Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Mrs Cockburn told me how generous you are,’ put in Effie.

  ‘Vera Cockburn? Well, there’s an unshakeable credential for you. Vera Cockburn hardly ever has anything good to say about anybody.’

  They didn’t speak much as they ate. The stewards brought them small bowls of chilled gazpacho, followed by breasts of woodcock on heart-shaped pieces of toast; then slices of fresh Scotch salmon with hollandaise sauce; a pineapple sorbet; and Suffolk ducklings roasted in mead, until their skin crackled. After the meal, coffee and sweets were served in the private lounge, on the other side of the dining-room. This was a warm, comfortable study with plush red sofas on three sides, and rows of leather-bound books. The only illumination was supplied by two bronze slaves, holding up oil-lamps.

  ‘Do you think that passion needs an excuse?’ asked Henry Baeklander, his cheek bulging with a ginger cream.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Effie, trying not to sound too prim.

  ‘Well, then, I think I might kiss you, and make no excuses for it,’ said Henry. And, without hesitating, he spat out his ginger cream into a napkin, and shuffled himself along the sofa until he was sitting close to Effie, so close that he could take her arm.

  Effie looked up into his face. Beneath the Floris cologne, she could smell a man; sweat, cigar tobacco, and that slightly musty fragrance which she was not yet sophisticated enough to identify, the fragrance of those juices which anoint a man when he is eager for sex.

  The clock on the bookshelf behind Henry struck eleven-thirty. Effie said, very quietly, ‘You’ll have to take me back to Eaton Square soon.’

  ‘Before I’ve kissed you, or after?’ murmured Henry.

  Effie closed her eyes. She wanted him to kiss her, and yet she didn’t. It was repugnant, and yet it was exciting. She had drunk only one glass of Burgundy at dinner, but she felt as if the lounge were crowding in on her on all sides, as if the walls were pressing against her, as if she were unable to take a breath.

  Henry kissed her, strongly, and lingeringly. His firm hands stroked through her hair. He touched her thighs though the, warm fabric of her dress and her petticoats, and for one extraordinary moment, his fingertips delicately touched her breasts. Then he suddenly said, ‘Enough. That’s enough. I can wait until tomorrow, when we sail.’

  ‘Enough?’ said Effie. She didn’t know whether to feel desperate or relieved.

  Henry stood up, and tugged his vest straight. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘don’t forget this,’ and gave her the piece of paper on which he had signed his agreement to Dougal’s employment with Baeklander Trust. ‘Mr Outcault will drive you home. I think I’m beginning to develop a headache.’

  ‘Henry,’ she said, frowning, ‘you’re not displeased with me?’

  He stared at her sternly, and then laughed. ‘No! No, Effie, I’m not displeased with you. If anything, I’m far too excited about you. It’s better if we restrain ourselves, at least until tomorrow. When I’m excited I tend to … well, I don’t want to be rough with you. I want to be gentle, and gentlemanly. If you don’t understand now, you will tomorrow. But please – ‘and here he lowered his head, and pressed his hand against his forehead for a moment, ‘– please, don’t ever think that I don’t love you.’

  He looked up. ‘I do love you, Effie. I’m quite obsessed with you. More than manners will ever allow me to say. There is something about you which –’

  He hesitated for a long time. He turned his back on her. Then he turned around, and said, ‘You’d better go. I’ll have them bring your cape. I just want you to know what a pleasure it’s been to have you on board.’

  ‘And those other girls?’ asked Effie, although she hadn’t meant to.

  Henry stared at her warily. ‘Those other girls, well …’

  ‘They’re none of my business, is that it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But, I promise you, from tomorrow, you won’t ever see girls like that again. I promise you solemnly.’

  Effie closed her eyes briefly, to show that she understood, and nodded.

  Henry came up to the embankment to see her off. The Alldays and Onions took two or three cranks before it eventually started up (it was damper now, being midnight) but at last Mr Outcault was able to get it going, and steer it back towards Westminster, and Eaton Square.

