‘Can I help you?’ The older woman’s voice was husky, as though tears had already been shed.
‘Is Miles Cowieson in?’ I asked her.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘We don’t know. He decided to take a break. We think that he’s abroad but we don’t know where to reach him.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard . . . His father . . .’
The younger woman sniffed loudly, to let it be known that she too was desolated.
‘I had heard,’ I said. ‘In the absence of Mr Cowieson Junior, who is in charge here?’
The older woman looked uncertain. ‘Well . . . I suppose . . . The office manager. We haven’t had much time to make arrangements,’ she added, apparently in explanation.
‘Could I see the office manager, please? Say that it’s Mr Kitts, on behalf of Agrotechnics.’
‘One moment please.’ She disappeared through one of the two doors which flanked the counter and re-emerged seconds later, holding the door for me.
There had never been an office manager at Cowieson’s in the past. I was not altogether surprised when Beatrice Payne got up from behind a littered desk and came to meet me. A second desk which had been squeezed into the little office was starkly bare.
The receptionist closed the door behind me.
Beatrice Payne’s eyes were moist, her lips were trembling and she was clearly in an emotional state. A visitor’s chair had found a place in the crowded office but she did not invite me to sit down. As a result, we were forced to stand intimately close together. I was uncomfortably aware of her rather strong floral perfume. In all other respects she seemed to have changed her ways. She was wearing a smart business suit in navy with a sharply pressed white blouse and she had combed her fair hair from a frizz into tidy and natural-looking curls. The change into more formal office attire should have had a neutering effect but the sensuality of her body and body language seemed rather to be enhanced. Even my elderly hormones turned over in their sleep.
‘Oh Mr . . .’ She paused and embarrassment was added to her other distress. Evidently she had forgotten my name already. She took the easy way out. ‘Oh, Uncle Henry! It’s awful!’
‘Death usually is pretty awful,’ I said.
She waved a vague hand. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, I know it’s awful, Mr Cowieson being dead and the police all over the place asking questions and saying that they aren’t finished with us yet but not saying why. And there was a reporter here earlier, hinting at something mysterious, and a man who wanted money for an unpaid account that I can’t find, and anyway I’m not empowered to write cheques yet. But Mr Miles is away, I don’t think he even knows about his dad, and everything’s upside down.’
‘You’d better tell me about it,’ I said.
She paused for a moment and then rushed on, evidently deciding that either as a director of Agrotechnics or as an honorary uncle I might be able to help. ‘I was engaged as office manager. But you knew that. It was mostly at . . . at Mr Miles Cowieson’s urging, but I think that Mr Maurice could see that it was high time things were taken in hand. They’d been trying to do everything between them, selling and bookkeeping and management and everything, with only a typist in the office and a girl to make the tea and an occasional salesman who never lasted long, and getting into a right old guddle, which didn’t leave them much time for selling anything and made it difficult for either of them to get away for a holiday.’
She paused and took a deep breath. ‘So Miles said that he’d take the opportunity for a break and go off for a few days or maybe a week and his father would keep me straight and he’d come back and keep me even straighter — that’s what he said — but the police met me on the doorstep this morning — my first day! — and told me that Mr Maurice was killed in a car smash yesterday. Those two out there aren’t any help, they just want to see me make a fool of myself. And I don’t know what to do.’
A suspicion in my mind grew into a certainty. Whether or not Miles Cowieson was Bea’s lover and the father of her child, he was certainly the friend who had recommended her for the post. Probably his father had been digging in his heels and Miles had been allowing time for the idea to sink in. But my suggestion that existing staff would be kept on if Agrotechnics took over the firm had triggered some hurried activity. If Miles and Bea were to count on working in cosy proximity, she would have to be in post before Agrotechnics took command.
