The New Collected Short Stories

by Jeffrey Archer

  Then he recalled the face of the woman who had slipped past him at the auction house. Of course, it had been his brother’s secretary. The second time he had misjudged someone.

  ‘What an irony,’ he said out loud. ‘If Hugh had put the set up for sale at Sotheby’s, he could have held on to the Louis XIV table and had the same amount left over. Still, as Pauline would have said, it’s the thought that counts.’

  He was writing a thank-you note to his brother when the phone rang again. It was Frank, reliable as ever, reporting in on his meeting with Hugh.

  ‘Your brother has signed all the necessary documents, and the shares have been transferred as requested.’

  ‘That was quick work,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘The moment you gave me instructions last week, I had all the legal papers drawn up. You’re still the most impatient client I have. Shall I bring the share certificates round on Thursday evening?’

  ‘No,’ said Cornelius. ‘I’ll drop in this afternoon and pick them up. That is, assuming Pauline is free to drive me into town.’

  ‘Am I missing something?’ asked Frank, sounding a little bewildered.

  ‘Don’t worry, Frank. I’ll bring you up to date when I see you on Thursday evening.’

  Timothy arrived at The Willows a few minutes after eight the following evening. Pauline immediately put him to work peeling potatoes.

  ‘How are your mother and father?’ asked Cornelius, probing to discover how much the boy knew.

  ‘They seem fine, thank you Uncle. By the way, my father’s offered me the job of shop manager. I begin on the first of next month.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Cornelius. ‘I’m delighted. When did he make the offer?’

  ‘Some time last week,’ replied Timothy.

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘Is it important?’ asked Timothy.

  ‘I think it might be,’ replied Cornelius, without explanation.

  The young man remained silent for some time, before he finally said, ‘Yes, it was Saturday evening, after I’d seen you.’ He paused. ‘I’m not sure Mum’s all that happy about it. I meant to write and let you know, but as I was coming back for the auction, I thought I’d tell you in person. But then I didn’t get a chance to speak to you.’

  ‘So he offered you the job before the auction took place?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Timothy. ‘Nearly a week before.’ Once again, the young man looked quizzically at his uncle, but still no explanation was forthcoming.

  Pauline placed a plate of roast beef in front of each of them as Timothy began to reveal his plans for the company’s future.

  ‘Mind you, although Dad will remain as Chairman,’ he said, ‘he’s promised not to interfere too much. I was wondering, Uncle Cornelius, now that you own 1 per cent of the company, whether you would be willing to join the board?’

  Cornelius looked first surprised, then delighted, then doubtful.

  ‘I could do with your experience,’ added Timothy, ‘if I’m to go ahead with my expansion plans.’

  ‘I’m not sure your father would consider it a good idea to have me on the board,’ said Cornelius, with a wry smile.

  ‘I can’t think why not,’ said Timothy. ‘After all, it was his idea in the first place.’

  Cornelius remained silent for some time. He hadn’t expected to go on learning more about the players after the game was officially over.

  ‘I think the time has come for us to go upstairs and find out if it’s Simon Kerslake or Raymond Gould who becomes Prime Minister,’ he eventually said.

  Timothy waited until his uncle had poured himself a large brandy and lit a cigar – his first for a month – before he started to read.

  He became so engrossed in the story that he didn’t look up again until he had turned the last page, where he found an envelope sellotaped to the inside of the book’s cover. It was addressed to ‘Mr Timothy Barrington’.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  Cornelius would have told him, but he had fallen asleep.

  The doorbell rang at eight, as it did every Thursday evening. When Pauline opened the door, Frank handed her a large bunch of flowers.

  ‘Oh, Mr Barrington will appreciate those,’ she said. ‘I’ll put them in the library.’

  ‘They’re not for Mr Barrington,’ said Frank, with a wink.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over you two gentlemen,’ Pauline said, scurrying away to the kitchen.

  As Frank dug into a second bowl of Irish stew, Cornelius warned him that it could be their last meal together at The Willows.

