The Proprietor's Daughter Page 6

  “What do you think’ll happen in the end, Miss Eagles?”

  There, Katherine was stumped. Would the building be sold with a sitting tenant, thereby lowering its value? Or would Archie eventually find himself in court, on the wrong end of an eviction suit?

  Katherine’s fifth and final evening at Cadmus Court was not a complete loss. Brian remained home that night. For the first time he seemed communicative, dropping the pose of swaggering toughness; it was as if he had finally decided to accept Katherine and show approval for her efforts.

  “What’s working on a newspaper like?” he asked Katherine out of the blue.

  “I enjoy it.”

  “What do you enjoy, seeing your name in print?”

  “Helping people like your grandfather. Seeing my name in print lost its gloss a long time ago.” It was a lie, but Katherine forgave herself; the thrill of seeing her byline would never diminish. “Did your grandfather mention that he’d ask at the newspaper if there’s a job for you?”

  “He’s talked about it a few times.”

  “Would you like to work there?”

  “I guess it’s all right. Got to work somewhere, haven’t I?”

  “It helps if you like where you work.”

  “Job satisfaction, eh?” he asked with a grin. Then he surprised Katherine by saying: “I thought you were some stuck-up, toffee-nosed bit when I first saw you. But you helped my grandpa. Thanks.”

  Katherine felt like asking Brian whether she’d helped him as well; after all, he also lived in Cadmus Court. But she could guess how he would reply: Brian Waters did not need any stuck-up, toffee-nosed bit to help him out, thank you very much!

  At ten-thirty, Katherine prepared to leave. Archie walked her downstairs. The forecourt light had gone out, and that end of the street was in darkness. The closest illumination came from the rectangle of brightness that was the living-room window of Archie’s home.

  “Like the blackout during the war,” Archie murmured. “Let’s just hope we can find your photographer’s car.”

  Clutching Archie’s arm, Katherine stumbled across the forecourt. She passed through the gate and came abreast of the alley leading behind Cadmus Court to the park. Nervously, she glanced into the mouth of the alley. It was as black as pitch; all the devils of hell could be lurking down there, and she would never know. She walked more quickly. Her eyes were playing tricks, conjuring up two shadowy forms that detached themselves from the inky blackness and lunged at her and Archie.

  She heard a grunt of surprise and pain as something hard cracked across Archie’s head. As he staggered back, a fist smacked Katherine a glancing blow in the face. Stars exploded inside her head. She lashed out wildly, fingers curved, nails raking the air like talons. And then, with every ounce of strength she possessed, she screamed.

  A car door slammed. Katherine heard feet pounding, saw a blur of motion. The man who had hit her seemed to fly. Arms and legs flailing, he defied gravity for a second before smashing into a wall and sliding to the ground. The second man turned to run. A hand grabbed his shoulder and swung him around. A foot hooked his leg. An abrupt shift of weight and he went down.

  “You all right, Katherine?” Sid Hall asked.

  “I . . . I think so.” She touched just above her left cheek, where the blow had landed. “What about Archie?”

  The photographer produced a small flashlight and shone the beam around. Archie was struggling to his feet. Blood trickled down the side of his face from a cut above his ear. “I’m fine, Miss Eagles. Thick skull.”

  Sid Hall directed the beam downward. On the ground were two men. One had raw grooves down his face where Katherine’s nails had found a target. “Know them?” the photographer asked.

  “Well enough,” Archie answered.

  “They’re the two men,” Katherine said, “who were working on the flat next to Archie.”

  Above the pain in her face, she felt disappointed at being so wrong about John Saxon. He had not rectified the situation at all. He’d just waited a couple of days and then increased the stakes, exchanged harassment for physical intimidation to rid Cadmus Court of its last troublesome tenant.

  Too bad, Katherine thought. But what could you really expect of a man conceited enough to consider St. James’s Square his own front garden?

