Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  Dougal put in, quickly ‘She met a young man who claimed he was Lord Rethesdale.’

  ‘Why should he claim he was Lord Rethesdale, if he wasn’t?’ Effie demanded. ‘What possible good could it have done him? He was a cripple; and a pauper. He lives in Greenwich now, under the care of a nursing-home. He can’t even afford his own medical treatment, let alone the underwriting of a million-pound railway.’

  Dougal looked towards Alisdair Snetterton. ‘I think that deserves some reply, Mr Snetterton,’ he said, in his calm Edinburgh accent. ‘For all that it may be folly, or mistaken identity, or fraud, I do think it deserves some reply.’

  But now it was George Plant’s turn to stand up. He eased his great shiny-trousered bottom out of his office chair, and circled his desk with his hands in his pockets. After a moment or two, he stopped, and smiled widely at Dougal and Effie, and slowly rested his chin so deeply into his neck that it looked as if his head were moulded out of wax, and was melting into his collar in thick, paraffin-yellow rolls.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘that Alisdair and I were very successful out in East Africa. Knew the lingo, knew the food, made friends with all of the blackies. Even entertained some of the tribal ladies, if you get my gist. Get my gist, Mr Cutting? We were respected out there, and still are. But the trouble with success is that it also generates envy; and there are plenty of rival concerns who would do anything to stop us building this railway. Anything at all, even murder! So my bet is that when you met Lord Rethesdale in Greenwich Park, Miss Watson, you weren’t talking to Lord Rethesdale at all, but a clever imposter. A hireling from the Nairobi Land & Plantation Company, I shouldn’t wonder. Or perhaps from the Colonial Office itself. There are millions of pounds at stake here, Miss Watson, and the world can be a very odd place when there are millions of pounds at stake. Morals go by the board. Reality goes out of the window, feet-first.’

  ‘May I ask one question?’ Effie interrupted him.

  George Plant spread his fat hands wide. ‘Anything you wish,’ he said. ‘anything you wish.’

  ‘Would it be possible, before the loan documents are signed, for us to meet Lord Rethesdale?’

  George Plant’s smile never wavered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, happily. ‘Won’t be possible. Lord Rethesdale is in Florence at the moment, on holiday. Likes Florence, I’m told, although the Lord knows why. Can’t stand anywhere but East Africa, myself. Born for it.’

  Effie said, ‘How did he give his consent to underwrite this loan, if he was in Florence?’

  ‘Did it just before he went,’ said George Plant. He opened a drawer in his desk, then another drawer, and at last produced a letter written on House of Lords notepaper. Effie took it, and read it, although she knew that it proved nothing at all. Anyone could steal sheets of House of Lords note-paper. She handed it to Dougal, who didn’t look at it, and Dougal handed it straight back to George Plant.

  Alisdair Snetterton said, ‘Do you think we might get on with our business, after these amateur theatricals?’

  Jack Cutting said, ‘Dougal?’

  Dougal raised his hand to Effie, and touched her elbow. ‘Come on, Effie,’ he told her. ‘Enough is enough. Banking is always dependent on trust, and I think we’ve seen sufficient evidence from Mr Snetterton to trust him.’

  Effie sat down. She knew, she absolutely knew, that Snetterton and Plant were deceiving Dougal, and that Jack Cutting was in league with them, or in their pay. Her instinctive feelings were so strong that she couldn’t imagine how Dougal could let himself be led so easily, and how he could agree to lend them a million pounds without exhaustively examining their railway and their personal backgrounds, and in particular the existence or non-existence of Lord Rethesdale’s house and fortune.

  She learned something that day, about men in general and about Dougal in particular. Men are afraid to ask questions, she decided, in case they appear to be foolish or over-critical. Men like to appear decisive and capable, even when they’re unsure, and for that reason they make snap judgements on the slightest evidence. Men bristle at once if they are told what to do by a woman; and when they are, they will promptly do exactly the opposite, although they will usually worry later that they have made a grave mistake.

  Lastly, and most importantly, she learned that a woman’s opinion may be scorned, but it is never ignored. Whatever she says, a man will believe violently that she is wrong, and even though he may secretly hold the same opinion himself, he will actually change what he believes to prove that she is wrong.

