49. they were still looking

for the Report. How typical thought Richard of this whole rotten mess. For instance, when he had been searching the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador in the Colonial Building in St. John’s it had soon become obvious that Reports from Labrador Rangers had been deliberately removed by person(s) unknown. He was still acutely aware that his interpretation only had flimsy pieces of evidence. He was feeling desperate for hard facts. Yet he instinctively knew he was in the right.
If he had only known what was happening 3,000 or so miles away he wouldn’t have felt so despondent.
Cpl. Dawson was about to start formally interviewing a certain Mr. Eric Wrigglesworth at the latter’s second country home. (Both homes were great financial millstones around his neck outside Bath in Southwest England.) Dawson pressed the start button of the audio cassette player and asked Wrigglesworth to tell him everything he knew about his Grandfather’s activities starting off from when he was Commissioner of Natural Resources, Newfoundland and Labrador in 1934.
Eric didn’t know where to start. Dawson had only been in the house for five minutes and now this was happening. It was absolutely awful. He felt hot, anxious and flustered. He started off by weakly telling Dawson that his Grandfather had only been doing the Dominions Office, London a favour by taking the appointment because they needed somebody with experience. He explained that Grandfather was a retired Indian civil servant with no experience of running a Government Department. That he had been desperately keen at 67 years of age to make a name for himself. He believed that he was very fortunate or so he thought at the time, to have accidentally met with a Mr. James Owen Jeffrey, whom he became convinced had great workable ideas for developing the Labrador. “Grandfather,” said Eric,