  *

  Katherine arrived home at two-thirty, after Sid Hall had driven both her and Archie to the hospital casualty department. Franz was waiting up when she entered the house. She had telephoned him from the hospital to tell him there had been some trouble and to assure him that she was all right. Nonetheless, he was expecting the worst.

  “What in God’s name happened to you?” he demanded when he saw her partly closed left eye and the growing bruise. “Your face looks like it was used as a punching bag.”

  “It was.” She told him what had happened. “Archie’s taking a couple of days off — he got a nasty crack on the head — but I’ll be all right to go in tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps you should take some time off as well. It seems that you have given more than enough for your job already.”

  By morning, the eye was far worse, almost completely closed and surrounded by a livid purple bruise. Katherine would not let the children into the bedroom, fearing they would be frightened by the sight of her. When she came downstairs, she was wearing a large pair of black glasses to hide the bruise.

  “I have a headache, darling,” she explained after Henry had asked why she had on dark glasses.

  “Will you tell your father the same lie?” Franz wanted to know, once Henry had left the room.

  “We’ll worry about that when it happens, won’t we?”

  Katherine got to Fleet Street just after midday. Crossing the lobby of the Eagle building, she came face-to-face with Erica Bentley, who was on her way out to lunch. The Daily Eagle’s women’s editor threw her arms around Katherine’s neck and hugged her tightly. “Jesus, but I’ve been worried sick ever since I heard what happened to you last night. Sid Hall told me. I tried phoning you —”

  “I know.” Katherine had not wanted to speak to anyone that morning. Edna Griffiths had taken the calls. “Didn’t the housekeeper tell you I was all right?”

  “Yes, but I want to see for myself.” Erica whistled as she lifted Katherine’s dark glasses to check the damage. “If I were you, kid, I’d put in for hazardous-duty pay.”

  Reaching her desk, Katherine found a note from Gerald Waller’s secretary asking her to see the editor the moment she arrived. She knocked on his perpetually half-open door and entered. After ascertaining that Katherine was all right, Waller handed her the photographs Sid Hall had taken the previous night: the two men on the ground, before Hall had turned them over to the police; Archie Waters, with the flash picking out the trickle of blood from the cut above his ear; and Katherine, dazed as she touched her eye.

  “You look like you don’t know what day of the week it is.”

  “Neither would you, if someone had just jumped out of a dark alley and stuck his fist in your eye.”

  “Touché. Instead of this,” Waller said, “I’d prefer that we used a picture of you sitting at your typewriter.”

  “You don’t want a picture of me at all. I’m writing the story, not starring in it.”

  “But you are. You starred in it as Archie’s niece. It’s great: concerned journalist involves herself —”

  “And gets a black eye in the process.”

  “That,” Waller said, assuming his strict, no-nonsense editor’s tone, “is the way I want it. A picture of you and your black eye, sitting at your typewriter, bashing out the exposé. If you’ll pardon my choice of verbs.”

  Katherine returned to her desk and began to write the story, switching from her customary taut news style to a subjective first person. She typed away busily, every so often glancing at Sid Hall’s photographs — in case her spirit flagged, she could always look at pictorial proof of what she had been through.

  Chapter Four />
  THE CADMUS COURT STORY ran the next day, a full page with liberal photographic coverage, including one of Katherine sitting at her typewriter, swollen eye plainly visible. Nigel Hawtrey was depicted as an ogre, a landlord who hired builders to double as strong-arm men. John Saxon was described as either a willing accomplice to Hawtrey’s criminal acts, or, to give him the benefit of any possible doubt, a property magnate so involved in his own importance that he was unable to see what was happening beyond the edge of his shiny desk.

  Katherine was still wearing the dark glasses when she went to work on Tuesday. She found Archie Waters already back on the job; one day of idleness was sufficient for the old soldier. She smiled at him, and asked, “See yourself in the paper, Archie?” Then, noticing the sour expression on his face, her smile waned. “What’s the matter?”

  “I took your father up to the top floor fifteen minutes ago, Miss Eagles. Looked fit to be tied, he did.”

