Rupert shrugged, “Either he destroyed them at a point in time when he didn’t want anyone to find the truth or he just liked the idea of me having to do some leg-work. In a perverse way I prefer the challenge. If he had just written an explanation or confession, I would not have become invested in unravelling the story – perhaps he wanted someone to take a real interest in his history. We’ll have to wait and see what I turn up – that may explain his motives.”
“And in the meantime, he’s done you more of a favour by providing you with a mystery to solve than he did by leaving you his possibly-dodgy fortune.”
“Precisely!” said Rupert cheerfully.
The following morning Rupert commenced his search into the history of Gordon Hodge and Janice Lacey courtesy of the evidence provided by the two photographs. He was helped in this search by that fact that picture of Janice showed a young woman in her early twenties standing outside what he took to be a London pub with its name prominently displayed. She was holding an empty tray in one hand and had an embarrassed, slightly furtive smile on her face as if not expecting to have her picture taken and unsure whether it was a good idea to allow it. Rupert was starting off by using the internet as his search tool. The pub bore a very common name and he searched this name along with Janice’s place of birth and soon found an up-to-date picture of the same pub. He knew little about this particular area of London, except that it was historically a port but the docks had been closed and it was now a residential area. He thought the picture of the old woman outside a house quite likely to be taken in the same sort of area of inner London. It showed a common type of meagre Victorian terraced house with just a front door and a lower and upper window. The simple process of searching a street-view map of the area immediately around the pub quickly revealed the very house. If, as he thought, this was Gordon’s mother and he had grown up in the house, it was a fair guess that Gordon had met Janice when she was a barmaid at the pub around the corner where he went for a pint, either when he still lived there or when he visited his mother. Rupert gave a grunt of satisfaction. A visit to the area might confirm his guess.
The second thing that Rupert did was to put on his coat and take the bus from Claresby into the nearby town to visit the bank where Gordon had started working about forty-seven years before – if Annie Hart’s memory was to be trusted. His inquiries at the bank were rewarded by the name Gilbert Howe – a man now in his eighties who was manager at the time that Gordon would have been there. He still lived in South Marlesby, a neighbouring village which Rupert knew very well. The retired manager was apparently held in some esteem at his old branch and visited weekly to conduct his banking business. Rupert left his name and telephone number, asking that these be passed on with a request that he could meet the old gentleman at a time to suit him. The time and place that suited Gilbert Howe turned out to be lunchtime at The King’s Head in Marlesby the following day.
The unspoken understanding was that Rupert would provide lunch and Gilbert would provide memories. The pub was homely and warm and Gilbert seemed to be well acquainted with both the barman and the menu. He had soon ordered the liver and bacon and Rupert followed suit. On Rupert’s inquiry he expressed a preference for white wine; so Rupert bought a bottle, hoping that it would prove sufficient to loosen the man’s tongue whilst not fuddling his mind. Over the first glass of wine Gilbert brought up the name of Gordon Hodge,
“When I originally got your message, I struggled to remember much about the fellow,” confessed Gilbert, who had a round, boyish face which belied his years, and astute, twinkling eyes sunk a little in the folds of age. “I do recall your wife’s late father, James Mortimer, very well. I’ve dined at Claresby Hall with him more than once. Affable fellow. And I recall Laura as a bright little girl. Anyway, Gordon was one of those men you could work alongside for years without ever getting past the surface impression – and that impression was not very edifying. He was a Londoner; not well educated but probably no fool. I imagine that he had been expected to leave school at the first opportunity to help out with the family bills. He never rose above cashier and never seemed to make much effort to recommend himself, although he was reliable enough. I think he retired in his late fifties with ill health – although I’ve just heard that he died only recently, so his health must have been reasonably good. Mind you, I took early retirement too and am still enjoying a pub lunch with a new acquaintance; so I can’t complain! Why the interest? He always struck me as a rather dull character?”
“I inherited his house and found a good deal of cash in the attic,” replied Rupert frankly. “He had inherited the house himself from a friend, and the money could have come from anywhere; I don’t mean to imply the money was dishonestly obtained.”
“Good-grief! Well, I can assure you that he was always considered scrupulously honest; whatever his other foibles might have been. I can’t pretend to have liked the man, but there was never any hint of impropriety in my time or since.”
“No, I’ve never heard any such suggestion,” Rupert replied carefully. “It just seemed odd for the man to keep so much cash about the place. Wouldn’t it be better to keep gold if you want to store your money under the mattress, so-to-speak?”
