The Richmond Diary

by Peter Rawlinson

  When, once, the Permanent Secretary had been lunching at the Oxford and Cambridge Club with Harrington of the Treasury and they were talking about his Minister, he had said he thought Richard Tancred was ‘a-sexual’. Gay? Harrington had asked. No, just not interested, the Permanent Secretary had replied.

  ‘He has one particular friend or acquaintance whom I have seen him with,’ went on Harrington. ‘Oscar Sleaven. That’s not very wise, is it?’

  It certainly wasn’t, the Permanent Secretary had thought. The Sleaven group were one of the conglomerates who tendered for the Ministry defence contracts so when he read the extracts of Francis Richmond’s diary published in the Sunday News he had been shocked. But it had come not altogether as a surprise. He had always admired his Minister but there was something about the man that he, with all his experience of men and matters, could not fathom. With his analytical mind, the Permanent Secretary had found this disturbing. He liked to understand the ministers he served. But from the start, Tancred had been an enigma.

  Oscar Sleaven, the Permanent Secretary had repeated to himself when he had read the extracts in the Sunday News. The Minister meeting Oscar Sleaven at private houses, in an art gallery! So that Tancred would be forewarned of what had been published about him before he returned to the UK, the Permanent Secretary had seen to it that the newspaper had been sent to Beijing in the Foreign Office bag. ‘He’d better know what he has to face,’ he had said. When Tancred had appeared in the Ministry on the morning of his return, it had not been mentioned. Then he had announced, confidentially, that in the evening he would resign. The Permanent Secretary had nodded but said nothing.

  ‘What a strange, cold fish he is,’ Colin Senter said to himself after Tancred had rung off. Then he joined the others in the Private Office where they speculated on who might be Tancred’s successor. Senter wanted Peregrine McClaren – which was met by a giggle from two of the women.

  In the bedroom of his flat Tancred packed a large suitcase, placed two fifty-pound notes on the kitchen table with a note to his cleaner who came three mornings a week, saying he was going away and did not know when he’d be back. ‘My solicitor, Mr Burrows, will send you your wages when the present £100 runs out. Please keep coming in for an hour a week.’

  Locking the front door behind him and carrying his suitcase, he took a bus over Battersea Bridge. On the far side of Clapham Common he walked down a small side street until he came to a mews. At a garage halfway down the mews he unlocked the roll-down door, loaded the suitcase into the back of a Jaguar and, after locking the door of the garage, drove away. On the ring road round the south of London he made slow progress amid the heavy traffic until he reached the M20, when he drove fast in the direction of the coast. He stopped once for petrol and coffee, and made a lengthy telephone call from a call box. It was eight o’clock when he passed through the barriers to the Tunnel at Folkestone, paid for the ticket with cash and drove on to the train to begin the short journey under the Channel. He had waved his maroon European Community passport from the car window. It had not been examined.

  From Calais he headed south, skirting Paris and driving in silence for many hours down the often empty motorways of northern and central France. He stopped once more for coffee and to make another telephone call, but otherwise he kept going until it was nearly dawn. It was in the half-light that he eventually left the motor-way at Valence and drove on to the narrower side roads. After another hour he swung into a lane, passing through a village and at a fork turned left up an even narrower lane. Seven kilometres from the village he came to the courtyard of a farmhouse surrounded by farm buildings. By now the sun was fully up.

  As the car drew up, the door of the house opened and a tall woman with short grey hair stood in the doorway. Tancred lowered the driver’s window. ‘You’ve made good time,’ she said.

  For answer he pointed to the barn beside the house, and the woman went back in and returned with a bunch of keys. She unlocked the door of the barn and disappeared inside. A moment later she backed a small Chevrolet into the courtyard and eased it into a lean-to shed, while Tancred drove the Jaguar into the barn. When he appeared with his suitcase the woman locked the barn door behind him. He put his arm round her shoulders as they walked side by side to the house.

  ‘Was there anyone about when you came through the village?’ she asked.

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘They may have seen you, from behind their curtains.’

