Read The Shift Key for Free Online Page B

to take advantage of his own son’s temporarily straitened circumstances! If the old fool had had an ounce of wit left in his addled pate, by now the deal would have been showing an enduring profit!
    And to think that just a couple of years’ revenue from that source could have set him on his feet again, maybe placated Helen who now nagged at him so constantly …
    Basil Goodsir was forty-seven. His straight black hair had started to recede and his complexion was florid, with a tracery of broken veins on his nose and cheekbones. His face was set in an expression of permanent discontent, for he had been brought up to expect that he would make a success of his life, with the implied assurance that if he didn’t there would always be some financial cushioning from the family.
    That assurance, though, had come from his mother, who was dead, and had left her personal money not to him but to his sisters, now both married and living abroad. So far Basil had inherited nothing, for at seventy-five his father obstinately clung to life. As for his own career, it was pockmarked with failed business ventures. Currently he was drowning in debt, and the vultures were closing in. And here he was surrounded by priceless heirlooms but forbidden to capitalizeon them! It was high time to make the old dodderer see sense!
    About this library, for example. He remembered with a start why he had come in here this morning. It was his intention to list a few of the prizes that he had once – oh, he had to admit the fact, if only to himself – dismissed as so much waste paper, fit chiefly for a Guy Fawkes bonfire, because so many of these splendid leather bindings covered nothing more remarkable than reprints of sermons.
    But great-great-grandfather Abel had been a notorious opponent of Darwin, and collected scores of books about the evolution dispute, and now there were all these colleges of ‘Bible Science’ breaking out in America like a rash. What might people like that not pay for a first edition of, say, Gosse’s
Omphalos
, that famous study of all the reasons why Adam must have been created with a navel?
    At least, that was what Basil assumed it must be about. He was wrong, not having read it. As a matter of fact, he had read precious few of the books in here, even as a child. Reading had never been his ‘thing’.
    Nor writing, come to that. But determinedly he gathered pencil and notebook and set about tabulating the items he thought might fetch the most on the American market.
    ‘Good morning, young fellow!’ wheezed Marmaduke from his velvet-backed armchair at the head of the dining-table. The days were long gone when at breakfast time the sideboard groaned with kedgeree and chops and devilled kidneys; he was eating porage because that was what there was, bar cereal or toast and marmalade. Still, he seemed to be thriving on his reduced diet; his eyes were bright above his wrinkled cheeks and sparse white beard.
    ‘Morning, Gramps!’ said Cedric, making for the coffeepot. He was twenty and should have been at university again this year. However, there had been a regrettable disagreementwith his tutors, and …
    Cedric didn’t mind. He enjoyed living at Weyharrow Court, above all because of his grandfather, whom he liked infinitely better than either of his parents. Besides, during the summer at least the village was always full of fascinating people of his own age, if not his social class. His fondness for them annoyed his parents so deliciously…
    ‘Where’s your father?’ Marmaduke inquired.
    Loading a slice of toast with ginger marmalade, Cedric shrugged. ‘In the library, I think. At any rate I heard someone muttering in there as I came past, and it can scarcely have been anybody else.’
    ‘The library. I see.’ Marmaduke pushed aside his bowl and drained his cup. It held tea rather than coffee, and left a tealeaf on his bewhiskered upper lip because he abominated tea-bags and would only have his morning beverage