  “I see.” Katherine had wondered how her father would react when he saw the story. Now she knew. Fit to be tied. She could not remember the last time she had seen him angry. Roland Eagles had remarkable control of his temper; perhaps that was one of the reasons he had been so successful in life, having rarely allowed his clarity of thought to be blurred by violent emotion.

  The elevator stopped at the third floor. As Katherine stepped out, some of the editorial staff began a chorus of “For she’s a jolly good fellow.” She responded with a half-hearted wave. Knowing her father was in the building had taken the edge off her triumph.

  “Katherine!” Erica’s voice came from her small office.

  “I know — my father’s upstairs. And in a foul mood.”

  “He’s biting Sally Roberts’s head off at the minute.”

  “I’ll go up there.”

  “I didn’t hear anything about your presence being required at this particular moment.”

  “All the more reason I should be there.”

  Katherine rode up to the fifth floor. Marching right past Sally’s secretary, she opened the office door and walked in. Sally and Roland faced each other across the desk. It was obvious they had been arguing, and now, having run out of harsh words to say to each other, were saying nothing at all. The silence in the room was oppressive. It reminded Katherine of standing beneath a huge cloud, waiting for the rain to fall.

  Both Sally and Roland were surprised by Katherine’s abrupt and unannounced entrance. She tried to dispel some of the gloom by greeting her father with a bright and cheerful “Good morning. What brings you to Fleet Street?”

  Roland glared at her. “Take off those ridiculous glasses. I want to see exactly what happened to you.”

  She removed the glasses. “It’s nothing that won’t go away.”

  Roland, his eyes a dark and angry blue, turned from Katherine to Sally. “You had no right to allow my daughter to involve herself in an assignment where she could receive an injury like that.”

  “It was not my business,” Sally answered evenly. “It was Gerry Waller’s concern. He is the editor. He makes all the decisions regarding what goes into the newspaper.”

  “Then we’ll wait until he gets here.”

  “He doesn’t come in until midday,” Katherine said.

  “I rang his home in Chelsea half an hour ago. If he is at all interested in continuing his association with Eagle Newspapers, he will be here very soon, mark my words.”

  Katherine started to open her mouth in protest, then closed it again on a signal from Sally. Before any more was said, they would wait for the Daily Eagle’s editor.

  Gerald Waller arrived fifteen minutes later. “What’s the big panic all about?” he wanted to know. “Did World War Three break out without the Eagle knowing of it?”

  The sarcasm was deflected right over Roland’s head by his anger. “How dare you place my daughter in danger?”

  “And how dare you question the way I run this newspaper?” Waller fired back. Any earlier doubts he might have harbored about exposing Katherine to possible peril were of no consequence now. Not when his position was being challenged. “You appointed me as editor. You appear to have been quite satisfied with my performance for the past eleven years, but if you want to start criticizing my decisions now, go ahead and sack me and appoint yourself in my place. I will not remain on a newspaper when my integrity is compromised.”

  “Damn your integrity! Surely I am entitled to expect that you will have the common sense not to allow my daughter into a situation where she might be harmed.” Roland had known he would receive a fierce argument. Journalists resent intrusions into their odd little world, and Waller was no exception. As editor, he would zealously protect every responsibility that went with the title. Roland could influence the political platform of his newspapers by filling the upper-level positions with people who agreed with his own moderate views, but he could not interfere editorially. Not unless he wanted a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Which was precisely what he had now.

  “If I treated Katherine as your daughter, and not as just another member of editorial, I would have a revolution on my hands. Not from other staff, but from Katherine herself.”

  Katherine interposed herself into the confrontation. “You knew about the story,” she reminded her father. “We talked about it on my birthday, over dinner at your house.”

  “I know. But you never mentioned anything about sticking yourself in the firing line, or getting injured.”

  “This” — Katherine pointed at her eye — “is not an injury. It’s a medal, a badge of courage. It proves I’ve paid my dues.”

