A Game of Consequences

by Shelley Smith

  ‘But one cannot stay with friends, however kind, indefinitely. I know this thing is only temporary too, but it gives us a breathing-space, and as it’s already been on the market for two years, I should think with luck we’d be able to stay there quite a while. I might even find a job down there,’ he said, dialling Directory Inquiries.

  He was already running up new plans, she thought, glancing over his shoulder at the bonfire’s dying smoke with a strange sickening of the heart. Strange, because it must be better than squeezing in with friends or, worse still, having to go back to her parents where there would be no room for poor Tom. They would at least have a place to themselves, and the country would be wonderful for the children, who, like their parents, had not had a holiday this year. Why then this feeling of despondency when she had so much to be thankful for, she wondered, watching him as he gaily questioned the agent. Probably it was the thought of leaving London and their friends and the last ties with a way of life she could see no hope of ever being regained. But she was not going to dampen Tom’s spirits by letting him see she was down.

  He put down the phone and turned to her with a smile. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’s all right for tomorrow.’ She turned her face up to his and put her arms round his neck …

  The Ransomes simply had no resources left. It was as if the gods had shaken up their neat secure happy life like dice in a box and tossed them out. If it had not been for Kate’s job there would have been no money coming in at all. ‘I’m a kept man,’ Tom told their friends, making a joke of it as was his way. But Kate did not find it very amusing, it frightened her. It was almost as though he did not realise the predicament they were in.

  He was by nature a man of sanguine temperament, but he seemed to be sliding into a dreadful Micawberish optimism that made her want to scream. Perhaps it was assumed to cheer her up. Perhaps he too secretly fretted and lay awake worrying long after she had at last dropped asleep.

  She loved him. Of course she loved him, he was a wonderful person; endlessly kind and generous to a fault. He was not to blame for what had happened.

  Tom had already been four years with Jennets, the world-famous auctioneers in St. James’s Street, when he married Kate, after four years’ grounding in a small firm of auctioneers in the West Country. Kate had a job in advertising, which she kept till Dinah arrived and was presently followed by Biddy. As soon as the little girls were old enough to go to school, Kate took up her career again.

  Tom and Kate then were bringing in between them about seven thousand a year. They lived lavishly, spending up to the hilt, never imagining things would change — except for the better.

  It was a shock when Tom was suddenly made redundant. Just like that. His boss’s explanation was that they had been hit very hard by the new tax laws affecting auction sales. Tom was furious. He had been with Jennets long enough to know of the wheels within wheels. Somebody with influence was pulling strings, conniving and intriguing to elbow him out.

  Then he overcame his chagrin and decided it would certainly all turn out for the best. Twelve years in the same firm was quite long enough for anyone. ‘I was in a rut and didn’t even realise it,’ he declared. ‘Anyway, twelve years at Jennets is as good as money in the bank, it’ll open all doors.’

  Only, that was not quite the way of it. The recession was on. He found that if one is at the top there is nowhere else to go but down. That did rather shake him. Tom became unemployed.

  It was horrifying to find how quickly their money ran away, like water down a drain. They could barely subsist on what Kate earned. The major expenses like rates and taxes and the house-mortgage and the quarterly bills could not be met.

  He did what he could to plug the holes in his finances. He sold his beloved vintage Bentley. He hated having to get rid of her, but it was a must. Henceforward they would have to manage with Kate’s runabout. He didn’t even get for it as much as he had expected, but had to take what he could get. He settled for three thousand seven, and let her go with a sigh.

  The fact is, Tom was not cut out to be a businessman, he hadn’t the right sort of temperament. He lacked the ability to see the other man as an opponent; he was too good-natured, too generous-spirited. He could not bring himself to get the sharp edge on the other fellow by honing him down. He stood about as much chance of competing in the business world, as a mouse did of winning in a world of cats, as he was to learn from Martin Henry (whose real name was Henry Martin).

