Treasure preserved, p.20
Treasure Preserved, page 20
Chapter Seventeen
The Colston road was a roundabout way back to Tophaven. It was a quiet route, though, and he’d needed time to think.
He recognized the doctor’s Range-Rover. It pulled out from the Trings’ drive just ahead of him as he drove through the village. It was shortly before ten o’clock: not too late for a call. He was genuinely concerned about the Canon.
‘Come in, Mark.’
She was wearing a white, fisherman’s knit sweater, sleeves pushed back, and a pleated tartan skirt. Her eyes had met his quite steadily. She touched his sleeve lightly as he passed her.
‘Saw the doctor’s car. Shan’t stop. How’s Algy?’
She put a finger to her lips, then pointed upstairs. She motioned him towards the drawing-room.
‘Not too good. I’m trying to get him to sleep. Do sit down. Scotch, isn’t it?’
‘Not if you’re not.’
‘But I am. So it’s two Scotches.’ She went to the drinks tray. ‘He may have had a tiny coronary when he was with you. There’s nothing on the ECGs. Doctor’s done two, but he doesn’t seem satisfied.’
‘Algy’s had heart attacks before?’
‘Mmm. We’ve yards of ECGs for comparison. He won’t have an operation. Age. Can’t blame him. Doctor wants him to stay quiet for two days. More tests tomorrow. I suppose you think I’m every kind of bitch,’ she added without pausing. She looked up calmly. ‘I’ve put ice in. Soda? Say when.’
‘I never make untutored judgements on private lives. Your husband is devoted to you. Denis Pitty tells me he is too. Must make life difficult.’
‘Denis told me you went to see him.’ She handed him the glass and sat beside him on the other end of the sofa. There was a log fire burning in front of them: real logs. ‘We’ll marry, of course. Eventually. At least I think so. It isn’t just a casual affair. And I didn’t break up his marriage. That was over years ago.’
‘But you love him?’
She shrugged, then said slowly, ‘That’s a very strong emotion. I’m not sure I’m capable of it. Not any more. I like to be needed. For the moment, Algy needs me.’
‘And Denis? Isn’t he too successful …’
‘To need a steadying influence? I don’t think so. He’s inclined to over-reach himself. The business expansion, it isn’t really justified. Not yet.’
‘The Sandy Lane business should help balance the books.’
‘The fees on that aren’t very big,’ she said carefully.
‘But he does own half the Rackburn & Claremont.’
‘He told you?’
‘No, the owner of the other half did.’ He smiled. ‘I wonder if it’s going to work?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Denis — er — couldn’t show me Algy’s lease on the Round House. I think it stipulates it reverts to the leaseholder in certain circumstances. At a guess — if the place has remained an educational establishment for young ladies. Am I right?’
She made no answer.
‘Which means I am, or as near as no matter. We’ll know on Monday, anyway. Seawell’s lawyers will be told to demand a copy, or, as I suspect, to read the one they’ve got.’
‘They have one.’
‘Professional negligence.’
‘Oversights like that are more common in solicitors’ offices than anyone would credit. You can almost bank on them in some circumstances. There’s nothing in the freehold documents. Nothing to alert anyone.’
‘And nobody’s bothered to read the lease. Except you, when you worked at Ribert and Glens perhaps.’
‘It was after I’d promised to marry Algy. It was a bonus, not an incentive.’
‘But you didn’t tell Algy?’
‘Let’s say I wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘And not a disappointment if you couldn’t prove Marshford’s terms had been met.’
‘There’s no real doubt. Even in the War it was a women’s school of a sort.’
‘I agree the other half of the scheme must have seemed more problematical.’ He was referring to Seawell buying the nearly valueless lease from the insurance company.
‘I’m not party to that,’ she retorted promptly.
