‘So do without the glasses.’
‘Hmm.’
Benny changed the subject. ‘You think Stephen is as rich as he says?’
They had avoided discussing Spotter until this moment.
‘No.’
‘Phoney?’
‘Something of the sort. Pierre obviously didn’t trust him. Glad the boy headed us off telling him the whole plan.’
‘About not going to the Mall?’
‘Right. Pity Florence spilled the rest of the beans before we got there.’ The Major frowned. ‘Still, he’s basically an ally.’
‘Long term?’
‘Long term.’ Copper nodded.
Both wished Mr Stephen Spotter had materialized before Exercise Rudy had started. Both faced the growing conviction that the grasping of initiatives was work for younger men.
Benny loosened his tie. ‘It’s hot, huh? You wouldn’t like half my burger? I haven’t touched . . .’
‘If you’re sure you don’t want it.’ The Major leant across and stabbed the object cleanly with his fork.
Lean and gangling Everard Crow-Patcher, aged forty-four, great-grandson of Marmaduke Rudyard, grandson of General Percival Crow-Patcher, son of Stanley Crow-Patcher, country lawyer—all deceased—fitted the appearance of a used car salesman. This was appropriate since his present occupation was selling used cars— though not very often. Indeed, the motor trade was only the most recent of several callings to which Everard had responded since being asked to leave the regular army following a misunderstanding over mess funds.
After closing the street door on the departing visitor he had waited a minute, then glanced out again before returning to the living-room of the small, first-floor flat in Guilford Street, Bloomsbury.
His second wife, Dina, previously Mrs Herman Schultz of Jersey City, was still presiding over a tray of used tea-things. He noted, though, that in his absence she had made time to pour herself a vodka and tonic. It was a little after five o’clock.
‘Well, bully for Cousin Stephen,’ she rasped, patting her hair which had the colour of ripe corn and the texture of wire wool. ‘Now there’s a guy I could make a play for. Should have offered him a drink. Bit early.’ She regarded the glass in her hand. ‘Gimme a cigarette, there’s a doll?’
‘He’s a second cousin, actually, and you’re a bit old for him, my sweet. He can’t be more than forty.’ He smirked and stroked his thick moustache.
‘Drop dead.’ Dina had just turned fifty. ‘Such a physique. Reminded me of my Herman before his first episode.’ Mr Schultz had passed away six years earlier, defeated by conditions mostly associated with being overweight. ‘Loaded too.’
‘No. Only sounded rich.’ Now there Stephen did resemble the late Mr Schultz, Everard reflected bitterly. ‘Something fishy about him. Sensed it from the start.’
‘Takes one to find one.’
He ignored the barb: gratuitous insults peppered their exchanges and were without significance—like their endearments. ‘He didn’t come just to tell us we should ignore rumours about the Rudyard Trust. About moves to rescue it.’
‘Well, he did a big enough spiel on it. Made me feel kinda warm.’ It had also encouraged her to believe there might be foundation to her husband’s claim to an expectancy after all.
Everard could hardly admit to a more desperate hope in the same vein. Any day his wife could discover he had mortgaged what remained of her securities with a now overdue bank overdraft.
Apart from his meagre and erratic earnings they lived off the interest from Herman’s estate—a widow’s dot somewhat smaller than Dina had knowingly implied when Everard had engineered their whirlwind marriage four years before—or thought he had.
At the time he had been available as a cultural escort for wealthy tourists—by his own report a gentleman Tilling in’ while an inheritance materialized. In reality he had been broke, with a backlog of alimony payments. She had been, by her own report, a wealthy tourist and inconsolable widow—in reality one with a quite modest income, a penchant for younger men, a strong desire to remarry and none at all to return to Jersey City.
In many ways they deserved each other.
‘He came on very strong about not supporting Florence.’ He poured himself a gin.
‘That crazy bitch.’