  “Paid them most handsomely,” Sally said. “Good crusading journalism. Our sales will be up today.” She turned to Roland. “Katherine was never forced into doing anything she didn’t want to do.”

  “She was the person best suited for this assignment,” Waller added. “That was why she got it. Whether or not she is related to the proprietor of this newspaper is beside the point.”

  “Yes, but —” Roland had been taken aback by Katherine’s presence; it had removed some of the sting from his anger. Now, surprise had turned to astonishment at the way she had aligned herself with Waller and Sally. To fight her own father! Damned journalists — they all stuck together. Blood might be thicker than water, but it was certainly thinner than printers’ ink.

  Sally’s telephone rang. She lifted the receiver, spoke for a few seconds, then looked directly at Katherine. “You might have some more dues to pay. John Saxon’s downstairs, wanting to speak to you.”

  “I’ll see him with you,” Roland offered.

  “No, you will not,” Waller contradicted. “Mr. Saxon is undoubtedly here about a story one of my people wrote, not about a story your daughter wrote. If anyone will be with Katherine, it will be me. As editor. She does not need her father holding her hand at this particular moment.”

  Roland’s eyes glowed. “I will not be there as her father. I will be there as proprietor. As publisher.”

  “Roland.” Sally spoke his name softly. Not as employee to boss, but as long-standing friend to friend. “Stay out of it. If legal proceedings are involved, you’ll hear soon enough.”

  “Come on, Katherine,” Waller said. “Let’s learn from Mr. Saxon the names of his solicitors.”

  Katherine followed the editor out of his office. As she passed her father, she felt a moment of sympathy. He seemed so lost. He had come to the newspaper looking for a fight, but he had not expected his own daughter to side against him. Katherine believed she understood what was really bothering him. Over dinner on her birthday, she had accused him of being like a man without arms. She had not realized then just how accurate the remark had been. After a life full of meeting challenges, her father was questioning his existence.

  Inside the office, Roland stood in the center of the floor, gazing at Sally. “Sometimes I tend to forget that Kathy’s all grown up with a mind of her own. I still get the urge to be a father and make sure none of the other children play too r
ough.”

  Sally walked up to Roland, brushed a dust mote from the jacket of his dark gray pinstripe suit, and kissed him on the lips. “Don’t ever lose that urge, Roland Eagles. Just try to keep it a little more beneath the surface, that’s all.”

  *

  Katherine accompanied Gerald Waller to the editor’s office. Two minutes later, John Saxon was shown in. Katherine introduced the two men, after which Saxon said to her, “Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself as well. Obviously, you’re not a young woman called Katherine Waters, whose Uncle Archie lives at Cadmus Court. Incidentally, was that the good Mr. Waters who just brought me up here in the lift?”

  “It was. And my real name is Katherine Kassler.”

  “I know. Your father owns this newspaper, doesn’t he? I should have guessed last week that you were not who you claimed to be. No tenant would have brought photographs like you did. Certainly not such professional prints.”

  “Mr. Saxon, if you came here to admit I fooled you,” Katherine said, “I already know I did.”

  Quite abruptly, Saxon’s tone changed. From brusque, sure of himself, it became soft. “I came to apologize. To tell you that I’m sorry I ever doubted your word. It’s just that Nigel Hawtrey had been with the company for a long time. I had the utmost faith in him. The utmost misplaced faith, as it now turns out.”

  “What’s happened to him?”

  “He’s gone. Paid off. We’ve had a complete personnel purge at the company he controlled.”

  “What was Hawtrey’s motive in terrorizing the tenants the way he did?” Waller asked.

  “The oldest one in the world. Greed. Nigel ran a small company for us, which specialized in buying up speculative properties, buildings in improving areas. The idea was to hold the properties until maximum appreciation had been achieved, do them up, and sell them. The moment a deal went through, Nigel saw a large bonus.” Saxon looked toward Katherine. “Did you mean that about me? So wrapped up in my own importance, I can’t see past the end of my desk?”