  ‘Does that mean you’ve sold the house?’ Frank asked, looking up.

  ‘Yes. We exchanged contracts this afternoon, but on the condition that I move out immediately. After such a generous offer, I’m in no position to argue.’

  ‘And how’s the search for a new place coming along?’

  ‘I think I’ve found the ideal house, and once the surveyors have given the all clear, I’ll be putting an offer in. I’ll need you to push the paperwork through as quickly as possible so that I’m not homeless for too long.’

  ‘I certainly will,’ said Frank, ‘but in the meantime, you’d better come and camp out with me. I’m all too aware what the alternatives are.’

  ‘The local pub, Elizabeth or Margaret,’ said Cornelius, with a grin. He raised his glass. ‘Thank you for the offer. I accept.’

  ‘But there’s one condition,’ said Frank.

  ‘And what might that be?’ asked Cornelius.

  ‘That Pauline comes as part of the package, because I have no intention of spending all my spare time tidying up after you.’

  ‘What do you think about that, Pauline?’ asked Cornelius as she began to clear away the plates.

  ‘I’m willing to keep house for both of you gentlemen, but only for one month. Otherwise you’d never move out, Mr Barrington.’

  ‘I’ll make sure there are no hold-ups with the legal work, I promise,’ said Frank.

  Cornelius leant across to him conspiratorially. ‘She hates lawyers, you know, but I do think she’s got a soft spot for you.’

  ‘That may well be the case, Mr Barrington, but it won’t stop me leaving after a month, if you haven’t moved into your new house.’

  ‘I think you’d better put down that deposit fairly quickly,’ said Frank. ‘Good houses come on the market all the time, good housekeepers rarely.’

  ‘Isn’t it time you two gentlemen got on with your game?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Cornelius. ‘But first, a toast.’

  ‘Who to?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Young Timothy,’ said Cornelius, raising his glass, ‘who will start as Managing Director of Barrington’s, Chudley, on the first of the month.’

  ‘To Timothy,’ said Frank, raising his glass.

  ‘You know he’s asked me to join the board,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘You’ll enjoy that, and he’ll benefit from your experience. But it still doesn’t explain why you gave him all your shares in the company, despite him failing to secure the chess set for you.’

  ‘That’s precisely why I was willing to let him take control of the company. Timothy, unlike his mother and father, didn’t allow his heart to rule his head.’

  Frank nodded his approval as Cornelius drained the last drop of wine from the one glass they allowed themselves before a game.

  ‘Now, I feel I ought to warn you,’ said Cornelius as he rose from his place, ‘that the only reason you have won the last three encounters in a row is simply because I have had other things on my mind. Now that those matters have been resolved, your run of luck is about to come to an end.’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Frank, as they marched down the long corridor together. The two men stopped for a moment to admire the portrait of Daniel.

  ‘How did you get that back?’ asked Frank.

  ‘I had to strike a mean bargain with Pauline, but we both ended up with what we wanted.’

  ‘But
how . . . ?’ began Frank.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Cornelius replied, ‘and I’ll tell you the details over a brandy after I’ve won the game.’

  Cornelius opened the library door and allowed his friend to enter ahead of him, so that he could observe his reaction. When the inscrutable lawyer saw the chess set laid out before him, he made no comment, but simply walked across to the far side of the table, took his usual place and said, ‘Your move first, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Cornelius, trying to hide his irritation. He pushed his queen’s pawn to Q4.

  ‘Back to an orthodox opening gambit. I see I shall have to concentrate tonight.’

  They had been playing for about an hour, no word having passed between them, when Cornelius could bear it no longer. ‘Are you not in the least bit curious to discover how I came back into possession of the chess set?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Frank, his eyes remaining fixed on the board. ‘Not in the least bit.’

  ‘But why not, you old dullard?’

  ‘Because I already know,’ Frank said as he moved his queen’s bishop across the board.