  Effie turned in her seat, and the last she saw of Henry Baeklander was him standing under the green gaslight by Hungerford Bridge, gaslight that looked like a dandelion-clock in the pearly fog, waving his handkerchief in slow, dignified strokes. She waved back, just once.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Malcolm Cockburn was already in his dressing-gown when she knocked at the door of his upstairs study. He had been to his barber’s that day, and his hair was neatly clipped and shiny with Smith’s pomade. He was writing letters to his relatives in Africa and Ceylon, his last chore of the evening, and there was a glass of tawny port beside his inkstand.

  ‘Well, Effie,’ he said. ‘You’re up very late.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, loosening the ties of her fur bonnet. ‘The truth is, I have to speak to you.’

  Malcolm Cockburn gave an uncomfortable chuckle. ‘I’m hardly dressed for entertaining the daughter of the bank’s founder … won’t tomorrow do?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Cockburn.’

  Malcolm Cockburn looked up at her, and saw that she meant what she said. ‘Very well, then,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Come in, sit down; but do leave the door ajar. I don’t want any of the servants to get the wrong idea.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Effie, and sat down in a small crinoline chair on the far side of the study.

  The study was quite a small room; less than half the size of the family library, but it was stacked to the ceiling with leather-bound books, and it was here that Malcolm Cockburn kept the memorabilia of his life’s work. The presentation certificates for long service to the bank, framed. The photographs of Malcolm and Vera, on vacation, in front of the Austrian Alps. The medal ribbon from the Peking campaign of 1860, when young Lieutenant Cockburn had served with Colonel Hope Grant during the taking of the Taiku forts.

  ‘Well,’ said Malcolm Cockburn, ‘Vera tells me that you’re leaving us at the end of the week, to go on to Putney.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Effie. ‘But that wasn’t really what I came to talk to you about.’

  Malcolm Cockburn sat back in his chair and crossed his long legs. ‘Nothing’s wrong, I hope? Nothing’s amiss?’

  ‘Not in the sense that I believe you’re trying to suggest. It’s to do with the bank.’

  ‘And your brother?’

  Effie nodded.

  ‘Well, then you’d better tell me,’ said Malcolm Cockburn.

  Effie lowered her eyes, and tugged at the fingertip of her glove. ‘This is not an easy thing for me to do, Mr Cockburn. Dougal and I have been the closest of companions ever since we were tiny. The relationship between us is very special to me; and I would do anything rather than sacrifice it.’

  She paused, and then she said, ‘Anything, that is, except betray my parents, and the bank, and keep silent in the face of an obvious deception.’

  Malcolm Cockburn looked very serious. ‘You’d better tell me what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘It’s simply this,’ Effie told him. ‘My brother was desperately anxious to impress his father by arranging for the bank a spectacular investment. He thought that if he could manage to commit Watson’s to a large but very profitable loan, then his father would realise that he was too talented a banker to be relegated to the trust department, and that he would be obliged to promote him to a position of influence.’

  Malcolm Cockburn was tensely stroking his face, waiting to hear the very worst.

  Effie said, ‘With Jack Cutting, he has authorised a loan for a company called the East African Railway Company, to complete the railway from one side of Lake Victoria to the other. The papers, as far as I know, were signed this afternoon.’

  Malcolm Cockburn sat in silenc
e for a moment, while he absorbed this news. Then he said, in a very dry-biscuity voice, ‘How much is the loan for?’

  ‘One million pounds, to be paid in sterling into a bank in Nairobi.’

  ‘And you say that the papers have already been signed?’

  ‘As far as I know. That’s what Dougal told me, anyway.’

  ‘I see,’ said Malcolm Cockburn. ‘Did you know about this loan earlier? Or did it come as just as much of a surprise to you as it has to me?’

  Effie blushed. ‘I did know about it last week. But I never believed that Dougal would be foolish enough to go ahead with it, particularly when I met the principals of the railway company.’

  ‘Do you happen to know their names?’

  ‘Mr Snetterton and Mr Plant. They had a very decrepit office in Star Yard, just behind Chancery Lane. They claimed that they had much finer offices in Nairobi, but I still didn’t trust them very much.’

