‘Very droll. I’m here on business. Some of us have to keep the economy turning. Have another gin, and thanks for the information. See you soon.’

  But he had to take some more banter from the other end before he was allowed off the line.

  He had avoided reporting Louella’s death, even to an old friend. It was unlikely Arkworthy had known her: it would be in the papers next day. He smiled to himself about one thing. The night before he had instinctively noted the name of the gas cooker. It was not a brand made by Harold Arkworthy’s companies.

  ‘How much do I owe for the calls?’ He had come out of the office.

  ‘On the house,’ said Tracy. ‘I’m in charge, ’Morning, ladies. Lunch isn’t quite ready yet,’ she called to two very aged crones who were making slow progress from the residents’ lounge towards the dining-room. ‘Though it’ll probably be over by the time they get there. If they get there,’ she added in an undertone. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Twelve-thirty, and I’m not here for lunch,’ Treasure answered. ‘Are those ladies guests?’

  ‘Surprising as it may seem, yes. This is a hotel, Mr Treasure,’ she pronounced loftily. ‘They’re the last of the permanents. They came with the place and they’ll have to be sold with it. Oh, Mr Daws has you crossed off for lunch already. Did you tell him, or Mrs Daws? I think she was looking for you.’

  ‘I told Mr Daws. Indirectly.’

  ‘He’s gone for his regular Saturday pint. Pub along the road. Left the memsahib in charge. Then she got taken by an urgent need to change her library books. Rang me to stand in. Lucky I was available. But then, I always am.’ She fluttered her eyelids. ‘So if you, too, have need for a lovely young body …’

  ‘Thank you, I have my own.’

  She made a face at him. ‘Actually I’m glad to be here. Daddy’s a bit miz. There was no …’

  ‘Cheque from Seawell this morning,’ he cut in with feeling.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘From several sources.’

  ‘Daddy’s sure Louella’s scheming has spoiled the deal. Incidentally, he’s guessed something was up this morning — in the Round House garden.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Told him what happened. About the vandal you bravely chased away. Well, drove away.’ She smirked. ‘Daddy said it was a pity you didn’t leave him to it. That he might have knocked the house down.’

  Treasure shrugged. ‘So he was right on one count. Possibly both.’

  ‘Daddy said he’d set fire to the place himself if he thought he’d get away with it. Didn’t mean it really. He’s terribly law-abiding. Pretty depressed, though. Pity he never got to see Louella. He did try. Might have got her to drop her beastly crusade.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday. When he knew what she was up to. He went to see her. In the cottage. But she was still in London.’

  ‘Any idea what time?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll ask him, if you like. Is it important?

  ‘Could be.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Your cup, Mark?’ Cynthia Tring held the bone china pot ready to pour. Treasure was on her right.

  They had finished lunch — the Trings, Treasure and Denis Pitty. They were lingering over coffee.

  The dining-room was well proportioned. Unlike the drawing-room, though, it was only sparsely furnished.

  The four were seated at a small gate-legged table — mahogany and quite old. The chairs, in contrast, were newish reproduction. Indentations in rugs, marks on walls, and a somewhat eccentric arrangement of pictures suggested the former presence of a good deal more equipage. There had probably been a sideboard, a chest of some kind, certainly a heavier table and more chairs. At a guess, the banished pieces were probably in the same class as the surviving breakfast table.

  At his time of life, the Canon would not be much given to entertaining. To be realistic, his wife was unlikely to live out an inevitably long widowhood in such a relatively large establishment. It made sense to dispose of unwanted furniture. The antique market was booming. Yet the near-brutal denuding of this room had been overdoing things — unless the Trings were very hard up indeed.

  Treasure remembered Lady Brasset’s quip about not living like a Cardinal: and Cardinals didn’t have wives with tastes for ultra-suede dresses. Cynthia looked very becoming.

  ‘Thank you. Delicious coffee. Like everything else.’ He smiled, pushing his cup towards her, and trying to make it clear the hostess was included in the compliment.

  ‘Fortunately, Louella’s affairs are in apple-pie order,’ offered Pitty, bringing them back to the subject being discussed — in a way, immodestly. Cynthia had earlier announced he had been in charge of all the deceased’s business affairs.

