The Lorimer Line

by Anne Melville

  ‘I’m so very glad to see you, and so sorry to have wasted your time yesterday. But William told you the reason?’

  She became excited again as she described what had happened. She knew the importance of what she had done, for it seemed sure by now that baby Arthur had a good chance of life. The fortunes of her family, and the affairs of the bank, had been completely thrust out of her mind, even when she was describing Dr Scott’s extraordinary drunken outburst.

  ‘Then the next day, though he was sober, he said that the baby could not be saved. Yet as soon as I learned of the difficulty I could see what might at least be tried. Either he was ignorant or else he was lying, wanting the baby to die. I think his mind has become unbalanced. Why should such a thing happen so suddenly? And what have the Lorimers done to cause it?’

  David took a deep breath and Margaret, suddenly sobered by the gravity of his expression, remembered that there were more things than a doctor’s drunkenness to be explained.

  ‘How much has your father told you of the affairs of the past few days?’ he asked.

  ‘He told me that the bank has failed, had closed its door. Nothing more. He was too upset to speak.’

  ‘And what do you understand by the failure?’

  ‘That all his money is lost. It was deposited, I suppose, in his own bank, and will not now be repaid. Although I hardly understand why, if it has been lent out, it should not be called back from those who borrowed it.’

  ‘Some of the borrowers were businesses which have proved unsound,’ David told her. ‘Trading companies whose trade has fallen off in the past few years. They already face bankruptcy themselves. There are other firms, like the Lorimer Line and Crankshaw’s dock development company, which will be able to repay their debts in the end, but only over a long period.’

  ‘Is it true that Dr Scott will also have lost all his money?’ asked Margaret. The doctor’s outburst had for some reason made her more puzzled about his situation than about her father’s or her own. ‘Even if his deposits are gone, surely he still has his house. He can still practise as a doctor. His patients will continue to pay him for what he does now, even though he may have lost his savings from the past. Why should he say that his wife will starve?’

  ‘It is not because Dr Scott deposited his money in the bank that he will find himself ruined,’ said David. ‘The depositors may be lucky enough to get some of their money back in the end. But Dr Scott was also a shareholder.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘The bank is owned by its proprietors, the people who hold its shares,’ David explained. ‘When there are profits, the shareholders divide these profits between them. When there are losses, these also must be divided.’

  ‘But Dr Scott is not a rich man. He cannot have invested any very large sum.’

  ‘Unfortunately that makes no difference,’ said David. ‘His liability for the bank’s debts is not limited to the amount of his shareholding. It is true that Parliament passed an Act a few years ago to ensure that the liability of shareholders would be limited to this amount in future. This was because so much distress was caused by bank failures in 1866. Newly-formed companies, including banks, were required to conform to the provisions of the Act. But existing companies could choose whether or not to change their articles.’

  ‘And Lorimer’s Bank?’

  ‘Made no change,’ said David. ‘There are about fifteen hundred proprietors and they have provided the bank with a capital of half a million pounds. Its debts, represented by its bank notes, the bills drawn upon it, and its receipts to depositors, may amount to five million pounds. If Dr Scott has invested a thousand pounds, he will be called upon to pay ten thousand. And if he cannot pay, his house may indeed, as he fears, be sold to raise the money.’

  Margaret had been sitting as close to David as she could on the sofa. Now she drew a little away, examining his expression in the hope that she would find he was exaggerating.

  ‘But that is unjust!’ she exclaimed, when his seriousness forced her to accept what she had heard.

  David nodded his agreement.

  ‘There is worse to come,’ he said. ‘Many of the proprietors are far from rich. The whole estate of a widow, or one that is on trust for a child, is often invested in an institution like a bank, because it seems so safe. Let us say that there is a shareholder with fewer assets even than Dr Scott. When he is called to pay ten pounds for every pound he invested, he cannot do it. He goes bankrupt. And then the money which was called unsuccessfully from him is added to the debt and divided amongst those shareholders who still have possessions: on them a second call will be made. Only the very richest men can survive such a system. For the others, bankruptcy is the only end. A man of Dr Scott’s age can remember what happened in 1866. He knows what will happen now. He is right to be frightened - although wrong, of course, to vent his anger on an infant.’

  Margaret was silent for a moment, but she understood David’s explanation well enough to apply it at last to her own situation.

  ‘And my father is a proprietor,’ she said.

  ‘The largest,’ David told her. ‘It is because he owns more than half the shares that he has been able to control the bank’s affairs.’

  ‘So his house too must be sold, and all his fortune taken away?’

  ‘Unless he has assets about which I know nothing.’

  ‘There is the jade,’ said Margaret. ‘But no, his wealth can hardly amount to five million pounds, and this is the amount which you say he might be called on to pay.’

  Again she was silent, until her sympathy for her father desolated her. ‘What can he do?’ she asked herself aloud. ‘He is almost eighty. He has been wealthy all his life, and accustomed to comfort and service. Oh, my poor father, what will he do? And I can do nothing for him, because I shall be destitute too.’