  Effie never forgot that afternoon in the offices of Snetterton, Plant & Beest in Star Yard. What she learned there was to sober her, sadden her, and help her for the rest of her life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  In the carriage on the way back to Eaton Square, Dougal said, ‘You made a fool of me there today. A real cuif! All that talk about Lord Rethesdale! Can you not see how genuine Snetterton and Plant really are? They may have the look of rief-randies, but that’s how a man has to be to make good in East Africa. They’re not bankers. They’re not ministers. They’re adventurers. The kind of men who can build a railway through jungle. Did you expect to meet the St Giles’ Kirk choir?’

  Effie sat well back in her seat, her face shadowed by her bonnet. ‘I still believe you’re being foolhardy,’ she said. ‘It would only take a week or two to write to Lord Rethesdale in Florence, if he’s really there. And what harm could there be in writing to Nairobi, and asking about Snetterton and Plant? Dougal, you only had to talk to them! I wouldn’t lend them a plack, let alone a million! I’m so afeared!’

  Dougal said nothing. Effie looked quickly across at him, and in a diagonal band of light that pivoted through the interior of the cab from a gaslight they were passing, she saw that he was biting his lip.

  She said, ‘You’re unsure, aren’t you? You’re still unsure. Dougal, think of what you’re doing!’

  Dougal clutched her hand, so tightly that her fingers were crushed together. ‘I’ve got to do it,’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘It’s the best chance I’m going to get all year! East Africa, Effie! They’ve called that railway the Lunatic Line so far, but if Snetterton and Plant can finish it all the way to the other side of the lake, they’ll be able to call it nothing but the Lucrative Line. That’s what Snetterton said, and he’s right. It’s my very best chance!’

  Effie said quietly, ‘You’re doubtful though, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s a risk, that’s all,’ Dougal argued. ‘It’s a chance. But all banking’s a chance. The value of money depends entirely on how much people believe in it.’

  ‘I can’t prevent you then, can I?’

  Dougal drummed his fingers on the crown of his Derby hat. ‘Listen, Effie,’ he said, with great patience, ‘you’re a lass of seventeen. A clever lass, and a bright one. But only a lass. And what you don’t understand yet is that people have to be judged on experience. I’ve seen odder and rougher rogues than Snetterton and Plant before, and sometimes I’ve refused to lend them money because of their looks. But looks are not what count, and there’s been many a time when I’ve regretted turning them down.’

  Dougal alighted from the carriage at Hyde Park Corner. He had arranged to meet Prudence at six o’clock at her friend’s apartments in Kensington High Street, and then to take both Prudence and her friend to supper at Williams, which was a fashionable restaurant in Holland Park for debutantes and actors and mashers. He closed the door of the carriage, and said to Effie, ‘You really shouldn’t worry your head with all this business. Snetterton was right, you know. Business isn’t for women. The best thing you can do is think about going back to Edinburgh. Come on, Effie, you know I’m right. You shouldn’t be wasting your sweet life away with old businessmen and bankers. You should be out dancing and enjoying yourself, and courting with boys.’

  A heavy dray stacked with kegs of Reids Stout came lumbering past, drawn by four huge black drayhorses, and for a moment Dougal’s words were drowned by the g
rinding of iron wheels on wooden blocks. As the dray turned the corner into Grosvenor Crescent, Effie just heard him say,‘… it’s not difficult to fall in love, you know.’

  Effie said, ‘Give my regards to Prudence,’ and then knocked on the roof of the carriage to tell the driver that she was ready to go. Dougal stood in the street with his hands on his hips watching her turn into Grosvenor Crescent after the beer-waggon, and then he tugged the brim of his hat and started walking towards Knightsbridge. The sleet had turned to fine rain now, which prickled his face, but he didn’t try to hail a cab. He felt like walking and thinking, and getting wet. There were times when discomfort could be salutary, and besides, he hadn’t exercised for weeks.

