"Yes." Being the only daughter of a new-deceased hero and an unworldly schoolmistress ought to count for something; and she might as well start rehearsing that role as of this moment. "Actually, Mr Aske said I couldn't have the Sunday papers until I'd written it."
If Father hadn't won it, where on earth had it come from?
"Very well. Page two, towards the bottom of it." Audley had his own copy of the statement. "You offered him what was in the box, and he said 'I don't want your money'."
She saw that he had produced the spectacles he had worn for his photograph, and had perched them in the same ridiculous place. "Yes. That's what he said."
"Uh-huh. And that's also what you said to Mitchell—'he didn't want my money'. So what was he after, Miss Loftus?"
"I don't know." Elizabeth blinked at him. "I said that to Dr Mitchell too."
"But it had something to do with France, and your father . . .
and HMS Vengeful—you told him that also."
"Yes . . ." What had been rather vague and disjointed in her memory came back to her suddenly with disconcerting clarity. In the state in which she'd been, and with both the dummy3
brandy and Paul Mitchell egging her on, she'd said much more than she needed to have done. "But it didn't make any sense—I told Dr Mitchell that too."
"Why not?"
She gestured helplessly. "How could anyone possibly be interested in the Vengeful?"
"Your safe deposits aren't in France, by any chance?"
"No—no, of course not. They're in London."
"All of them?"
"Yes—there are only four . . ." Elizabeth faltered as she realised that this was the line of questioning the snake-man should have pursued yesterday, instead of fruitlessly pursuing Father's Vengeful research trips.
Audley nodded. "So we come to the big question, Miss Loftus: what have you got in those precious boxes of yours?"
"I'm sorry?" She looked at him in surprise, then at Paul Mitchell.
"Come on, Elizabeth," said Paul Mitchell. "Get it over with.
We're bound to find out, one way or another."
She frowned at him. "Well—money, of course. I told you!"
"Money?" Audley returned the frown.
"What did you expect?" Now they were frowning at each other, as though she'd given an unexpected answer.
"Just money?" Audley persisted. "In all four deposits?"
"Yes." She shared her own bewilderment with them.
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"Look, Elizabeth . . ." Paul Mitchell abandoned his position by the suitcase, coming round the bed to squat on his heels in front of her, among the bank notes ". . .we don't want your money—okay?"
"Well—what do you want?" It ought to have been an angry question, but the way it came out there was a pleading note in it.
Paul Mitchell's encouragement slowly changed to doubt.
Then he swivelled towards Audley. "What the hell do we want, David? That's a good question!"
Audley was watching her over his spectacles. "Tell me about the safe deposits, Miss Loftus."
"There isn't much to tell." All the stuffing had gone out of her. "Father gave me a parcel one day, and told me how to open a deposit—what to do . . ."
"In your own name?"
"That's the only way you can do it. And then he gave me other parcels . . . and there were other accounts . . . And I gave him the keys each time, of course."
"Of course!" He thought for a second. "And you always do what you're told—you didn't ask what was in them?"
Put like that it hurt, and she couldn't bring herself to answer it directly. But somehow it had to be answered.
"David—" began Paul Mitchell.
"No. Let her answer." Audley waved him off. "Weren't you at dummy3
least curious?"
There was no way of answering that without humiliation.
"You never met my father, Mr Audley?"
"No. That pleasure was denied me, Miss Loftus."
The funeral came back to her: the rain gusting across the churchyard in sheets and falling through the saturated summer leaves of the trees on to the mourners—the smell of the wet earth and damp uniforms.
"He should have commanded a battle-squadron, Mr Audley
— that's what they said. But all he had was me." She managed to look him in the eye. "After he died there was a letter in his deed-box at the solicitor's, with the keys. It's still there, so you can see it for yourself. And the keys, too."
Paul Mitchell stirred. "But he didn't say where he'd got it?"
"He said he'd taken a gamble. And he said that it was now all rightly mine, and no one else's. That's all."
Audley nodded slowly. "How much?"
It was the inevitable question. "I don't know—not exactly.
There are gold coins as well as bank notes . . . sovereigns, and also those South African coins."
"Krugerrand," murmured Paul. "Nice!"
"Roughly—how much?" Audley wasn't letting her go.
"In bank notes . . . about £100,000. I don't know what the coins are worth. But there are a lot of them."
"And the tax-man doesn't know about any of it!" Paul dummy3
grinned like a schoolboy. " Very nice!"
"I don't know whether I should have reported it. . ." When it came to the crunch, pretending to be an unworldly schoolmistress lacked credibility, decided Elizabeth. But if she was to salvage something from the wreck she had to do her best. "But if you think I ought to, then I will, Mr Audley."
"Good Lord—I wouldn't!" exclaimed Paul. "She doesn't have to, does she, David? I mean . . . can't we declare her prize-money between ourselves, as it were?"
Elizabeth's heart warmed to him. But also, at the same time, she had the impression that Audley was reading her like an open book.
"What you do with it isn't our business, Miss Loftus—as Mitchell said, we don't want it." Audley closed the open book.
"But where it came from is our business."
They were back to the unanswerable question.
"The notes will have numbers," said Mitchell. "Are they new ones, Elizabeth?"
The look on her face answered him even before she shook her head.
"Pity." Almost unwillingly, he turned to Audley. "That amount of money in used notes . . . means it's been professionally laundered, David."
"It's not the money that matters." Audley studied her. "Tell me, Miss Loftus . . . did the parcels come to you after the trips to France?"
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"I don't know . . . no, I don't think so . . ." Her memory sharpened as she realised the point of the question. "No . . .
there were more of them—he didn't go nearly that often . . .
and . . . and they started before he went the first time—" she stopped suddenly as the absurdity of the connection became apparent.
"Yes?"
"He went to France to research the book, Mr Audley."
"So?"
"It's absurd—it makes no sense."
"It makes sense to someone, Miss Loftus." He echoed Mitchell's words from the previous evening. "That's why we need your help, you see."
"My help?" Elizabeth was so grateful he'd dropped the subject of money that she didn't frown.
"You're the expert on his book—you did all his typing, Mitchell tells me."
"Yes—no . . ." Caution re-asserted itself. "I only typed the chapters when they were complete, he never discussed them with me or told me what he was doing. And he kept most of his notes in his head, it seemed to me."
Audley nodded. "But he was re-writing one particular chapter, I gather?"
They were back to the absurdity. "Yes, but that was to do with Number Seven—the old Vengeful—" She didn't want to dummy3
discourage him, but it was no good pretending to knowledge she didn't possess "—and I really don't know why, or what."
Another nod. "Perhaps not. But if we do come up with anything new, then you'll be able to advise Mitchell here. You can be his technical adviser, in effect."
She looked at Paul Mitchell. She could hardly refuse to help him now, Audley himself had made sure of that. And even apart from that moral obligation there was her money to be considered—they had made that her prize-money, and prize-money had to be earned in battle.