'You've put the money in the whisky wall with the man?' he
asked.
'Aye, the trunk and the suitcases are well hidden,' said Mr Dodd, 'but you said that no one will come looking.'
'But I cannot be certain,' said Lockhart, 'and it's necessary to prepare for contingencies and I dinna intend to be dispossessed of my gains. If they cannot find the money they can seize the house and everything in it. I have mind to prepare for that eventuality in advance.'
'It would be a hard place to take by force,' said Mr Dodd, 'but perhaps you have other intentions.'
Lockhart said nothing. His pen doodled on the pad in front of him and drew a moss trooper pendant.
'I would rather avoid that necessity,' he said after a long silence. 'I'll have a word with Mr Bullstrode first. He always dealt with my grandfather's tax problems. You'll go to the telephone in Pockrington and send for him.'
Next day Mr Bullstrode arrived to find Lockhart sitting at the desk in the study and it seemed to the solicitor that a more than subtle change had come over the young man he had known as the bastard.
'I would have ye know, Bullstrode," said Lockhart when they had exchanged preliminaries, 'that I have no intention of paying Death Duties on the estate.'
Mr Bullstrode cleared his throat.
'I think we can find a way to avoid any large assessment,' he said. 'The estate has always been run at a loss. Your grandfather tended to deal only in cash without receipt and besides I have a certain influence with Wyman as his solicitor.' 'Why, man?' said Lockhart brusquely. 'Well, to be frank because I handled his divorce for him and I doubt he would want some of the details of, shall we say, his sexual propensities whispered abroad,' Mr Bullstrode explained misinterpreting the question.
'I dinna care a fig what the bloodsucker does abed,' said Lockhart, 'his name is Wyman?'
'As a matter of fact you've more or less put your finger on what he does abed. Substitute for blood a certain appendage and…'
'The name Wyman, Bullstrode, not the proclivity attendant on the appendage.'
'Oh, the name,' said Mr Bullstrode, brought back from those fantasies Mr Wyman so frequently fostered in his imagination. 'The name is Mr William Wyman. He is Her Majesty's Collector of Taxes for the Middle Marches. You need have no fear he'll trouble you overmuch.'
'He'll not trouble me at all. 'Twill be t'other way round if he so much as sets foot on Flawse Fell. Ye'll tell him that.'
Mr Bullstrode said he would but he said it uncertainly. The change in Lockhart had extended to his language which before had been that educated accent acquired from old Mr Flawse but had now broadened into something more akin to Mr Dodd's way of speech. Lockhart's next statement was stranger still. He stood up and glared at the solicitor. There was a wild look about his face and his voice had a dreadful lilt.
'So gan ye back to Hexham and tell the taxmen there that should they want to die abed and not the open air, they'd best steer clear of old Flawse Hall and gan anither route or else they'll not a-hunting go but be themselves the shoot. I will not have an ane of them come peering through my door or speiring after money that I had made afore. I'll pay my way and gie my due to them as has the need but let a taxman show his face I'll show it how to bleed. Aye, they can sweat and they can stew and they can gan to court but I'll hie here and I'll lie there and niver I'll be caught. So warn them, Bullstrode, heed my words. I dinna wish to kill but if they come a searching me so help me God I will.'
Mr Bullstrode had every reason to believe it. Whatever – and there was now no doubt in his mind that Lockhart was no contemporary but some congenital disaster – whatever stood before him and threatened so much in rhyme meant every syllable he uttered. And a man who could have his own grandfather stu… Mr Bullstrode sought a diversionary word and found it in preserved, was made of sterner stuff than the society in which he was living.
Further proof of this supposition came later when, having been prevailed upon to follow his former custom and stay for dinner and the night, he lay in bed. From the kitchen there came the sound of Mr Dodd's Northumbrian pipes and with it a singing voice. Mr Bullstrode got out of bed and tiptoed to the head of the stairs and listened. It was Lockhart singing, but although Mr Bullstrode prided himself on his knowledge of Border Ballads, the one he heard that night was none he knew.
As the song died away and the thin call of the pipes was lost in the silence of the house. Mr Bullstrode, shivering more from future fears than present cold, crept quietly back to bed. What he had just heard confirmed his premonition. Lockhart Flawse was out of the dim and dangerous past when the moss troopers roamed Tyndale and Redesdale and raided cattle from the low country on the east coast. And having raided they had hidden in their strongholds in the high hills. With that wild lawlessness there had come too poetry as harsh and unflinchingly tragic in its view of life as it was gay in the face of death. Mr Bullstrode, crouching beneath the blankets, foresaw dire days ahead. Finally, with a silent prayer that Mr Wyman would listen to reason and not invite disaster, Mr Bullstrode managed to snatch some sleep.
Chapter twenty
But there were forces already at work to nullify the hope expressed in Mr Bullstrode's prayer. Mr Wyman was quite prepared to listen to reason next morning when the solicitor returned to Hexham with his warning but Her Majesty's Collector of Taxes for the Middle Marches was no longer in control of the situation. In London a far more formidable figure in the person of Mr Mirkin, Senior Collector Supertax Division (sub-department, Evasion of) at the Inland Revenue offices had been alerted to the possibility that Mr and Mrs Flawse, previously of Number 12 Sandicott Crescent and now of no known address, had withdrawn £659,000 in used one-pound notes with the intention of not paying Capital Gains Tax. This had been brought to his notice by the bank manager of the East Pursley branch of Jessica's bank who happened to be a close friend of Mr Mirkin and who had been piqued by her refusal to accept his advice. He had been more than piqued by Lockhart's attitude. In his opinion something very fishy was going on. In the opinion of Mr Mirkin it was more than fishy; it stank.
'Tax evasion,' he said, 'is a crime against society of the very gravest sort. The man who fails to contribute to the economic good deserves the most severe punishment.' Which, since Mr Mirkin's income derived entirely from the contributions of socially productive persons, was an opinion both understandable and self-serving. The very magnitude of the sum involved merely increased his sense of outrage. 'I shall pursue this matter to the ends of the earth if need be.'
But such lengths were not needed. The late Mrs Flawse had written to the bank manager informing him of her change of address. That she had changed it yet again made no difference to Mr Mirkin. He consulted the tax register for Northumberland and confirmed that a Mr Flawse, who had in fact paid no tax for fifty years, nevertheless lived at Flawse Hall on Flawse Fell and where the mother was, her daughter was likely to be. Leaving all other duties aside Mr Mirkin travelled first class at the country's expense to Newcastle and then, to emphasize his status in the hierarchy of Tax Collectors, by hired car to Hexham. Within two days of Mr Bullstrode's visit and warning, Mr Wyman found himself trying to explain to a very superior superior how it was that a Mr Flawse who owned an estate of five thousand acres and seven tenant farms had failed to make his contribution to the national Exchequer by paying any income tax for fifty years.