Free The Shepherd File by Conrad Voss Bark

net. In this particular case it turned out to be a monitored telephone conversation between Mrs Wrythe and Monique Shepherd.
    ‘Shepherd’s widow!’ exclaimed Morrison, when he heard. ‘What the devil is she pushing her nose into this for?’
    Mrs Shepherd had telephoned Mrs Wrythe, had said she was unable to sleep and was taking drugs since her husband died and could anything be done for her, as, like her husband, she had not much faith in doctors.
    Morrison listened incredulously. ‘Then why take drugs in the first place?’ he growled. ‘What’s she after?’
    Mrs Wrythe had been sympathetic. Perhaps Mrs Shepherd would call and see her and discuss things. Perhaps she did not need a doctor as much as rest and quiet.
    ‘Old charlatan,’ grunted Morrison, ‘she baits it well. What do they charge for peace and quiet — forty guineas a week?’
    There was very little more on the recording. The conversation was a perfectly normal one with no overtones of meaning in it that would suggest it was not what it appeared to be.
    ‘No mention of her sister,’ said Holmes.
    ‘Or of the boy.’
    ‘Perhaps the sister is going to look after the child while Mrs Shepherd goes in for her rest cure?’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘Are we checking up on her sister?’
    They checked. Rosa Verschoyle had arrived at London Airport. No one had met her. Her papers had been in order. She had come from Brussels. She had hired a car and driven down to the Shepherd bungalow at Bray.
    ‘Seems all right to me,’ said Morrison. ‘After all, why shouldn’t her sister visit her? Why shouldn’t she have a rest cure? All that I think is odd is that she is going to the place where her husband went. You would have thought she would have kept away.’
    ‘She wasn’t interested in nature cure,’ said Holmes. ‘She told me so.’
    ‘Then what’s she after?’
    Checking up on the place where her husband was last seen alive?’
    ‘Could be,’ said Morrison. ‘Could be,’ he stared at Holmes. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t like it.’
    ‘Another reason,’ Holmes said, ‘for getting somebody inside Uplands.’
    ‘Somebody?’
    ‘Not me,’ said Holmes. ‘At least, not yet. Later,’ he referred to his diary. ‘Mrs Shepherd,’ he said, ‘is due to come up to London in a couple of days to see Lamb about her widow’s pension. She won’t be going to Uplands until after that. I want to be with her when she meets Lamb. I think,’ he said, ‘it could be interesting.’
     

CHAPTER SIX
    Lamb’s Den
     
    The air conditioning hummed subduedly, like the sound of far distant planes murmuring in the ventilation ducts. The sun blazed in horizontal strips through the slats of the drawn window blinds. Lamb sat at a large desk, whose surface was almost empty except for a telephone and intercom. The room was insulated. The blinds and the air conditioning protected it from the heat. The thick carpet blotted out noise.
    ‘Let us be frank,’ Lamb said. ‘The Foreign Office handled him badly. Whatever they did, they handled him badly.’
    ‘They queried his expenses.’
    ‘It is a question,’ said Lamb, ‘of how to handle men. When you are out in the middle of the Libyan desert, not knowing who is your friend and who is your enemy, you don’t expect to be treated as a small-time civil servant sending reports in triplicate.’
    ‘Did they ask for reports in triplicate?’
    ‘You know what I mean.’
    ‘I’m trying to be fair.’
    ‘I’m trying to defend my staff.’
    ‘Do you defend everything he did?’
    Lamb leant back in his chair. His eyes travelled round the room as if seeking inspiration for a reply. There was no reply. He stroked his moustache. His moustache had a jaunty air; it filled the empty space under his nose and added decorative qualities to his upper lip. When he smiled, as he did now, his moustache helped to radiate a kind of charm which would not otherwise have been there.
    ‘When you run my kind of department,’