  Back at Eaton Square, Vera Cockburn was waiting for Effie in the living-room, in a straight-backed chair, dressed in a lavish afternoon dress of pale pink velvet, with a bodice that was sewn with a mesh of pearls and silver thread. In her hair she wore a ruby clasp with a huge white ostrich plume in it. She had been reading Love and Friendship by Jane Austen, and the small book with its marbled cover lay open on the wine-table next to her. She looked pale and displeased.

  ‘Your Mr Baeklander has been around here yet again,’ she said. ‘He wanted to stay until you returned, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded him to leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Effie, standing by the door. ‘I do nothing to encourage him.’

  Vera Cockburn sighed and flapped feebly at her hair. ‘That’s the whole trouble, my dear. You do nothing to encourage him. Yet you do nothing to discourage him, either. He’s extremely rich, you know. He is one of the richest men in the entire world. You really should make up your mind if you’re going to humour him or not. In my humble opinion, you should. He would set you up for the rest of your life! You would never have to lack for anything. Dresses, furs, jewellery, horses. And he works so hard, you would have plenty of time for, well, outside pleasures.’

  Effie looked across to the mantelshelf, and sure enough, there was another note from Henry, propped up beside the clock. She crossed the room, took the letter down, and opened it up. It read, Two days left! Please favour me with your reply, so that I may prepare your room aboard the Excelsior!’

  Vera Cockburn craned her neck around so that she could see what Henry had written. ‘You’d be a fool to let a chance like this slip past you.’ she said. ‘I grant you he’s not exactly Apollo, but then he isn’t exactly Caliban, either. And I have heard from several very reliable sources that when he does come back from Wall Street, he’s a most attentive lover.’

  Effie blushed. There was no question that Henry had an effect on her, and that despite his greater age and his blunt looks, he was overtly masculine. But she was not avoiding him so much because she found him unattractive, or unpleasant. She was simply too frightened of the idea of marriage so soon, and of losing her cherished ambition of being great, and famous, and wealthy in her own right. Of course, she would be quite famous if she were to marry Henry Baeklander, and she would socialise with millionaires and princes. But it was not enough; it seemed wrong; and the difficulty was that she didn’t know how to refuse him.

  It was even more difficult because she was still awaking at night from dreams about him, and finding a guilty slip-periness between her thighs.

  Vera Cockburn said, ‘You’re going to have to do something, Effie, you know! I don’t want him coming around here any more. It’s neither seemly nor kind. Perhaps it’s time you went on to stay with your aunt in Putney; or perhaps you feel like returning to Edinburgh.’

  ‘If you want me to leave, Mrs Cockburn, then I’ll leave,’ said Effie. ‘I have no wish to impose myself on you if I am no longer welcome.’

  ‘Well, of course you’re welcome,’ insisted Vera Cockburn. ‘It’s just that we want to avoid embarrassment. Malcolm does have his position to think about.’

  Effie read Henry’s letter again, stroking her forehead absentmindedly with fingertips as she did so. First Dougal wanted her to go back to Edinburgh, and now Vera Cockburn wanted her to go on to Putney, to stay with her Aunt Maisie. She was beginning to feel young and silly again, just when she desperately wanted to be sophisticated and grown-up. Hope and ambition and common sense were obviously not enough, not if she wanted to survive in the world of men and adults. She needed something more.

  ‘Perhaps I will go to Putney,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I stay until the end of the week?’

  ‘Of course not,’ smiled Vera Cockburn, magnanimously, but then Vera Cockburn had a husband, and a lover, and all the dresses that a woman could desire. Magnanimity came easily to her, even though charity might not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It took Dougal almost twenty minutes to walk from Knightsbridge to Kensington High Street, and by the time he arrived at Iverna Court, the ugly new blocks of red-brick apartments where Prudence’s friend lived, his pumps were soaking, and the shoulders of his coat were stained dark with wet. He stood in the doorway, and shook the rain off his hat. He already had a cold, and now he would probably contract double pneumonia. He blew his nose on his damp hankerchief, and then rang the doorbell to be admitted.

