Dr Magrew looked doubtfully at his stuffed patient.
'Let us just say that I won't let appearances to the contrary influence my judgement,' he said. 'I suppose I could always put it that he shuffled off this mortal coil.'
'A thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, would certainly seem to fit the case,' said Mr Bullstrode. And so it was agreed.
Two days later a solemn cortege left Flawse Hall led by the brougham in which lay the coffin containing Mr Taglioni. It made its melancholy way along the gated road to the church at Black Pockrington where, after a short service in which the Vicar spoke movingly and with unconscious percipience about the dead man's love of wild life and its preservation, the taxidermist was laid to rest beneath a tombstone which proclaimed him Edwin Tyndale Flawse of Flawse Hall. Born 1887 and Gone to His Maker 1977. Below Lockhart had had inscribed a suitably enigmatic verse for them both.
'Ask not who look upon this stone If he who lies here, lies alone. Two fathers share this plot of land; The one acquired, the other grand.'
Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew looking upon it found it appropriate if not in the best of taste.
'I dislike the emphasis on lies,' said Dr Magrew.
'I still have grave reservations about Mr Taglioni's claim to be the bastard's father,' said Mr Bullstrode. 'That "acquired" has a nasty ring to it but I don't suppose we shall ever know the whole truth.'
'I sincerely hope no one else does,' said Dr Magrew. 'Do we know if he left a widow?'
Mr Bullstrode said he thought it best not to inquire. Certainly Mr Flawse's widow did not attend the funeral. She wandered the house dementedly and occasionally wailed, but her cries were drowned by the whines of the Flawse hounds baying the passing of their creator. And occasionally as if in royal salute there came the boom of a gun firing on the artillery range to the west.
'I wish the old bitch would go the same way herself,' said Lockhart after the funeral breakfast. 'It would save' a lot of trouble.'
'Aye, it would that,' Mr Dodd agreed. 'It never does to have your mither-in-law living in the same house with a young couple. And you'll be moving in with your wife shortly na doubt.'
'As soon as I have made financial arrangements, Mr Dodd,-said Lockhart. 'I have one or two matters still to attend to in the south.'
Next day he caught the train from Newcastle and by evening was back in Sandicott Crescent.
Chapter nineteen
There everything had changed. The houses had all been sold, even Mr O'Brain's, and the Crescent was once more its quiet undisturbed suburban self. In Jessica's bank account £659,000 nestled to her credit, the manager's effusiveness and the great expectations of the Chief Collector of Taxes who could hardly wait to apply the regulations governing Capital Gains. Lockhart's million pounds in damages from Miss Goldring and her erstwhile publishers were lodged in a bank in the City acquiring interest but otherwise untouchable by the tax authorities whose mandate did not allow them to lay hands on wealth obtained by such socially productive methods as gambling, filling in football pool coupons correctly, playing the horses or winning £50,000 by investing one pound in Premium Bonds. Even bingo prizes remained inviolate. So for the time being did Jessica's fortune and Lockhart intended it to remain that way.
'All you have to do,' he told her next morning, 'is to see the manager and tell him you are withdrawing the entire sum in used one-pound notes. You understand?'
Jessica said she did and went down to the bank with a large empty suitcase. It was still large and empty when she returned.
'The manager wouldn't let me,' she said tearfully, 'he said it was inadvisable and anyway I have to give a week's notice before I can withdraw money in my deposit account.'
'Oh did he?' said Lockhart. 'In that case we will go down again this afternoon and give him a week's notice.'
The meeting in the bank manager's office did not go smoothly. The knowledge that so valued a customer intended to ignore his advice and withdraw such an enormous sum in such small denominations had rubbed away a great deal of his effusiveness.
'In used one-pound notes?' he said incredulously. 'You surely can't mean that. The work involved…'
'Will go some way to making good the profit you have received from my wife's deposit,' said Lockhart. 'You charge higher rates for overdrafts than you pay for deposits.'
'Yes, well we have to,' said the manager. 'After all…'
'And you also have to return the money to customers when they require it and in the legal tender they choose,' continued Lockhart, 'and if my wife wants used one-pound notes.'
'I can't imagine what for,' said the manager, 'I would have thought it the height of folly for you to leave this building with a suitcase of untraceable notes. You might be robbed in the street.'
'We might equally well be robbed in here,' said Lockhart, 'and to my way of thinking we have been by the discrepancy between your rates of interest. The value of that money has been depreciating thanks to inflation ever since you've had it. You won't deny that.'
The manager couldn't. 'It's hardly our fault that inflation is a national problem,' he said. 'Now if you want some advice as to the best investment…'
'We have one in mind,' said Lockhart. 'Now, we will abide by our undertaking not to withdraw the money without giving you a week's notice provided you let us have the money in used pound notes. I hope that is clear.'
'Yes,! said the manager for whom it wasn't but who didn't like the look on Mr Flawse's face. 'If you will come in on Thursday it will be ready for you.'
Jessica and Lockhart went back to Number 12 and spent the week packing.
'I think it would be best to send the furniture up by British Rail,' said Lockhart.
'But don't they lose things? I mean look what happened to mummy's car.'
'They have the advantage, my dear, that while things frequently don't arrive at their proper destination they invariably fail to be returned to their point of departure. I rely on this inefficiency to prevent anyone knowing where we have gone to.'
'Oh, Lockhart, you are clever,' said Jessica. 'I hadn't thought of that. But why are you addressing that packing-case to Mr Jones in Edinburgh? We don't know any Mr Jones in Edinburgh.'
'My love,' said Lockhart, 'no more we do and no more does British Rail but I will be there at the station with a rented van to collect it and I very much doubt if anyone will be able to trace us.'
'You mean we're going to hide?' said Jessica.
'Not hide,' said Lockhart, 'but since I have been classified as statistically and bureaucratically non-existent and thereby ineligible to those benefits the Welfare State is said to provide, I have not the slightest intention of providing the State with any of those benefits we have been able to accrue. In short not one penny in income tax, not one penny in Capital Gains Tax, and not one penny in anything. I don't exist and being non-existent intend to reap my reward.'
'I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Jessica, 'but you're quite right. After all fair's fair.'
'Wrong,' said Lockhart. 'Nothing is fair.'
'Well, they do say "All's fair in love and war", darling,' said
Jessica.
'Which is to invert the meaning of the word,' said Lockhart, 'or to reduce it to mean that there are no rules governing one's conduct. In which case all is fair in love, war and tax evasion. Isn't that true, Bouncer?'
The bull-terrier looked up and wagged his stump. He had taken to the Flawse family. They seemed to look with favour on those ferocious attributes for which he and his fellow bull-terriers had been bred, namely the biting of things and hanging on like grim death.
And so by the following Thursday the contents of the house had been packed and dispatched to Edinburgh by British Rail to be collected there by Mr Jones and it only remained to go to the bank and fill the suitcase with the used one-pound notes. Lockhart had already withdrawn his million in the same form from his bank in the City. The manager there had been more cooperative, largely thanks to Lockhart's explanation that he needed the money immediately as he was conducting a little transaction concerning oil wells with the Sheik of Araby who wanted his money in coinage, and preferably in five penny pieces. The thought of counting one million pounds out in fivepenny pieces had so daunted the manager that he had done his utmost to persuade Lockhart to accept one-pound notes. And Lockhart had reluctantly agreed provided they were used.