‘A passive observer, perhaps.’ He paused. ‘So, someone told Denis Pitty about the reversion clause. Algy wasn’t aware of it. Ribert and Glens had ignored it. On a long shot, Pitty bought the insurance company for a song. It was already a shell. The owners were probably delighted to get rid of it. No doubt he waved a copy of Algy’s lease at them. So they at least knew the Round House lease was pretty nearly worthless.’
‘I believe he paid a fair price,’ said Cynthia, smoothing a strand of hair from her forehead.
‘And sold just under half to a Swiss company owned by the head of Seawell, along with a proposition.’
She shrugged. ‘That Seawell should buy the Round House freehold from the Rackburn & Claremont, which they very much wanted to do.’
‘Except the head of Seawell had no idea their freehold had such a short life.’
‘All he or his lawyers had to do was read our lease.’
‘I agree. A case of buyer beware. You could have blown the whistle yourself any time, of course …’
‘Except I had no formal knowledge …’
‘Nor legal responsibility. I see that. It was a long shot for Pitty. The sale to Seawell had to happen before Christmas. As soon as that lease expires you or the Canon have to claim ownership of the freehold. Meantime, you had to keep the college going at all costs.’
‘There’s no dishonesty involved,’ she stated quietly.
‘I told you, I’m not making judgements. The bare fact is Seawell knew nothing about the lease reversion, but they would have if their purchase had been held up another six weeks. Even when planning permission came through, it’s possible Seawell might have been slow about buying the buildings. And Pitty could hardly press any harder than he had been without raising suspicions.
‘It was Lady Brasset’s intervention that forced the issue. Seawell bought the Round House so fast yesterday, I doubt their lawyers had time to go over all the documents, even if they’d intended to. They probably regarded a lease with six weeks to run as hardly worth a glance. Am I boring you?’
She smiled, kicked off her shoes, and drew her legs under her. ‘Not at all. I can’t wait for the happy ending.’
‘I’ll bet you can’t. On Monday afternoon Pitty will tell the Seawell lawyers Algy will be claiming title to the freehold on the Round House on Christmas Day. I assume he’s delaying till the afternoon to make sure the money already paid to the Rackburn & Claremont is properly dispersed to wherever it has to go.’
‘Perhaps. If Seawell want to buy our interest they can.’
‘You mean there’s no harm in the legal balloon going up on Monday. Or are you hoping there won’t be a fuss?’
‘Who’s going to make a fuss? Hardly your sheikh. He owns half the company that bought the freehold yesterday. Now he’ll have to authorize buying it again.
It’s not likely he’ll sue his lawyers for negligence. They’ll be insured for that, of course. But he’s made himself terribly vulnerable, don’t you think?’ She stared at Treasure earnestly, then she broke into a smile.
‘I think if Pitty proves your claim …’
‘He will.’
‘Then it may be appropriate for the Rackburn & Claremont to make more than a token repayment to Seawell. You see, I’m not sure what view the Law Society will take of his part in this.’
‘As a lawyer? So far he’s had none.’
‘All right. Maybe he’ll get away with it. Sheikh Ali is subject to sterner sanctions if the story gets out.’
Ali was to pay dearly for Treasure’s recommendation about his salary increase.
She shook her head. ‘The insurance company had a perfect right to sell that freehold. They owned it till Christmas. Seawell made the offer in the first place.’
‘That’s the ingenuous view, yes.’ Treasure paused. ‘You realize it’s still possible you’ll find yourself owning a listed ancient monument?’
‘Thanks to poor Louella?’
‘On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for poor Louella … How long had you known she was hunting for ways to get the Round House protected?’
‘Not till Thursday evening. She said it was to be her Christmas present to me.’
‘She didn’t know about the lease reversion?’
‘Hardly. She thought if she got the building listed it would keep it out of the Sandy Lane development. Also that the sweet little insurance company would give us a nice long new lease at a nice low rent because nobody else would want the place. She had it all worked out.’
‘And she hadn’t mentioned any of it to you?’
‘Louella was a loner when it came to confounding the bureaucrats.’
