The meal had passed off quietly enough. All three had kept off controversial subjects. No business had been discussed. Now Treasure was ready to introduce something more important than the age of Arundel Castle.

  He had been disturbed that Ali was staying another night with Quaint, and had arranged the dinner because of this. In the circumstances he hardly trusted either man not to do something precipitate and probably illegal about the Round House: in concert they were definitely dangerous.

  Dinner and a homily at the end had seemed eminently sensible when he had issued the invitation on the telephone in the morning, just before he had met Jacks.

  As he expected, Mrs Quaint, although invited, had been unable to join them. The two men had come in the Arab’s small Ford.

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know I spent an hour or so at the town library, with the Marshford Papers. Very encouraging,’ Treasure offered.

  ‘The letter of the Lady Brasset, the one by Mr Marshford about the architects. It has not been found?’ Ali asked, looking at Quaint not Treasure as he spoke.

  ‘Not only that. There seems some doubt anyone can prove it ever existed.’

  ‘Cooked up by the old bird. She was playing for time — and effect.’ Quaint belched again. ‘Whoops.’ He smiled expansively.

  ‘She mentioned it to Mrs Tring. Went to the Round House to show it to her, among other things, apparently …’

  ‘But it never actually got seen by anyone? Well, well, well,’ observed Quaint with heavy cynicism.

  ‘The librarian never saw the original. I couldn’t find it in the Marshford Papers. The copy Lady Brasset made …’

  ‘Said she made.’

  ‘All right, Tony, said she made, got lost, according to her. She rang her gardener from London. Told him she thought she’d left it in the pocket of a coat. He was to get it and post it to me.’ It was the first time Treasure had mentioned anything he had learned from Jacks to anyone except Commander Mane.

  Quaint flashed a stern glance at Ali.

  ‘You think there was a letter, Mark?’ asked the Arab.

  ‘Window-dressing,’ pronounced Quaint, balancing a large piece of cheese on a small bit of biscuit. ‘Crafty old bitch. Elaborate a lie enough and you can improve on its credibility. Old trick. Takes an artist, though.’ The cheese fell into his lap.

  ‘This gardener. He didn’t find the letter?’ Ali pressed.

  ‘Of course he didn’t,’ Quaint asserted while searching in his napkin for bits of cheese. ‘There was no letter.’

  ‘He didn’t find it, certainly.’

  ‘Stolen, no doubt,’ scoffed Quaint. ‘That and the original. Librarian suborned, gardener too, I expect, by wicked property developers suppressing evidence about the former — former, mark you — alleged elegance of a sat-upon lighthouse. Saying the letter was pinched would have added bags of drama. You can see some fairy from the Department of the Sacred Environment swallowing that one whole.’

  ‘Bit fanciful, I think,’ murmured the banker, though the speech had set him wondering for a moment about Sims. ‘Still, it makes it all the more important the developers should be white as driven snow.’ He gauged it was homily time.

  ‘Oh, point taken, Mark.’

  ‘It will snow for Christmas?’ Ali asked earnestly.

  ‘Not necessarily. Bit of Shakespeare. The Winter’s Tale.’ Treasure wished Ali could avoid writing things down at mealtimes. ‘By the way, enquiries are going on about who visited Lady Brasset’s cottage yesterday.’

  ‘Who by?’ enquired the other two in perfect unison.

  ‘Nothing official yet, so far as I know. The gardener was there all afternoon.’ He paused for a reaction. There was none. ‘He saw people coming and going.’

  ‘D’you know who he saw?’ This was Quaint, with studied casualness.

  Treasure found the question enlightening. One of the scenarios suggested Quaint should have known exactly who had been seen.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said truthfully. ‘Neither of you there, I suppose?’

  ‘I was not there in any circumstances,’ pronounced Ali as if reciting an article of faith.

  Quaint took his time over ingesting a generous draught of port. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘And anyone who wants to make a federal case out of it’s welcome. I was there on misinformation received.’

  Ali looked downcast.

  Treasure avoided showing his satisfaction. At least Quaint’s admission had come without involving his wife. Tracy’s assessment of the man’s character could well be right.

  ‘Misinformation?’