  The realization came to her suddenly. She thought she had accepted the fact that she would be poor, but this was the first moment when she realized that she had nothing at all. She whispered, as though ashamed to be thinking of herself, ‘What is to happen to me?’

  ‘You will be my wife,’ said David. He took both her hands and held them firmly. ‘We shall be very poor at first, but I shall be all the less concerned about that for knowing that you have not had to leave a life of wealth in order to marry me. I am young and I shall work hard and we shall be together. We must make our own future, but it will be better in the end than living on someone else’s past.’

  ‘I have no right,’ said Margaret. ‘I can bring you nothing. I am no longer the woman you asked to marry you.’

  ‘You are the woman I love, and nothing in you has changed.’ He kissed her gently, and she clung to him for reassurance. Half an hour earlier, as she described the birth of the new baby, she had felt all the confidence of a grown woman; now, suddenly, she was young again, and insecure.

  ‘There may be a few weeks’ grace before the first call is made on your father’s property,’ David said. ‘I will use the time to make some definite plans. Meanwhile, I am sure your brother values your presence here.’

  He stood up to go, but he had reminded Margaret of another fear.

  ‘You speak of my brother,’ she said. ‘Surely he too is a proprietor of the bank, I remember my father making over some of his own shareholding when William became twenty-one. Is his property also at risk?’

  David gave an incredulous gasp and began to laugh, with bitterness rather than amusement. Margaret looked at him in perplexity, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘William is safe, and I am the one who saved him,’ he said. ‘The situation is ironical. Only a short while ago I forced him to sell his shareholding in order to reduce the Lorimer Line’s debt to the bank. The Line will be called upon to repay the rest of what it owes, but only in the normal course of business. Your brother has no personal liability for any of the bank’s debts. Fifteen hundred citizens of Bristol may curse the name of Lorimer as they consider their ruin, but Mr Wil
liam Lorimer will not be among them.’ He stopped apologetically. ‘I must learn to control my tongue. It was not your brother’s own idea to relinquish his interest in the bank. He was angry, in fact, and would have resisted me if he could. He is not to be blamed for what in the circumstances is the greatest good fortune which could have befallen him. I hope he will remember that I, who so much angered him, was the one to do him so great a favour.’

  The doorbell of the house rang as they used their last moment of privacy to say goodbye. By the time they arrived in the hall the front door had already been opened to show three men standing on the doorstep. One of them removed his hat and took a step inside. He took no notice of Margaret, but looked straight at David.

  ‘Are you Mr David James Gregson?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am. What of it?’

  ‘You may perhaps wish the young lady to withdraw, sir,’ he suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Margaret. Suddenly frightened, she gripped David’s arm more tightly than before. ‘What is your business here?’

  ‘I’m afraid we have to ask Mr Gregson to come with us, ma’am. I have a warrant here for his arrest.’

  14

  A man who knows his own guilt will evade arrest if he can, but one who believes himself innocent may feel a kind of relief when suspicion hardens to the point of accusation. David heard Margaret gasp with horror at his arrest, but his own feelings were more complicated. In one way he was as incredulous as she, and as sure that there must be some terrible mistake. Yet he had been expecting something of the sort ever since the police sergeant’s visit to the bank. He could not be happy that the challenge had come, but it meant that there was now something more concrete to fight than his own apprehensions.

  ‘On what charge?’ he asked quietly.

  The man who appeared to be the spokesman of the three pulled a paper from his pocket and read in a sing-song voice.

  ‘You are charged with the felonious fabrication and falsification of the balance sheet of a joint-stock banking company trading under the name of Lorimer’s Bank, with intent to defraud. And further with theft and embezzlement through the continued trading of the aforesaid company when known to be in a condition of insolvency.’

  ‘Theft!’ exclaimed David. ‘I have never had a penny …’ He stopped himself in mid-sentence. This man was merely a servant of the court, neither knowing nor caring about the details of the case. David forced himself to speak calmly.

  ‘Am I the only one to be so accused?’

  ‘No, sir. Mr John Junius Lorimer was arrested earlier this evening.’

  This time Margaret cried out in distress. David turned quickly to support her in case she should faint, but her face showed only bewilderment.

  ‘Send at once to William,’ he told her. ‘He must find a lawyer. Ask him also to arrange bail.’

  Margaret nodded her understanding, but her hand continued to grip his arm so tightly that he could not move away until he released her hold.

  ‘There must be an investigation, and this is the way to start it,’ he told her, with more confidence than he felt. ‘A formality, nothing more. But send for William.’ He took his coat and hat and stepped out of the house.

  Margaret obeyed him at once, and William worked fast. Early the next morning an application for bail was made at the preliminary hearing as soon as the charges and pleas had been heard. David knew that two of the magistrates were friends of John Junius Lorimer, men of his own generation, who were likely to regard it as unthinkable that a man who had led a respectable life for seventy-eight years should be forced to stay in jail while the lengthy preparations for a trial were made. Because he was too old and well-known to run away, there could be little point in refusing bail - and then David must have it too, or the magistrates would seem to be pronouncing in advance that one of the accused was less trustworthy than the other.