‘Actually, the dotty one’s Prudence but we don’t say so because she’s in favour of winding up the Trust. I’ve told you that before. Several times.’ He gazed at the ceiling, drew his lips back and sucked air in noisily through clenched teeth. This indicated an exercise in massive toleration or else that he was thinking deeply.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’
‘Florence is quite sane,’ he continued, now staring at his wife over the top of his glass though his eyes showed he was preoccupied with a more important subject.
‘If it’s your Aunt Florence who wants to keep the cruddy Trust going through Act of Parliament, she’s got to be the crazy one.’
‘She’s also a second cousin, not an aunt,’ he corrected absently. ‘Prudence is an aunt—a great-aunt, actually.’ He was taking in air again. ‘What I don’t understand is why it’s such a big secret he’s here. Stephen, I mean. Why we mustn’t let anyone know he’s in England— especially the old girls, not for a couple of days.’
‘It’s like he said. He’s a big shot in the oil business. My Herman used to say those guys played it very close.’
‘Did he indeed? How very perceptive of him. Must have known a great many of them to come up with anything as profound as that,’ he observed, cynically concluding that the nearest Herman ever got to a big oil man was probably a heavy petrol pump attendant. ‘Well, if Stephen’s playing his own close little game, we can do the same.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘I mean there’s something cooking we haven’t been told about. I’m going to pay a call on the old girls. Owe ’em a visit anyway. Go in the morning. In the BMW if I don’t sell it tonight.’
‘You won’t if it’s before dark,’ she countered sarcastically. The nine-year-old car had been his only stock in trade for some time: a good light accentuated some bad respraying resulting from extensive accident repairs.
‘Anyway, I might flog it to Florence. She needs a new car.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I sold her the one she’s got.’
‘That’s a pretty good reason.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s looking worn. It was parked up the street. Stephen drove away in it.’ He sucked in some air. ‘Just doesn’t fit.’
Greywick Court Mansions is a substantial, Victorian four-storey block of flats still invested with a sort of dignity—the kind condemned aristocrats of the better sort used to exhibit on the scaffold. In a decade tenants of the Mansions will be obliged to yield up their spent leases and the freeholder will knock the building down to put up something more practicable.
Meantime, for most of the tenants the cavernous halls, the labouring lift, and the grandiose, unheatable accommodations provide homes at a relatively low basic cost. For many the close proximity of Westminster or Whitehall makes compensation for a modest extra investment in thicker winter underwear.
The dog Hercules often covered the level quarter-mile to Strutton Ground in ten minutes—less with a following wind. This was one reason why Greywick Court suited the ailing spaniel’s indulgent and—for the present— impecunious owners.
Half an hour after leaving Guilford Street, Stephen Spotter pressed a doorbell on the second floor of the Mansions, and above a card announcing that this was the residence of Mr and Mrs Clarence Miff.
The heavy, unattended street door below had opened to his touch. The wires from an early model, automatic-entry system had been hanging loose from their casing outside: a porter’s booth just inside the hall looked long since abandoned—successive relics of a genteel past.
There was a low canine moan from inside the flat. It rallied rather than peaked as the door was opened.
The middle-aged woman stared searchingly at the caller. The light in the hallway of the flat was a good deal better than it was on the landing. The woman fumbled for her monocle.
Spotter hesitated. ‘Mrs . . . Mrs Miff?’ he enquired with astonishment.
‘I am Mrs Miff, yes. You are . . . ?’
‘I don’t believe it. Edna. Edna McSlope. After all these years. It’s Stevie.’ He paused, still not quite certain. ‘You are Edna? Fay Crow-Patcher’s daughter? I thought you were dead. Nobody’s mentioned . . .’
‘Merely disowned, like my mother.’ It took a moment for Miss McSlope to compose herself. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. You were a little boy . . .’
‘At Nice after the war. I was eight. I guess you were twenty . . . or thereabouts . . . and er . . . and very beautiful.’
‘Come in, please. I was a little taken aback. I’m sorry.’ She stood aside for him to enter. ‘How did you come to find me?’
‘I didn’t. It’s your husband I came to see. Figured I’d drop by on the off-chance. Say, do they all know the Director of the Rudyard is married to one of Marmaduke’s great-granddaughters?’
