Two weeks later he had a job as a second-hand car salesman in Clapham. He was successful from the first day and although he was only paid commission he was earning reasonable money. But not enough money to justify the flat he took in the White House, a residential hotel in Regent’s Park. But the legend of the wealthy father covered that, and his fellows at the car showrooms were impressed by his constant flow of anecdotes about his life in Canada. He found that, like Collins had said, he already believed his own story. He could bring himself to raging anger at the indignities heaped on him by his imaginary wife and could bring tears to his own eyes as he reluctantly revealed the unhappiness of his childhood. Neglected by his frivolous mother, his wealthy father too often away abroad on business trips.
The advertisement in the Evening Standard offered the opportunity for investors to get into the vending machine business and Molody had telephoned the next morning.
He’d spent an hour with the two men talking about their proposition. They wanted £500 down and he’d be given a small territory to sell machines in. To offices, canteens and clubs. But there was no chance of him having a stake in the business. He had offered up to £1,000 for a five per cent shareholding but they’d refused. Molody was impressed by the two Jaguars in the tatty yard outside. And he was impressed by their refusal of an offer that valued their business at £20,000. There was only one room and the two lock-up garages that housed the vending machines. He got on well with both men, they were amiable rogues, as talkative and confident as he was and they finally gave him the telephone number of a firm that handled juke-boxes.
The man with the juke-boxes was an altogether different sort of man. Big and rough, he was obviously not interested in Molody’s amiable chat. If Molody paid a hundred-pound deposit in cash on each machine he could have up to five. Take it or leave it. There were no exclusive territories and no sales leads. It was all up to him. He paid the deposit on five machines and stood watching as the man counted every note.
In six days of tramping the streets of Clapham Molody had placed seven juke-boxes, and by the end of two months had a regular income of over two hundred pounds a week in cash. An income on which he would pay no tax and was therefore worth more than double what it netted him.
In his journeys he heard of a syndicate in another district selling and renting one-armed bandits that was looking for an additional partner. They were in Peckham, and Molody invested several thousand pounds and became a substantial shareholder and a director.
From the office he set up in Rye Lane Molody worked from early morning until late at night. Gradually his partners let him take over and he became managing director. He was then planning how to make extra profits by setting up a plant to manufacture machines for them to sell. He had already started exporting machines. There was only one condition he laid down and that was that he was to have all weekends free.
The girls who phoned and called for him at the small offices were much admired by his colleagues and when he came in on Mondays looking tired he made no protest when they made their schoolboy jokes about why he always wanted his weekends free.
10
Alongside Portland is the small seaside town of Weymouth. Its harbour has provided safe anchorage for invading Saxons, Romans and Normans. But when it became a favourite resort of George III it became better known for its sandy beach and old-world peace.
The Old Elm Tree public house in Weymouth had Harry Houghton as one of its regulars. Night after night he regaled the other regulars with stories of his war-time exploits. They listened with amusement, exchanging winks, because they were well aware that his tales were often self-contradictory, manning naval guns in Mediterranean convoys at the same time that he had been twenty below zero on an ice-gripped convoy to Murmansk. But with his mottled, red-veined face and his pointed nose he was harmless enough. He was a bullshitter but he livened up the bar-room chat. He was always there promptly at opening time and he seldom left before the bar closed. It was well known that he didn’t get on with his wife.
It was in May 1958 when his wife contacted the probation service in Bournemouth and arranged an interview. Probation officers are reluctant to hear complaints about third parties who have not been put under their control by the courts, and it often turns out that their informants are more in need of help than the alleged offenders. But listening is part of their official therapy.
Mrs. Houghton’s interviewer was a cautious man and he listened without comment to her litany of her husband’s drunkenness, neglect, unfaithfulness, and his determination to get his own back on the Admiralty who had ruined his career prospects. It was an old, old story that had been retailed with variations on the theme hundreds of times in every social service office in the kingdom and when all this seemed to rouse no indignation Mrs. Houghton played her trump card. She claimed that her husband regularly brought home classified documents from the naval bases. When even that brought no response she gave up.
The probation officer thought vaguely of passing the information to naval intelligence but decided against it. The woman was almost certainly lying, from spite against her husband. And if he passed on such information and it turned out to be a pack of lies God knows what repercussions there could be. Actions for defamation, libel and all the rest of it. Anyway, none of