  ‘How can you possibly know?’ demanded Cornelius, who responded by moving a knight back to defend his king.

  Frank smiled. ‘You forget that Hugh is also my client,’ he said, moving his king’s rook two squares to the right.

  Cornelius smiled. ‘And to think he need never have sacrificed his shares, if he had only known the true value of the chess set.’ He returned his queen to its home square.

  ‘But he did know its true value,’ said Frank, as he considered his opponent’s last move.

  ‘How could he possibly have found out, when you and I were the only people who knew?’

  ‘Because I told him,’ said Frank matter-of-factly.

  ‘But why would you do that?’ asked Cornelius, staring across at his oldest friend.

  ‘Because it was the only way I could find out if Hugh and Elizabeth were working together.’

  ‘So why didn’t he bid for the set in the morning auction?’

  ‘Precisely because he didn’t want Elizabeth to know what he was up to. Once he discovered that Timothy was also hoping to purchase the set in order to give it back to you, he remained silent.’

  ‘But he could have kept bidding once Timothy had fallen out.’

  ‘No, he couldn’t. He had agreed to bid for the Louis XIV table, if you recall, and that was the last item to come under the hammer.’

  ‘But Elizabeth failed to get the long-case clock, so she could have bid for it.’

  ‘Elizabeth is not my client,’ said Frank, as he moved his queen across the board. ‘So she never discovered the chess set’s true value. She believed what you had told her – that at best it was worth a few hundred pounds – which is why Hugh instructed his secretary to bid for the set in the afternoon.’

  ‘Sometimes you can miss the most obvious things, even when they are staring you right in the face,’ said Cornelius, pushing his rook five squares forward.

  ‘I concur with that judgement,’ said Frank, moving his queen across to take Cornelius’s rook. He looked up at his opponent and said, ‘I think you’ll find that’s checkmate.’

  THE LETTER

  ALL THE GUESTS were seated around the breakfast table when Muriel Arbuthnot strode into the room, clutching the morning post. She extracted a long white envelope from the pile and handed it over to her oldest chum.

  A puzzled look came over Anna Clairmont’s face. Who could possibly know that she was spending the weekend with the Arbuthnots? Then she saw the familiar handwriting, and had to smile at his ingenuity. She hoped her husband Robert, who was seated at the far end of the table, hadn’t noticed, and was relieved to see that he remained engrossed in his copy of The Times.

  Anna was trying to wedge her thumb into the corner of the envelope while keeping a wary eye on Robert, when suddenly he glanced across at her and smiled. She returned the smile, dropped the envelope in her lap, picked up her fork and jabbed it into a lukewarm mushroom.

  She made no attempt to retrieve the letter until her husband had disappeared back behind his paper. Once he had turned to the business section, she placed the envelope on her right-hand side, picked up the butter knife and slipped it into the thumbed corner. Slowly, she began to slit open the envelope. Having completed the task, she returned the knife to its place by the side of the butter dish.

  Before making her next move, she once again glanced across in the direction of her husband, to check that he was still hidden behind his newspaper. He was.

  She held down the envelope with her left hand, while carefully extracting the letter with her right. She then placed the envelope in the bag by her side.

  She looked down at the familiar Basildon Bond cream notepaper, folded in three. One more casual glance in Robert’s direction; as he remained out of sight, she unfolded the two-page letter.

  No date, no address, the first page, as always, written on continuation paper.

  ‘My darling Titania’. The first night of the Dream at Stratford, followed by the first night they had slept together. Two firsts on the same night, he had remarked. ‘I am sitting in my bedroom, our bedroom, penning these thoughts only moments after you have left me. This is a third attempt, as I can’t find the right words to let you know how I really feel.’

  Anna smiled. For a man who had made his fortune with words, that must have been quite difficult for him to admit.

  ‘Last night you were everything a man could ask from a lover. You were exciting, tender, provocative, teasing, and, for an exquisite moment, a rampant whore.

