Copper, Gold and Treasure

by David Williams

  ‘We shall?’ Benny’s pleasure at the news was tinged with surprise.

  Happy nodded. ‘No problem there. We haven’t asked anyone yet but you’ll have retired Admirals and Generals queuing up to serve if you want them. Running FORT will be like campaigning against sin.’ She smiled, then glanced back at the typescript. ‘ “Meantime we shall look forward to hearing from you, we hope with your approval and a message of encouragement. Yours sincerely.” ’ She looked up. ‘Is that about what you wanted to do with the first broadside? Make them show their colours?’

  ‘Oh absolutely. By Jove, first rate.’

  Benny was nodding too, indicating that if the ignorance of all three in matters relating to Trustee responsibility did them small credit their enthusiasm at least was commendable.

  ‘Can we give a copy to Miss McSlope?’ asked Benny. ‘It won’t be strictly right, I know, but . . .’

  ‘Not yet. After we’ve approached the Generals, perhaps. It might embarrass her,’ Miss Brown advised. ‘I think it’s rather sweet the way she protects Mr Miff.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Benny with feeling.

  ‘She doesn’t want him to lose his job by stirring things up. That’s what she said,’ the Major observed.

  ‘So soon he loses it anyway,’ commented Benny with more logic. ‘Can’t wait to see the Trustee’s answer.’

  It took two days for Wilfred Jonkins at Grenwood, Phipps to decide how to deal with the letter from FORT—after resisting the temptation not to deal with it at all.

  Jonkins was an Assistant Manager in the Trustee Department at the Bank, a position he had occupied for more than fourteen years. The portfolio of private trusts for which he was responsible were usually small and untroublesome.

  His retirement lay only months ahead—an event he anticipated with ambivalence. If it meant he was to spend each remaining day with Mrs Jonkins, then he was firmly against the change. If his partly formulated plan to escape by himself to a low-price apartment in sunny Florida materialized, then he could hardly wait.

  That the low-price apartment was in the middle of a swamp inhabitable only if residents remained indoors through the greater part of the year with the airconditioning set to freezing was a factor yet undisclosed. Jonkins’s current researches were restricted to reading a biography of Gauguin.

  Mr Edwards was in charge of the Department, but he also had other responsibilities. He was away at the start of a five-week trip abroad. Jonkins could have acknowledged the letter saying it would await his superior’s return. On balance he decided if the cranks who had written actually did obtain some sort of public airing for their objects it would be as well that Grenwood, Phipps should be on record with an unexceptionable view. His reply to Happy Brown read:

  Madam,

  We acknowledge your letter of 26th April.

  As Corporate Trustees for the Rudyard Trust we commend your interest in the future of the Clubs.

  However, we need to correct a misapprehension on your part. We have no present commitment to seek alteration to the terms of the Trust Deed, nor in law or ethics could we have. Any initiative in this context would need to come from the residual beneficiaries, namely the direct descendants of the late Marmaduke Rudyard.

  Yours faithfully,

  WILFRID F. JONKINS

  He had checked in the file. Miss Florence Spotter had written six months before saying she would be in favour of having the wind-up stipulations set aside. She had also proposed selling land to overcome the financial problem. If only such things were as simple as lay people would like to make them.

  No doubt it had been Miss Spotter who had briefed this lot of busybodies. Jonkins re-read his earlier answer to her, pointing out that she was only one of the residual beneficiaries and that he would inform her if any others wrote expressing views similar to her own: none had.

  He ordered Miss Brown’s letter to be put before Mr Edwards on his return, together with the reply. He debated about sending copies of both to Mr Treasure, decided the survival or extinction of a £50,000 Trust was hardly meat for the attention of the Chief Executive.

  He did nothing further before returning to Gauguin with a quiet mind.

  If Jonkins’s reply had offered even a spark of hope to its recipients events might then have taken a very different turn.

  If Major Copper and Mr Gold had not been so pompously rebuffed the cavalier course of action that had meantime opened before them might never have been adopted.