She motioned him along the passage towards an open door at the end. Hercules fell in behind. ‘If by they you mean the rest of the benighted family I haven’t the first idea. You see, none of them has ever asked.’
CHAPTER 11
‘KIDNAPS AT HARRODS AND SKULDUGGERY among the officers and gents. Darling, you have had a day,’ exclaimed Molly Forbes, the attractive actress wife of Mark Treasure. She was curled up in a broad wing chair, a cold chicken leg in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
It was 11.15 p.m. They were in Treasure’s study at their house in Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk. Molly was unwinding after a 5 o’clock matinee and an evening performance of a boisterous Congreve revival which, thanks largely to her performance, was playing to capacity audiences. He was sharing the half-bottle she had brought in with her supper tray a few minutes earlier. Treasure had been taking a telephone call when his wife had appeared: Freddy Hinterton had just received the mid-afternoon message to call back as soon as possible.
‘You forgot to mention an unforgettable evening with Wilfred Jonkins.’ The banker sighed, surveying the open files and folders on the desk before him. ‘He didn’t leave till after ten.’
‘Seemed a harmless little man.’ Jonkins had arrived just before Molly had left for the theatre. ‘Not a bit put out about suddenly having to work on Saturday.’
‘Possibly made up for doing nothing the rest of the week. Lord, what a mess!’ He looked up, then smiled. ‘That’s a new negligee. Nice. Oh, and Freddy just had the nerve to suggest meeting at midnight somewhere near Hampstead Heath.’
‘Freddy lives near Hampstead Heath.’
‘Yes, but we don’t. Anyway, all this cloak and dagger stuff is quite unnecessary.’
‘Which is why I heard you arrange to meet in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at ten in the morning.’
‘Because I humour the fellow.’ He sniffed. ‘Freddy was sailing all day.’ The tone was a touch resentful.
‘That was sinful of him when he could have been helping you over the kidnap. Any news?’
‘Not on that, but I don’t like this Rudyard set-up. Oh, and I was right remembering the family had an incentive for folding up the Trust. What’s difficult is finding anyone desperately interested in keeping it going. Desperate enough to stage a kidnap, I mean—the kidnap that’s still top secret, all right?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Molly saluted with the chicken leg. ‘Cloaks and daggers will be worn, after all. What have you got on the Offs and Gents?’
‘That for three or four years numbers have been dropping. Not enough people can afford the ante or the weekly rates, or both.’
‘Wouldn’t that be quite common these days?’
‘Yes, in a way. But the entrance fee, the initial capital payment, is five times what it was a few years ago, and the weekly charge for new members over two hundred a week when you’d expect it to be about a hundred.’
‘Because the Trust is supposed to be a charity not a chain of three-star hotels? Mmm. But couldn’t one have known this before now? Isn’t there an annual report or something?’
‘A Director’s Report bewailing soaring costs plus an auditor’s report showing decreased income and mounting expenses. As you said, nothing unusual in that these days if you accept the facts as presented and don’t dig.’
‘But you’ve been digging?’
‘Jonkins has on that phone, for information we wouldn’t normally come by. You see, the Director, who has to be a qualified lawyer, has enormous discretion. Normally we, the Trustees, accept what he says and does without question. It’s he who interviews new applicants, fixes the ante, the weekly charges . . .’
‘But surely there’s a voluntary council of do-gooders—people who raise extra money for improvements and so on . . .’ Molly was on the Council of one of the national children’s charities and several local charity committees.
‘No, there isn’t,’ Treasure interrupted. ‘The Rudyard is a closed operation. You’d expect outsiders to be involved but they’re not. Most charities of that type have the kind of set up you’re used to, but not this one. Which partly explains why it seems we’ve been slack in overseeing it.’ He might have substituted Jonkins or Edwards for ‘we’, but with trouble looming the conscientious Chief Executive of Grenwood, Phipps knew exactly where the buck had to stop. ‘I should have twigged what was happening. Would have if I’d bothered.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Molly, as much out of instinct and experience as out of pure loyalty: mentally she was revising her tolerant view of the evidently slothful Jonkins. ‘Anyway, what’s been happening that could have been avoided in these inflationary times?’