“Oh, we’d all like some gold under out mattress,” smiled Gilbert, whilst acknowledging with gratitude the arrival of the liver and bacon. “But if there’s one thing you learn as a bank manager it is that people can be very funny about money. Some want to hide how much they have from a spouse or children. Then there was one person – whose name I will not mention - who lived the most frugal of lives in a very modest house, whilst keeping a fortune of money in the bank untouched. It all went to charity in the end. Then there were those with deposit boxes full of gold jewellery which was never worn – a form of insurance policy, I suppose. But you say that it was notes you found? Were they recent? By the way, even if they are old and have been withdrawn from circulation they can be redeemed at the Bank of England – in my experience most high street banks will accept them.”
“Some of the ten pound notes show Florence Nightingale – I checked it out and think that particular note was introduced in 1975. Some are the older, brown note which was withdrawn in 1979. Then there are the twenty pound notes with a Shakespeare theme which I believe were available from 1970 until 1991. So it seems is that the notes all date from the time that Gordon was working in the bank in the 1970s. I haven’t tried to spend any of it yet. How easy is it to spot a forgery?”
“Oh, I used to pride myself on being able to tell a forgery just by feeling the texture of a note,” beamed Gilbert, helping himself to a third glass of wine. “And of course now when they make bank notes they use sophisticated devices such as holograms and embedded strips. There was always a small incidence of forged notes, but they were quickly removed from the system and destroyed. Probably you’ve heard of the best known case – Operation Bernhard?”
Rupert shook his head and Gilbert, looking gratified, mopped some of his gravy up with his mashed potato and took a mouthful before continuing,
“Well, during the war, the Nazis thought that they might be able to destabilise the British economy by dropping loads of forged banknotes into our country. The plan never quite came off, but some of the forged notes did enter into circulation. One practical upshot of this was the fact that we did away with many of the larger denominations whilst forgeries of five pound notes were gradually removed from the system. We no longer have a one hundred pound note and, after the war, it wasn’t until 1981 that the fifty pound note was reinstated. I’m not saying that forgeries no longer occur, but it’s not an easy game. If Gordon was stockpiling money in his attic it was because he was an odd fellow – I don’t for a moment think they would be forgeries.”
The two men finished up their lunch with spotted dick and custard and Rupert returned to Claresby Manor with the question of why there was so much money concealed in a pram in Gordon Hodge’s old home unanswered. He found Laura in the kitchen making
apple pies. She kissed him briskly, leaving flour marks on his jumper sleeve, and carried on with her rolling and cutting whilst he sat at the large, well scrubbed table.
“How was your lunch?” Laura asked.
“Nice lunch, pleasant man; no progress on finding out where the money came from. Gordon’s old manager just hinted that some folks are a bit odd about money. He was a little dismissive of Gordon – uneducated Londoner, that sort of thing. There might be the hint of the snob in Gilbert Howe, and it may explain why Gordon was never promoted, despite the fact that Gilbert acknowledged that he was intelligent, hardworking and reliable.”
“But you don’t know that it was Gordon’s money in the first place, “said Laura sensibly. “He inherited the house from Janice and we don’t know anything about her. She must have been pretty well off to buy The Red House in the first place. Where did her money come from?”
“I guess the house is worth over half a million now – so, yes, she must have had some money; but the picture I have of her shows a barmaid.”
“Perhaps she robbed a bank?” suggested Laura helpfully.
“Maybe she did,” acknowledged Rupert. “I’m going to see the pub where she worked tomorrow. A lot of time has passed, but I might find out something about her there.”
As it turned out, Rupert’s luck was in when he made his way to the Rotherhithe pub pictured in the photograph of Janice. It was a free house which had been in the Bullock family for three generations and still had a fine selection of real ales on tap. The family lived on the premises and there were a couple of rooms available for guests. It was a smart, square fronted brick building, very well maintained and comfortable within. But the first thing that struck Rupert as he entered was that the landlady, who was pulling a pint and chatting to the customer at the bar, bore a striking resemblance to Janice Lacey. Rupert waited his turn before ordering a pint himself and asking if sandwiches were available, it being still before midday.
“Yes, no problem,” smiled the woman, who was a shapely blonde in her late thirties or early forties. “Beef and mustard, ham, cheese?”
“The beef would be nice,” said Rupert with a smile. “By the way, if you have a moment, could you tell me if you recognise the lady in this picture?”
The woman put Rupert’s pint down in front of him and glanced over at the picture,
“Well, it’s this pub, isn’t it?” she said with mild interest. “She looks kind of familiar. When was it taken?”
“I don’t know for sure,” admitted Rupert. “Maybe forty years ago.”
“Oh, my dad would be the one to ask, then. He’s over in the corner keeping an eye on me – aren’t you dad?” She gave a wink in the direction of an elderly man who sat on his own with a half finished pint in front of him. The man glowered back at her. He was a big, bullish man who didn’t do anything to encourage Rupert to come and join him. Rupert, however, smiled and sat on the opposite side of the little round table,
“I’ll sit here and wait for my sandwich,” he said in a friendly way. “Nice pub this.”