  He was right. It was as a free man that he attended his first conference with the Lorimers’ family lawyer. But it was as a worried man that he left it. He had hoped that the case could be defended in the same manner that the chairman had defended his actions to David himself, with a general argument about the benefits which would have accrued to everyone concerned if the bank could have maintained public confidence in its solvency for only a few months longer. But the solicitor, Mr Broadbent, dismissed the possibility from the start.

  ‘I fear, Mr Gregson, that the law does not recognize an end as justifying a means. You will be examined on your figures and required to explain them in the light of the bank’s situation at that time. We shall be briefing counsel, of course, and he will need to know in advance detailed answers to the most detailed questions which the Crown can put. Let us take an example - one which may prove central to the whole charge. At the beginning of May you recommended to the directors that they should declare a dividend of twelve per cent. The effect of such a declaration was to attract an increased volume of deposits, and this was presumably its intention. We may take it that the prosecution will scrutinize with particular care the accounts by which this dividend was held to be justified.’

  ‘The recommendation of such a high dividend was not mine,’ said David.

  ‘It bears your signature.’

  ‘That was a formality. The decision was the chairman’s.’ He looked across the table at John Junius. The old man had not spoken since the meeting began; he did not speak now. David turned back to the lawyer. ‘I must remind you, Mr Broadbent, that my responsibilities as manager took effect only from the first day of May this year.’

  ‘And you accepted the situation as you found it on that day. Your promotion, I understand, Mr Gregson, was earned by your ability as an accountant. We may take it that you understood the figures which you were asked to approve?’

  David looked for a second time at the chairman’s massive figure. John Junius neither met his gaze nor turned his head away. He continued to stare straight ahead as though what was going on in the room was no concern of his. Was it the look of a man who might still be in a state of shock at the collapse of his empire and the attack on his own reputation? Or was it the defence of a man who had already decided on a way of escape from his predicament and was not prepared to jeopardize it by any show of sympathy. Search as he might, David was unable to decide which was the more likely judgement. He pushed back his chair and stood up.

  ‘What I understand now is that my interests may not run with those of Mr Lorimer,’ he said. ‘It will be more satisfactory for all parties, I imagine, if I engage my own lawyer.’

  He left the room with as much confidence and dignity as he could summon, but inwardly he was trembling. It seemed inconceivable that the man who had welcomed him as a son-in-law should be preparing to place the blame for the collapse of the bank on his shoulders, but it was difficult to interpret the chairman’s silence in any other way. As David paced the streets, trying to unravel his thoughts and emotions, the realization came to him that he could state the position in an opposite way. Could it be that John Junius had accepted his relationship with Margaret precisely in order that he could be used as a scapegoat in a situation already recognized as almost hopeless?

  Such a possibility was too villainous to be accepted at once, but David’s anxiety increased as he considered its likelihood. Back in his room, he began to make notes of dates and conversations, trying to establish the order of events and to see through them to the motives behind. As he did so, he came near to panic. Everything that had happened had two possible explanations. Who would believe the version of a stranger to the city, who had lost nothing but his employment, if it was opposed by the word of a man who had always been respected and who was now old? When a rich man claimed that he had been duped by the young upstart to whom he had delegated business which in his declining years had become too much for him, the very men who today were cursing the name of Lorimer might even be persuaded to sympathize with his ruin.

  David had said that he would engage his own lawyer, but the defiance was a toothle
ss one. He had no money to pay the bill for what was bound to be a complicated and costly case. Even if his defence proved successful, he would win back nothing but his good name. William had backed his application for bail, but would no longer support him once it became apparent that his interests directly opposed those of John Junius. Such was David’s state of mind that he could not even bring himself to visit Margaret again. Days passed as he scribbled calculations which increasingly revealed to him the complexity of his involvement.

  Of all the Lorimers, it was the least expected one who made the first friendly gesture. William appeared without warning in his lodgings one evening. He made no comment on the shabby furnishings or the empty grate which David could no longer afford to fill with coals, but kept his top coat on against the cold. David found it difficult to realize that he and his visitor were much of an age. William’s small, precise body and tightly controlled emotions expressed themselves in a clipped voice which had the coldness of a far older man. But the offer he had come to make, though he couched it in businesslike terms, was not a cold one.

  ‘You will appreciate, Mr Gregson, that at the time of my father’s arrest, and your own, I had little knowledge of the true position at Lorimer’s. I have never involved myself in the affairs of the bank. My father would not have taken kindly to such interference, and I have enough to do, looking after the Lorimer Line. What I have learned recently has come as a shock to me.’

  He paused, allowing David to bow his head in acceptance of the fact, which did not seem of any great importance.

  ‘It seems to me likely, Mr Gregson, that the prosecution case will be proved. I understand very well the motives from which my father and yourself acted …’ he swept away David’s attempt to interrupt - ‘but I am afraid that a judge may hold them to be irrelevant. It is possible that all may go well. What I have come here to discuss is the other possibility.’

  David waited. He had no liking for William, but at this crisis in his life he could not afford to be proud.