  The appearance of London’s residential suburbs had changed dramatically since the introduction of the safe electrical elevator. Londoners had never been flat-dwellers, and even now they disdainfully refused to live over shops and other commercial premises, the way that Europeans often did. But the ‘lift’ had made it possible for developers to put up in Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea huge arrays, of five-and six-story mansions and courts and buildings, and let them out to the middle-class and the wealthy. Quite suddenly, it became fashionable to have a four-bedroom pied-à-terre in town. Apart from saving on the enormous cost of a full-scale London house, flats provided the sons and daughters of country aristocracy with somewhere to escape from the supervision of their parents, entertain their friends, and be as licentious as they liked. The ‘lift’ had brought with it a social upheaval, as well as an architectural revolution.

  Dougal closed the gates of the elevator behind him, and rose to the fourth floor. The interior of the building smelled of new carpets and furniture polish. The lift whined, clattered, and eventually jolted to a stop. He slid back the expanding gates, and stepped out. Number 24B was along the corridor, on his right, past a solemn steel engraving of the late Queen.

  Prudence was waiting for him. She was dressed, very prettily, in an evening gown of coffee-coloured satin, sewn with panels of dark brown embroidery, and topped with an openwork bodice, cut very low, so that the warm swell of her large breasts was tantalisingly exposed. Around her neck she wore a five-strand pearl choker, and there were pearls in her chestnut-brown curls.

  Dougal stepped into the hallway, and took off his hat. ‘No servants today?’ he asked Prudence.

  ‘Monday’s their day off.’

  ‘Ah. Good. And your friend?’

  Prudence took his scarf, and helped him off with his soaking-wet overcoat. ‘I’m afraid my friends had to go out. Patricia’s mother is feeling unwell. The influenza, I think, so they took her some fruit and a packet of Imperial Granum.’

  Dougal glanced towards the half-open door of the living-room. He could see the end of a red plush sofa, a table crowded with bibelots, and a glass lamp held up in the outstretched arm of a naked bronze nymph.

  ‘You mean we’re alone?’ he asked her.

  Prudence nodded. Then she said. ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

  ‘Frightened? Of course not. It’s just that it’s not really customary in Edinburgh for a gentleman to call on a young lady, and stay with her, unless they have a chaperone.’

  Prudence held out her hand. ‘Come inside and have a glass of sherry. This is London, not Edinburgh. I’m sure I can trust you not to compromise me.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Dougal, uncertainly. ‘What time do you expect your friends to come back? I’ve reserved a table at Williams for eight-thirty.’

  Pr
udence led him into the living-room. It was a large, heavily-decorated corner room, with a view four floors below of Wrights Lane, wet and narrow and cluttered with parked hansoms, their hoods shining dully in the lamplight. She said, ‘The sherry’s on the table. There’s fino, and amontillado.’

  Dougal, conscious of his wet shoes and the dragging cuffs of his wet trousers, went across to a small table on which two decanters stood in a brassbound tantalus. Next to them was a sepia photograph of a plump woman who obviously believed she looked like Lily Langtry, the way she had wildly thrown her head back to have her portrait taken. He asked Prudence, ‘What’s yours to be?’

  ‘Amontillado, of course.’

  ‘Of course?’ asked Dougal.

  ‘Dry, but developed,’ said Prudence, and when Dougal turned around to look at her, she gave him a bright-eyed smile.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, smiling back at her, and unstoppering the decanter.

  ‘Jack was here not long ago,’ said Prudence. ‘You must only just have missed him.’

  ‘I walked from Knightsbridge. I felt like clearing my head.’

  Prudence arranged herself on the heavy-legged mahogany sofa, spread out her coffee-coloured skirts among the braided cushions, and then accepted her glass of sherry. ‘You’re not worried, are you?’

  ‘Worried?’ asked Dougal, still standing, with one hand behind his back. ‘Why should I be worried?’

  ‘Jack thinks you may be suspicious of the East African Railway scheme.’

  ‘I’m not suspicious,’ said Dougal. ‘I’m just exercising professional caution. Jack doesn’t have any cause to be concerned about it.’

  Prudence straightened out her skirt with long, pearl-pink fingernails. ‘He seems to think your sister may be stirring up trouble. Making up stories to put you off.’

  ‘Och, Effie’s a Watson! Wealthy but wary, as my father used to say. We may have been born with silver spoons in our mouths, but the first thing we did was send them off to be assayed.’