“Been in the family three generations,” said the man. “Always managed to keep our independence: that’s why people come here – best beer for miles.”
“This is a nice drop,” agreed Rupert, taking a good swig of his own drink. “I take it that you ran the pub before your daughter?”
“I still do my share,” said the man, “but Trudy and her husband have taken over now. I’m John Bullock and my father, James, was landlord before me.”
“So you’ll probably recognise the lady in this picture?” Rupert passed the photograph across the table. The man only looked at it for a moment, but it was a long enough glance for Rupert to detect signs of recognition in it. No comment was returned, so he prompted, “One of your barmaids, was she?”
“Where did you get this?” was the response.
“It was in a house which I recently inherited – she was one of the previous owners.”
“Dead, is she?”
“As far as I know she died about two decades ago.”
“She’d have only have been in her forties, then – not much older than Trudy here. They look alike.”
“Yes, I thought there was a resemblance,” said Rupert.
“The woman’s my sister: Janice.”
“That would be Janice Bullock?”
“That’s right.”
“And she moved away?” pursued Rupert.
“Disappeared more like. Didn’t know what happened to her. My dad was furious. Don’t know where she would have gone to. She didn’t have any money and left with nothing more than what she stood up in. We tried to find her, but we never heard another word. What did she get up to, then?”
“I don’t know much myself. She came to live in Claresby village, where I live now. She was well liked locally; that’s all I know.”
“Why are you bringing that picture in here then?”
“I was trying to make a connection with a man called Gordon Hodge: he’s the man who left me the house.”
“Never heard of him,” replied John Bullock shortly.
“He was rather a slight man, fair hair, pale face. I think he grew up just around the corner from here. I wondered if you remember him coming into the pub to chat to Janice?”
“A couple of blokes used to hang around after Janice, but she never paid them much attention – my dad wouldn’t have liked it.”
Rupert’s plate of sandwiches arrived in the hands of Janice’s niece.
“Here – that’s your Aunty Janice!” said the thickset old man, suddenly seeming to take an interest.
“Looks like me, doesn’t she?” said Janice. “Except that I lighten my hair. It was a bit of a family mystery, where she got to, wasn’t it, dad?”
“This man says she died years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Trudy, automatically clearing away her father’s now empty glass. “Where did she get to?”
“She lived in Claresby village until her death,” repeated Rupert.
“Don’t think I’ve heard of that place,” said Trudy. “I hope she was happy. What my dad isn’t saying was that my granddad could be a bit of a bully.”
“Thought he owned my sister,” admitted John Bullock. “I didn’t always get on with him myself; but he was a good landlord.”
“And you don’t have any pictures of her or any idea if she had any gentleman friend?”
“My dad threw all her stuff out after six months,” said John. “That was it, really. We never much spoke about her again, although I did think about her quite a bit. She was younger than me and I suppose I felt I should have done more to look after her. Still, that’s water under the bridge. What about another pint for your dad?” he asked Trudy.
After that Rupert made small talk about football to his reluctant companion until he had finished eating his sandwiches. Then, thanking both father and daughter, he left the pub and made his way around the corner to where the terraced house he thought to have been Gordon’s home was. There was really nothing much to be gleaned from looking at it. Two neighbours chatting in the street were young and unlikely to know anything about the inhabitants of forty or fifty years before. He decided that he had achieved as much as he could and set off home again, still having failed to unravel the story which Gordon had wanted him to make public.
Rupert had left the central heating on a low setting at The Red House and returned there more than once to browse the items in the rooms and to make more careful searches in drawers and even between the pages of the few romantic novels which must have belonged to Janice; but without uncovering anything that explain the relationship between Gordon and Janice or where the money in the attic had come from. The only piece of information which moved him on in his quest was that imparted by the Land Registry entry for the house. It told him that it was Gordon, not Janice, who was named as the owner on the records. He was also now aware that Janice had changed her name from Bullock to Lacey – probably to stop her
father from tracing her. For some reason, Rupert always felt uncomfortable in the house as if a hostile not a friendly spirit inhabited it. Therefore he was pleased when Laura accompanied him there one day for her first visit, having dropped Florence off to play with a friend.
“I can see why you don’t love the house,” said Laura after taking a tour of the rooms. “There is something empty and unsatisfactory about the place, despite the pretty furnishings. It’s almost as if nobody ever lived here – although we know first Janice, then Gordon did. And you say it was Gordon’s house all along?”
“Oh, yes. He must have bought if for her and everyone just assumed that it was hers because she moved in and he remained living in his own little cottage until she died.”
“But why not live with her? Do we assume that she was his mistress?”
“Probably. I imagine that Gordon saw her at his local pub – the sort of beauty he never really stood a chance with. But she was trapped and unhappy and he had the money to offer her an escape. He bought the house and maintained her in reasonable style here until her untimely death.”
The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries Page 22