Stone's Fall

The details were much as his wife and McEwen had related, and gave little else besides. The similarity between the various reports was striking. Evidently not a single one of the reporters had written the account himself. They all had a common source, who must have more or less dictated the report. More than that, the brief summary of events appeared in all the papers some three days after the death – that is on 30 March, an unusual delay in reporting the sudden and violent death of a peer, even if one of recent creation. Ordinarily events would have proceeded thus: Ravenscliff found, police summoned. Police go back to their station to report, man on desk informs journalist, who comes in for routine enquiries, as one does every morning. If it is not the stuff of which great scoops are made (and this would not have been considered such), he informs his colleagues in the pub at about eleven. All make whatever enquiries they see fit, and the first account appears in the evening, the rest the next morning.

In this case matters went along differently. The enquiring journalist was not told of Ravenscliff's death, either that day, or the day after. Why not? I decided that this would be my first enquiry. I had to start somewhere, and it piqued my interest. Besides, I had seven years; I was in no hurry.

It would give me something to do, and would place no great strain on my patience or intellect. I looked forward to it, for the rest of my time in the library was passed in much less interesting reading. Only the Financial Times gave Ravenscliff much of an obituary, and even there the details were sparse. Ravenscliff was born John William Stone in 1841, the son of a vicar in Shropshire. School, university. In 1868 he had set up the Gosport Torpedo Company. Then followed a blizzard of complicated dealings that made my head spin. Gosport Torpedo had been bought by Beswick Shipyard in Newcastle, which was listed on the Stock Exchange in 1878. Beswick then combined with the Gleeson's steelworks in 1885, then bought out the Yarnton chemical works, then the Salford railway factory, iron-ore mines in Yorkshire, and coal mines near Edinburgh. Then in 1890 he had put all his holdings into the Rialto Investment Trust and sold that on the Stock Exchange as well. The result, the obituarist told me, was an extraordinary construction which could begin by taking dust out of the earth and change it, bit by bit, into a fully operational and equipped battleship, without ever having to purchase a single object from an outside company. The entire combine was run with a legendary efficiency, so much so that it boasted that it could go from mine to battle on the high seas in less than twelve months.

Even more curious was the phrase 'among his business interests'.

The obituary dropped a similar hint later on: 'the most publicly known of his financial concerns . . .' What was the author leaving out? What was he not saying? What more was there? McEwen had said he owned the Chronicle; Wilf Cornford had mentioned hotels and banks. Is that what they meant?

As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: 'a natural raconteur' (loved the sound of his own voice); 'Noted for his generosity to friends' (profligate); 'a formidable enemy . . .' (a brute); 'a severe but fair employer . . .' (a slave-driver); 'devoted to the turf ' (never read a book in his life); 'a life-long bachelor' (vice); 'a collector of flowers' (this meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.)

More browsing through The Times Annual Index produced other articles of a general sort, but I could not face reading them that day. I had enough in my notebook at least to present a tolerably intelligent face to Franklin that evening, and I found the bombardment of names and share prices and capital ratios too bewildering to be contemplated on an empty stomach. So I took the bus back down to Fleet Street, where I went into the King and Keys for a pickled egg and a drink.