  She led him down a stone-flagged hall into a large kitchen. From the stove she brought a tall brown pot of steaming coffee to the table on which were a long, thin baguette, butter and a pot of cherry jam. Tancred sat and watched as from the dresser she produced two mugs and from a cupboard a bottle of cognac. She poured the coffee and added brandy. ‘You look exhausted,’ she said.

  He nodded and sipped the coffee. ‘It’s a long drive.’

  ‘How long will you be staying?’

  ‘For some time,’ he said.

  ‘You must get to bed. Tonight we can talk.’

  When they had finished the coffee and he had eaten some of the bread and jam, they went upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Tancred put his bag on the bed. ‘Hot water?’ she asked, drawing the curtains against the morning light.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Later. Now I must sleep.’

  She came to the room after an hour and looked at the sleeping figure. She closed the door and went silently downstairs.

  Forty-eight hours after Tancred’s arrival, during which he had never left the house, another car, an Alfa-Romeo bearing Monaco registration plates, drew up in the courtyard. The woman, who had obviously been expecting it, came from the house and pointed to the lean-to beside the barn. The driver of the Alfa-Romeo duly drove into the shed, parking beside the Chevrolet. The woman threw an old horse blanket over the back of the Alfa-Romeo, hiding the rear registration plate.

  When the driver got out she kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Welcome,’ she said.

  Harry Cheung took an overnight bag and a briefcase from the car.

  ‘How long will you be staying?’ she asked.

  ‘One night. I have to be at Nice airport tomorrow evening. But I’ll be back. How is he?’

  ‘Very well, very relaxed.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Inside. He hasn’t left the house since he came. He’s expecting you. He says you have much to discuss.’

  Harry nodded and followed her into the house.

  In the weeks that followed, Tancred never left the farmhouse except in the hours of darkness when sometimes he took a stroll in the meadows. Four weeks after his first visit, Harry Cheung returned. This time he stayed three days.

  On the night before the publication of the diary in the Sunday News, some three nights before Tancred left London, two other persons had taken the route under the Channel.

  Oscar Sleaven and his wife Ethel had been driven to Folkestone, crossed by the Tunnel and arrived very late at an apartment in the boulevard Suchet in Paris. Next morning, when the Sunday News was on sale in the streets of London and was being delivered to the breakfast tables of its readers who then read the extracts from the Richmond diaries, Oscar and Ethel Sleaven left Paris on the early morning Concorde flight to New York.

  On that same morning the City pages of the Sunday Telegram carried a report that due to ill health Mr Oscar Sleaven had resigned as Chairman of Sleaven Industries and was having to seek urgent medical treatment abroad.

  At eleven o’clock, also on that morning, from his flat in Portland Place, which was conveniently situated on the floor above the head office of Sleaven Industries, Sebastian Sleaven, Oscar’s younger brother and solicitor, issued a statement that was sent to all the news agencies. It read:

  Mr Oscar Sleaven, who has resigned as Chairman of Sleaven Industries owing to ill health, has been obliged to go abroad to obtain medical treatment. He has, however, been informed of the publication of extracts of a diary said to have been written by t
he late Mr Francis Richmond and printed in today’s edition of the Sunday News. He has not himself read what has been printed but insofar as any suggestion might arise from what was printed that he has been involved in any improper conduct, he will take whatever steps are necessary to refute such a falsehood, so far as his state of health will permit.

  When reporters came to Portland Place, Sebastian Sleaven declined to answer any questions as to the present whereabouts of his brother or when he might be expected to return to the United Kingdom, but confirmed that he was under medical care.

  Later that same day, Oscar and Ethel Sleaven flew from JFK in New York to Rio in Brazil in a private jet.

  As soon as Sebastian Sleaven’s statement had been issued, News Universal’s investigators mounted a furious effort to discover the whereabouts of Oscar Sleaven, but they lost track of him in New York.

