"Do you have an appointment?"
"No," said Daniel.
"Then I doubt—"
"Would you be kind enough to explain to the inspector-general that I have traveled from England especially to see him?"
Daniel was kept waiting for only a few moments before he was shown up to the eighth floor. The same warm smile that appeared in the picture now beamed down at him in reality, even if the lines in the face were a little deeper. Daniel judged Hector Watts to be near his sixtieth birthday and, although overweight, he still looked as if he could take care of himself.
"Which part of England do you come from?" Watts asked.
"Cambridge," Daniel told him. "I teach mathematics at the university."
"I'm from Glasgow myself," Watts said. "Which won't come as a surprise to you, with my name and accent. So, please have a seat and tell me what I can do for you."
"I'm trying to trace a Guy Trentham, and the Police Department have referred me to you."
"Oh, yes, I remember that name. But why do I remember it?" The Scotsman rose from his desk and went over to a row of filing cabinets that lined the wall behind him. He pulled open the one marked "STV," and extracted a large box file.
"Trentham," he repeated, as he thumbed through the papers inside the box, before finally removing two sheets. He returned to his desk and, having placed the sheets in front of him, began reading. After he had absorbed the details, he looked up and studied Daniel more carefully.
"Been here long, have you, laddie?"
"Arrived in Sydney less than a week ago," said Daniel, puzzled by the question.
"And never been to Melbourne before?"
"No, never."
"So what's the reason for your inquiry?"
"I wanted to find out anything I could about Captain Guy Trentham."
"Why?" asked the inspector-general. "Are you a journo?"
"No," said Daniel, "I'm a teacher but—"
"Then you must have had a very good reason for traveling this far."
"Curiosity, I suppose," said Daniel. "You see, although I never knew him, Guy Trentham was my father."
The head of the prison service looked down at the names listed on the sheet as next of kin: wife, Anna Helen, (deceased), one daughter, Margaret Ethel. There was no mention of a son. He looked back up at Daniel and, after a few moments of contemplation, came to a decision.
"I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Trentham, that your father died while he was in police custody."
Daniel was stunned, and began shaking.
Watts looked across his desk and added, "I'm sorry to have to give you such unhappy news, especially when you've traveled all this way."
"What was the cause of his death?" Daniel whispered.
The inspector-general turned the page, checked the bottom line of the charge sheet in front of him and reread the words: "Hanged by the neck until dead." He looked back up at Daniel.
"A heart attack," he said.
Chapter 31
Daniel took the sleeper back to Sydney, but he didn't sleep. All he wanted to do was get as far away from Melbourne as he possibly could. As every mile slipped by, he relaxed a little more, and after a time was even able to eat half a sandwich from the buffet car. When the train pulled into the station of Australia's largest city he jumped off, loaded his trunk into a taxi and headed straight for the port. He booked himself on the first boat sailing to the west coast of America.
The tiny tramp steamer, only licensed to carry four passengers, sailed at midnight for San Francisco, and Daniel wasn't allowed on board until he had handed over to the captain the full fare in cash, leaving himself just enough to get back to England as long as he wasn't stranded anywhere on the way.
During that bobbing, swaying, endless crossing back to America Daniel spent most of his time lying on a bunk, which gave him easily enough time to consider what he should do with the information he now possessed. He also tried to come to terms with the anxieties his mother must have suffered over the years and what a fine man his stepfather was. How he hated the word "stepfather." He would never think of Charlie that way. If only they had taken him into their confidence from the beginning he could surely have used his talents to help rather than waste so much of his energy trying to find out the truth. But he was now even more painfully aware that he couldn't let them become aware of what he had discovered, as he probably knew more than they did.
Daniel doubted that his mother realized that Trentham had died in jail leaving a string of disgruntled debtors across Victoria and New South Wales. Certainly there had been no indication of that on the gravestone in Ashurst.
As he stood on the deck and watched the little boat bob along on its chosen course under the Golden Gate and into the bay, Daniel finally felt a plan beginning to take shape.
Once he had cleared immigration he took a bus into the center of San Francisco and booked himself back into the hotel at which he had stayed before traveling on to Australia. The porter produced two remaining cards and Daniel handed over the promised ten-dollar note. He scribbled something new and posted them both before boarding the Super Chief.
With each hour and each day of solitude his ideas continued to develop although it still worried him how much more information his mother must have that he still daren't ask her about. But now at least he was certain that his father was Guy Trentham and had left India or England in disgrace. The fearsome Mrs. Trentham must therefore be his grandmother, who had for some unknown reason blamed Charlie for what had happened to her son.
On arriving in New York Daniel was exasperated to find that the Queen Mary had sailed for England the previous day. He transferred his ticket to the Queen Elizabeth, leaving himself with only a few dollars in cash. His final action on American soil was to telegraph his mother with an estimated time of arrival at Southampton.
Daniel began to relax for the first time once he could no longer see the Statue of Liberty from the stern of the ocean liner. Mrs. Trentham, however, remained constantly in his thoughts during the five-day journey. He couldn't think of her as his grandmother and when the time came to disembark at Southampton he felt he needed several more questions answered by his mother before he would be ready to carry out his plan.
As he walked down the gangplank and back onto English soil he noticed that the leaves on the trees had turned from green to gold in his absence. He intended to have solved the problem of Mrs. Trentham before they had fallen.
His mother was there on the dockside waiting to greet him. Daniel had never been more happy to see her, giving her such a warm hug that she was unable to hide her surprise. On the drive back to London he learned the sad news that his other grandmother had died while he had been in America and although his mother had received several postcards she couldn't remember the name of either of the professors he had said he was visiting so she had been unable to contact him to pass on the news. However, she had enjoyed receiving so many postcards.
"There are some more still on their way, I suspect," said Daniel, feeling guilty for the first time.
"Will you have time to spend a few days with us before you return to Cambridge?"
"Yes. I'm back a little earlier than I expected, so you could be stuck with me for a few weeks."
"Oh, your father will be pleased to hear that."
Daniel wondered how long it would be before he could hear anyone say "your father" without a vision of Guy Trentham forming in his mind.
"What decision did you come to about raising the money for the new building?"
"We've decided to go public," said his mother. "In the end it was a case of simple arithmetic. The architect has completed the outline plan, and of course your father wants the best of everything, so I'm afraid the final cost is likely to be nearer a half a million pounds."