“She used to be. My sister wouldn’t let her ride, but a friend and I used to lead her round on a docile old mare. She was always very happy when we did that.”
Doctor Grove made a note. “I think perhaps we should explore that avenue. Thank you, my lord.”
“John,” I said automatically, “call me John.”
I dutifully inspected the kitchens, the drawing rooms, the communal dining room and the consultation rooms where, I was told, the best London psychiatrists came to weave their spells. If Georgina could be happy anywhere, I thought, then surely it was in this kindly place.
After the inspection, and after I had expressed my wholehearted approval to Doctor Grove, Sir Leon asked for a moment alone with me. He led me out to the southern gardens where a curious group of patients inspected his helicopter which stood with drooping rotors on the wide lawn. Sir Leon steered me away from the machine, preferring the solitude of a gravel walk. “My lawyers have already opened negotiations with the Lady Georgina’s trustees,” Sir Leon said in his precise and pedantic voice. “I think I can assure you that there will be no hindrance to her coming here.”
“Sir Oliver Bulstrode might not agree,” I suggested grimly.
“Sir Oliver, like all top London lawyers, will decide in favour of the richest party.”
I smiled to hear this dry little man confirm my own opinion of lawyers. I was beginning to feel quite fond of Sir Leon, which I thought was only appropriate considering how I felt about his stepdaughter. We paced on in silence for a few yards, then he shot me a very shrewd and rather unfriendly glance. “And what of your own future, my lord?”
Something in his tone alerted me. Perhaps I’d been too quick in my warm feelings. I’d thought it slightly strange that a man of his importance should see fit to show me round a high-class lunatic asylum, but now I sensed he had quite another reason for meeting me this day. “I haven’t thought much about my future,” I said casually, “and please do stop calling me ‘my lord’.”
“If you wish.” Sir Leon had noticed how walking pained me, even with the help of a walking stick that Charlie had found in his junk room, so now he stopped by an ornamental urn. “Forgive me asking, but was your boat insured?”
“No.”
He frowned severe disapproval. “That was imprudent, was it not?”
“Insurance companies won’t touch deep-water yachts. If you stick to cruising the Channel or the North Sea they’ll offer you a quotation, but if you sail beyond the sunset, and especially if you sail alone, they won’t look at you.”
“I see.” He stared down at the urn’s base, frowning slightly. “So, forgive me again, but what is the extent of your loss?”
“Ninety thousand pounds?” It was a guess.
He looked up sharply. “As much as that?”
“She was a good boat,” I said defensively. “She wasn’t a plastic tub tricked out with veneered chipboard. She was a deep-water steel boat with hardwood fittings. She was well equipped, Sir Leon. She was what a sailor would call a proper boat.” That, I supposed, was Sunflower’s obituary, and a good one too. She had been a proper boat, and I mourned her, but I don’t think the full extent of the loss had yet occurred to me. I might put a financial value on the hull and rigging and fittings, but there was an emotional loss that was incalculable. A boat becomes a companion, a person you talk to, a creature that shares the good times and helps you survive the bad. Sunflower had also been my home, and I’d lost her.
“I would take it as a great kindness if you would find yourself another yacht.” Sir Leon said it so softly that at first I thought I had misheard. “At my expense, of course,” he added just as softly.
“I’m sorry?” I said with incredulity. His manner in the last few minutes had been touched with a cold hostility, yet now he was offering me a boat? I warmed to him again.
“It’s quite simple.” He seemed irritated by my obtuseness. “I am offering to buy you another ocean-going yacht.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” I hoped to God he wouldn’t agree with me. Pride would make me protest, but not for long. I needed another boat desperately.
He offered me the ghost of a smile. “Not so ridiculous, my lord, as giving away a Van Gogh.” He was plainly determined to go on calling me ‘my lord’. “Of course,” he continued, “if you don’t want another boat, then I shall quite understand.”
