“No, thank you.”
“Not on duty?”
“Sometimes,” Susan said. “But not today.”
“Very well.” He poured himself a generous measure, swirled it and took a sip. A little color came back to his cheeks. “Ah… that’s better.”
“If we could get back to Mr. Rothwell, sir?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But you must understand Miss, Miss…?”
“Gay, sir. DC Gay.”
She saw the inadvertent smile flash across his face. People often smiled like that when she introduced herself. “Gay” had been a perfectly good name when she was a kid – her nickname for a while had been “Happy” Gay – but now its meaning was no longer the same. One clever bugger had actually asked, “Did you say AC or DC Gay?” She comforted herself with the thought that he was doing three to five in Strangeways thanks largely to her court evidence.
“Yes,” he went on, a frown quickly displacing the smile. “I’d heard about Keith’s death, of course, on the radio this lunch-time, but they didn’t say how it happened. That’s a bit of a shock, to be honest. You see, I knew Keith quite well. I’m only about three years older than he, and we worked here together for some years.”
“He left the firm five years ago, is that right?”
“About right. A big move like that takes quite a bit of planning, quite a bit of organizing. There were client files to be transferred, that sort of thing. And he had the house to think of, too.”
“He was a partner?”
“Yes. My father, Jeremiah Pratt, was one of the founders of the firm. He’s retired now.”
“I understand the family used to live in Eastvale, is that right?”
“Yes. Quite a nice house out toward the York roundabout. Catterick Street.”
“Why did they move?”
“Mary always fancied living in the country. I don’t know why. She wasn’t any kind of nature girl. I think perhaps she wanted to play Lady of the Manor.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Pratt shrugged. “Just her nature.”
“What about her husband?”
“Keith didn’t mind. I should imagine he liked the solitude. I don’t mean he was exactly antisocial, but he was never a great mixer, not lately, anyway. He travelled a lot, too.”
Pratt was in his mid-forties, Susan guessed, which did indeed make him just a few years older than Keith Rothwell. Quite good-looking, with a strong jaw and gray eyes, he wore his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his mauve and green tie clipped with what looked like a silver American dollar sign. His hairline was receding and what hair remained was gray at the temples. He wore black-framed glasses, which sat about halfway down his nose.
“Did you ever visit him there?”
“Yes. My wife and I dined with the Rothwells on several occasions.”
“Were you friends?”
Pratt took another sip of Cognac, put his hand out and waggled it from side to side. “Hmm. Somewhere between friends and colleagues, I’d say.”
“Why did he leave Hatchard and Pratt?”
Pratt broke eye contact and looked into the liquid he swirled in his snifter. “Ambition, maybe? Straightforward accountancy bored him. He was fond of abstractions, very good with figures. He certainly had a flair for financial management. Very creative.”
“Does that imply fraudulent?”
Pratt looked up at her. She couldn’t read his expression. “I resent that implication,” he said.
“Was there any bad feeling?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“When he left the firm. Had there been any arguments, any problems?”
“Good lord, this was five years ago!”
“Even so.”
Pratt adopted a stiffer tone. “No, of course there hadn’t. Everything was perfectly amicable. We were sorry to lose him, of course, but… ”
“He wasn’t fired or anything?”
“No.”
“Did he take any clients with him?”
Pratt shuffled in his chair. “There will always be clients who feel they owe their loyalty to an individual member of the firm rather than to the firm as a whole.”
“Are you sure this didn’t cause bad feeling?”
“No, of course not. While it’s unprofessional to solicit clients and woo them away, most firms do accept that they will lose some business whenever a popular member leaves to set up on his own. Say, for example, you visit a particular dentist in a group practice. You feel comfortable with him. He understands how you feel about dentists, you feel safe with him. If he left and set up on his own, would you go with him or stay and take your chances?”
Susan smiled. “I see what you mean. Do you think you could provide me with a list of names of the clients he took?”
Pratt chewed his lower lip for a moment, as if debating the ethics of such a request, then said, “I don’t see why not. You could find out from his records anyway.”
“Thank you. He must have made a fair bit of money somehow,” Susan said. “How did he do it?”
Pratt, who if truth be told, Susan thought, suppressing a giggle, might not be entirely happy about his name, either, made a steeple of his hairy hands. “The same way we all do, I assume,” he said. “Hard work. Good investments. Excellent service. Arkbeck Farm was in pretty poor shape when they bought it, you know. It didn’t cost a fortune, and he’d no trouble arranging a fair mortgage. He put a lot into that house over the years.”
Susan looked at her notes and frowned as if she were having trouble reading or understanding them. “I understand Mr. Rothwell actually owned a number of businesses. Do you know anything about this?”
Pratt shook his head. “Not really. I understand he was interested in property development. As I said, Keith was an astute businessman.”
“Did Mrs. Rothwell work?”
“Mary? Good heavens, no! Well, not in the sense that she went out and made money. Mary was a housewife all the way. Well, perhaps ‘house manager’ or ‘lady of leisure’ would be a more appropriate term, as she didn’t actually do the work herself. Except for the garden. You must have seen Arkbeck, how clean it is, how well appointed?”
“I’m afraid I had other things on my mind when I was there, sir,” Susan said, “but I know what you mean.”
Pratt nodded. “For Mary,” he went on, “everything centered around the home, the family and the immediate community. Everything had to be just so, to look just right, and it had to be seen to look that way. I imagine she was a hard taskmaster, or should that be taskmistress? Of course, she didn’t spend all her time in the house. There were the Women’s Institute, the Church committees, the good works and the charities. Mary kept very busy, I can assure you.”