  Martin was a trade acquaintance, one of the many who turned up at Jennets year after year. He was a frail elderly queer who ran a picture gallery in Heath Street.

  Tom dropped in on him one day to show him a Samuel Palmer drawing which he hoped Martin would buy since he had a special regard for Palmer’s work. (Making a successful sale is largely a matter of knowing who would have a particular interest to buy what one has to offer; and that is not luck but highly specialised knowledge acquired over many years in the trade.)

  Tom wanted £850 for it, but Martin wouldn’t budge higher than £300.

  ‘It’s a nice little thing,’ Martin conceded, casting a casual eye over it, ‘but it’s honestly not worth what you’re asking. Or not to me.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Ransome gave him his engaging smile and slipped it back into the portfolio.

  ‘Leave it here for a day or two and I’ll think it over.’

  ‘Can’t do that, I’m sorry. I’ve promised to let someone else have a look at it, tonight.’

  ‘Who? Wellesley?’

  ‘You know better than to ask me that.’

  Martin held up his hands in deprecation.

  They began to talk of other matters. The state of trade, which was shocking. (When had it not been? Tom wondered.) In the course of the conversation, Martin mentioned that he was looking for someone, a junior partner, to take over the more active side of the business; he was getting old, his health was bad. ‘Somebody young, energetic, and knowledgeable, like yourself,’ Martin said, regarding him out of his profile, bird wise. ‘But I don’t suppose it would interest you?’

  ‘It might. I have been thinking of making a change.’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard you’d left Jennets,’ Martin remarked with an enigmatic gaze.

  ‘Oh?’ It was natural enough that it should have come to Martin’s ears, but Tom was put out by it. ‘Well, it’s a mistake to stay in the same job for ever.’ He emitted a short laugh: ‘I was beginning to feel like a fly caught in a spider’s web. I wanted more freedom and I thought I’d never get away if I didn’t make the break soon.’

  ‘Then you might care to discuss the proposition with me some time? Come and see me again,’ Martin’s thin lips curled at the corners, ‘with or without the Palmer. Let me have another look at it before you go. I’ve an idea we’d get on quite well together, you know,’ he murmured, holding the paper in delicate fingers and studying it. ‘I’ll be generous,’ he said at last, ‘I’ll meet you halfway, as a token of goodwill for the future. Five hundred and fifty.’

  Ahhh, the wretch! Tom was caught and forced unwillingly to accept. Impossible to refuse the offer and it would have seemed inelegant to bargain further. First round to Martin.

  The thing was that Martin’s proposition greatly interested Tom, it sounded like just the sort of thing that would suit him; and the offer, coming when it did after months of unsuccessful searching, cheered him no end.

  Going into partnership with someone was a serious business of course. Tom, with his friendly manner, got on with most people and he thought he would be able to handle Martin all right. The real problem was that Martin was looking for a partner who could inject a fairly hefty amount of capital into the Gallery. Capital, unfortunately, was precisely the commodity Tom had not got.

  He talked it over with Kate at great length. It seemed terrible to lose this opportunity, the kind of infirmity of purpose one would regret all one’s life. On the other hand, to raise that amount of money on overdraft would require the Ransomes to put up eve
rything they possessed as collateral. With the two thousand remaining from the sale of the Bentley, they would just about do it.

  Kate was warier than Tom, she should have resisted. If she acted unwisely it was because she was a loving wife, who wanted her husband to have the chance to do what he wanted, and would not thwart him merely because the project seemed risky. She did not want him to reproach her later.

  The agreed procedure of the partnership was that Martin would continue to manage the Gallery, the arranging of the pictures, the advertising, the selling, and the book-keeping: while Tom drove around the countryside, visiting shops, paying calls on persons who had answered their advertisements offering to buy old oil paintings, water-colours, and drawings, and attending country sales, especially those which took place in private houses.

  Tom threw himself into it heart and soul. It was an activity for which his years of experience at Jennets had peculiarly fitted him. It had the advantage too of not flinging him too much into Martin’s company.