  If Happy Brown had been more irritated—and, frankly, less busy—she might have pressed both members of FORT to let her persevere with Grenwood, Phipps. In fact she was quite relieved when they asked if she minded letting the campaign lie while they got to know Miss Spotter better.

  In short, if only Jonkins had tempered justice with humanity then murder might well have been avoided.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘MILK OR LEMON, MR GOLDSTEIN?’ MISS Prudence Rudyard demanded in a wavering contralto. She rallied on the surname, pronouncing the invented suffix in the German manner. She regarded Benny with mounting incredulity through her lorgnette—an accoutrement he found much more unnerving than a monocle. He was certain she believed he was the Major’s chauffeur.

  ‘It’s Gold . . . tea . . . I mean lemon. Thank you very much.’ Benny reddened with confusion. He had been confused since their arrival at Rudwold Park, as arranged, at four o’clock for tea.

  He had borrowed the cab they had come in from a sick friend. They had found the house beyond a burnt-out lodge and along a twisting, menacingly overgrown drive curtained by immense rhododendron bushes. It was on the south side of Callow Hill beyond Egham, some twenty miles from London.

  Rudwold Park was half an imitation castle begun by Marmaduke Rudyard in 1904 and stopped in 1905 when he failed to acquire the peerage it was intended to embellish. The blocked ennoblement was due to his having competed with the King for the affections of a married lady that neither had any moral right to be suborning.

  What happened about the lady is not material: hopes for the peerage sank without trace, not even to be revived in the following reign. Despite his good and public works, Marmaduke’s rift with the old monarch did nothing to endear him to the new one, who had him marked as a womanizer: even a modest knighthood was twice vetoed at the highest level. He died in 1921 plain Mr Rudyard—still with half a castle which he had come to abhor.

  The complete east- and south-facing aspects of the house—all Norman tower, turrets, oriel windows and battlements—had some redeeming features: the cement rendering incised to look like stone was not one of them. Ivy had long since been allowed to obscure this masonic solecism.

  The back of the building left in honest red brick was more convincingly medieval than the front. Even so, it had no embellishments like the southern colonnade with its semi-circular arches overlooking what had once been a well-kept formal garden, nor the crumbling, crenellated porte-cochère on the entrance front—very grand though Perpendicular, which tended to undermine what integrity the building possessed.

  They had parked the taxi beyond the shelter of the portico, which looked ready to fall down, and picked their way back to the front door, avoiding pot-holes ankle deep in water from a midday storm.

  It had been Florence Spotter who had cheerfully greeted them at the door. Before that it had been impossible for them to ignore—and to fail to identify—the eighty-six-year-old Prudence Rudyard standing in full view at a ground-floor window and stonily marking their staccato progress.

  Since the lady had given no sign of acknowledgement the Major, respecting the old etiquette, had purposely offered none himself: one who might be choosing whether to be at home had, for the moment, better be assumed to be out.

  Copper had some difficulty in explaining all this to Benny much later—Benny who while almost following the other’s lead had given a no more than waist high and tentative lift of a forearm in greeting. He had frozen the movement guiltily when the lady within turned about and walked aw
ay from the window.

  Miss Spotter was short and wiry, wavy grey hair matching the colour of twinkling eyes. She had the bounce of a keen if aging gym mistress. ‘Come in, come in,’ she cried while appearing to conduct an invisible orchestra through something rousing from the doorstep. ‘You’re dead on time. Found us all right in our unenchanted castle. So good of you to come.’

  The writer and illustrator of Trudy the Tuna, Sally the Salmon, Wally the Winkle and other Fishy Stories for the Under Fives was appropriately dressed in a turtle-necked sweater over well-pressed aquamarine slacks.

  Introductions over, Florence had disposed of coats, offered the freedom of the wash-room and delivered a brief history of the house. She then added the more personal intelligences that her Aunt Prudence was hard of hearing and a trifle unpredictable.

  All this had been accomplished while conducting the visitors from the front door, along the marble-tiled, oak-panelled hall to the drawing-room.

  Florence had paused before the double doors on the left allowing the two to admire the grand central staircase opposite. The broad stone steps rose in a single sweep to the centre of a wide, cantilevered gallery above.