  ‘Ali here rang me. Told me about the Brasset woman’s visit to you. What she was up to. He also said she’d gone home.’

  ‘A mistake. My English,’ the Arab apologized.

  ‘Thought it might be worth a bit of tactful personal intervention,’ continued the big man.

  Treasure suppressed a vision of Quaint arriving astride his trusty JCB ready tactfully to mow down the cottage with Louella still in it. Aloud he said, ‘Clever of you to find the place. Bit hidden away.’

  ‘Got it second time around. Matter of fact, my wife knew it. Gave me directions. Been to meetings there. Used to know Lady Brasset. Involved together in some charity.’ He gave the banker a knowing look. ‘That was how I got the idea. Thousand quid to the old girl’s favourite lost cause. If she’d drop this damn fool scheme to save the Round House.’

  For someone who boasted a genteel background — good school, famous regiment and so on — Quaint’s view of the motivations and scruples of decent people was perversely malevolent.

  ‘I’d have gone higher, if necessary,’ he said, compounding the felony. ‘And Ali knew about that.’ He paused, then lowered his voice. ‘The demolition plan was better.’

  ‘But Lady Brasset wasn’t at home,’ said Treasure, ignoring the last remark. ‘Any idea what time you got there?’

  ‘Six-fifteen. Twenty past, perhaps. Ask the Canon’s wife. She was coming out when I passed the first time. Pretty sure it was her. Didn’t see me.’

  Treasure swallowed his astonishment. ‘Did you go in?’

  ‘Into the cottage? No. As you said, she wasn’t there. No answer.’

  The banker nodded. ‘It’s just that the place had an open house kind of reputation. Friends let themselves in. Spare keys were left about. Your wife might have mentioned …’

  ‘She didn’t. She wasn’t that much of a friend.’

  ‘Nobody smelled gas from outside.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t. Would have reported it.’

  ‘The build-up of gas inside from early morning apparently could have been too heavy to ignite.’

  ‘But the Lady Brasset was blown up, no?’ put in Ali. ‘Very sad.’

  ‘Wasn’t inside the house when it happened,’ said Quaint with authority. ‘Concentration of gas in the air inside could have been greater than fifteen per cent. It’d dilute when she opened the door on it. Ignition could have happened from a bare flame in the doorway.’

  ‘That’s the theory. Trouble is, the gardener didn’t smell gas when he was in the front hall around five.’

  ‘So he said … er, presumably.’ Could Quaint’s confident treatise on the behaviour of sea-gas have made him careless?

  ‘Past tense is right in two senses,’ Treasure offered gravely. ‘The man died this afternoon. Accident with a hedge-cutter. Perhaps you’d heard?’

  ‘Suppose I did,’ Quaint replied grudgingly. ‘Indirectly, that is.’

  ‘You mean the lawyer, Denis Pitty, rang Ali at your house …’

  ‘He rang me to say all visitors to the cottage seen by the gardener,’ Ali interrupted obviously glad to be unburdening, but anxious with it. ‘He wished to know if I had been there. Why should I have been, I ask? Better, he said, if all callers tell the police in case this gardener has told anyone before he dies. I told this to Tony. I’m sorry.’

  During the whole of his little speech the Arab had avoided looking at Quaint, but the apology had still clearly been meant for his co-conspirator. Whatever the pact the two had made before coming to dinner had just been broken.

  ‘Thoughtful of Pitty to have got in touch,’ said the banker lightly. He was satisfied that one of his conjectures had been proved.

  ‘He assumed someone from Seawell or Roxton International might have taken the initiative over Lady Brasset,’ said Quaint, glowering at his inevitably empty port glass. ‘Right, in a sense. But I never heard of any gardener working after six in the winter. The man couldn’t have seen me.’

  ‘This makes for suspicion, however. Do you think, Mark,’ asked Ali, ‘at the trial it’s better for Tony to say he was there? Better to say first in case anyone …’

  ‘It’ll be an inquest, not a trial,’ Quaint butted in testily. ‘And I’ve already said I’m going to report being there.’

