‘It wouldn’t be a problem putting them outside? Don’t they have to be near the other equipment, you know, like the horn on a gramophone has to be connected to the box?’

  ‘No, that’s the beauty of it. It’s an electrical signal, so there’s a theoretical limit to how far away you can put loudspeakers before it degrades, but in practical terms, as long as you’ve got a long enough piece of wire, they can go anywhere.’

  ‘That would be handy,’ said Skins. ‘What other changes would you make?’

  ‘I’d like to be able to use more than one microphone, but I can’t fathom out how to blend the signals together. I’m sure the chaps in America are working on something. Other than that, I’d just welcome any developments to improve the fidelity of the recording and playback. Can you imagine a recording so clear it’s impossible to tell whether you’re listening to real musicians or a gramophone record?’

  ‘That would be something,’ said Dunn. He reached out and put his hand near one of the amplifiers. ‘I reckon a way of keeping the room cool would be handy.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Surely it gets hot in here. You keep the door shut while you’re recording and all this kit will generate quite a bit of heat. It must get uncomfortable during a long session.’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no, this room’s always blissfully cool. It sometimes gets a little chilly, actually. But that’s old churches and chapels for you, eh? A bit draughty.’

  ‘Maybe you could open a studio in a purpose-built place,’ suggested Skins. ‘Design it exactly how you want it.’

  ‘Perhaps. But this old chapel has an . . . “ambience”, wouldn’t you say? As well as the splendid acoustic qualities of the place, there’s a certain atmosphere here. Perhaps it’s the old stone, perhaps it’s a memory of what it used to be – I have no idea. But it seems to bring out the best in performers. I think we’ll stay here for a while. And, to be honest, it was hard enough to raise the capital to convert this place – I can’t even imagine where we’d get the money for a new building.’

  ‘I’d have thought people would be falling over themselves to invest in gramophone recordings,’ said Dunn. ‘People love records. And look at all the juke joints in America – bar owners are actually playing records instead of hiring musicians. We’ve got to start making records if we’re going to survive, I reckon.’

  ‘I thought the same. But investors want mines and factories. Even at the artistic end of things, they want grand paintings and theatre shows. It was a struggle to get someone interested.’

  ‘But you managed it,’ said Skins.

  ‘Eventually, yes.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  While they’d been talking, Ellie had been messing around with a few tunes on the piano. They stopped to listen just as she was joined by two saxophones and the warm, velvet voice of Hetty Hollis.

  ‘Is everything set up?’ asked Skins. ‘Could you record this?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll take a few moments to put a disc on. Hold on.’

  Ellie, Puddle and Vera played in the chapel, accompanying Hetty’s singing, while Malcolm, Skins and Dunn listened in the control room. They managed to capture snippets of two of these semi-improvised songs before Ellie began playing an introduction to a gentle love song that perfectly suited Hetty’s warm, sensuous voice. Malcolm had set up a new disc just in time, and was able to record the whole thing. This, thought Dunn, was the future of music.

  When they’d finished, Skins called Ellie, Vera, Puddle and Hetty into the control room.

  ‘Come and listen to this, ladies,’ he said.

  The room was crowded with seven people in it, but they were so thrilled at the idea of hearing themselves play that the minor discomfort this brought was forgotten.

  ‘That’s astonishing,’ said Puddle. ‘I’d never heard myself play before this weekend.’

  ‘It’s a pity my piano-playing isn’t up to the same standard,’ said Ellie. ‘But it is rather wonderful to hear it all back.’

  Hetty just stood with her mouth open, staring at the equipment.

  ‘Are these discs expensive?’ she asked.

  ‘Not prohibitively so,’ said Malcolm. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like to buy this one from you. I’ve never heard myself, either. I might be able to use it to get work.’

  ‘Oh, my dear girl, don’t be so silly. Discs are all part of the expense of the business. You can have it with my blessing. Better yet, why don’t we cut another complete song with the band. That would really get you noticed.’

  ‘Oh, I say. Really? That’s absolutely the most marvellous thing. Thank you so very much.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, dear girl.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s everything. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. It’s my dream come true. One can scratch a living in the small clubs, but something like this would open doors for me. I’d be able to get on the bill with bands like the Dizzy Heights.’

  ‘You’d be welcome at any of the clubs we play,’ said Skins.

  ‘Even more so with a record in my hand.’

  Malcolm smiled indulgently. ‘Let’s see what we can do for you, then.’

  It might not have been hot in the little control room, but it was certainly getting a little claustrophobic.

  ‘It’s a touch cramped in here,’ said Ellie. ‘Would you mind awfully if I ducked back out into the main room?’

  Malcolm waved airily. ‘Be my guest, dear lady. The room certainly wasn’t designed for seven.’

  ‘And we ought to get out and get the band ready for your recording,’ said Dunn.

  After some amount of shuffling and shunting, accompanied by huffing, puffing and profuse apologies, they eventually managed to work out a way of getting back out through the door and into the cavernous chapel, but Hetty stayed with Malcolm.

  Skins and Dunn rounded up the Dizzy Heights from their raucous card game and herded them back to their instruments. There was a brief discussion about what song might best suit Hetty’s range, and after a few minutes they were ready to play.