I opened my hands in what was intended to be a vaguely supportive but non-committal gesture. Evidently she took it for an invitation to a comforting hug, because she swayed forward and leaned against me so that I was enveloped in her floral perfume. Other nationalities may hug comparative strangers at the drop of a hat but we Brits pride ourselves on a certain reserve. Besides, I was past the age at which I could get more than nostalgic pleasure from physical contact with a young woman. I could hardly push her away but I was damned if I was going to hug her. I administered a sympathetic pat on the back but when I tried to back away I found that I could only take half a pace before my back was against the partition and Miss Payne was still plastered against my front.
‘Suppose we sit down and you can tell me what the problems are,’ I suggested.
She took me up on the second part of my suggestion but not, unfortunately, the first. ‘The phone’s been going non-stop,’ she said. Her brow wrinkled as she realized that it had not rung since I came in. ‘It’ll probably start again in a minute.’
‘Then I suggest that you pick it up and tell the lady on the counter that you aren’t taking any more calls while I’m here and that she’s to get a number and you’ll call whoever it is back.’
She produced the shadow of a relieved smile and did as I suggested. While she was dealing, surprisingly firmly, with the phone, I took the opportunity to step sideways and take a seat in the chair behind the vacant desk. I feared for a moment that, having adopted me as a father figure, she was going to sit on my knee, but she slammed down the phone and almost threw herself into the other desk chair.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘Cough it up.’
The vulgar expression seemed to hit the right down-to-earth note. She set off again more calmly. ‘Mostly, it’s been farmers wanting to know the prices of things I’ve never heard of or wanting to be advised what we’d recommend for doing a certain job. I’ve a list . . .’ She picked up a sheet of typing paper and frowned at it. ‘I understand the paperwork all right, though it could be done much more effectively. I’ve even heard of the things they . . . we sell. I’ve found a price list and I think I can identify most of the things which are referred to by numbers, but I don’t know if the list’s up to date and I cannot answer technical questions. I could learn, but I’m not being given the chance.’
‘Every enquiry must be followed up,’ I said. ‘No question about that. Is there nobody else here who can help?’
‘Not a soul. There’s a yardman who just keeps things clean and orderly, a storeman who knows what we’ve got but not what it’s supposed to do and a mechanic who’s off sick.’
‘Then let’s get you some help,’ I said. ‘Get me an outside line. I want to speak to the Agrotechnics factory.’
Facing up to tasks which were well within her competence had a further calming effect. She placed the call for me and transferred the connection to the phone by my hand. The girl on the factory switchboard knew me for a board member, so I was soon speaking with Cyril Jacks, the factory manager. ‘We have a problem at Cowieson’s,’ I said.
‘So what else is new?’ he asked glumly.
‘Not just the settlement of outstanding accounts. This is a newer and bigger problem,’ I told him. ‘Had you heard that Maurice Cowieson was killed in a car smash yesterday?’
We lost a minute or two while he expressed shock and asked for details which I furnished very sparingly. When I felt that the discussion could decently move onward, I said, ‘It’s even more
of a problem than that. Miles Cowieson has gone off on holiday. Nobody seems to know where and I don’t suppose that he even knows about his father’s death yet. There’s a brand new office manager here and she doesn’t know how to answer the enquiries that are coming in. Can you give her a name or names that she can contact for technical or financial information, so that she can call the enquirer back?’
He considered for a very few seconds. ‘I can do better than that,’ he said. (I breathed a sigh of relief. It was what I had hoped he would say.) ‘It won’t help anybody if Cowieson’s gets into an even bigger fankle. I’ll send my assistant over right away. He can hold her hand for a few days. Then, when she’s getting the hang of it and if Miles isn’t back by then, he can leave her with a price list.’
‘She has a price list,’ I said, looking at the other desk.
‘Well, tell her that the prices are slightly inflated and she can give each farmer ten per cent off as a special favour, in confidence. Every farmer loves to think that he’s driving a hard bargain and getting a discount that nobody else is getting. I rather suspect that old Maurice has been keeping the discount for himself, so that potential clients simply transferred their enquiries to other outlets. We’ve sometimes been getting orders for machinery to be delivered in this area but coming from other agents.’
