that his father might catch him disobeying his instructions to stay where he was, but, as their next stop was the hotel and there was precious little left of the day to be grounded in, Trey thought that the risk was worth taking.
Except he didn’t want to get Ahmet into any kind of trouble; that would not be fair.
Trey looked across the street and saw what looked like a stationer’s and he had an idea. Pressing his pencil hard onto the page he bust the lead. “Would you look at what happened?” He held up the broken pencil. “Could you come with me over the road, Ahmet, ’cause I need to go to that shop and get a sharpener?”
“Bad idea, I should say so.” Ahmet shook his head as he opened his door. “I go, I come back, you stay, is better one.”
Before Trey had a chance to say anything to Ahmet about why he really wanted to go to the shop, Ahmet was the other side of the street and the next moment had disappeared through the shop’s door; Trey glanced nervously at the building his father had gone into, half expecting to see him come striding out and get an extra knot in his tie because his driver wasn’t where he was supposed to be. If there was one thing he knew his father hated it was being kept waiting.
“I make note, through window.”
Trey jerked round to find Ahmet getting back into the driving seat. “You did what?”
Ahmet looked over his shoulder, smiling as he held up his right hand, a folded slip of paper gripped between the two fingers. “You want number of car, no?”
“You are the best!” Trey reached over and took it.
“But can’t make note in book without this.”
Trey looked up and saw that a brand-new pencil had appeared between Ahmet’s fingers.
After copying down The Man in the Grey Suit’s car licence plate, Trey found absolutely nothing else to put in his notebook on the drive back to the hotel; with his father lost in his paperwork he was free to observe all he liked, and with the late afternoon traffic slowing their pace down to a crawl it was a perfect situation for careful observation. But, as hard as he looked (trying his best to make it look as if he wasn’t looking hard) he even lost sight of the one car he knew had been following them.
Glancing at his father, sitting next to him making occasional notes on the papers he was reading, Trey found it hard to believe he could possibly be involved in anything that might make him the kind of person who got tailed. But he had been a bit distracted recently, so could he be tied up in some shady deal or other? Surely not...and then it occurred to him that, from what he’d seen today, they must appear to be very, very rich indeed; back home he’d never really thought about how they lived, or how much money they had. So could this all be leading up to a robbery? The thought gave him the jitters.
Trey sat back, frustrated and vexed that, though he was sure something really was up, he had no evidence whatsoever. And evidence, as any gumshoe worth his pay cheque knew, was everything. So a day which had started with so much promise ended on a rather flat note as Ahmet pulled their car up in front of the hotel and a doorman rushed to assist in his father’s exit. Trey realized that that was it – tomorrow would be entirely different – no chance for any sleuthing. He got out, aware that his father was organizing for Ahmet to pick him up first and deliver him to the Stanhope-Leighs. He slouched into the lobby, the truly awful prospect of what was in store for him the very next day hanging like a thundercloud over him...
10 FROM BAD TO WORSE
Trey stood in front of the house and looked from the imposing brass door knocker to the polished bell-pull, not knowing which one to use...not actually wanting to use either and wishing he was still in the back of the car that Ahmet had just driven off in to go and pick up his father. In the end he didn’t have to choose as the double doors swung open on well-oiled hinges to reveal a smartly dressed older man in a black suit, starched shirt, wing collar and neat black bow tie standing in the gap, looking down his nose at him. These people had a butler?
“May I be of assistance?”
“I’m T. Drummond MacIntyre III.”
“Ah, just so...you’ve come to play with the children.” The butler stood back and indicated that Trey should enter the house. “Do come in, sir, and I will go and fetch their governess, Miss Renyard.”
Play? With the children? Trey, momentarily lost for words, watched the man, whom he now noticed was wearing white gloves, walk away. What kind of nightmare had his father cooked up for him? Visions of spinning tops, dolls, construction sets and even sand pits flashed before his eyes. He looked over his shoulder, just in case, by some miracle, Ahmet had come back to rescue him, but the wide, cobbled street was silent and empty. Absolutely no sign of anyone following him.
When he looked round he saw a woman with close-cropped dark brown hair and wearing a blue sailor-style dress coming down the hall towards him, smiling broadly. Just exactly what, he wondered as she approached, did she have to be so happy about?
“Young Master MacIntyre! How nice to meet you...do come with me and I’ll take you up to the playroom and introduce you to Arthur and Christina, who can’t wait to make your acquaintance!”