  ‘It’s been over a year since we met at the Selwyns’ dinner party in Norfolk, and, as I have often told you, I wanted you to come back home with me that evening. I lay awake all night imagining you lying next to the prune.’ Anna glanced across the table to see that Robert had reached the back page of his paper.

  ‘And then there was that chance meeting at Glyndebourne – but it was still to be another eleven days before you were unfaithful for the first time, and then not until the prune was away in Brussels. That night went far too quickly for me.

  ‘I can’t imagine what the prune would have made of it, if he had seen you in your maid’s outfit. He’d have probably assumed that you always tidied up the drawing room in Lonsdale Avenue in a white see-through blouse, no bra, a skintight black leather skirt with a zip up the front, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels, not forgetting the shocking-pink lipstick.’

  Anna looked up again and wondered if she was blushing. If he had really enjoyed himself that much, she would have to go on another shopping trip in Soho as soon as she got back to town. She continued to read the letter.

  ‘My darling, there is no aspect of our lovemaking that I don’t relish, but I confess that what turns me on the most is the places you choose when you can only take an hour off work during your lunch break. I can recall every one of them. On the back seat of my Mercedes in that NCP carpark in Mayfair; the service lift in Harrods; the loo at the Caprice. But most exciting of all was that little box in the dress circle at Covent Garden during a performance of Tristan and Isolde. Once before the first interval and then again during the final act – well, it is a long opera.’

  Anna giggled and quickly placed the letter back into her lap as Robert peered round the side of his newspaper.

  ‘What made you laugh, my dear?’ he asked.

  ‘The picture of James Bond landing on the Dome,’ she said. Robert looked puzzled. ‘On the front of your paper.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Robert, glancing at the front page, but he didn’t smile as he returned to the business section.

  Anna retrieved the letter.

  ‘What maddens me most about your spending the weekend with Muriel and Reggie Arbuthnot is the thought of you being in the same bed as the prune. I’ve tried to convince myself that as the Arbuthnots are related to the Royal family, they’ve probably given you separate b
edrooms.’

  Anna nodded, wishing she could tell him he had guessed correctly.

  ‘And does he really snore like the QE II coming into Southampton harbour? I can see him now, sitting on the far side of the breakfast table. Harris tweed jacket, grey trousers, checked shirt, wearing an MCC tie, as thought to be fashionable by Hare and Hound circa 1966.’

  This time Anna did burst out laughing, and was only rescued by Reggie Arbuthnot rising from his end of the table to enquire, ‘Anyone care to make up a four for tennis? The weather forecast is predicting that the rain will stop long before the morning’s out.’

  ‘I’ll be happy to join you,’ said Anna, secreting the letter back under the table.

  ‘How about you, Robert?’ Reggie asked.

  Anna watched as her husband folded up The Times, placed it on the table in front of him and shook his head.

  Oh my God, thought Anna. He is wearing a tweed jacket and an MCC tie.

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Robert, ‘but I’m afraid I have to make several phone calls.’

  ‘On a Saturday morning?’ said Muriel, who was standing at the laden sideboard, filling her plate for a second time.

  ‘Afraid so,’ replied Robert. ‘You see, criminals don’t work a five-day, forty-hour week, so they don’t expect their lawyers to do so either.’ Anna didn’t laugh. After all, she had heard him make the same observation every Saturday for the past seven years.

  Robert rose from the table, glanced towards his wife and said, ‘If you need me, my dear, I’ll be in my bedroom.’

  Anna nodded and waited for him to leave the room.

  She was about to return to her letter when she noticed that Robert had left his glasses on the table. She would take them through to him as soon as she had finished breakfast. She placed the letter on the table in front of her and turned to the second page.

  ‘Let me tell you what I have planned for our anniversary weekend while the prune is away at his conference in Leeds. I’ve booked us back into the Lygon Arms, so we’ll be in the same room in which we spent our first night together. This time I’ve got tickets for All’s Well. But I plan a change of atmosphere once we have returned from Stratford to the privacy of our room in Broadway.