It wasn’t going to be a 36-hour stern chase after all, thought Elizabeth desolately—she was going to strike her colours long before Decatur had done. But it wasn’t really Audley who had beaten her.
“I know you told Mitchell that—and when he might have believed you … that was resourceful, Miss Loftus—I grant you that.” They both knew she was going to surrender, she saw that in his face, as he looked down at the money, and then back at her. “There’s more than this, isn’t there? You’ve got safe deposit keys lodged with your solicitor—oh yes, your safe deposits, I don’t doubt that … the Commander was resourceful too—like daughter, like father, I don’t doubt that either.”
Mr Lovell had talked. But, what was worse, Mr Lovell had been much more observant than was good for her.
“Your safe deposits—but his loot.” He had her in range now. “And this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
She felt cold enough for it to be just that. And she couldn’t fight him any more because she had never in her heart really believed the gambling story, but had simply chosen never to question it.
A token resistance, for form’s sake if not for honour’s, was all she could make. “What makes you … so sure … that he didn’t win it?”
“My dear—practically everything.” He gazed at her with a suggestion of sympathy which she found humiliating. “Like, for instance, retired naval officers of an academic persuasion aren’t often given to gambling … or, if they are it’s usually common knowledge. And the house would have been full of bits of evidence, from bookies’ phone numbers in his address book to old race-cards shoved behind the cushions … And if it wasn’t horses, then he’d be known around the clubs—especially if he was a big winner, believe me.” He paused. “Which, of course, he wouldn’t have been—he’d have been a loser. And that’s almost the clincher by itself. He just didn’t have the right form.”
Of course, they would be experts on this sort of thing, reflected Elizabeth, because gamblers would always be security hazards. And, anyway, if Father’s story had never really convinced her, it would be no match for them, just as she was no match for them.
“Apart from which there’s your statement—Mitchell!” Audley passed the stapled sheets to her—not the original, she noted, but a photo-copied copy. “This is your account of what happened yesterday, between the time you left the village fête and … Mitchell’s second coming, if I may call it that—as witnessed by Aske and written and signed of your own free will?”
He was closing in on her now. But however disastrous the revelation of the safe deposits might be, that wasn’t her real worry, not now.
“Yes.” Being the only daughter of a new-deceased hero and an unworldly schoolmistress ought to count for something; and she might as well start rehearsing that role as of this moment. “Actually, Mr Aske said I couldn’t have the Sunday papers until I’d written it.”
If Father hadn’t won it, where on earth had it come from?
“Very well. Page two, towards the bottom of it.” Audley had his own copy of the statement. “You offered him what was in the box, and he said ‘I don’t want your money’.”
She saw that he had produced the spectacles he had worn for his photograph, and had perched them in the same ridiculous place. “Yes. That’s what he said.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s also what you said to Mitchell—‘he didn’t want my money’. So what was he after, Miss Loftus?”
“I don’t know.” Elizabeth blinked at him. “I said that to Dr Mitchell too.”
“But it had something to do with France, and your father … and HMS Vengeful—you told him that also.”
“Yes …” What had been rather vague and disjointed in her memory came back to her suddenly with disconcerting clarity. In the state in which she’d been, and with both the brandy and Paul Mitchell egging her on, she’d said much more than she needed to have done. “But it didn’t make any sense—I told Dr Mitchell that too.”
“Why not?”
She gestured helplessly. “How could anyone possibly be interested in the Vengeful?”
“Your safe deposits aren’t in France, by any chance?”
“No—no, of course not. They’re in London.”
“All of them?”
“Yes—there are only four …” Elizabeth faltered as she realised that this was the line of questioning the snake-man should have pursued yesterday, instead of fruitlessly pursuing Father’s Vengeful research trips.
Audley nodded. “So we come to the big question, Miss Loftus: what have you got in those precious boxes of yours?”
“I’m sorry?” She looked at him in surprise, then at Paul Mitchell.
“Come on, Elizabeth,” said Paul Mitchell. “Get it over with. We’re bound to find out, one way or another.”