“I do want one,” I said fervently. His equation of my gift of the Van Gogh with his present of a replacement boat made the transaction seem less astonishing and more acceptable. I had also decided that this was a man who liked to hide his kindnesses behind a pernickety façade.
Sir Leon stirred the gravel with a well-polished shoe. “I assume, my lord, that if you have another boat you will resume your wandering way of life?”
“I really don’t know.”
He had asked the question casually, and my reply had been just as offhand. Yet my careless answer provoked a very cold look indeed. “Does your uncertainty have anything to do with my stepdaughter?” The abruptness of the question, and its acuity, astonished me. I said nothing, and Sir Leon frowned. “My wife seems to think that the two of you might be suited, but I must tell you that I often find Lady Buzzacott’s ideas whimsical.”
Now the thing lay in the open; the boat wasn’t a recompense for the gift of a painting, but a bribe to take me away from Jennifer. This wasn’t a man who hid his kindnesses, but simply purchased what he wanted. Now he wanted my absence. I felt foolish for liking him, for it was suddenly plain that he detested me. “You’d prefer Hans to become Jennifer’s husband?” I asked forthrightly.
“Of course I would,” Sir Leon said blandly, as though we merely discussed our preferences for cars or boats. “Hans is a most steady and sensible man. It might take flair to build a financial empire, my lord, but it takes steadiness to maintain it, and Hans has succeeded very well at preserving and expanding his inheritance. So, you see” – and here he offered me the smallest of smiles – “I would be very well advised to help you find a suitable boat and thus tempt you to very distant waters.”
At least, I thought, the bastard was honest. He wanted me gone because I wasn’t suitable. I was a rogue and vagabond. I was a mongrel sniffing round his thoroughbred.
“And I assume,” he pressed me, “that if you are equipped with a suitable boat, you will indeed resume your previous way of life?”
“Not necessarily, no.” I would not give him that satisfaction, even if it meant that the bastard withdrew his offer.
“May I ask what other inducements might keep you ashore? Besides Jennifer?”
“I might go into business,” I said airily, then, despite my dislike of him, found myself articulating an idea which must have been simmering in my mind ever since I had returned to England. “I sometimes think it’s time to give myself a proper base. I live on a very narrow knife edge between poverty and bankruptcy, and that’s fine for a time, Sir Leon, but after a while it becomes tedious. I need something to make some money, something that will let me sail away when I want to, but something that will go on earning money while I’m away.”
“It sounds very desirable,” he was amused, “but rather a pipe dream, surely?”
“There’s a property on the Hamoaze,” I heard myself saying. “It belongs to a plump old crook called George Cullen, and if I could raise the money I could make it into one of the finest yacht-repair yards on the south coast. It’s no good looking to the banks, of course, so it is probably a pipe dream, but I’ve got a friend who might be interested. Except that he’s rather over-extended financially.”
“You have the necessary skills to run a yacht-repair business?”
“All of them,” I said proudly.
Sir Leon looked up at me. “If you had not given me the Van Gogh, my lord, you would doubtless have received all the capital you might need. But, alas, your own generosity seems to have condemned you to the wanderer’s life.” He gave me one of his very small smiles, as if
to show that he had proved that my only chance of financial survival lay in accepting his offer, and thus leaving his stepdaughter alone. He glanced towards his helicopter and I assumed he was about to walk away, but instead he offered me an irritated frown. “I must admit that I am sorely disappointed in Inspector Abbott. His ploy of making you a target seems to have misfired very badly.”
“Indeed.” I could only agree.
“It now seems clear to me that Inspector Abbott has very small chance of finding these wretched people, so it seems I have no choice but to deal with them myself.”
“Pay the ransom, you mean?”
“What else?” Sir Leon did not sound dismayed at the prospect. “I have already inserted the coded advertisement in The Times indicating my willingness to do so. I now await their instructions which I will follow punctiliously. Inspector Abbott advises me that the criminals might renege on the arrangements, but that is a risk I must be willing to take. Following Inspector Abbott’s advice has so far only succeeded in putting my stepdaughter into hospital, so you may imagine that I am not enamoured with his ideas.”