  Despite one or two splendid finds Tom had made, the first three months were disappointing. At the end of six months he was decidedly worried, their returns were so low. They seemed to be doing much worse than Martin had led him to expect. Tom now had such heavy commitments he did not know how he would meet them.

  Martin said it was all due to inflation and the trade recession, but it looked to Tom as though Martin was not nearly as good at selling as he had supposed, he seemed never to make enough profit to cover their overheads. Martin maintained that Tom bought too dear and it didn’t allow him sufficient margin.

  ‘The fact is, I’m not making enough to live on, Martin,’ Tom complained. ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  ‘My dear boy, believe me I do understand how hard it must be for you, and I wish there was something I could do to help,’ Martin replied, giving Tom’s arm an impulsive squeeze. ‘But you know I’m not drawing out a penny more for myself, notwithstanding I’m the senior partner. I can only suggest, dear boy, that you learn to be a more ruthless bargainer — that is the name of the game, you know.’

  That was always the way it was whenever Tom became aggrieved and made a fuss: Martin would thrust the ledgers under his nose and insist on his inspecting them for himself, and after he had done so, Martin would put a hand on his shoulder and beg him not to worry, saying: ‘Things are bound to get better soon. They can’t go on like this much longer.’

  ‘I certainly can’t,’ Tom would answer gloomily.

  Maybe Martin’s words would have come true, matters might have improved; but before that could happen, Martin died. Quite suddenly. In horrible circumstances.

  It came as a terrible shock to Tom. He was the one who happened to find him on that Monday morning. Martin had a flat over the Gallery, and as the shop door had not yet been opened (Martin liked to keep it locked and bolted from the inside), Tom went in through Martin’s front door to which he had a key. He turned to the entrance to the shop and halted, seeing that the decorative flower-piece Martin always made for his tiny hall was no longer standing on the console table. Tulips and irises and feathery spirea lay crushed and mangled in a pool of water on the floor.

  There was something horribly sinister about those broken trampled blossoms, and Tom stepped back, turned away from them, with a feeling that something had happened there.

  It was then that he noticed Martin lying prone on the stairs, as though he had been struck down by a seizure or heart attack as he tried to mount them.

  He had been struck down, yes, but not by a cataclysm within his own frame. Martin had been struck down, beaten down with repeated blows, by some other person. The sensitive fragile hands were encrusted with dark blood where he had held them up to try to protect his face.

  Martin was so obviously dead that Tom did not need to call a doctor, he dialled at once for the police. While he waited for them he went into the office to get himself a drink. Only last Friday evening he had had a drink in there with Martin as usual while they discussed the week’s business.

  The office was a wreck: drawers and boxes had been emptied on to the floor and abandoned. The door to the office which led on to the street was also kept locked and bolted from the inside. It was now unfastened, which suggested that the intruder had left that way. Maybe had even been let in by Martin? It was an unpleasant thought.

  It was altogether a very unpleasant business, highly disagreeable. Disturbing even. The inspector in charge was polite and impassive, but the questioning, the intrusive probing into things, made Tom feel himself to be a prime suspect.

  As Tom said later to Kate: ‘I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not cut out for a criminal. I wouldn’t have the nerve. It’s quite bad enough when one is innocent, they still manage to make you feel guilty, they look at you so accusingly with such a tone of cold disbelief in their voices. It makes one cringe.’

  The Gallery was sealed pending the investigation. Tom was required to give evidence at the Inquest, at which inevitably a verdict was returned of ‘Murder by some person or persons unknown.’

  Tom had supposed that as far as he was concerned that would be the end of the affair, but far from it. He was continually being called upon to clear up some point or other, which generally he was unable to do.

  Then Tom received a shock that affected him more powerfully even than Martin’s death. He had rather querulously inquired of the inspector when the Gallery would be allowed to reopen. The inspector regarded him pensively. The wall-clock behind him ticked off the seconds loudly in the silence.