She frowned at him. “Well—money, of course. I told you!”
“Money?” Audley returned the frown.
“What did you expect?” Now they were frowning at each other, as though she’d given an unexpected answer.
“Just money?” Audley persisted. “In all four deposits?”
“Yes.” She shared her own bewilderment with them.
“Look, Elizabeth …” Paul Mitchell abandoned his position by the suitcase, coming round the bed to squat on his heels in front of her, among the bank notes “…we don’t want your money—okay?”
“Well—what do you want?” It ought to have been an angry question, but the way it came out there was a pleading note in it.
Paul Mitchell’s encouragement slowly changed to doubt. Then he swivelled towards Audley. “What the hell do we want, David? That’s a good question!”
Audley was watching her over his spectacles. “Tell me about the safe deposits, Miss Loftus.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” All the stuffing had gone out of her. “Father gave me a parcel one day, and told me how to open a deposit—what to do …”
“In your own name?”
“That’s the only way you can do it. And then he gave me other parcels … and there were other accounts … And I gave him the keys each time, of course.”
“Of course!” He thought for a second. “And you always do what you’re told—you didn’t ask what was in them?”
Put like that it hurt, and she couldn’t bring herself to answer it directly. But somehow it had to be answered.
“David—“ began Paul Mitchell.
“No. Let her answer.” Audley waved him off. “Weren’t you at least curious?”
There was no way of answering that without humiliation. “You never met my father, Mr Audley?”
“No. That pleasure was denied me, Miss Loftus.”
The funeral came back to her: the rain gusting across the churchyard in sheets and falling through the saturated summer leaves of the trees on to the mourners—the smell of the wet earth and damp uniforms.
“He should have commanded a battle-squadron, Mr Audley— that’s what they said. But all he had was me.” She managed to look him in the eye. “After he died there was a letter in his deed-box at the solicitor’s, with the keys. It’s still there, so you can see it for yourself. And the keys, too.”
Paul Mitchell stirred. “But he didn’t say where he’d got it?”
“He said he’d taken a gamble. And he said that it was now all rightly mine, and no one else’s. That’s all.”
Audley nodded slowly. “How much?”
It was the inevitable question. “I don’t know—not exactly. There are gold coins as well as bank notes … sovereigns, and also those South African coins.”
“Krugerrand,” murmured Paul. “Nice!”
“Roughly—how much?” Audley wasn’t letting her go.
“In bank notes … about £100,000. I don’t know what the coins are worth. But there are a lot of them.”
“And the tax-man doesn’t know about any of it!” Paul grinned like a schoolboy. “Very nice!”
“I don’t know whether I should have reported it…” When it
came to the crunch, pretending to be an unworldly schoolmistress lacked credibility, decided Elizabeth. But if she was to salvage something from the wreck she had to do her best. “But if you think I ought to, then I will, Mr Audley.”
“Good Lord—I wouldn’t!” exclaimed Paul. “She doesn’t have to, does she, David? I mean … can’t we declare her prize-money between ourselves, as it were?”
Elizabeth’s heart warmed to him. But also, at the same time, she had the impression that Audley was reading her like an open book.
“What you do with it isn’t our business, Miss Loftus—as Mitchell said, we don’t want it.” Audley closed the open book. “But where it came from is our business.”
They were back to the unanswerable question.
“The notes will have numbers,” said Mitchell. “Are they new ones, Elizabeth?”
The look on her face answered him even before she shook her head.
“Pity.” Almost unwillingly, he turned to Audley. “That amount of money in used notes … means it’s been professionally laundered, David.”
“It’s not the money that matters.” Audley studied her. “Tell me, Miss Loftus … did the parcels come to you after the trips to France?”
“I don’t know … no, I don’t think so …” Her memory sharpened as she realised the point of the question. “No … there were more of them—he didn’t go nearly that often … and … and they started before he went the first time—“ she stopped suddenly as the absurdity of the connection became apparent.
“Yes?”
“He went to France to research the book, Mr Audley.”
“So?”
“It’s absurd—it makes no sense.”