He had spoken with unnatural venom when he mentioned Jennifer. I blushed. “I’m sorry –” I began.
“My wife has already assured you that there is no need for an apology,” he interrupted me. “I don’t entirely agree with her, but we shall nevertheless consider the matter closed. The important thing now is to provide Jennifer with the very finest medical attention. Hans has some very sound ideas, but I do assure you, my lord, that none of this any longer concerns you.” He looked up at me and I saw how deceptive were those myopic pale eyes. This was a very formidable man indeed, and one who disliked me intensely. “I believe in making things very plain in negotiations,” he went on, “so I am here to tell you, my lord, that your association with my affairs, and with my family, is concluded. Jennifer will be moved to a private clinic in Switzerland where, I assure you, her visitors will be strictly controlled. I hope you understand me?”
“Keep my dirty hands off her?” I said flippantly.
I annoyed him, as I’d meant to, but he controlled the annoyance. Instead he took a business card from his top pocket. “That is the name and address of my financial controller. He will henceforth make all the arrangements concerning the Lady Georgina, and he will also pay the bills contingent on your new boat. I shall instruct him that you are to be given credit of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Should you wish to have that money paid to you in cash, then feel free to ask, but I should advise you to arrange payment in some place where the taxman might not notice.” He handed me the business card, then took a long brown envelope from his inside pocket. “At the same time, my lord, I do not wish you to think that I am ungrateful for your efforts on my behalf, so perhaps you will also accept this small token of my thanks?”
I took the envelope. I didn’t open it. I was hoping he had been so generous that I would feel constrained to refuse the gift, and I knew I couldn’t afford that quixotic gesture, not since my own money had sunk to the bottom of the English Channel.
Sir Leon held his hand out to me. “Should your sister challenge your right to give me the painting, then I trust you will make yourself available to my lawyers? My driver is at your disposal for the rest of the day.” I shook his hand, then he turned away. I wondered how such a dry little sod had ever attracted a woman like Helen. Not a week before she had offered me a bedroom in Comerton Castle, now her husband was giving me the boot.
“Sir Leon!” I called out when he was a dozen paces away.
“My lord?” He turned back.
“I haven’t given up my hopes of Jennifer.”
He shrugged. “I cannot command your hopes, my lord. I can only make my own views very plain to you both. Good day to you.” He nodded coldly, then walked between the lunatics to where his pilot waited.
I opened the envelope. It had a thousand pounds in it, and I knew I probably would have felt obliged to hand it back. I wondered if he would have taken it. He wanted rid of me, and would happily pay a hundred and twenty-one thousand pounds for the privilege. I watched his helicopter take off and reflected on the fact that, for the first time in my life, I’d actually been fired. And that I was in love. And that I had a new enemy.
* * *
I had Sir Leon’s driver take me to Exeter where, in a shabby pub close to the police station, I found Harry Abbott. He watched me limp between the tables, then ordered me a pint of bitter. “I tried to telephone you today,” he said grumpily, as though I’d inconvenienced him by being away from Charlie’s house.
“I was with Sir Leon Buzzacott.” I took a first sip of the pint, and sighed with relief at the taste. “I’ve just been fired, Harry. It was very nicely done, and he even gave me a golden handshake, but it was still a firing.”
“Fired?” Harry asked in puzzlement.
“My services are no longer required for the retrieval of the painting.” In truth I was still rather dazed by the experience. Sir Leon had spent weeks seeking my help and, at the first stiff hurdle, had brushed me away like dirt. “He gave me the heave-ho, Harry, then warned me off his stepdaughter.”
“You can’t blame him for that,” Harry said reasonably. “Who wants a nice girl like Jennifer being mauled by some dirty-minded bastard like you?”
“I was beginning to like you in the last few days, Harry. I can see I was wrong.”
He grinned. “So what’s little Sir Leon going to do now? Pay the ransom?”
“Yes.”