  Treasure had been mildly surprised and irrationally irked to find the lawyer had also been invited to lunch.

  Pitty had evidently not been summoned to arrange a settlement over the damage at the Round House. No one had seemed much interested in the subject. Perhaps it had been correctly assumed it was hardly Treasure’s province to haggle over petty claims against Seawell Developments.

  ‘Everything goes to Richard, the son. He’s a doctor. Used to be in New South Wales,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘South Wales … South Wales?’ questioned her husband from across the table.

  ‘New South Wales, I said, Algy. But he’s moved somewhere in the north,’ his wife countered with a touch of impatience. ‘Denis telephoned him last night.’

  Pitty nodded. ‘Took the news of his mother’s death very stoically. May not be able to come to the funeral.’ He glanced at Cynthia.

  ‘Good deal of the estate was entailed for the grandchildren. Remember from the husband’s death. Best way,’ said the Canon.

  ‘Yes, virtually the lot,’ Pitty confirmed promptly.

  ‘Pretty well everything,’ Cynthia came in simultaneously.

  The Canon shook his head. ‘Didn’t Louella have money of her own? Intended giving it away in due time to avoid death duties. Hmm.’ He sighed. ‘In the midst of life. Well, there it is. She liked to play the stock market, d’you see …’

  ‘It was only pin money, really.’ Pitty was quietly dismissive.

  ‘Did you handle that for her?’ Treasure asked, showing a mild professional interest.

  ‘… except she had no real head for figures. None at all. Did well at it, though. So she said.’ The aged cleric had continued, unaware of the exchange.

  ‘Through a broker.’ Pitty nodded. ‘Small stuff, though.’

  ‘Made thousands. Tens of thousands, she told me. All thanks to Denis here. She was into commodities, as they say.’ The Canon pressed on to the evident if curious discomfort of the lawyer.

  ‘She tended to exaggerate these things, I’m afraid.’ It was Cynthia to the rescue. ‘I don’t mean Denis’s flair. I mean money she kept for what she called her gambling.’

  ‘Gambling,’ her husband repeated, though whether as affirmation or moral censure it wasn’t clear.

  ‘Sweet of you to take Algy to Chichester, Mark,’ Cynthia changed the course of the conversation. ‘Since he stopped driving it’s become quite a job fitting in his travels with mine.’

  ‘Pleasure. I’d intended dropping into the cathedral anyway while I was near.’

  ‘Well, his committee meeting’s there too. In the cloisters, actually. I’ll tell you my secret parking place. Otherwise you have to park miles from anywhere. I can pick him up later, but it’s my turn to do the flowers here in the village church. I’ve still got to pick them up in Tophaven.’

  ‘Sorry I’m no use,’ Pitty said. ‘Dashed nuisance. Got a client in half an hour. Saturday afternoon, too.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ commented Treasure affably. He turned to his hostess. ‘If I might tell Sheikh Mhad Alid to have his solicitors ring Denis on Monday about the lease …’

  ‘Then they can work something out,’ she cut in. ‘For the end of term.’ She was looking at Pitty as she spoke.

  So Treasure had won half a cake: Seawell or Roxton were going to have to pay for it: the banker had done his best.

  ‘Monday afternoon would be fine. I’m out in the morning … Glad to ring them, if you like? Know the partner involved,’ Pitty offered helpfully.

  ‘Of course, you’re acting for the freeholders. Tit for tat. Give you the chance to tickle up Seawell about the deserving poor of Sandy Lane. I gather Mr Daws was an early supplicant this morning.’ Treasure thought also of the besieged Elderberry.

  ‘Absolutely. Had me going through the bally mail at eight-thirty.’

  ‘You really should charge overtime for Saturday work,’ said the hostess, with a wide-eyed glance that lingered on Pitty a fraction longer than seemed appropriate.

  For the second time in as many minutes, Treasure was conscious Cynthia and Pitty were by look and innuendo conducting exchanges to which neither he nor the Canon were privy, or meant to be.

  ‘Actually, today’s unusual,’ the lawyer admitted self-effacingly. ‘Even had someone beg an appointment as I was coming out. Comes of living over the shop.’