  There was a large silver bowl on a mahogany plinth standing at the head of the stairs displaying an arrangement of daffodils, tulips and spring foliage. ‘All my own work, but God helped a little,’ Miss Stopper had answered when the Major remarked on the flowers.

  It was explained that only the ground floor of the house was used. The three main rooms to the south of the hall comprised Miss Rudyard’s bedroom—once the library— the drawing-room, and the dining-room in the base of the round tower. The rooms in the east wing to the north of the entrance were Florence’s own domain.

  Keeping the house on at all satisfied Prudence Rudyard’s caprice and, she apparently insisted, her father’s earnest wish. Florence was disinclined to demur at this stage in her aunt’s life.

  The drawing-room was a vast chamber, dark, and almost unfurnished. Only at the eastern end near the first of five velvet-draped Venetian windows stood four chairs, almost certainly late Chippendale, a card table, possibly early Woolworth, a two-bar electric fire with one bar burning, and a steaming electric kettle on top of a giant colour television set showing a race meeting with the sound turned off.

  Leading the way across the highly polished floor, Florence had explained that Miss Rudyard had stored most of the good furniture for fear of fire or theft but had kept some chairs and other things for entertaining: evidently fairly modest entertaining.

  The card table was laid with the ‘other things’—a Georgian silver tea service and some bone china cups and saucers. There was nothing to eat.

  Miss Rudyard, sitting with her back to the window, had acknowledged the introductions with a bow of head motioned the men to be seated and gone back to counting the spoons. She occasionally glanced at the television.

  Shrunken rather than diminutive, she was an aged grande dame and very aware of it. She wore a high-necked, ankle-length dress in heavy pink brocade with a large cameo at the throat. On her head was a pink-feathered toque. The regal effect of this ensemble was marred by the worn woollen cardigan over the shoulders and the ancient sheepskin boots protruding grotesquely from beneath the long skirt.

  It was Florence who had made the tea and turned off the television: it was she also who rescued Benny from his confusion with the milk and lemon. ‘Sugar, Mr Gold?’ she enquired with a smile.

  ‘No, thanks . . . Sweet enough,’ he blurted in gratitude, then wished he hadn’t.

  ‘Then he won’t require a spoon,’ boomed Prudence, who had been listening carefully for the reply. She leaned forward and snatched the implement from its saucer with astonishing alacrity. ‘People steal them. The servants . . .’ She looked about her in search of servants: Benny did the same. ‘Not what they were. Guests little better.’ Benny nodded earnestly because she was staring at him.

  ‘Oh Pru! Mrs Smith is the soul of honesty. She’s our cleaning lady,’ Florence added for the benefit of the others. ‘And the Major and Mr Gold are the first guests we’ve had for ages. Except the Vicar. He doesn’t steal spoons. At least I don’t think he does. Shall I ask him? What a jape that’d be.’ She rocked to and fro on her chair, still holding the sugar bowl.

  ‘Have you had a chance to reconsider closing the Rudyard Clubs, Miss Rudyard?’ the Major enquired boldly and very distinctly.

  ‘Nothing to consider. Not my responsibility. My dear father had perfect judgement’— except in the matter of royal mistresses.

  ‘Come now, we chewed it over again this morning,’ Florence put in loudly. ‘You said you’d listen to these gentlemen.’

  ‘They’re not poor. Came in a taxi-cab. I saw it.’ She pointed at Benny. ‘You were driving.’

  ‘Mr Gold used to drive a taxi before he retired, Pru. He borrowed one for today.’

  It was not clear whether Miss Rudyard had chosen to hear. ‘My father founded these clubs for indigent officers and gentlemen.’

  ‘Not indigent, Pru—retired.’

  ‘Not rich though. Not people with expensive conveyances at their beck and call.’

  Either she considered Benny to be the prosperous owner of a fleet of taxis or merely the driver of the affluent Major sneaking a free tea.

  ‘There are two hundred deserving members . . .’ Copper began, articulating carefully.

  ‘Know how many inmates there are now?’ Prudence burst in tremulously. ‘Two hundred. Numbers dropping all the time. Father said it’d happen if we put down the Bolsheviks. He was right. Everard will tell you. Where’s Everard?’