  When, three days later, it was announced that Tancred was going to sue the Sunday News, Sebastian Sleaven issued another statement in which the legal action that the former Minister was taking against News Universal was noted and it was repeated emphatically that Mr Oscar Sleaven had never been involved in any form of improper conduct in relation to his dealings with the Minister or the Ministry. It ended by repeating that Mr Oscar Sleaven was presently receiving urgent medical care and was in no condition to comment. Again, Sebastian Sleaven declined to meet reporters or elaborate on the statement. Despite massive efforts by the investigators, lashed on by Digby Price, no trace could be found of Oscar Sleaven’s whereabouts. He had apparently vanished.

  Chapter Five

  In the robing room of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, Mordecai Ledbury tore off his court coat and flung his wig, originally grey but blackened with age, to his clerk, Adams. As usual after a day in court, his linen wing collar and bands were crumpled by sweat. He wrenched them off and Adams held out to him a clean white shirt. As well as being hot, Mordecai was angry. He had not had a good day. He had lost when he thought he should have won. On the other side in the case had been an elderly, rather prim counsel called Hayden Welsh who had a habit, which Mordecai found immensely irritating, of pursing his lips producing a whistling sound whenever he made what he considered a telling point in his argument. Welsh had pursed his lips even tighter and whistled even louder when the judge had given judgement in his favour. As Mordecai flung off his court clothes in the robing room he complained loudly enough for all the other barristers disrobing to hear that his defeat was an infamous miscarriage of justice entirely due to the bias and dislike of him of ‘the judicial buffoon’ who had tried the case, Mr Justice Traynor.

  As everyone at the Bar knew, it was not unusual among the judiciary to dislike Mordecai Ledbury, for he was not known for his deference to the Bench. In court he quarrelled with judges as well as opponents, and the older he became the fiercer were the quarrels. But the dislike of most of the judges was tinged with a healthy measure of respect, for Mordecai Ledbury was a legend. He had been at the business of trials far longer than any living member of the Bench, some before they had even been born – or certainly out of short pants. Mr Justice Traynor, who had so roused Mordecai’s ire, was a blunt north countryman, who had spent his entire career in the north and had only fairly recently come to London on his appointment to the High Court Bench. He still retained all the prejudices of the Yorkshireman about southerners, whom he considered pretentious, condescending and devious. When he had first had the experience of Mordecai Ledbury as counsel in his court earlier in the year, Ledbury’s attitude and aggressive manner had so offended him that he had privately complained about him to a friend, an older and senior judge, John Williams, a Lord Justice in the Court of Appeal.

  Williams, aware of Jack Traynor’s short experience of London counsel, had reminded him of Ledbury’s decades of experience. ‘He has a reputation for quarrelling with the Bench. You should handle him warily, avoid provoking him. It’s not worth the trouble,’ Williams said. ‘Just sit quiet, keep your temper – and remember that you have the last word. It’s you who decides the case.’

  It so happened that in that same week Mr Justice Traynor’s prickly northern sensibilities had also been affronted by another counsel who had been in his court two days earlier. This had been a young silk, Patrick Foxley, of Eton and Oxford, elegant, polished, with a forensic style very different from that of Mordecai Ledbury. Nevertheless he too, with what Jack Traynor considered his ‘airs and graces’, was not the kind of counsel to whom a judge from the north-east of England readily warmed. Again Jack Traynor grumbled to his friend John Williams, complaining that Foxley had been condescending to him.

  Lord Justice John Williams had taken his friend by the arm. ‘You’re being silly, Jack. You’ve an outsize chip on your shoulder and you must get rid of it. Foxley’s manner in court is the same whatever judge he’s addressing, be it you or three of us Lords Justice in the Court of Appeal or even, I’m told, five Lords of Appeal in Ordinary sitting beneath the great tapestry in the Committee Room in the House of Lords. It’s just his manner.’ Foxley was clever, Williams went on. Maybe he knew it rather too well.