  ‘Over the shop,’ echoed the Canon. ‘Who might that have been, Denis?’

  ‘Algy, what an improper question,’ his wife scolded.

  ‘No one important, Algy,’ the lawyer answered blandly.

  Treasure wondered. ‘None of you visited Lady Brasset’s place yesterday, I suppose?’ he inquired on impulse.

  There was marked reaction to the question in the sense that no one immediately replied to it.

  Eventually Cynthia drew in a breath as though to speak, but it was Denis Pitty who got in first. ‘I was there.’

  ‘We were there together, of course,’ said Treasure.

  ‘No, I mean much earlier. Just before lunch. I was driving through the village. Remembered I had some share transfers for Louella to sign. Why d’you ask?’

  Treasure shrugged. ‘Obviously you didn’t smell gas.’

  ‘I didn’t go inside. Louella wasn’t there.’

  ‘Wasn’t there,’ the Canon reiterated. ‘Cynthia could have told you that when you rang about my will in the morning. She knew Louella was going to London. Could have saved you a journey.’

  ‘Denis just said he was driving through Colston, Algy.’ Cynthia spoke abruptly, almost angrily. She was showing the nervousness Treasure had marked at the start of their first meeting. ‘So I couldn’t have saved him a journey. On the phone we were discussing our wills, not Louella’s movements.’

  ‘Not Louella’s movements. Quite right, Cynthia. Shame I hadn’t wandered down,’ the Canon ruminated. ‘I have a particularly sensitive nose.’ The feature in question was certainly prominent and aquiline. ‘It was remarked upon even during childhood. I might have detected escaping gas. Your question had special relevance to us, Treasure?’

  ‘Not really,’ the banker lied. It had been an ill-judged and unsubtle attempt to find out if Eddy Jacks had taken his advice and seen Pitty: much better to have asked the lawyer privately, though it was difficult to broach the subject directly without breaking a confidence. ‘It occurred to me someone might have been there during the day. As the Canon suggests, gas does hang about the air.’

  ‘I didn’t smell gas,’ Pitty commented, ‘but I only went to the front of the house. Came away when there was no answer. Thought Louella was probably at that wretched library again.’

  ‘I … I wasn’t there. At the cottage,’ broke in Cynthia. The words came out more as a declaration than as a mere statement.

  ‘Buildings are often now preserved for fear of what may replace them,’ Canon Tring pronounced, staring at the road ahead. He was gripping an old leather attaché case in his lap.

  ‘What a very profound observation,’ said Treasure, and meant it. He slowed the Rolls to a stop at the T-junction.

  ‘Very. Regrettably not mine. Sir Hugh Casson. Sound architect and a first-rate President of the Royal Academy.’

  ‘Agreed.’ The banker swung the car left on to the A27. ‘Are you wondering whether the Seawell building in Sandy Lane will be an unworthy replacement for what’s there at the moment?’

  ‘You couldn’t do worse than that ghastly hotel, for instance.’

  ‘I really meant the Round House.’

  ‘The Round House. There you have the advantage. I don’t know what the developers have in mind to replace it.’ The Canon looked sharply at his companion. ‘I’d feel confident of your opinion.’

  ‘Which could be unduly prejudiced.’

  ‘Unduly prejudiced? Not unless my judgement of your character is sadly awry.’

  ‘Thank you. The new building I’d describe as seemly.’

  ‘Seemly. Meaning better than inoffensive? Well, that’s something.’

  ‘Oh, much better. Aesthetically, stylistically, it owes more to, say, Lutyens than Corbusier. On balance, I think the community and posterity will gain from the change. Of course, one doesn’t know how the Round House would look put back to its original shape.’

  ‘Assuming anyone would pay for the experiment. I remember it before the war.’ The Canon grunted between phrases. ‘Well before the war. Relatively unremarkable.’

  ‘Lady Brasset …’

  ‘Was a Colonial at heart. Venerated anything built before the Civil War. The American one.’

  ‘She was on the way to proving it was a joint Soane and Butterfield creation.’

