“And I remembered this advice when a client came to me and said that he wished to transfer all his assets into immoveable property – or land, as laymen call it – and in this way to defeat the right of his son, whom he did not like, to claim his legal rights to a share of the property on his father’s death. I was 202 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty appalled by this, because I knew the son, and knew him to be a perfectly decent man. So I said to the client that I did not think that this was the right thing to do, especially as the person who stood to benefit from the arrangement was his mistress, a sleazy woman who drank a lot and had a real roving eye.
“The client became very agitated by this and said: ‘If that’s the way you feel, then I can always go to another firm.’ So I said to him, ‘You do just that! I would remind you that I am a professional man and not some paid lackey you can order to do this, that and the next thing.’
“He took his business away from the firm and I had to report this to Mr Ptarmigan. I shall never forget his reaction. He said:
‘Dunbarton, you have done the right thing, even if this is going to cost the firm a lot of money, for which I must express a slight regret. But well done, nonetheless.’
“Later, I am happy to say, the son, whose interests I had sought to protect, and who had heard of my stand, became very successful and brought his business to us. Mr Ptarmigan noted that fact and pointed out that virtue was not always its own reward, in the sense that it sometimes brought additional benefits of a material nature. We both had a good laugh over that!
“Of course that particular client was an important one, but I never got to know him particularly well. I knew other clients rather better, and one or two of them even became friends.
Johnny Auchtermuchty was one of these.
“Johnny had an estate up near Comrie. His father, Ginger Auchtermuchty, had been a well-known golfer, but had not been particularly good at keeping the estate in good order. In fact, he was rather bad at that, and by the time that Johnny had left the South East Scotland Agricultural College everybody thought that it would probably be too late to do much with the farms that they had in hand. The fencing was in a pretty awful state and a lot of work needed to be done on the steadings. In fact, when Ginger handed over to Johnny and went to live in Gullane, we were very much expecting to have to sell off a large parcel of land just to keep the place from folding up altogether.
The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 203
“I first met Johnny when he came in to discuss the possibility of raising some money to do essential repairs. I prepared a deed which gave security for the loan and I remember thinking that he would never be able to repay even part of what he had to borrow. How wrong I was! Johnny proved to have a real nose for the managing of shooting and fishing and within a few years the estate was one of the most successful in Perthshire. And Johnny was also one of the most socially successful people of his day. Everybody liked him and invited him to stay with them.
He used to make people laugh and told the most wonderful stories.
“I had heard about his house parties, which were legendary, but I had never received an invitation to one of them. This slightly distressed me, and I began to wonder whether Johnny thought of me as just his lawyer and not worth having anything to do with socially. That would have been very unjust. I enjoyed a party in exactly the same way as the rest of them did and even if I was not a particularly experienced shot I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be invited to join in now and then.
“And then at last the invitation came. Would I care to come up to Mucklemeikle to shoot? Friday to Sunday? I replied that I would be delighted to do this. I did not ask what it was that we were going to shoot. Betty, who did not treat the invitation with the same enthusiasm as I did, suggested that it might be fish in a barrel. That was meant to be a joke, but I must admit that I did not find it very funny at the time. Indeed, I don’t find it funny now. In fact, it has remained as unfunny as it was when she first uttered it – it really has.”
62. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:
Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend
“Now,” said Ramsey Dunbarton to his wife, Betty, as he read his memoirs to her. “Now things get really interesting.”
“Johnny Auchtermuchty!” mused Betty. “What a card he was, 204 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend Ramsey! And such a good-looking man with that moustache of his.”
“A great man,” agreed Ramsey.
They were both silent for a moment. Then Betty asked: “And they found no trace of him?” she said. “Not even a few scraps?”
“Not a trace,” said Ramsey sadly. “But let’s not slip into melan-choly. I’ll resume with my memoirs, Betty.” He looked at his watch. “This will have to be the last reading for the time being, my dear. People will just have to wait for the rest.”
“And we haven’t even got to the part where you played the Duke of Plaza-Toro at the Church Hill Theatre,” said Betty.
“Time enough for that in the future,” said Ramsey. “Now back to Johnny Auchtermuchty and the invitation up to Comrie.
“I was delighted, of course, to receive this invitation to shoot, even though, quite frankly, I had not done a great deal of shooting before. In fact, if the truth be told, I had hardly ever handled a shotgun, although I had done a bit of clay-pigeon shooting when I was much younger. I don’t hold with shooting really: I’m rather fond of birds and I think that the whole idea of blasting them out of the sky is a bit cruel. But it was not really for me to criticise my clients and certainly Johnny Auchtermuchty would have been very surprised if I had taken a stand on the matter. There are plenty of Edinburgh solicitors who would have jumped at the chance of a day’s shooting with Johnny and some of them would not have been above a bit of subtle persuasion that he should perhaps take his legal business to them rather than to Ptarmigan Monboddo. Now I am not going to mention any names, but I’m sure that if any of them are reading this they will know that I mean them.
“Betty decided that she would not come after all, and so I motored up to Comrie by myself on the Friday afternoon. I had borrowed a friend’s Rolls-Royce for the occasion and I enjoyed the drive very much, taking the road past Stirling and then up across the hills behind Glenartney. Johnny was standing outside the Big Hoose, as we called it, when I arrived and he said to The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 205
me: ‘Nice Rolls there, Dunbarton! You chaps must be charging us pretty handsomely to afford a car like that!’ I was a bit embarrassed by this and started to explain to him that it really belonged to a solicitor from another firm but he paid no attention. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Blame the other chaps! Old trick that, Dunbarton!’
“We all had dinner that night and had a very good time too.
There were a couple of people from Ayrshire and somebody from Fife. Johnny’s wife was a splendid cook and had prepared a very fine set of dishes for us. I asked her if she could give me the recipes to take home to Betty, but she said no. I thought that this was rather rude of her, but I fear that she had long been nursing a grudge against me, at least since she unfortunately had overheard me, some years before, telling somebody that I thought that Johnny had married beneath him. That was most unfortunate, but I was absolutely right. He had, and I think she knew it. I also noted that I was given the smallest bedroom in the house – one at the end of the corridor and that the sheets on the bed did not quite reach the end. And the water in the flask beside my bed did not taste very nice at all, and so I decided not to drink it.