“It makes sense to someone, Miss Loftus.” He echoed Mitchell’s words from the previous evening. “That’s why we need your help, you see.”
“My help?” Elizabeth was so grateful he’d dropped the subject of money that she didn’t frown.
“You’re the expert on his book—you did all his typing, Mitchell tells me.”
“Yes—no …” Caution re-asserted itself. “I only typed the chapters when they were complete, he never discussed them with me or told me what he was doing. And he kept most of his notes in his head, it seemed to me.”
Audley nodded. “But he was re-writing one particular chapter, I gather?”
They were back to the absurdity. “Yes, but that was to do with Number Seven—the old Vengeful—“ She didn’t want to discourage him, but it was no good pretending to knowledge she didn’t possess “—and I really don’t know why, or what.”
Another nod. “Perhaps not. But if we do come up with anything new, then you’ll be able to advise Mitchell here. You can be his technical adviser, in effect.”
She looked at Paul Mitchell. She could hardly refuse to help him now, Audley himself had made sure of that. And even apart from that moral obligation there was her money to be considered—they had made that her prize-money, and prize-money had to be earned in battle.
And that left her no choice at all.
“Very well, Mr Audley.” As she came to her no-choice decision it occurred to her that she’d been manoeuvred into this surrender by Paul Mitchell and Mr Aske and Mr Bannen just as surely as Endymion and the Pomone and the Tenedos had brought Decatur’s President within range of the Majestic’s seventy-four guns. But Decatur had struck his flag then without loss of honour, so she could do the same.
Paul Mitchell smiled at her. “It’ll take you out of circulation too, Elizabeth. And that’s probably just as well at the moment.”
She didn’t know quite what to make of that, because she knew she couldn’t trust him. But it sounded well-meant, and she wanted to believe that it was.
“I don’t see how I can help you, Mr Audley. But if it really is Number Seven …”
“Ah …how we’ve been lucky there.” Audley had brightened with her surrender. “Owing to Mitchell’s … exuberance … we cannot put any questions to your burglars. But before your arrival on the scene they had collected all they wanted to steal, it seems. So at least we know what they wanted.”
Paul Mitchell nodded at her. “Number Seven, Elizabeth.”
“The old Vengeful, Miss Loftus,” said Audley.
V
“PUT ON YOUR seat-belt,” said Paul. “Aske keeps telling me that I must wear it at all times. It’s getting to be a habit.”
The belt clicked, and she had better keep her wits about her, snapped the sound of it. “And now?”
“And now…” his foot went down on the accelerator “…and now … tell me about Number Seven, Elizabeth.”
“Where are we going?”
“Ah … you must have made quite an impression on David, because he’s doing you a great honour—you should be pleased … and reassured—you’re going to Steeple Horley.”
“Steeple Horley?”
“The old house—his house … You’ll like his wife—Faith is a great lady in her way—“ he snorted as he changed gear “—to be married to David Audley she has to be a great lady.”
Great lady? “His wife?” Elizabeth looked down at her creased and shapeless dress. It wasn’t even very clean, either: there was something suspiciously like a stain right in the middle of it—she had last worn this dress when she’d helped the Vicar’s wife with her meals-on-wheels for the old people of the parish. It was certainly not what she would have chosen to wear for a great lady. “Oh lord!”
“Don’t worry!” He observed her consternation. “I don’t mean ‘grande dame’, I mean she’s sympathetic. And she’s not a lot older than me—than you too, Elizabeth. Like they say, he married a much younger woman … and they live in this marvellous rambling old house under the downs—we haven’t got far to go.”
Elizabeth was still appalled. Apart from the dress there was her face and hair, which were irreparable. There was probably a mirror on the other side of the car’s sun-visor, but she couldn’t bring herself to look in it. Everything was bad enough as it was, but to have to meet another woman was downright unfair. She hunched herself up at the thought of it.
“Don’t worry, Elizabeth!” He exerted himself to reassure her. “It’s a good sign—his inviting you to his home … you’ll meet his daughter too—a skinny little blonde creature, the image of her mother, and very sharp like both of them … it means he’s not about to peach about those safe deposit boxes of yours to all and sundry, I’d guess—for a start.”