Harry grimaced. “He was bound to do it in the end. He wants to get his paws on that picture, doesn’t he? God knows why. I know a fellow in Okehampton who could knock him up an identical fake in a couple of weeks. Who’d know the difference?”
“Beats me, Harry. So why were you trying to telephone me?”
“To tell you to bugger off, Johnny.” He spilt a packet of pork scratchings on to the bar and generously pushed one small sliver towards me. “I’ve drawn a blank, you see. Garrard’s gone, and so has his thick friend. I can’t find hide nor hair of them. I’m sorry, Johnny, but they’ve disappeared.”
“Just like Elizabeth,” I said grimly.
“Who’s probably still in France,” he said, “and I can’t issue a warrant for her because I’ve got damn-all evidence. I can’t even get a search warrant for her bloody house. Of course there’d be plenty enough evidence for a warrant if she was just some housewife, but as she’s the Lady la-di-da Tredgarth I can’t get near her.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t worth searching her house?”
“I don’t expect to find a Van Gogh hanging in the downstairs loo, Johnny, but I’m getting desperate now. I’ll settle for her private telephone book, or her diary, or anything.” He wiped beer off his lips. “You never know, we might find Garrard’s phone number written down in her book, but without a search warrant?” He shrugged, then flinched as a piece of scratching irritated a loose filling in his teeth.
“What about George Cullen?” I asked.
“What about George?”
“He knows Garrard.”
“Listen.” Harry tapped my forearm to emphasise his next words. “George Cullen is terrified of me. He’d fly to the moon rather than hold out on his Uncle Harry. I told you, I talked to him, and George doesn’t know a dicky-bird about it.”
“So who does?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Johnny. No one. Unless those bastards have another go at you, we’re done. And frankly I can’t get the manpower to look after you any more, so the best thing you can do is go. Get yourself another boat and piss off.”
Sir Leon had given me the same advice, though couched in politer and more practical terms. I scooped a handful of Harry’s pork scratchings off the bar. “Can you give me a lift to Charlie’s house?”
“All the way to Salcombe?” He sounded outraged.
“I’ll buy you a pint on the way.”
“You’ll buy my bloody supper, you miserable hound.?
??
So he gave me a lift, and I wondered just what I would do now. All I knew was that I didn’t want to run away to sea again, because this time I had someone worth staying for. Which meant that, despite the bastards who were trying to see me off, I would stay.
* * *
Charlie was not at home that night, which made staying at his house an awkward experience. Yvonne was watching television when I arrived, so I went straight to bed. At four in the morning I woke up in a muck sweat, panicking because I had been dreaming that I was drowning. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so as soon as I heard Yvonne up and moving, I went down to the kitchen and asked if she’d mind driving me to where I could catch a bus. She grudgingly agreed. “He should be home tonight,” she told me as she drew up at the bus stop in Kingsbridge, “but you can never tell.”
“I might be back, I might not. I’ve got a lot to do today.”
“You’re just like him, aren’t you?” She drove off before I could thank her for the lift.
I caught the first bus to Plymouth. The weather was warm and calm. The south coast seemed trapped in one of those rare bubbles of high pressure which would fill the beaches and becalm the yachts. Not that my concern this day was with the sea. Instead, and perhaps foolishly, I would retrace Harry Abbott’s steps.
I reached George Cullen’s yard a few minutes after nine. Rita was making the day’s first cup of tea. “Look at you!” she said in shocked sympathy. I was still using Charlie’s cane, for my left ankle was fearsomely painful. “You poor man. I saw it in the papers. How did it happen?”
“Like they said, an accident. Gas leak.” The papers had speculated about sabotage, but someone, presumably Harry, had killed that notion. The story had run for a day or two, then disappeared.
“You should take more care of yourself, Johnny.” Rita took down a third chipped mug into which she poured a dollop of milk. “He’s in there,” she said, “and I’ll bring your tea in.”
George half smiled when I limped into his office, then his face assumed a properly sympathetic look. “Johnny,” he said as greeting.