‘I believe she thought the college was important to you … er …’
‘Financially?’ She finished the sentence for him without embarrassment. ‘In other circumstances she could have been right. We’re pretty hard up, and it happens Algy’s never made any money.’
‘So if it weren’t for Denis Pitty …’
‘Denis and the reversion, I might have been glad to go on running the school. God, what a prospect.’ She shuddered. ‘Like to get us another drink?’ She gave him her glass. Her hand lingered on his a fraction longer than necessary. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t worry. I still seem to have a modicum of sex appeal. It’s just that … well, after my first husband died …’
‘While still quite young, I understand.’ He fetched the drinks.
‘Suicide,’ she said without emotion. ‘Threw himself under a train while the balance of his mind was disturbed. But not by me.’ She swallowed more of the new drink than was either decorous or judicious.
‘I’m sure not.’
‘I wasn’t at the time. Shatters one’s confidence a thing like that. There was no reason, you see. So —’ she sighed — ‘we lived in the Midlands. I came here to recuperate. Got a job. Met Algy. He was marvellous. So understanding, and he needed me. We needed each other. It made all the difference at the time. But it wasn’t the panacea, our marriage. As you saw when you … when you dropped in on Denis and me this afternoon. I’m truly sorry about that.’
‘None of my business. And I must go.’
‘Please don’t.’ This time she purposely put a hand on his and left it there for several seconds, drawing it back slowly. ‘I wanted you for a friend, and I spoiled it.’ She dropped her gaze from his, stared into her drink, and then drank the rest of it. Treasure had barely touched his second whisky. ‘My first husband, then this charade with Algy and … and I wish I were more certain about Denis. Life hasn’t been easy.’ She looked up again. This time there were tears welling in her eyes. ‘What I most fear, I suppose, is loneliness, and … and rejection.’
The performance was completely out of character. It was even less convincing than one of Tracy’s intendedly overplayed caricatures.
‘You’ll miss Lady Brasset, I expect.’
‘Louella? Yes.’ The sharpened tone in the voice made it clear Treasure had not come up with the hoped-for response. ‘We weren’t that close. She was older.’
‘But she must have had your interests very much at heart.’
‘A dear person. Yes.’
‘Did she show you the letter she copied in the library?’
Treasure’s obsession with fact, and his disinclination to enter into the emotional spirit of things was clearly irksome to the attractive woman on the other end of the sofa.
‘What letter?’
‘That’s a good question. Lady Brasset described it to me in some detail. I haven’t put my hand on the original yet, in the library where it ought to be. As for this copy, it’s got to be somewhere. She didn’t show it to you?’
‘She may have.’ The tone was now more calculating than irritated.
‘You mean you don’t remember?’
‘She was very excited when she came to see me. It was late Thursday afternoon. I was about to leave. She had a great bundle of papers. She was full of what she’d been up to. Surprise, surprise, and all that.’
‘While the idea of having the Round House protected was not the sort of surprise you needed. Mark you, the news spurred Seawell into action. So it suited Denis.’
She shrugged, but made no comment.
‘Lady Brasset didn’t leave any part of that bundle of papers with you? Some intentionally, some by mistake?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She took a lot of photocopies at the library, most of them, it seems, to mislead Sims. He told me as much. He was quite philosophical about it. Understood she wanted to keep everything dark until the last minute.’
‘There were photocopies, yes. She dropped some of them in the waste basket.’
‘Nothing else?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes, I remember now. A sheet of paper in handwriting. Might have been a copy of a letter. Didn’t look like it.’
‘It wasn’t her prize exhibit?’
‘Oh God, it might have been. Does it matter? And do get me a drink.’
He got up and took her glass. ‘And did she leave this piece of paper with you? On your desk perhaps? By mistake? Didn’t she ring you from my office when your students were out to lunch — or working from headphones? Didn’t you say you didn’t think you had any such paper, but you’d have a look? And didn’t you find it?’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
His questions had been intelligent invention. The call must have been made. Lady Brasset had effectively said so to Jacks. Still, it had been a long shot.