  ‘Bit fanciful. Soane was dead. My generation never really cared for Butterfield. Nothing wrong with his churchmanship.’ He paused. ‘He did Balliol College Chapel in the ’fifties. Eighteen-fifties. They remodelled it again less than a hundred years later.’ He nodded as though doubly to remark such swift, decisive action. ‘Hmm. I recall recognizing his iron screen for the chapel. On top of a lorry it was, going to an Oxford scrap yard in 1940. They’d thrown it out, you see.’

  ‘Helping the war effort.’

  ‘War effort? You could say that. Oh, no doubt. Like the Round House. Navy took that, for the women. The WRNS. Marshford would have approved. Besotted by the fair sex.’

  ‘Plagued by it too, I gather. All those daughters. Who was Miss Darlington, the one who started the ladies’ academy?’

  The Canon looked momentarily surprised. ‘She was Sydney Marshford’s mistress for donkey’s years,’ he announced in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Should have married her when his first wife died, but by then he judged she was too old to produce a son. There’d been a daughter by mistake, years before. Didn’t augur well.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘The child? Fostered off with suitable provision. Never, of course, owned as progeny. Miss Darlington returned after her confinement to run the academy. Marshford’s second wife bore him a son — or somebody’s son. Threw everything into reverse. His will and so on, and all those mostly feminist endowments he couldn’t undo.’

  ‘You mean he lived to regret his generosity?’

  ‘Rather to realize he’d overdone it. The public benefactions for females in general were meant only to provide a cloak of objectivity. In case his private and particular ones ever came in for scrutiny.’

  ‘Were there so many of those?’

  ‘I think not. And there’s the point.’

  ‘He overkilled.’

  ‘Overkilled? Is that the going expression? The endowments of all kinds led to great legal wranglings with the son, when he came of age.’

  ‘With his half-sisters?’

  ‘Half-sisters, official and unofficial. Always girls, it seems, except for that one son. Terrible hypocrite, Marshford. In mitigation, he did make provision for all members of his brood.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes in circuitous ways.’

  ‘Like Miss Darlington. The reason I asked about her, there was something in the diaries I read this morning. Meant to mention it at lunch. It was in the 1868 diary …’

  ‘That was the year of the second marriage.’

  ‘So I gathered. Rather later than the period Lady Brasset was researching, I imagine.’

  ‘I imagine. A good woman, Louella, but lacking in scholarly application.’

  Treasure smiled at the gratuitous comment. ‘Anyway, if Miss Darlington was the man’s mistress it’s not surprising there was to be a freehold reversion in her favour when “labour’s done”. I believe that was the phrase.’

  ‘Very apposite,’ the Canon remarked drily.

  ‘And after a “seemly interval”,’ the banker continued. ‘That’s also his phrase, and not so carefully circumspect when you think about it.’

  ‘The interval would refer to the time since she stopped working, not since she ceased labouring with his child. Otherwise you’re right. It would have been a careless entry. The diaries generally do nothing to diminish his moral reputation. That’s why they’re so deadly dull. The property she was given was the small house originally leased to her in the town, in her capacity as academy principal.’

  ‘The diary didn’t say. It couldn’t have been the Round House?’

  ‘The Round House? Unlikely. That lease was hers from the start, theoretically in lieu of fees.’

  ‘It was a longish lease in that case. And an odd length. It’s the one that expires next month.’

  ‘Next month. Marshford was an odd person. The lease was to provide income for Miss Darlington. It was left unsaid it was long enough to do the same for her secret offspring. And succeeding generations, I suppose. Though not in perpetuity.’

  ‘That might have signalled something improper?’

  ‘Marshford would have argued so.’

  ‘And it could have been given as a freehold in the first place.’

  ‘In the first place. Precisely. Saved a lot of bother. As it was, though, the proprieties were not put at risk. Miss Darlington and her child enjoyed the benefit of whatever income could be derived for the time being. If Marshford’s legitimate lineage had not been so profligate, they, in turn, would now he coming into the unencumbered freehold.’

  ‘Which one of them sold to an insurance company. You’re singularly well informed about Miss Darlington. I assume your family bought the Round House lease from her, or her daughter? Is it an eccentric sort of document?’

 

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