‘So you assumed that the happy ending was in sight when you married for the second time.’
‘Wouldn’t anyone? And then, clean out of the blue, I ran into Coralie in the town market here at the beginning of the Long Vacation. I had the shock of my life, I can assure you. I must simply have stood and gazed at her. She said, “Well, dearie, have you come back to keep me in the style to which I am not accustomed? I know all about your second marriage, you rat.” I managed to gargle out something to the effect that I thought she was dead and that I’d seen her grave. She laughed in a very nasty way. “That was my poor mum’s grave,” she said. “Her stage name was the same as mine. Ever been had, you two-timing Casanova? Well, you’ve done for yourself now, haven’t you? I suppose you’re prepared to pay me to keep my trap shut? Wouldn’t do you or the lady don much good to be labelled as bloody bigamists, would it? All right, my greatest lover of all time, I want my first instalment and I want it soon.” ’
‘And you met her again at the pub on the Bicester road?’
‘Yes, I hoped I could persuade her to call off her vendetta. However, as I said, she made herself very pleasant at first, but she stuck to this outrageous demand for what she was pleased to call alimony, although there had never been any question of divorce. She mentioned her marriage lines and said that they were in a safe place, but that she could and would produce them at any moment if I refused to pay up. I was scared out of my wits because I knew she meant what she said, so, in despair, I gave in. You see, she could prove that when I married Margaret it really was bigamy. Well, all that was bad enough and now, on top of it, comes this charge of embezzlement. It’s untrue, but I simply don’t know how to refute it.’
‘All right, Lawrence. For the sake of your uncle and his position in this my old College, I am prepared to guarantee you a long-term loan of forty thousand pounds, which will clear your name for the time being. I shall then go into the matter with your auditors. Who are they, by the way?’
‘Lestrange, Collins and Dobbs.’
‘My cousin Harry? Well, that’s a bit of luck for you, anyway. Once the money is repaid, I can fix Harry and ask for his discretion, so that nothing need be made public. That isn’t for your sake, but for Sir Anthony’s and the Warden’s. A stink of this nature wouldn’t do either of them any good. I shall need you to sign an undertaking to repay the money, of course, and with reasonable interest.’
‘There’s been some mistake, some ghastly mistake, Lestrange. I’m going to get another firm of auditors on the job.’
‘You would be very unwise to do that. I have influence with Harry, but none with any other firm if you have a second audit carried out.’
‘Oh, well, if you can get your cousin to stall for a bit, I suppose that will help. I’m going on holiday the week after next with old Sir Anthony, so I shan’t be on hand for a bit.’
‘Yes, it might be as well to get him out of the way while we settle things up and put you in the clear.’
‘And I suppose you expect me to thank you into the bargain!’
‘Oh, hardly! I feel I know you better than that,’ said Sir Ferdinand, going towards the door.
CHAPTER 3
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A place of security in times of insecurity
The Stone House just outside the village of Wandles Parva on the edge of the New Forest belonged wholly to the eighteenth century. All the rooms in it were spacious, high-ceilinged and airy. The most pleasant room of all, thought Sir Ferdinand, meeting his mother, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, at the conclusion of his visit to Wayneflete College, was the drawing-room.
It had two doorways, one leading in from the hall, the other to an ante-room. Both doors were augmented by six plain panels: two, small and square, at the top of the door, four, rectangular and beautifully proportioned, below. Both doorways were topped by broken pediments evolved from an earlier style, that of Renaissance architecture.
In the drawing-room, as in every room in the house with the exception of the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, there were bookcases. These were low and long and placed on either side of the elegant fireplace in the drawing-room, taller and more sombre in the dining-room, and lining all the available wall-space in the library.
The bedrooms were stocked with lighter matter; poetry, essays, humorous literature and novels for the most part. In the small study where Laura Gavin, Dame Beatrice’s secretary and close friend, carried out such duties as answering letters and typing from Dame Beatrice’s manuscripts, the books were on law and forensic medicine; and here, too, were volumes for general reference, encyclopaedias, atlases, motoring and yachting manuals, guide books, year books, dictionaries both English and foreign.
Ferdinand was being given tea in the drawing-room and he had turned the conversation on to his recent visit to Wayneflete College. Having greeted him and announced that she did not care for tea, Laura Gavin, the secretary, had slipped away and left the mother and son together.
‘So did you guarantee the forty thousand pounds?’ Dame Beatrice enquired, at the end of her son’s narration.
‘No, mother,’ Sir Ferdinand replied. ‘A most unexpected thing has happened. Perhaps I should say that two unexpected things have happened. All that I’ve told you so far is, so to speak, stale news, so I’ll come to the reason for my being here. I need your advice.’
‘Intriguing.’
‘My profession has aggravated and extended what has always been a suspicious mind. However, my cousin Harry suffers no such disadvantage, so I want to know whether you think, when I come to enumerate them, that his unusual suspicions are justified; if you decide that they are, I’d like to know what you think I ought to do about them. Harry is neither doctor nor lawyer, but he has a great fund of commonsense.’
‘More and more intriguing! Would you take it amiss if I ventured upon a little wild guesswork?’
‘I know something about your kind of guesswork. It’s usually founded upon a brilliant series of deductions. Please go ahead.’
‘I can scarcely bear to wait for the full details which I trust you are about to supply, but my suggestion is that, since you have not needed to guarantee a replacement of the forty thousand pounds of embezzled money, old Sir Anthony must either have paid the debt out of his own pocket, or else he has died and the money has been repaid out of his estate. That is if I am correct in assuming that Mr Lawrence managed to become so much persona grata to the old gentleman as to be nominated as his heir.’
‘You must be clairvoyante, mother.’
‘That is not so flattering an observation as your previous attempt. It is true, then? Sir Anthony is dead?’
‘True as true can be.’
‘So what is the advice I have to give?’
‘Well, everything turns upon this suspicious mind to which I make claim and which gives me cause to think that Harry may be right, although I fail to see what anybody can do about it. The facts are these: a fortune, which was to come to this minor for whom Sir Anthony’s cousin and Lawrence himself were trustees, was left for the youth to enjoy at such time as he should come of age. No actual year was mentioned in the Will. I have seen a copy of the testator’s intentions and the words at such time as he shall come of age are plainly given. Well, of course, when the Will was made, the recognised date for a minor to come of age, unless otherwise stated, was on his or her twenty-first birthday.’
‘Ah, yes, I see. A comparatively recent change in the law could have made a difference of three years to the heir presumptive.’
‘Exactly. It is now recognised that youths and young women come of age at eighteen instead of at twenty-one. Old Sir Anthony’s cousin, the other trustee, had told Lawrence, it seems, that the testator expected his heir to inherit at the age of twenty-one, but the heir himself, not unnaturally, wanted the letter of the law to be observed, and confidently expected to come into his money as soon as he celebrated his eighteenth birthday. There was a legal wrangle and, owing to the wording of the Will, the trustees lost their appeal, although there is no doubt in my mind that their contention was right and that the testator had been thinking in terms of his son’s twenty-first birthday and not his eighteenth.’