  ‘My second cousin, Pru’s great-nephew, Everard Crow-Patcher, promised to join us as you asked, Major. Not sure he’d do much for the cause. Anyway, he’s creaked. Rang to say he couldn’t make it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Miss Rudyard. ‘You’re mumbling again, Florence.’ She slipped a teaspoon into a cardigan pocket.

  ‘I’m telling them about Everard. He’s not coming.'

  ‘Everard? Everard?’

  ‘Stanley’s son.’

  ‘Can’t come.’ She gazed around the group in triumph. 'He's a deserving gentleman. No means of getting here, I suppose.’ She then added accusingly, ‘No motor-car.'

  ‘Dental appointment, Pru.’

  ‘Not a disappointment at all,’ the old lady protested. ‘Never had a chance poor lad.’

  ‘What a hoot. He’s forty-four,’ Florence interjected quietly.

  ‘Badly hurt in the Crash—in ’31. There’ll be money for him in this Trust.’ Miss Rudyard made a performance of studying the gold watch pinned to her dress. ‘Now I must see cook about dinner. The Prince of Wales often drops in unexpectedly. We cannot afford to be taken unawares.’

  ‘He did once,’ Florence put in. ‘Not this Prince of Wales. The last one, in 1925. Thought we were a golf club. There’s one just down the road. Didn’t stop, of course.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘She wants us to go. It’s one of her programmes.’ She turned to her aunt. ‘If I see cook I’ll send her in. Want to see the cartoons while you’re waiting?’ She turned on the television set.

  ‘Don’t mind,’ muttered Miss Rudyard. ‘I’m sorry you cannot dine. My best wishes to His Royal Highness.’ She rose unsteadily, did a kind of curtsey to the Major and glanced malevolently at Benny before sinking back into her chair. Meantime two spoons and the sugar tongs fell from her person with a clatter on to the bare floor.

  ‘She’s not batty. Just gets things mixed up. Don’t we all?’

  Florence had led the others around the stairs, past her bedroom, and seated them in her well lit studio.

  ‘Everard wasn’t born in 1931. She was talking about his father. And of course we don’t have a cook. Used to. Now we just have Mrs Smith and the electric floor polisher. Sounds like a children’s story, doesn’t it?’

  The room was as full with impedimenta as the other one had been empty. There were chintz-covered armchairs and a huge so
fa, a fine, leather-topped partners’ desk, tables of various sizes, and books, drawing-boards and typescript pages piled on every available surface. There were more books on shelves and more drawings stacked against the walls. Under the north window was a draughtsman’s easel and a rickety swivel stool. But what captured the eye on entry was the collection of watercolour landscapes hanging on the walls.

  ‘The pictures. They’re a delight,’ cried the Major.

  Florence blushed. ‘All mine, I’m afraid. Nothing pinched from the family collection. Nothing so good . . .’

  ‘That I find difficult to credit.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Benny loyally, though he was still too overawed by the house in general to have savoured anything in detail: the drawing-room had been the stateliest he had ever entered without paying.

  ‘My watercolours sell well enough. Not as well as my fishy books, alas. Prudence doesn’t care for watercolours.’

  ‘Well, a few of these would do wonders for the other room,’ Copper volunteered with feeling.

  ‘That was the ballroom?’ enquired Benny who had had difficulty keeping his feet there.

  ‘No, the drawing-room, but it looks jolly like a ballroom, Mr Gold. The ballroom was never built. It was to have been on the north side of the house. This was the gun-room and next door, where I sleep, was the billiard-room. Rather romantic having a turret staircase over there, don’t you think?’ She pointed to a round-headed, studded oak door in the comer. ‘My bathroom’s above— with a rather Spartan sort of guest-room. It’s the only bit of the upper floors we use.’

  ‘You could let your hair down from the turret like in the fairy stories.’ Benny had been a tireless reader of bedtime fairy stories through two generations.

  ‘For my lover to climb up? What a lark.’ The sixty-five-year-old spinster clapped her hands together and gave a loud, infectious chortle.