  Malcolm Cockburn drummed his fingers on the half-finished letter he had been writing. It said, “… our old friend Greville is off to Barbados to do some business there, the lucky devil, and –”

  ‘It’s Cutting, of course,’ he said, reflectively. ‘Cutting’s taken advantage of your brother’s trustworthiness and arranged a little bit of highly profitable hoaxing. At least that’s my guess. I may be doing Cutting a severe injustice. The railway may be perfectly bona fide. But you were quite right to come to me, Effie, and I admire what you have done. Even the ties of sisterly loyalty do seem rather insignificant beside a million pounds, don’t they?’

  ‘Is there anything you can do, now the papers are signed already?’ asked Effie.

  ‘Technically, no,’ said Malcolm Cockburn. ‘Your brother was officially representing the bank when he made that offer to Mr Plant and Mr – what was that other fellow’s name? Snetterton. The bank is committed even though your brother has gone beyond his brief. There are plenty of precedents for it, and I’m afraid that our name wouldn’t be worth very much on Cornhill if it got around that we were the kind of bank who made offers and then welched on them.’

  ‘Then you have to lend them the million pounds?’ Effie wanted to know.

  Malcolm Cockburn slowly shook his head. ‘No, we don’t have to. Even gentlemen sometimes have to resort to ungentlemanly tactics. Star Yard, you say? That’s where their office was?’

  Effie said, ‘Yes. But what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do? I’m not going to do anything. Why don’t you go to bed now, and get yourself some sleep, and in the morning we’ll talk about it some more.’

  ‘There’s one thing I must ask you,’ said Effie.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You won’t ever mention that Dougal was involved in this affair.’

  ‘I don’t know I can avoid mentioning it, my dear. Your father will have to know what happened. And I can hardly keep Dougal on at the bank if this is the kind of behaviour I can expect from him.’

  ‘Mr Cockburn, please. I’ve already arranged for Dougal to take a job in America. He’ll leave Watson’s and you won’t ever have to see him again. But please don’t tell his father, and please don’t ruin his reputation. That’s all I ask.’

  Mr Cockburn sipped his glass of port, and then placed it precisely back on his desk. This is all very dramatic,’ he said.

  ‘Please, Mr Cockburn. It would have been so much easier for me to pretend that I didn’t know anything about this loan, and let the bank lose all of its money. But I had to tell you; and Dougal’s freedom is all I want in return.’

  ‘I’ll have to sack Cutting. I may even have to have him arrested by the police.’

  ‘I know that. But please let Dougal get away. He’ll be gone by this time tomorrow, on a boat for the Mediterranean, and then for New York.’

  Mr Cockburn thought for a long time. With his steel-nibbed pen, he doodled a flourishing One Million, with dozens of curlicues. Then he said, ‘All right. I’ll give Dougal two days to get away. If he’s not gone by Friday morning, then I’ll have him arrested. I mean that. But if he has gone then you will never hear another word from me about what he’s tried to do, ever. And I think you had better get yourself back to Edinburgh, in case Mr Snetterton and Mr Plant get to hear what you’ve done. Men will do a great many unsavoury things for a million pounds; and even more unsavoury things if they think they’ve been tricked out of it by some young amateur detective. I don’t want to have to tell your father that you were found face-down in the Thames.’

  Effie rose, and straightened her skirts. I’m sorry I disturbed you so late at night,’ she said. ‘And I appreciate your kindness towards Dougal.’

  Mr Cockburn shook his head. The only person who’s done your brother any favours is you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  At three o’clock in the morning, in the thick of a London particular, two men in heavy sailors’ jackets and oilskin caps forced open with a crowbar the outside door of Messrs Snetterton, Plant and Beest, in Star Yard, WC, while a portly policeman stood at the end of the yard, at Carey Street, taking no notice of them at all, and tunelessly whistling Goodbye, Dolly Grey. The men quickly ascended the stairs inside the building, and then noisily broke open the glass-panelled door at the end of the landing.

  They went straight through the partners’ office, and began to ransack it with a ferocity approaching madness. Drawers were dragged out of desks, and tipped out on to the floor; papers flew in all directions; stuffing was ripped out of the chairs. They even tore the pictures down from the walls. All the while the moulting green parrot screeched inside its cage, and pecked noisily at its bars.