“I thought that remained to be seen,” said Elizabeth guardedly.
“So it does. But although David’s a damned tricky bastard, he’s not mean with it. Putting one over on other people is what he enjoys, too—putting one over the Inland Revenue, or whoever deals with death duties … that’ll appeal to him.” He gave her another quick glance, but this time a fellow-conspiratorial one, which told her that under the skin, and in spite of their publicly abrasive relationship, Paul Mitchell returned the loyalty and regard which David Audley felt for his subordinate—the same thing which had made the survivors of Father’s old crew stand in the rain for him in their best suits so recently, in that secret society to which she had never been admitted.
“What’s the matter?” Her silence bothered him.
“I have the feeling that I’m being press-ganged, that’s all.”
“Hardly that. It’s your knowledge we want, you won’t be expected to fire the cannon and shin up the mast. And there can’t be anything dangerous involved, not this time.”
“ ‘Can’t’? How do you know that? After what’s happened already?”
Paul shook his head. “David wouldn’t invite you to his home if he was worried about anything. He’s pretty careful that way—that’s why the invitation is reassuring.” He drove in silence for a second or two. “Surprising maybe … I admit I find it a little surprising … but damn reassuring nevertheless, Elizabeth. So tell me about Number Seven.”
Press-ganged or not—and shanghai’d might be a more accurate description for all that
had happened to her during the last 24 hours—but press-ganged or shanghai’d or whatever … and reassured or not about her own fate and the fate of her inheritance, she had to trust to Paul Mitchell’s judgement and David Audley’s good faith, even though they were both men outside her experience.
“Where do you want me to begin?”
“Twelve Vengefuls,” said Paul, nodding at the road ahead, on which the homeward-bound Sunday traffic was thickening to slow him up. “The Armada Vengeful, hanging on to Medina-Sidonia’s shirt-tail up the Channel—King Charles’s Vengeful, betraying him at Bristol in 1642, and Cromwell’s 50-gunner in the First Dutch War, wrecked on the Goodwins …—then Pepys’ Vengeful, scuppered by the Dutch in the Medway in ‘67—then Rooke’s Vengeful fighting alongside the Dutch at Gibraltar in 1704—“
Was that his own research, or had he read Father’s earlier chapters?
“Then Number Six, protecting our loyal American colonists from the French in ‘59, but eventually getting wrecked off Cape Hattcras in ‘81 trying to stop the French helping those revolting Yankee rebels— historical irony, you could call that, I suppose.” He drove in silence for a time. “Number Eight—muzzle-loaders versus breech-loaders— I enjoyed Number Eight … He had a nice line in scorn, did your father—‘the mechanics of incorrect decision-making, brought to a fine art in the mid-Victorian navy’—“ he gave her a quick half-look, half-nod “—and so to Number Nine—“
But he had missed out Number Seven altogether, thought Elizabeth, staring at the handsome profile.
“The armoured cruiser—‘the ugliest Vengeful of them all, and in her day arguably the worst sailer and gun platform in the whole Channel Fleet’ … But she was also the one that obstinately refused to sink when they used her as a target ship in 1897, wasn’t she—‘to the surprise and embarrassment of all concerned’—right, Elizabeth?”
Not just a handsome face; though: somehow, between last evening and the moment he’d bounced back into her life, and apart from whatever else he’d done, he’d read those carefully-typed pages closely enough to memorise passages from them accurately.
“Plus my Number Ten, from Jutland, and his Number Eleven, full-fathom-five off Finisterre, or wherever … and we don’t need to worry about that submarine we gave to the Greeks after the war—we know all about that apparently, and it doesn’t signify. So that makes the full Vengeful tally—right?” Another look, and then the profile again. And with that face and the self-assurance which went with it there would be equally good-looking and assured girl-friends in tow, if not an elegant wife close-grappled, so it was no use making silly pictures just because he was being gentle with her. She was merely business, and his gentleness was common-sense.
The Old Vengeful Page 8