‘Small wonder that the firm’s in difficulties.’
‘Very small indeed. We’re only a couple of miles away, so my man will be with you in ten minutes. You remember Colin Weir?’
‘I remember him very well,’ I said. I had been thinking of Colin as a possible manager for Cowieson’s if Agrotechnics had to take over.
I told Miss Payne that help was on the way and she looked at me as though my next trick would be to feed the five thousand.
It seemed to be a good time for frankness. ‘I’m surprised that they took on an office manager at this time,’ I said. ‘Not that it isn’t needed; it’s long overdue. But did anyone explain to you that there are certain financial hurdles ahead?’
Before I had finished speaking she was nodding energetically. ‘Mr Miles was very frank about that,’ she said. ‘He explained that they could only make it a temporary appointment for the moment but his father had agreed at last to let him pull the firm out of the mire and he was sure that he could do it, given some fresh capital. Between you and me, Uncle Henry — you don’t mind me calling you Uncle Henry?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said.
‘That’s all right then. I’m so used to hearing Elizabeth call you that, and Duncan as well but not to your face, that I can’t help it. I think that Miles is trying to raise the capital now. He put it about that he was going for a holiday, but I think that that’s where he’s gone. He let something slip.’
‘He may not get anywhere,’ I pointed out. ‘But if you and Colin can shift enough of the stock to settle a substantial part of the debt, the whole situation might change.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ she breathed. ‘I have a lot of hopes riding on this job. I took it on because I needed any job, even a temporary one, because it’s much easier to get a job when you’ve already got one or just been made redundant. But I must admit that I was really sold by being offered the granny-flat in the house. A place of my own with a nice garden — at least, it will be nice when they’ve finished replacing the lead pipes and put it back together again.’ Her face was lit by an inner radiance and the beauty that I had once suspected burst out. ‘I’ll show it to you, some time,’ she said, ‘when I have it looking right.’
‘I’ll look forward to that,’ I said.
*
Colin Weir, a thin young man with a wispy beard but a firm grasp of agricultural technology and economics, turned up within the promised ten minutes and after a little verbal sparring the two seemed to arrive at a cool understanding. I decided that I could safely leave them alone to work out a modus vivendi without any fear of battle breaking out.
That left me free to resume my journey to Edinburgh. Rather than risk the occasional congestion in the middle of the old town of Newton Lauder, Ronnie turned south for a mile or two until we came out on the main road. While we headed north again, I turned the situation over and over in my mind. Every effort to simplify it seemed only to add further complications. There were too many unknowns in the equations. Would Miles Cowieson find a source of money? Would he be as amenable to a friendly takeover as he had once suggested? Cowieson’s must be losing money and goodwill hand over fist, but would a hostile takeover be in their best interests? And how would it best be accomplished? How were any other creditors affected? In the end, I decided that my immediate task was clear. I had to make sure that liquidity was available so that Elizabeth could meet her obligations. After that, each new fact would have to be dealt with as it emerged.
Having arrived at that much of a decision I was free to enjoy the beauty of the day but, unfortunately, the expected low had arrived and the fine spell had ended. Grey cloud had drawn across the sky. The heather-clad hills had turned a dirty grey. There was just enough of a drizzle to make smears on the windscreen but not enough to wash them away. Other vehicles managed to throw up a thin mush of mud and leftover rubber. Heavily laden artics pulled a trail of opaque mist behind them. Ronnie’s patience and the washer-bottles were both exhausted by the time that we reached Gordon’s office.
The second advantage of having a chauffeur (after impressing potential sources of finance) is that you have no need to park the car and then walk back in the rain from the remoter corners of the city. The third is that you need not worry about casual theft or vandalism. I gave Ronnie some money for a car wash and lunch and told him to go and find somewhere where he could keep an eye on the car while he ate and then sit in it. I would use my mobile to call him on the car phone when I needed him. Ronnie accepted these instructions placidly and I recalled that he had a sister in nearby Gogarburn who would no doubt be good for a free meal.