‘An overkill. The fees have been put up far higher than necessary to meet expenses—so high they’ve virtually stopped the inflow of new members. As old members die . . .’
‘Oh dear, how sad.’
‘Well, we are discussing old gentlemen’s homes. As members die they’re not being replaced. Hence the dramatic fall in numbers and new income. Most of the present inmates joined long enough ago to be paying the old rates . . .’
‘Fixed for ever when they came?’
‘Exactly. Result, increasing losses over the last three years, which under the Founder’s rules means the Trust should be wound up—a hazard that’s nothing to do with the auditors, of course, but one the Director has been promising to do something about. It seems he’s been using the wrong strategy.’
‘Cue for Robin Hood to the rescue? This kidnap business?’
‘Not sure yet. I still don’t believe the boy’s in any real danger.’ It was an instinctive feeling he had had from the beginning.
Molly dipped a Jersey strawberry in sugar. ‘Where’s Jonkins been digging?’
‘Well, for a start there’s precious little written information from the Director, man called Miff. From time to time, though, candidates for membership apply direct to the Trustees by mistake— quite a lot of them. It’s a predictable enough error. Grenwood, Phipps is the first name listed under the Rudyard entry in this.’ He held up a copy of the Directory of Grant-Making Trusts. ‘We pass the enquiries on to Miff but we keep copies. The most recent ones are in this file. About eighty from last year, another sixty since January. From seven to ten this evening Jonkins has talked to as many of the applicants as he could reach by phone—them or relatives—to find out what happened to them. He managed to get nineteen. Enough as it turned out.’
‘Because they all said the same thing?’
Treasure nodded. ‘All interviewed by the Director. All asked, among other things, about their capital resources and their incomes. All eventually told the size of the required down payment and the weekly rates—different in almost every case.’
‘Depending on what each totted up to? That’s accepted charitable practice isn’t it?’
‘Sure. But every time the sums involved have been a hell of a lot more than any of these people reckoned to afford. Not one bought the deal. Either they’re still where they were or they’ve taken some other, cheaper option.'
‘You don’t have copies of any written offers?’
Treasure shook his head. ‘I don’t believe there are any. Miff seems to do it all verbally. He gets the candidates either to accept or reject on the spot, or else to write or phone a decision later. Most say they phoned, which possibly means some did and others just forgot the whole thing. Some declined at the interview. Very few said they wrote a refusal.’
‘Which leaves a very slim volume of written testimony, m’lud.’ Molly lit a State Express cigarette. ‘I still don’t see why this Mr Miff’s been so busy doing himself out of a job . . .’
‘And denying droves of deserving old gents from getting into retirement homes.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’
‘No, I’m going to have Jonkins deliver the declaration about the half-million to him Monday afternoon. I hope it comes as a surprise. Once the boy’s safe, of course, we can take the place apart.’
‘You think Miff could be involved with the kidnap?’
‘Highly unlikely, But I’m not taking chances. Don’t have much on his background. Been with the Trust eleven years. Lawyer. Widower, re-married. There was a mix-up five years ago over a member’s joining fee. A suggestion a special headquarters deposit was asked for in cash. It was a misunderstanding by Miff’s secretary. She left shortly afterwards. Replaced by someone older and more experienced.’ He glanced at some scribbled notes. ‘A Miss McSlope. No, I’d guess the kidnap is an entirely separate firm. Either people who genuinely want to rescue the Rudyard but by a totally irresponsible method, or else someone whose sole interest is in the fifty thousand.’
‘Who’s only pretending to involve the Charity? Oh, that’s very devious.’
‘And possibly quite clever. Anyway, we’ll know after Tuesday. Meantime, I’m not having Miff disturbed. Incidentally, Jonkins knows nothing about the kidnap. He thinks the panic’s because someone’s alerted me to the fact the Trust’s in imminent danger of being closed down. I’ve told him now I have the bare facts I want a day or two to consult with others.
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