  At last, the men discovered the documents that they had been looking for, inside a small black metal deed-box. They held them up to the light of their bull’s-eye torch to make sure, and then one of them tucked them into the inside pocket of his jacket. The documents were headed ‘Messrs Thomas Watson, Cornhill, London,’ and began This agreement witnesseth …’

  The two men didn’t leave the office until they had destroyed everything in it. They broke all the tea-cups, emptied the tea on the floor, kicked the kettle flat, tore up sheaves of bills and invoices, and thrust a steel ruler into the innards of the Columbia Patent Typewriter. By the time they had finished, the rooms looked as if they had been attacked by a pride of rabid baboons.

  One of the men opened the parrot’s cage, gripped the parrot by its legs, and brought it out into the lamplight. The parrot squawked and struggled.

  That’s a bloody ugly-looking chicken,’ remarked his friend, through the doorway.

  ‘Doesn’t even speak,’ the first man agreed. ‘Pretty polly, pretty polly, who’s the King of England, then?’

  The parrot screeched, and craned its neck around to nip at the man’s finger. Without any hesitation, the man lifted the parrot in his hand and stuck it straight down on the upright metal spike on Mr Snetterton’s desk. Impaled, the parrot shrilled, and clawed at the air, and managed pitifully to pivot itself in a circle.

  ‘Skewered,’ said the man, with satisfaction. Then he left the office, nodded to his friend that it was time to go, and led the way down the stairs to the moist and foggy street. On their way out of Star Yard, one of them tucked a pound note into the police constable’s belt, and said, ‘Top of the morning to you, Percy.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jack Cutting was awakened at four o’clock by the abrupt and terrifying crack of his bedroom door being wrenched off its hinges. He was in bed with a dark-haired shopgirl from Balham called Edwina Hargreaves; and his first ridiculous thought was that it was his landlord bursting in to surprise him with a woman in his digs. He jumped smartly out of bed, in nothing but his nightshirt, and at the same time managed to heap his blankets and his pillows all over Edwina, in an attempt to hide her.

  He said, ‘What on earth’s going on?’ But the three bulky men who jostled into his room said nothing at all. One of them snatched at his left wrist, and jerked his arm painfully around behind his back, while the
others began to tug out all the drawers in his bureau, and throw them one by one across the room.

  ‘I said, what on earth’s going on?’ Jack demanded, in a shrill voice. The man who was gripping his arm gave him a short, stunning punch in the back, and he let out a high-pitched cough.

  ‘You can’t –’ he began, ‘but the man punched him again, and he involuntarily brought up an acid splash of bile, which came spurting out of his nostrils.

  The men tore open his wardrobe, ripped down his clothes, and systematically wrenched them to shreds. They even sliced his shoes open with a sharp cobbler’s knife, and cut his celluloid collars in half. They emptied his bottles of cologne on the floor, and shattered the wardrobe mirror with three powerful kicks. Then they turned their attention to his bed, and started to slash the mattress. Edwina, huddled in terror under her blankets, let out a scream, almost a whoop.

  The men dragged back the blankets until they discovered her.

  ‘You leave her alone!’ croaked Jack, but the men did nothing more than tip her roughly off the bed and on to the floor, where she sat in the corner, her nightdress pulled prudishly down to her ankles, shivering and letting out little mewling noises of fright.

  It took the men no more than five or six minutes to wreck the room and smash everything that Jack possessed. Then, very brutally and calmly, they beat him with their fists, breaking out six of his front teeth, cracking four of his ribs, and bursting his right eardrum. The last punch they saved for his testicles. Whoever delivered it was holding a full handful of pennies, and it sent him instantly into shock. He fell to the floor, eyes rolled up into his head, like a knackered bullock, and lay with his bloody face buried among the feathers of his mattress, choking for breath, twitching.

  The three men left the room unhurriedly, as if they were nothing more than obliging workmen, even taking the trouble to prop the bedroom door back into position. From somewhere distant and echoing and dark, somewhere that was more like a freezing Arctic seascape than the inside of his own head, Jack Cutting heard one of them say, ‘I could go a cup of tea, Frank. Fancy a cup of tea?’