For one blissful moment Trey thought he had to be dreaming, that at any moment he’d wake up in his bed, back in his room at the Pera Palas, and none of this would be happening...but then he was walking down the hallway, Miss Renyard’s trilling voice bouncing off the silk-lined walls as he dragged his unwilling feet up two flights of stairs (were these kids locked away in the attic?), and not one word of what she was saying sinking in.
“...and after we have been to the archaeological museum, and had a lovely picnic lunch in the park, we shall take a little look at the Topkapi Palace, which I have heard is quite...”
The fact that this torture was going to happen to him until his father’s work was done was beginning to really get to him, and the thought occurred to him that maybe he could fake some kind of terminal illness and get to stay at the hotel instead; he wouldn’t even mind if they took him to the hospital.
“...only been with the family a week
or so, but the children are very nice and I’m sure you’ll all get along swimmingly togeth...”
Or maybe, maybe, he could have an accident! Nothing too serious, just bad enough to mean he couldn’t go off on any trips to yet more museums and palaces, as he really did think, apart from not wanting to spend any time at all with these Limey kids, he had been to more than enough since leaving Chicago.
“...and here we are!”
Trey stumbled to a halt to see Miss Renyard had stopped walking down the wide corridor and was standing by a door. She was smiling at him again, in that way he’d noticed some adults did when they really wanted everything to be all right, but had an inkling that this might not necessarily be the case.
“Shall we go in?”
“Okay...” Trey nodded, and then remembered his manners. “Thank you.”
“What a sweet accent!” Miss Renyard chirped as she opened the door and beckoned for him to follow her. “Arthur, Christina – here’s your new friend!”
Trey was still trying to work out what this Miss Renyard had meant by him having an accent – when it was as plain as the nose on a pug dog’s face (as his gramps would say) that she was the one who sounded funny – as he entered the room. The playroom, he reminded himself. And indeed there was the girl kneeling on the floor surrounded by a whole gang of dolls – all dressed much like she was, in frills – and the boy, standing at a table covered with an electric train set, the engine clickety-clacking its way round the extensive track.
“Children!” Miss Renyard clapped her hands. “This is – what does the ‘T’ stand for?”
“Trey,” Trey replied.
“Trey...what an unusual name.”
“Not really.” Arthur Stanhope-Leigh let out a bored sigh as he expertly slowed the train down to take it through a sharp bend in the track. “He’s called T. Drummond MacIntyre the third, isn’t he...and ‘trey’ sort of means three, so it’s obvious, really.”
Trey did not appreciate being talked about almost as if he was an object, and one that wasn’t even in the room, and felt like boxing this stuck-up kid’s ears to show him just how much he didn’t appreciate it.
“Well I think it’s a very nice name.”
Trey saw the girl had got up from the floor and he noticed for the first time that, with her mass of blonde, curly hair and big, blue eyes, she was actually quite pretty. If you liked that sort of thing. Which he wasn’t sure he did.
“I’m Christina.” She came over, holding out her hand, which etiquette demanded Trey shake. “And that’s my absolute pill of a brother whom you should really just ignore. He wants to be the Prime Minister when he grows up,” Christina added, as if that explained everything. And then she finally let go of Trey’s hand.
“Well, now that we’ve all met I think it’s time to think about going!” Miss Renyard nodded and smiled, somehow managing to look relieved and anxious at the same time. “I’ll go and make sure Cook has everything ready and then tell Stevens to meet us with the car at the front of the house. I’ll send Molly up to get you...”
Trey watched her go, wondering how many people this family had working for them.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, MacIntyre?”
“You talking to me?” Trey frowned at Arthur, who hadn’t even bothered to look up as he spoke.
“I do believe I must have been, old chap.”
Trey took a deep breath, aware that Christina was watching him like a hawk and for some reason he did not want to come out of this looking like he’d been gotten the better of. “Let’s make a deal, okay? You keep out of my hair and I’ll keep out of yours. That way I won’t have to boot your keister, old chap.”
Christina snorted with laughter, Arthur’s ears turned a deep puce and Trey could tell that the next few days were not going to be a cakewalk, by any manner of means. On top of which, every moment he had to put up with the Stanhope-Leighs was a moment he was unable to spend with Ahmet, watching his father’s back (as he knew all the best shamuses called checking to see if someone was being followed). The thought of what he might be missing made Trey grind his teeth.
11 THE VISITOR
Ahmet closed the car door, and as he went back to the driver’s seat Trey heard Christina call out.
“Bye-eee! See you tomorrow!”
