Stone's Fall

Wilf looked contemptuous. 'A nothing. A face, that's all. No, my friend, it is someone else. And he won't escape me for long. You wait and see.'

He drummed his fingers on the table. A strange light was glimmering in his eyes as he took an enormous swig at his glass. 'Barings wishes to make it clear it is convinced there is nothing wrong with Rialto. But perhaps it is only doing this because it knows full well that there is something very wrong indeed, and it is prepared to risk losing its stake to keep it hidden. What motive could a bank have for being prepared to lose money? Eh? Tell me that.'

'The prospect of losing even more money?'

He rubbed his hands together. 'Ah, this will be fun.'

Well, I thought, I'll let him get on with it. I didn't want to share the crown jewels of my knowledge with him. But I knew, so I thought, what it was all about. In fact, it was obvious. Any proper investigation of Rialto would throw up the fact that the accounts were fictitious, that millions had been siphoned off the underlying companies. But – and it was a fairly sizeable but – what was the point? Wasn't it just postponing the inevitable?

I wandered home, thinking I would have a quiet hour before dinner. A whole evening when I did not have to think about money or aristocrats at all. I almost felt pleasure as I turned the key in the lock of Paradise Walk, and breathed in the foul air of the entrance.

But not for long. Mrs Morrison shot into the hall the moment she heard the door, and bore down on me with a severe, distressed look, quite unlike her normal air of amiability.

'Mr Braddock,' she began, 'I am most upset. Most upset. How you could be so disrespectful, I do not know. I am very disappointed in you. I'm afraid I must ask you to leave my house.'

'What?' I said in shock, pausing as I took my coat off. 'What on earth is the matter?'

'I have always given my boys complete freedom, and expect them to respect this house. To invite unsuitable people is unacceptable.'

'Mrs Morrison, what are you talking about?'

'That woman.'

'What woman?'

'The one in the parlour.'

Lady Ravenscliff, I thought, but the surge of pleasure was quickly tempered by feeling of dismay that she should see the circumstances in which I lived. The meanness, the shabbiness. I looked around, at the brown painted wood, the dingy wallpaper, the cheap prints on the wall, at Mrs Morrison herself, and almost blushed.

'I am sorry she came here,' I said fervently. 'But have no fears. She is entirely respectable. Certainly not unsuitable in any way.'

'She's a trollop,' she said, hesitating a moment before she used the word, and then deciding it was justified. 'Don't pretend to me, Mr Braddock. I know one when I see one, and she is. I won't have it.'

I had rather expected Mrs Morrison to be overcome with the flusters at the idea of having a real Lady in the house, and my relief that Elizabeth had not got the tea and cakes routine was only matched by my dismay that she should be characterised in such a way. Had she been a trollop, she would have been far beyond my purse, even at £350 a year.

'But Mrs Morrison, she is my employer.'

Now she stared at me in blank astonishment. We had reached an impasse, with neither understanding what the other was going on about, until a noise of movement resolved the matter. The girl coming through the door of the parlour was no lady. In fact, Mrs Morrison's characterisation seemed pretty judicious. She was about twenty, I guessed, garishly and shabbily dressed, and moved with an air of cheeky insolence mingled with caution and suspicion. Why I say that, I do not know; but that was my impression.

'Who the hell are you?' I asked incredulously.

'Well, you asked for me, didn't you?'

'No.'

'I was told you'd pay me a guinea.'

A guinea? For her? I wasn't that desperate. I could see why Mrs Morrison was so angry with me. Women was the one thing she did not allow. Certainly not one like that.

'I can assure you I . . .' and then an idea came into my head. 'Who said I'd pay you a guinea?'

'Jimmy.'

'Who's Jimmy?'

'Never met him before. He's a kid.'

And the penny dropped. 'Is your name Mary?'

'Course it is.'

I breathed a sigh. 'Go back in there and wait for me, please.'

I all but pushed her back into the parlour, shut the door, then turned to Mrs Morrison.

'I apologise from the bottom of my heart, Mrs Morrison. I cannot say sorry fervently enough. This woman is not what she appears, believe me. She is a very important witness, absolutely crucial to my work at the moment. I have been looking high and low for her, and I must talk to her before she takes fright and runs away. Let me do this, and I will explain fully afterwards. Please?'