“It sounds like falling off a log,” said John, “but—I may be being stupid—why did he want a second set of title deeds to Crookham Court Farm? He must have acquired a perfectly good set when he bought the place in 1936.”
“Well,” said Henry. “He had to hand over the real deeds to the National Provincial Bank when he mortgaged his farm to them, way back in 1937. Don’t you think a spare set must have been quite useful when he wanted to raise the wind again in 1943?”
“Viewed in that light,” agreed John, “a chap could hardly have too many sets of title deeds. Where are you going?”
“Down to the Husbandmen’s League to make sure. Coming?”
“Might as well,” said John. “I can see that I shan’t be allowed to concentrate on my Final until everything has been cleared up in Chapter Sixteen. How did you get on to this particular swindle?”
“It’s known as the cuff-link trick,” said Bohun. “If we run we shall just get that bus. You pawn one cuff link twice. I started to have it explained to me by an expert last night.”
II
The Husbandmen’s League occupied a floor in the building that housed Mr. Bohun Senior. There was nothing markedly agricultural about them apart from their name and their seal, a design showing two blades of corn (thrift) crossed in front of a sickle (hard work). They were, in fact, a collection of long-headed believers in private enterprise who lent their money at three and a half per cent to farmers. Hazlerigg had already been on the telephone to them and Bohun and Cove were shown straight into the office of the general manager. Mr. Manifold was a baldish West Countryman, constructed basically on the lines of a barrage balloon. The worries of the morning had emptied a pocket or two of the gas out of his fabric.
“I hope,” he began, “that there’s nothing wrong. We heard, of course, of Mr. Horniman’s death. Very sad.” He assumed a mournful expression momentarily. “We had anticipated that probate would be exhibited in the normal way, and the executor would have continued the quarterly payments. The next one falls due on the first of June.”
Bohun decided that brutality would probably get him through quickest in the end.
“I don’t doubt,” he said, “that the interest payments will be kept up, for the time being anyway. But I am afraid I must break it to you that the security for the loan is illusory.”
“Illusory?” Mr. Manifold deflated sharply, then recovered and went rather red, exactly as if he had received a badly-needed replenishment of helium. “Perhaps you would be good enough to explain how the security of two hundred acres of freehold farming land can be illusory?”
“Have you got the deeds here?”
“I have asked for all the papers to be brought up,” said Mr. Manifold stiffly, “and here is Mr. Fremlinghouse—our legal adviser.”
Mr. Fremlinghouse, who was very tall, had a light moustache, and wore horn-rimmed glasses, advanced and laid a packet of deeds in front of Mr. Manifold. Mr. Manifold untied the red tape and shuffled them over to Bohun.
Bohun only needed to look at the first one to be certain. He pushed it across to John Cove. “February 15th, 1880. Indenture of Conveyance. Henry Balderstone and Others to John Pratt. Longleaf Farm in the County of Kent.”
“The name was changed later, as I remember it,” said Mr. Fremlinghouse.
“It certainly was,” agreed Bohun grimly.
Passing over the next deed he opened the conveyance of 1920. It was engrossed bookwise, on clean-looking parchment, in the usual beautiful characterless law copperplate. Bohun looked carefully at the final page. John Cove and Mr. Fremlinghouse looked over his shoulder.
“You can see the join quite easily,” he said. “The last page inside the back sheet. It’s been sewn in behind the fold, and the hinge has been covered by that transparent adhesive stuff—map-makers’ tape, I believe it’s called.”
“Gracious goodness,” said Mr. Fremlinghouse. “Now so it has. I don’t think I examined it particularly—not from that point of view at least. It’s quite a common practice to repair deeds with that transparent tape. What is your idea—that the last page is an insertion—a substitution?”
“That’s it,” said Bohun.
“Now I do like that,” said John. He had his finger on the clause describing the property. “Neat but not gaudy: ‘formerly known as Longleaf Farm, but now and for some years past known as Stancomb Farm in the County of Kent’.”
Mr. Fremlinghouse was examining the three deeds with a professional interest that almost bordered on enthusiasm.
“No plan in the first two deeds, I see,” he observed.
“No. Just a schedule of tithe numbers with their acreages and the usual interminable descriptions: ‘All those several fields or closes of arable and pasture land and land covered by water, together with the messuages hereditaments buildings etc. etc.’ I wonder they troubled to write it all out. I’m certain no one ever bothers to read it.”
“I imagine,” said Mr. Fremlinghouse, “that it’s a relic of the days when you got paid for your conveyancing by the yard. I see your man has simply carried on from the last page of the genuine conveyance—quite so—and inserted the words: ‘As the same is delineated on the plan annexed hereto.’ Then he supplied his own plan. Wait a minute, though. What about a comparison of the schedules?”
“The total acreage was about the same,” said Bohun. “The old deeds gave tithe numbers. He changed them to Ordnance Survey numbers to correspond with his own farm.”
“Beautiful. Beautiful,” said Mr. Fremlinghouse.
“Really, Fremlinghouse,” said Mr. Manifold. “Isn’t this exactly what we pay you to protect us from.”
“No conveyancer can protect you from deliberate fraud,” said the solicitor. “On the face of it, these deeds confer a proper title to Stancomb Farm on one Ezekiel Jedd. They’re properly stamped and appear to be properly executed. Then we have another excellent deed conveying the same property from Ezekiel Jedd to Mr. Horniman. What more could anyone ask for?”
Another thought struck Mr. Manifold. “What about our valuer?” he said. “If Stancomb Farm doesn’t exist, what did he value? Or is his report a forgery, too?”
“I see you haven’t grasped the full inwardness of the idea,” said Bohun. “When your valuer went down to Kent to inspect the farm he would naturally get in touch with the owner—arrange an appointment and so on.”
“Of course.”
“Well, the owner of this Stancomb Farm—which we now know to be a figment of his own fertile imagination—was Abel Horniman. I’ve no doubt Abel met him with a car, took charge of him, and showed him round his own farm. That’s why it was a plan of his own farm—Crookham Court Farm—and not a purely imaginary one, that he put on the forged set of deeds. Everything then tied up very neatly.”
A gleam of hope appeared in Mr. Manifold’s eye. He pointed to the last deed.
“If that’s really a plan of Crookham Court Farm,” he said, “can’t we claim that our mortgage covers that farm—whatever it says in the deed?”
“I suppose you might,” said Bohun. “Only it won’t do you much good. It’s already very heavily mortgaged to the National Provincial Bank.”
“Why didn’t you find that out?” said Mr. Manifold. He felt that it was intolerable that he should be able to blame nobody. “Didn’t you search at the Land Registry? I take it you made the usual searches.” This was a minutia of the law which he happened to understand, and he got it off his chest with some pride.
“Certainly I searched,” said Mr. Fremlinghouse. “And I found Abel Horniman’s mortgage of Crookham Court Farm duly recorded. Why should I worry about that? He was mortgaging Stancomb Farm to you. Of course, it really was Crookham Court Farm, too, but I wasn’t to know that.”