  ‘My brother, the Emir, will not be pleased if we or associates are in trials …’

  ‘Inquests …’

  ‘Which you and your associates might well have been,’ said Treasure, ‘after trying to knock down the Round House this morning.’

  ‘No one was killed,’ Ali almost whispered.

  ‘I might have been,’ grumbled Quaint. ‘Anyway, Ali, I keep telling you it’s not a trial. Nothing like. Oh, thanks.’ He nodded at Treasure as the waiter refilled his glass.

  ‘Mr Pitty thinks there may be trouble if they show the Lady Brasset doesn’t leave on the gas herself.’

  ‘Well, it’s going to be bloody difficult to prove anything else.

  That’s all I can say.’ Quaint raised his glass unsteadily. ‘Whatever the gardener smelled or didn’t.’

  ‘But he is also now dead.’ Ali looked from one to the other. ‘That will make a scandal? I ask Mr Pitty. He says not to worry, but not to shake the ship.’

  ‘Rock the boat,’ Treasure amended involuntarily.

  ‘Thank you, Mark. Not to rock the boat in anything to do with the Sandy Lane development. Just so everything goes smooth. No … no headlines. He says the DoE won’t protect the Round House. We can knock it down soon.’

  Denis Pitty had been remarkably helpful considering he was formally retained not by Seawell but by the freeholders and one leaseholder in Sandy Lane. The injunction to Ali about avoiding publicity Treasure also found intriguing.

  ‘I think Pitty has given you sound advice. I hope we’re both of us right about the Round House. Tell me, Ali, why is he looking after your interests so carefully?’

  ‘Ah, he is pressing hard for the money for his clients. It is for them.’

  Quaint snorted. ‘He hasn’t done much for them so far. Only lawyers involved worth their fees are the ones who work for the Rackburn & Claremont. Money for old rope, of course.’ He blinked. ‘Still, it was Pitty who tipped us off there might be trouble yet over the Brasset accident. Not that we’ve anything to hide. Ali wasn’t supposed to let on Pitty had been in touch. You understand, Mark? All in the family, of course,’ he added hopefully. For once the man appeared mildly shamefaced.

  ‘I assumed as much,’ said Treasure, sure now that Pitty had lied to him about Jacks, but not so certain about the extent. ‘So you’ll ring the Tophaven police tomorrow?’ He waited for Quaint’s nod, then went on. ‘You weren’t at the cottage today, either of you?’

  ‘With my back? Haven’t been anywhere till now,’ Quaint complained. ‘Excuse me a minute.’ He got up slowly, then limped off across the restaurant heading for the washroom.

  Ali had shaken his head in answer to the question.

  ‘And Tony’s been at home all day?’ the banker pressed.

  ‘Yes, Mark. Oh, except he went to see an ostler. No an osty …’

  ‘An osteopath?’

  ‘That’s right. I expect he forgot. For the pain.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just after lunch.’

  ‘Did he drive himself?’

  ‘I think so. It wasn’t far.’

  ‘How long was he away?’

  Ali looked troubled. ‘It’s important, Mark? I think …’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  Time to have driven to Colston and back.

  ‘There’s nothing else you’d like to tell me that’s pertinent?’ The Arab looked confused. ‘I mean anything else that could upset the Emir?’ Having scored with his surprise deduction about Pitty earlier, the banker decided to try another. ‘For instance, do you know anything about a Swiss company called HBAM Research and Development?’

  ‘It is permitted to know why you ask this, Mark?’

  ‘Sure. It owns forty-nine per cent of the Rackburn & Claremont, which has just come into money from the sale of the Round House. I believe the remaining shares may belong to Denis Pitty. They’re listed under bank nominees, but the sole British director seems to be Pitty’s managing clerk. The initials HBAM are your own run backwards, Ali, and Pitty seems unduly interested in your welfare. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘It is complicated,’ began the Arab. I have many interests, you understand? HBAM is one,’ he went on lamely. ‘The investment in the insurance company seemed … what do you say? … prudent?’