Gordon had at one time been my assistant but he was too much of a go-getter to remain in banking, where promotion is slow and uncertain. He had left to become a partner in an accountancy firm which had grown large under his nurturing, but not too large to be run efficiently and with due regard to every client’s interests. Gordon himself was now far too senior to dabble with clients’ accounts. Instead, he was a financial and taxation adviser of some standing as well as being a director of several companies. He had been known to say that his success was due in part to the early training which he had had at my hands. I was never sure whether he was sincere or ironic, but preferred to assume the former.
The firm had swallowed a large part of one of the tall, mostly Victorian crescents with which Edinburgh abounds and Gordon had retained for his own office one of the former drawing rooms, redecorated but otherwise unaltered, complete with the original plaster cornices and furnished in period except for the inevitable computer and telephones. It must have been one of the most comfortable and impressive private offices in Scotland.
Although I had made an appointment, Gordon showed a sign of surprise as he greeted me, evinced by a minute raising of one eyebrow. (Later, when I recalled that Ronnie had tried to hide a smile when I returned to the car, I realized that Bea Payne’s floral perfume was clinging to me and I found a trace of her face powder on my lapel. To what conclusion they had leaped I could only guess, but I was not wholly displeased. At my age, reputation has to make a poor substitute for actuality.) Gordon ignored the big desk and led me to a group of deep chairs around a low marble-topped table. A secretary brought coffee. When we were alone, Gordon said, ‘Now, Henry. What’s the panic?’
‘Panics,’ I said. ‘Plural. Did you know that Maurice Cowieson is dead? Found in his car at the bottom of a steep embankment. Found by me, incidentally.’
His eyebrows shot up and the habitual smile was wiped away. ‘No, I hadn’t heard. There was something on the radio this morning but it didn’t give an identity. The usual formula — ‘until next of kin have been in
formed’’.
‘Therein lies the rub. Next of kin — believed to be Miles — has gone off abroad, officially on holiday but probably chasing after fresh finance, and can’t be contacted. There’s a new office manager who only started this morning. Old Maurice was supposed to be inducting her, but he’s not much help now — for want of a spirit guide. I’ve borrowed Cyril Jacks’s assistant for a few days. He and the office manager can run the place between them. I’ll keep an eye on the pair of them. By the time Cyril has to have the boy back, Miles may have returned with fresh money and everything in the garden will be lovely again. Or, of course, not.’
Gordon rubbed his chin. ‘Or, as you say, not. Until then, it seems to me that you’ve done all that’s possible. We’ll have to wait. Play it off the cuff. Keep me posted.’
‘There are other factors,’ I said. ‘There seems to be at least one other creditor.’
‘That could be his bad luck. After all, we do have a floating charge.’
‘Half a dozen others may think they’re covered too,’ I pointed out.
Gordon’s nostrils flared. ‘Cowieson’s couldn’t give another floating charge. That would be impossible.’
‘But I can imagine several ways by which a gullible creditor could be tricked into thinking that he’d got some form of guarantee. In my opinion — feel free to disagree — old Maurice had just the right mixture of cunning and stupidity for that sort of double-dealing.’
‘I wish I could disagree,’ Gordon said, ‘but I can’t. Luckily for us, no guarantee would outweigh our floating charge. I checked it myself and then went along with our solicitor to see it registered in the Companies Register. And a limited company is a separate legal persona from its members and is unaffected by the death of its directors.’
‘Unaffected legally,’ I said. ‘But liable to be very much affected all the same. Maurice was chairman and managing director and just about everything else. He managed to retain a majority of the shares in his own hands and had no intention of ever being outvoted — that, I suspect, is why he didn’t find much-needed capital by way of a share issue. His son, Miles, is also a director but the old man kept him on a very tight rein. The only other director is a female, some sort of cousin I think, who lives in Troon. She supported Maurice all along the line.’
Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12) Page 9