Free Beware This Boy by Maureen Jennings

shining.”
    “I’ll be careful.”
    He was twitching with agitation, finding their slowness unbearable.
    Joe wrapped a muffler around his neck and put his cap on. Beatrice had to trot back to the kitchen to get her shopping bag, then she couldn’t find her gloves. Brian wanted to scream but he clamped his jaw tightly and stayed in the chair.
    Finally they were gone.

    Alf was right about the breakfast at the station being nothing to write home about, and Tyler saw no reason to linger. The fog had mostly dispersed but the sky was grey and lowering, the air chill. Leafless, bedraggled trees drooped and dripped moisture onto the slick pavements. There were few people on the streets.
    When he’d worked in Birmingham previously, Endicott’s had been making sporting guns for the gentry. However, even this early in the war, the War Office was commandeering every factory it could find that could convert its machines relatively easily to munitions work.
    The original owner, unlike many Victorian manufacturers with pretensions, had made no attempt to prettify the building. The factory was dull brick, low and square, no folderols, no grand entrance. It was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac among equally plain small businesses and cheek-by-jowl rundown houses.
    Tyler showed his identity card to the guard, a wizened man whose red-tipped nose was holding on to a drop of mucus. He was wearing some kind of dated gatekeeper’s uniform that didn’t look warm enough. He greeted Tyler with some enthusiasm.
    “Morning, Inspector. We were told to expect you. Get this thing sorted out. Everybody wants to get on with work. We can’t let the Boche get a lead on us, can we.”
    “Indeed not.”
    “I’ve had instructions from Mr. Cudmore to tell you he’ll be waiting inside. Just go along to those double doors.”
    Tyler entered the lobby. A large clock with its unforgiving stamper dominated one side and there was a glassed-in cloakroom on the other. Only the fine wooden floor and the bevelled glass of the cloakroom gave any indication of the previous age.
    The double doors the guard had referred to opened directly onto the factory floor, which held about a dozen machines. A conveyor belt circled the area.
    A flight of stairs to his left led up to another glassed-in section, this one contemporary. He could see the tops of tea urns. The canteen, presumably. The rest of the section seemed to be offices. Suddenly he had a brief glimpse of a portly, bald-headed man watching him from the window. As soon as he realized Tyler was looking in his direction he jumped back. At the same time another man, small and neat, in a dark suit, came hurrying down the stairs and trotted towards Tyler, his hand outstretched.
    “Good morning, Inspector. I’m Lester Cudmore, Mr. Endicott’s secretary. Mr. Endicott sends his sincerest regrets, but he is unable to attend to you at the moment. He has had to leave on other urgent business. He asked me to act in his stead and to make sure you have everything you need.”
    He covers his employer’s tracks very well
, thought Tyler. The disappearing man had to be Endicott, a man who, according to Alf, avoided trouble like the plague.
    “May I offer you a cup of tea? It’s a blamed dismal morning.”
    “Perhaps later. I’d like to get right down to it.”
    “Of course. Let me show you where you can work while you are here.” He indicated an area that had been partitioned off underneath the stairs. “I do apologize for its smallness but I’m afraid that’s all we could do at such short notice.”
    He opened the door. Tyler had seen larger pantries. There was a table shoved against the wall and two straight-backed chairs. A coat tree. A poster from the War Ministry exhorting everybody to buy war bonds was pinned to the door. That was it.
    “I’ll hang your coat and hat, shall I, sir?”
    Tyler handed them over and waited, looking over the deserted factory floor while Cudmore hung up his things. He probably