  Hetty reappeared, flushed with excitement, and joined them. They told her what they had in mind and she agreed enthusiastically. Malcolm gave the signal that everything was running, Mickey counted them in, and they were off.

  When they were finished, the young songstress all but bounced into the control room to listen to the playback.

  Most of the Dizzies resumed their seats at the card table, while Ellie, Skins and Dunn returned to what they were coming to think of as the lounge area.

  After what seemed like an age but was probably closer to fifteen minutes, Hetty emerged and joined the card school, followed by Malcolm who limped down to join Ellie and the boys.

  He sat and accepted a tin mug of tea from Dunn.

  ‘You seem to have made an impression there,’ said Ellie, nodding towards Hetty.

  Malcolm sipped his tea. ‘She’s a remarkably talented young woman. Ambitious, too. And very keen to learn – she had so many questions.’

  Skins chuckled. ‘I remember being young and enthusiastic. What was she asking about?’

  ‘Absolutely everything, dear boy. The business – how to get bookings, how to spot the reputable agents, how to sell gramophone records. The technicalities – how all the equipment works, what that button does, what’s on that shelf there, what’s in that cupboard, where to stand, how to sing into a microphone. I don’t think there was anything in my little control room she didn’t prod or poke, and I’d be surprised if there were anything she couldn’t operate on her own by now.’

  ‘If the singing career doesn’t take off, maybe you should offer her a job,’ said Dunn.

  ‘I could do worse, certainly, but I feel she has a bright future ahead of her. No need to lurk in the shadows if she can be standing in the limelight, what?’

  ‘Is that how you see yourself?’ asked Ellie. ‘In the shadows while everyone else gets the glory for your work?’

  ‘Heavens, no, dear lady. We all have our part to play. You chaps make music, I record it. The men and women on the factory floor make biscuits, John sat in the boardroom and made what he always called “the tough decisions”. I always imagined it in white on a black background, like one of those cards at the cinema. “The Managing Director Makes the Tough Decisions”.’

  Ellie laughed. ‘And then they cut to a well-dressed man with a pensive expression, surrounded by board members, eager for his wisdom.’

  ‘That’s the ticket. Actually, that’s exactly how I remember John from the few board meetings I could bear to attend.’

  ‘Do you mind talking about John?’ asked Skins. ‘Do say if you’d rather not.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell, I’m afraid. Not really.’

  ‘It’s just that Howard booked us to come down here for the party, not John, so we didn’t really have many dealings with our host. We saw him for a couple of minutes here and there, and now he’s gone. It would be nice to know a little bit more about him – I’m sure you and the rest of the family would prefer we remembered the man he was rather than what happened to him.’

  Malcolm touched Skins’s arm. ‘That’s rather thoughtful of you. Thank you. Though I confess he might not come out too well from a full and frank account of his life.’

  ‘Surely he can’t have been as bad as all that,’ said Ellie. ‘Everyone has at least one redeeming quality.’

  Malcolm chuckled. ‘I suppose he must. Dashed if I can think of one offhand, though.’

  The three friends laughed.

  ‘What was he like as a boy?’ asked Skins. ‘Were you mates?’

  ‘I don’t know – he’s seven years older than I. By the time I wanted a playmate he was away at school most of the time. I saw him during the holidays, of course, but I’d not say we were pals. He always thought of me as an annoying little twerp and wasn’t shy in telling me so. Mother used to say it was just our ages, but we had such different personalities that I doubt we’d have been friends even if we were twins. He had no imagination, for one thing. He was angered by my flights of fancy. I remember playing with our toy soldiers one day. It wasn’t something we did often, so there must have been exigent circumstances – I imagine we were stuck indoors because it was raining.’

  ‘It seems to do that a lot round here,’ said Dunn.

  ‘Well, quite. Anyway, we set up a mighty battle between our forces. I was outnumbered and outflanked, but I summoned up the massed ranks of my wooden farm animals and routed his cavalry to claim a historic victory. Or I would have, had he not refused to accept that my general was also a powerful wizard, trained in the mystic arts by Merlin himself and able to control the beasts of the field.’

  Ellie smiled. ‘It does sound a little like cheating.’

  ‘He certainly hated cheating, but what bothered him most of all was that my attack came from my “stupid made-up world” and not the real world as he knew and understood it.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Skins. ‘Did he win?’

  ‘No, I sneaked a sniper on to the high ground – the back of an armchair – while he was engrossed in putting his infantry in neat lines. Shot his general. He conceded that one because marksmen are real. That the man couldn’t possibly have scaled the armchair, nor made the deadly shot from that distance, didn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as the idea of being overrun by sheep and pigs.’

  ‘He could have ridden up on the back of a goat,’ said Skins.

  ‘That was surely going to be my defence if challenged.’

  ‘Were there just the two of you?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘No, I’m the youngest of four. I have two sisters: Violet and Sylvia. I was closer to Sylvia – she’s just two years older than I. She and her husband live in Scotland. There are so many people who need to be told.’

  ‘What did he do next?’ asked Dunn. ‘University?’

