‘Maybe that’s the point,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It works because it’s so improbable. What do you think we should do, Francis?’
‘My man,’ Powerscourt had been careful not to mention Arbuthnot’s name, ‘didn’t say if there is any connection with the other two murders. Maybe the intelligence people used the Silkworkers indiscriminately, wherever they were to be found, I just don’t know. Did Meredith join the hospital of his own free will? Or did the secret service place him there for reasons of their own? It would be a good place to hide people, if you think about it. Known largely by your number not your name, hardly ever out of the building apart from expeditions to the Rose and Crown. All strangers immediately visible and probably suspect. If you were looking for somebody, you wouldn’t necessarily think of an almshouse, or, put it the other way round, if you didn’t want to be found, what better place to hide than an almshouse? Damn it,’ he looked round at his companions, ‘there are too many questions and not enough answers. The first thing we need to do, and this, I feel, is going to fall on your shoulders, Inspector, is to find out as much as we can about Abel Meredith’s past life. Where he was born, how he earned his daily bread, wives, children, criminal convictions, spells in prison, you know, the works.’
‘Fine,’ said the Inspector. ‘We’ve done this before.’
‘Not like this, I think you’ll find. I don’t think my friend has stopped yet. There’s more to come.’
‘How did you know, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.
‘I’m like our friend the Inspector, I’ve been here before too.’
‘I don’t understand, my lord.’ Inspector Fletcher was looking confused. ‘What else do you want me to do?’
‘I’m afraid I think we need the past lives of more than Abel Meredith, Inspector.’
‘Which ones?’
‘All of them in the hospital.’
‘Great God!’
The man they called Eye Patch was looking out to sea in the daytime just as he did in the night. As then, he kept well back from the windows. The sun was shining this morning, dancing over the water, lighting up the pretty buildings on the seafront. Eye Patch was pleased. Most of his mission had been successfully accomplished. There was only one task left for him to perform, and he could do that once they had a really dark night. He found he was no in hurry now. At the start, with nothing accomplished, he had been unusually nervous. Now he was so near the end he felt calm. He had grown very attached to the little town, not that he had met any of the inhabitants. The closest he came to contact with them was when the locals came to the door to deliver supplies of food and drink. Very soon, maybe in a couple of days, he could close his operation down and go home. He thought he would go through a city where you could buy women by the hour or the afternoon, so much quicker than the boring rituals of flirtation and conquest. Eye Patch smiled and stared out at the water.
‘Which of these two knights of the realm would you like to start with?’
‘Let’s start with Sir Peregrine, at least he’s still alive.’
Inspector Miles Devereux had gone to the home of a retired newspaperman. Sammy Wilson had covered the City of London for a variety of newspapers for over forty years. Even in retirement he kept his hand in, composing short biographies of financial grandees for small but welcome sums. He was a small man, who looked, even his friends admitted, remarkably like a gnome, a benevolent one, but nonetheless a gnome. Devereux had known him for years. He was always a useful source of information, much of which had never made its way into the public prints. Now they were drinking Mrs Wilson’s finest tea, and consuming her lemon cakes in front of the fire, the walls lined with prints of famous cricketers and famous matches from long ago.
‘Well,’ Sammy Wilson began, ‘I’m not surprised you’re asking questions about Sir Peregrine. I’ve thought for years that he might get into trouble for some of his activities.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, my young friend, that Sir Peregrine has often sailed pretty close to the wind. I don’t think he’s gone in for massive fraud against the public, against the people who’ve invested in his companies. Rather, it’s the way that he gets to the top of them that’s always interested me. It’s happened twice, as far as I know. There may well be more examples that I don’t know of. And these are only rumours, you understand, just rumours, nothing you could issue an arrest warrant for, if you follow me.’
‘You’re talking in riddles, Sammy, and you know it,’ said Inspector Devereux, popping his second lemon cake into his mouth. ‘Can you be more specific? We’re talking off the record here, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Sammy Wilson. ‘The pattern is the same in both cases. Sir Peregrine gets himself appointed to the board of some medium-sized outfit, London Wall Insurance was the first one. He sits there for a while, good as gold. Doesn’t query the accounts or anything troublesome like that. Eighteen months in, there’s an emergency meeting of the board, called by our friend. A vote of no confidence in the managing director is passed by a small majority. Sir P, surprise, surprise, becomes the new managing director. The word on the street is that his supporters were either bribed or blackmailed into following him. His supporters’ club, surprise, surprise again, are given large increases in salary under the new regime. The cynics said that a promise of future cash would not have been enough to persuade his colleagues to vote the previous man out. Money must have changed hands beforehand. Or they were blackmailed. Or both.’
‘What happened to the previous managing director? Did he make a fuss?’
‘I can see the way your devious mind is working, young Devereux. Previous man loses job, loses income, bears a grudge against Sir P for years, bumps him off in the basement of the Silkworkers Hall. Well, Sir Peregrine was too clever for that. Not long after his expulsion from London Wall Insurance, the previous managing director, Young was his name, Randolph Young, gets another job in a different company specializing in shipping. Guess who was on the board there? Finding it difficult, are you? Too tricky a problem perhaps? Let me enlighten you. Sir Peregrine was on the board there too. Seemed to have no problem working with the man whose job he’d stolen, as you might put it. Rum, that, I thought, rum.’
‘Nothing ever came out about what had been going on? Not a word?’
‘Well, as you might imagine, there was a lot of whispering and muttering around the City. Terrible place for the speed of rumour, as you know. But no, nothing firm ever emerged, just one more strange happening in an environment where strange things happen all the time.’
‘And the second time, Sammy? I think you said there were two examples.’
‘You’re quite right, I did. The second was slightly different. But once again it happened at a company where Sir Peregrine was on the board. Lombard Electricity, they were called, installing and researching electric supply, that sort of thing. Doing very well, it was, too. Still is, I think. Anyway, Sir Peregrine is on the board again, as before. Very well behaved again to start with. Then there’s another extraordinary board meeting. The charge is that the managing director has been fiddling the books. Hand in the till, that sort of thing. Poor man says all the documents are forgeries but the monies do seem to have been extracted from the company’s bankers and transferred over. The board, led, with great reluctance, more in sorrow than in anger, by Sir Peregrine, how unfortunate that one of our best and brightest should have had a temporary fall from grace and what probity he has always displayed in the past, the board don’t believe this unfortunate managing director. Out he goes. In comes our friend, Sir P, top dog once again, the man who overcame his friendship with the previous incumbent to restore that honest dealing for which the City is famed. Hypocrisy was being handed out in ladlefuls and Sir Peregrine was the chief beadle.’