  But in Mr Justice Traynor’s opinion, young Mr Foxley was too clever by half. However, his feelings about that young man were nothing compared with his dislike for Ledbury. Nonetheless he had accepted the advice of John Williams and when, on this occasion, Ledbury appeared before him, he had kept control of his tongue and his temper, although inwardly fuming at the disdain with which Mordecai treated him. For Mordecai made no secret of what he thought of the provinces whence Jack Traynor came and which to Mordecai Ledbury were as uncouth as those distant lands overseas that Mordecai still described as ‘the colonies’.

  Jack Traynor was indeed a provincial, a fully-fledged ‘Geordie’, born and bred in the suburbs of Newcastleupon-Tyne in the north-east of England. He had gone to school in that city and attended Newcastle University. When called to the Bar, he had joined the north-east circuit and acquired a large practice across the north of England, especially in criminal trials. At first he was popular with his fellow practitioners, for at convivial circuit dinners he made comical Yorkshire after-dinner speeches and played music-hall songs on the trombone. Like all his fellows, he never disguised his low opinion of anyone who lived south of the Wash, especially Londoners.

  Then, in his late thirties, he had fallen in love. Lois was no more than nineteen years old, which made her twenty-five years younger than he. And she was from London, raised in Feltham near Heathrow with an Indian father. She worked in a couturier’s in Mayfair and had ambitions to be a model. Jack had fallen head-over-heels in love and proceeded to lavish on her a slavish devotion – and his hard-earned Yorkshire money. Soon she was leading him around like a jolly bear on a chain. Somehow he managed to persuade her to wed him and they were eventually married at the Wandsworth Register Office in London. The only witnesses were a man and a woman from the couturier, both of whom kissed Jack enthusiastically when they parted after the ceremony. The honeymoon was to be spent, at Lois’s insistence, in an hotel in Ischia off the coast of Italy near Naples, which had a terme with seaweed and mud baths and special beauty treatments. Jack Traynor was looking forward to a very jolly ten days with his very pretty bride.

  When they arrived at the hotel, Lois’s suitcase was missing. She made a scene in front of the concierge and the manager, and refused to go down to dinner but went straight to bed. Jack excused this as due to overexcitement and exhaustion on top of her irritation at the loss of her luggage, and he went alone to the dining room where he dined well and drank several glasses of cognac. When he came up to their room it was in darkness. He stood by her bed. She was asleep. He called her name but there was no response. He undressed in the dark and slipped into the other bed.

  When he woke she was sitting on the balcony overlooking the bay, sipping orange juice. He came to her and put his arms round her and laid his cheek against hers.

  She tilted her head. ‘I’ve got the curse,’ she sai
d. ‘I have a headache.’ She complained she’d been kept awake by his snoring.

  The suitcase turned up during the morning and she went to the terme, while Jack swam and watched the topless women by the pool. Her head was no better in the evening, although she consented to stroll with him around the small town. They dined together but she ate and spoke little. It’s a migraine, she said and soon she went to bed. Jack stayed, drinking brandy. In the morning when he woke she was again sitting on the balcony and again complained that she had not slept, kept awake by his snoring. He persuaded her to come in a taxi to La Mortella, the garden created by William Walton whose music Jack admired, a magic forest of flowering shrubs and fountains, pierced by ribbons of paths cut from the side of a hill that had been a quarry. Lois said the walking tired her and sat on a bench drinking lemonade while he explored the garden. Her head, she said, was still troubling her. They did, however, dine together again but she left him as soon as he ordered coffee. Once again he drank brandy and undressed in the dark room. The next morning she told him she was going to spend all day having aerobic therapy and mud baths in the hope that this would help her migraine. She suggested he should explore the main town on the island. She set off down the corridor in her robe, and he caught a bus and wandered around looking at the sights. It was early evening when he got back to the hotel. She wasn’t in their room; nor were her clothes. When he descended to the hall to enquire for her, the concierge said that she had departed in a taxi soon after he’d caught the bus. The man suggested he call the terminal where the ferries left from the harbour. Why? Jack asked. The concierge shrugged his shoulders and said the lady had had a suitcase with her. A little later he told him that a lady answering to her description had sailed on the noon ferry to Naples.