  ‘Indeed. University, then straight into the biscuit company. The gaffer had founded the company a couple of years before John was born. Started out making crackers for cheese, and by the time John joined the firm they were experimenting with all manner of sweet biscuits, too. The old man retired in 1900 but John was more or less running the place by then. As soon as the gaffer was out of the way, John put all his plans and schemes into action. He launched the Tea Break Assortment a short while later and we haven’t looked back since.’

  ‘It’s very popular even now,’ said Ellie. ‘The band was talking about it just the other day.’

  ‘It changed the family’s fortunes, that’s for sure. Things had been ticking along well enough, but the Tea Break Assortment took the business to an entirely new level – it was a runaway success. It bought him this place a couple of years later.’

  ‘I imagined you’d all lived here for ages,’ said Skins.

  ‘Good Lord, no. The family was hardly poverty-stricken before – had a nice place at Oxford – but this is a relatively recent acquisition in the grand scheme of things. They moved here in 1903 – it’s the only home the children remember. Gordon would have been . . . five, I think, which would make Betty four and little Ronnie two. Howie was just a bump under Christina’s dress.’

  ‘That was John’s first wife?’ asked Ellie. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘I adored her. Everybody did. Even John, in his own way. Although that didn’t stop him breaking the seventh. Or the tenth, come to that – he coveted every man’s wife if they were young enough.’

  ‘Why did Christina put up with it?’

  ‘It’s what people do, isn’t it? What were her options, after all? Scandal? Divorce? She’d have lost her home. She might even have lost her children. She thought it was far better to endure.’

  ‘You talked to her about it?’

  ‘She wrote to me often. She couldn’t talk to her friends about him, and certainly not her own family. But I knew what he was like so she felt safe telling me.’

  ‘When did it all start?’

  ‘Well, they married in ’97 and his eye was roving before the ink was dry in the parish register. They were always younger than he, always pretty. You met him – he was a handsome chap, and he could be as charming as anything when he wanted to be. They just seemed to fall at his feet. I’d have given him what for if I’d been here, but I was never around. Not sure he’d have paid any attention if I had, mind you. Christina was just part of his organized, regimented plan, d’you see? Successful business. Beautiful young wife. Children. Country house. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, he just thought of her as another accomplishment to be noted in life’s ledger. And being faithful to her wasn’t really part of the plan. He saw no reason not to bed every young popsy who caught his fancy.’

  ‘I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I’m afraid I like him less and less the more I hear of him,’ said Ellie.

  ‘You’re not thinking anything that many, many others haven’t thought.’

  ‘How did you come to get involved in all this?’ asked Skins, indicating the chapel and its electronic equipment. ‘Why a recording studio?’

  ‘Once I resigned my commission, I used to spend my time travelling the world listening to music. Concerts, opera festivals, nightclubs in the capitals of Europe. Even just a few locals playing traditional folk songs in a backstreet taverna – you name it, if there was someone making music, I wanted to be there listening. Expensive business, though, with just an army pension and dividends from my shares in the family firm. Army had been my life, you see? Took me to most of the places I wanted to go. Joined in ’96. Fought in South Africa. Posted all over the Continent after that – military adviser stuff, you know? Then the big one.’ He tapped his right leg with his cane. It clonked hollowly. ‘Lost this in ’17. Retired not long after it was all over – couldn’t face the thought of a desk job at the War Office. So I thought, why not make the music come to me? Started out with some mechanical kit and recorded a few sides for local chaps. Reputation grew. Soon found my ambition had outstripped the facilities, so I started looking round. Raised some finance and imported the latest kit from America.’

  ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard before,’ said Dunn.

  Malcolm inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘It’s the future of music.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing a few moments ago.’

  The iron door handle clattered and Veronica came in.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Uncle Malcolm,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s been wondering where you’d got to.’

  ‘It’s seldom a mystery,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many places I’m likely to be.’

  ‘Hence my venturing here to your not-so-secret lair. It seemed the likeliest of all.’

  ‘Is my presence required elsewhere?’

  ‘Gordon wants to talk to you about something, but I’m not part of the inner circle, I’m afraid, so I’m not allowed to know what.’

  Malcolm grinned. ‘I shall go and see him and then report straight back. I can’t have my favourite niece left out of the inner circle.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You know, you really should get a telephone out here.’

  ‘It’s on my list. I just need to sort out running a cable from the house.’

  He hauled himself out of the chair and stood for a brief moment to gain his balance before setting off for the door.

  ‘What’s the weather like?’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s clearing up nicely. I saw the sun briefly on the way here. Peter says he thinks it’ll clear up completely by teatime, but I’ve no idea what he’s basing that on.’

  Malcolm opened the door. ‘A feeling in his knees, I expect. That’s why I struggle to forecast the weather.’ He tapped his false leg. ‘Only one knee, d’you see?’

  Veronica winked at the three friends. ‘Gosh, Uncle Malcolm, do you only have one leg? You should have mentioned it.’

  He chuckled. ‘Cheeky wench.’

  And was gone.

  The card school was breaking up, and one or two of the band members were getting up to stretch their own legs.