He also thought he could hear Miss Renyard urging Arthur to say goodbye as well (some hope she had); he sank back into the seat, giving a desultory wave as Ahmet drove off, and then going cross-eyed at the thought that what he had just been through was going to be repeated, ad nauseam, for some days to come.
“You have good day?”
“No, Ahmet, I do not have good day...how about you?”
“I fine, thanking you.”
The two of them sat in a reasonably easy silence for the next few minutes as Ahmet guided the car through the traffic; the last thing Trey wanted to do was go over what he’d done that day, and he was exhausted from the strain of answering the seemingly continuous stream of questions from both Miss Renyard and Christina about what it was like to live in Chicago. Not to mention constantly having to stop himself from biffing that sneering worm Arthur, who seemed a real sneaky type. Which reminded him...
“Did you see anyone following you today, Ahmet?”
“Were back again.”
“They were?” Trey snapped upright.
“Yes, that men, from day before today. Different car, but I spot all the same; they follow like lost puppy.”
“Are they here now?” Trey whirled round and looked out of the rear window, amazed with himself for not having thought to check before.
Ahmet shook his head. “Not you they like to see. Only Mr. Macktire.”
“What happened?”
“Not so much. I just see the car, and two men with it, here.” Ahmet reached up and tapped his rear-view mirror.
“Where’s my father now?”
“I took him Pera Palas – in the room, maybe?”
“And the people who’ve been on your tail all day, you think they’re still there outside?”
Ahmet shrugged eloquently. “I not magic...can’t not see from here.”
Trey couldn’t tell if Ahmet was joking with him or not, but he was more concerned with the fact that, while he’d been traipsed around yet another collection of cultural artefacts, in the real world a story his father was blissfully unaware of was still unfolding – and he should have been involved! And the more Trey thought about it the more it was like the novelette he’d read recently; in The Nearly Man, a hapless detective had always been one frustrating step behind the man he was trying to catch, and he now knew just how he felt...
“You tell Mr. Macktire?” Ahmet asked, interrupting Trey’s thoughts.
“You think I should?”
Ahmet did another of his meaningful shrugs.
“He more than likely wouldn’t believe me, if I did.” Trey shrugged to himself. “But what if something happens to him if I don’t tell him?”
They were stopped in traffic and Ahmet raised both hands off the wheel and looked up at the roof as he shook them, like he was offering a heartfelt prayer. “What to do, eh? What to do?”
Standing in the lift as it cranked its way up to the seventh floor, Trey was still unsure of what would be the best course of action. Experience (“The cheapest form of education available!”, as his gramps, who seemed to have a saying for almost every single occasion, would put it) had taught him that his father would be disinclined to believe him if he said there was somebody following him, so maybe he’d believe someone else. Someone like Ahmet. But then again, maybe not, and he did not want to get Ahmet into any kind of trouble with his father.
He watched the operator bring the lift to a halt at his floor and pull the two sets of doors to one side so he could exit; walking out he turned right to go to their suite. Maybe, if his father had had a good day, and seemed to be in an amenable mood, he could try and work the conversation round to what he might do if it so hap
pened he was being followed. Just to get his father at least thinking about the idea. Trey was still deep in thought, planning how the conversation might go, when he reached the door to the suite...and found that it was ajar.
If Trey had owned hackles they would have been standing right up on end. As it was, even though it was hot, he felt a shiver run from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. What could this mean? The only way to find if it was “nothing” or “something” was to go in. So Trey gently pushed the door open just enough so that he could get his head through the gap, and then peered in.
So far it was “nothing”, an empty lobby area leading into the sitting room, which was also, as far as he could tell, empty. And then he heard voices coming from the room his father was using as a study. His father must have a visitor. So now there was only one thing for it: he had to actually go in. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door open a little bit further and slipped into the lobby.
He knew that, under normal circumstances, he would have marched in and, as he was always being told, really made his presence felt. But these circumstances were not, he reckoned, quite normal. So, like any gumshoe worth his salt, he quietly made his way into the sitting room (“Keep schtum and keep breathing” was, as he was well aware, every private eye’s watchword), stopping by one of the leather chesterfields and listening. He could still hear the voices – a low, loud rumble from behind the closed study door – but not what was being said; and then, out of the blue, the burning question of what his next move should be was answered by his father bellowing “GET OUT!” and what sounded like a fist being slammed onto a desktop. Trey ducked down out of sight behind the leather sofa.
Later, when he reran what had happened, he supposed he’d hidden because he’d felt like he was about to be caught red-handed eavesdropping, but at the time, with the study door slamming open, it seemed like the only thing to do and the right place to be.