  ‘You could say more than that when you know Seawell has to buy its only substantial asset at a very inflated price.’ Treasure looked stern. ‘What you’re paying for the other properties sets the Round House price out of proportion. Lot too generous. I noticed it when I asked for the figures, before we lunched yesterday. I assumed that part of the total site would justify the difference. Now I’ve seen it I accept the Round House has the most important position. But that doesn’t cover a price per acre three times as high as you’re paying for the other properties.’

  ‘The Round House, it has historic importance,’ offered Ali hopefully.

  ‘Nonsense. You’re going to knock it down. Basically, you’re buying land. By the way, you’ll be in an embarrassing situation if you can’t knock it down. Pitty’s right not wanting you involved locally.’

  ‘Not rocking the boat?’ came the glum and accurate response.

  ‘Anything that gets people enquiring into your relations with Pitty is what he has in mind. Special prices for properties when the buyer is a company controlled by you and the local lawyer. Not cricket, Ali.’

  ‘Not cricket. I understand.’

  ‘Comes in the same category as taking kickbacks — bribes from contractors.’

  Ali looked shocked but not baffled. ‘I never have …’

  ‘I didn’t say you had, and I hope you never will.’ He paused. ‘Does Tony Quaint know about HBAM?’

  ‘A little.’ The Arab gave a quick, nervous smile.

  ‘Not about its owning half the insurance company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He knows the name of the company?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you’re doing a consultancy deal with him on the building contract payable through them?’ He was prepared to stretch a point, accepting a difference between a consultancy fee and a kick-back.’

  ‘Tony told you that?’

  ‘Let’s say I’m partly guessing. You and he are pretty close. Possibly too close. I wouldn’t trust him with all your confidences if I were you. And I wouldn’t take presents from him — in any form. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, Mark.’ The sheikh responded like a scolded schoolboy. ‘You will tell my brother?’

  ‘That you’ve gained personally from a Seawell property deal? I don’t think so. Seems to me what the company’s paying for the whole Sandy Lane site is about right. The other freeholders should be getting more and the insurance company less.’ He shrugged. ‘But the others seem happy enough with the prices Pitty negotiated for them.’

  ‘We leave things as they are?’

  Treasure sniffed. ‘In equity, the Rackburn & Claremont ought to make bonus payments to the others.’ He lifted a hand to stem the Arab’s protest. ‘Except there isn’t a way to do that without everybody wondering why — including a lot of interested outsiders like tax collectors.’ He smiled. ‘Complicated if your insurance company had to give all the money back, of course.’

  ‘How could that be?’ asked the startled Ali.

  ‘You can’t think of any reason?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘How could there be a reason?’

  ‘Good. Just a passing thought. I assume it was Pitty who put you up to buying a piece of the company?’

  ‘He came to see me in London. He owned the company. HBAM bought forty-nine per cent …’

  ‘For rather more than he’d paid for the whole outfit, I expect.’ Treasure shook his head. He saw Quaint coming back. ‘No, I shan’t tell the Emir about this sordid episode. And don’t write down sordid,’ he added just in time. ‘I will tell him I think you’re underpaid for the responsibility you carry.’

  ‘So he pays me more?’ Ali brightened.

  ‘Which should stop you needing to take advantage of your position in less legitimate ways.’ He nodded at Quaint who was sitting down. ‘Ali has decided he won’t require you to retain that Swiss company as consultants after all.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘HBAM. So you can revise the Sandy Lane estimates deducting their fee. That goes for future contracts, too. I suggest you forget about HBAM and any — er — personal connections with it.’

  ‘I see.’ Quaint glanced at Ali. ‘And where does that leave Roxton International?’

  ‘With a valuable contract and a warm commendation from me to the Emir, providing the Tophaven work is up to standard.’ Quaint considered for a moment. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘OK, Mark,’ Ali added quietly.

  Treasure looked at the time. ‘Ali, you’ve hardly drunk anything. It’s still quite early. Why don’t you drop Tony at his place, then drive back to London tonight?’

  ‘I was thinking I’d do that.’

  ‘Good.’ Treasure called for the bill. He’d accomplished all he’d intended, including pointing Ali towards Town.

  The larger issue remained still. He was now sure Lady Brasset and Eddy Jacks had been murdered. He was fairly certain, also, he knew the name of the murderer. The problem was proving it.

 

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