  ‘I think I ought to warn you, Mr. Ransome,’ the inspector said at last, in a way that made Tom’s heart jump sickeningly into his throat, ‘that it is highly improbable that it will ever be opened again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tom stammered, suddenly dry-mouthed.

  ‘Among the deceased’s effects we found the other set of books.’

  ‘Books?’

  ‘Oh come, Mr. Ransome! Are you expecting me to believe you were unaware that your partner kept two sets of ledgers?’

  Tom’s eyes stared, round and expressionless as a cod’s, his jaw moved soundlessly, as if he were mouthing in the fishy deep. He passed a hand across his damp brow and shook his head.

  ‘You disappoint me, Mr. Ransome. I was counting on you to reveal where and under what name the money had been put. Need I say that it would make matters much easier for you, if you did.’

  ‘It would make things easier for me if you would explain what you are talking about, Inspector,’ Tom said with a faint flicker of spirit.

  ‘All the papers in the case are now in the possession of the Inland Revenue, but if the debt were paid, it would presumably obviate the necessity for bankruptcy proceedings.’

  ‘Bankruptcy proceedings!’ cried Tom aghast.

  ‘Yes indeed. For the last ten years or so, Mr. Henry Martin has been defrauding the Inland Revenue of considerable sums of money; it would appear to be in the region of thirty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘In consequence the Treasury has claim on all Mr. Martin’s property and estate.’

  ‘But what about my money?’

  ‘Your money, Mr. Ransome?’ the inspector said drily.

  ‘All the capital I put in. Every penny I possessed. I have been defrauded too. He told me all this while we weren’t making any money. Oh, my God, what am I going to do!’

  *

  The mystery of Martin’s murder was never solved. The police, who knew of Henry Martin’s sexual proclivities from before the days of the Wolfenden Report, believed he had been done to death by some male prostitute he had picked up and brought home with him. He had indeed been noticed leaving a pub on the Saturday night with a young man with black hair. After which Henry Martin had not been seen alive again. ‘A young man with black hair’ was not much of a description to go on.

  Since the instrument with which the poor man was bludgeoned to death was a bronze statuette of a boy holding
aloft the container for the flower arrangement, it looked as though the crime was unpremeditated; the more so in that the victim was naked but for a short foulard dressing-gown when Ransome found him at the foot of the stairs.

  A quarrel over money? Yes, perhaps. But what was the real significance of the havoc in the office? Was the murderer really looking for something? And did he find it? Or was it intended only as a false trail to confuse the real issue? According to Thomas Ransome nothing of any value was missing.

  But there was something missing, it dawned on Inspector Fielding later. Something very important indeed. If that was what the murderer had been searching for, then he had unquestionably found it.

  Or them. For what was missing was the chequebook or books on the bank or banks where Martin had deposited the money under false names. And there was no way for the truth of that ever to be discovered. It was a dead end.

  For the Ransomes Martin’s murder was a disaster from which they never recovered. They were ruined, quite literally. An instance of the cruel truth of the words ‘From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.’ For now Tom was not only jobless and penniless, there was no way left for him to borrow any more money, he could not even pay off the interest on his overdraft or on his mortgage. The overdraft was closed; their nice friendly bank manager mercilessly informed them that Head Office insisted that the loan had now to be repaid.

  Every day it remained unpaid, the interest mounted. Tom was not merely in the soup, he was drowning in it. Only one way was open to him. One frail straw to clutch at. It was to put the house up for sale and, with the money it fetched, hope to pay off both mortgage and overdraft. What would happen after that was beyond their imaginings. If he did not manage to find a job, he would still be penniless and they would be homeless as well.

  Tom found a couple of temporary jobs while the house was still on the market. By the time the house sale had gone through and their debts been paid off, there was precious little of the money left. Just a small capital sum of under two thousand pounds. The prospect was bleak indeed when he encountered Jeremy Eskdale, who turned out to be his saviour.