‘If you knew all about the wretched letter, or whatever it was, why didn’t you say so in the first place? It wasn’t my fault Louella left it behind.’
Treasure wondered about that: aloud he said, ‘It was thoroughly inconvenient for Lady Brasset not to have had it with her in London. Made the difference between strangers having to take her word it existed, and reading it for themselves. Naturally, we believed her.’ He handed Cynthia her glass. ‘It was mostly because of what she said was in the letter I rang Sheikh Mhad Alid. That was what set Seawell moving in such a hurry. But I don’t believe the people at the DoE were so impressed that Exhibit A was missing.’
‘You know that?’ she asked, too searchingly.
‘Lady Brasset implied it. That letter is pretty crucial …’
‘To the Round House being listed?’
‘Mmm. More, now Marshford’s own copy has gone missing. There’s the suggestion, of course, she invented the whole thing. Would you credit that?’
‘Entirely. Louella was ruthless. Unscrupulous in what she considered a good cause.’
‘You think she composed the letter she left with you?’
Again she hesitated. ‘If it was a letter. I didn’t read it.’
‘And she didn’t read it aloud to you?’
‘I told you, she was excited. She came bursting in with this garbled story about the two architects. What she’d found in the Marshford Papers. She was quoting from things. Yes, probably letters.’
‘Did you realize what her day in London might start? That she could be scuppering the Sandy Lane project entirely?’
‘Certainly not. One is so used to Louella’s causes. Many came to nothing. This one sounded specially futile. Until later.’
‘You didn’t tell her right away protecting the Round House would do you and Algy out of a small fortune?’
‘How could I without …’
‘Without doing you and Denis out of another small fortune? Without blowing his little scheme, though, as you say, you aren’t party to that. Just a sort of delayed beneficiary.’
‘You can be very hurtful when you choose, and quite unjustifiably smug. You and your business friends have just as much interest in seeing the Sandy Lane scheme through as we have.’
‘All three of you. True, though it seems my business friends are likely to pay twice for the privilege. Tell me, when did you deliver Lady Brasset’s copy letter to her cottage?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. I think you knew exactly how important it was to her case. Did she leave it on your desk by mistake, or did you arrange that it got left behind? Of course you were too astute to destroy it right away. When she rang from London the first time, I believe she was certain she’d left it with you. That’s why on balance, and on advice later in the afternoon, you decided to give it back to her. Or you tried to.’
‘I tell you, I didn’t know it was a letter.’ She was now sitting bolt upright. There was more than anger in her voice: it was fear she was permeating. ‘I realized it was the paper she was looking for.’
‘So you stuffed it into an envelope.’
‘I was busy.’
‘After she called the first time.’
‘Yes.’
‘And dropped it in to the cottage …’
‘Yes. Uh!’ Her teeth dug into her bottom lip.
‘At around four-thirty on Friday afternoon. Meaning to demonstrate to Lady Brasset how conscientious you’d been, thinking she might return on the early train. So you were at the cottage after all?’
‘I’d forgotten. I … I came up to make Algy some tea, but he’d gone out. I slipped the envelope in on the way back.’
‘You went in the cottage?’
‘No,’ she almost whispered. ‘And I didn’t smell gas.’
‘But Lady Brasset rang again later, about measurements. And then it was obvious she wasn’t coming back early. And that’s when you had second thoughts — or someone put second thoughts in your mind. What if Marshford’s letter — the original — had disappeared? If that happened, had you done something unspeakably stupid? Preserved the only copy? So did you then go back to the cottage …’
‘No, I didn’t. I … I …’
‘You’ve forgotten again. Someone saw you driving out of the gate …’
‘Not Jacks, he’d …’
‘Gone? That’s right. He saw you the first time. Was he paid five hundred pounds later to forget it?’
Her jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
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