Stone's Fall (7 page)

CHAPTER
9

I wasn’t really sure why it was, considering the task at hand, that I devoted myself to trying to understand Ravenscliff ’s manner of business. I reckoned it was important to know the sort of man I was dealing with, and so far I had learned little. Only his wife had referred to his character, and I assumed her testimony was unreliable. He must have had some friends, surely? Someone who knew and understood him. While the doings of the Rialto Investment Trust would offer little insight into his passions and emotions, they might at least lead to someone who had known him. So I hoped, anyway.

The following day I had a quick lunch with a friend who worked as a jobber at the Exchange; not a grand figure in that world, but one who was around all the time, and the jobber’s bread and cheese depends on knowing even the least wisp of gossip. Fortunes are made, companies rise and fall on catching a muttered comment in a pub or club or tavern before anyone else hears of it. The firm which employed Leighton was moderately prosperous, so I understood, and so must do tolerably well in listening.

Not that Leighton looked like a man who spent his time closeted in dark rooms, listening to idle gossip. If there was anyone less obviously suited to the life he led, then I have never met him. Leighton gave the impression of one born to rule an empire, or at least explore it. It would have been more fitting to come across him a few miles from the source of the Nile than the Stock Exchange.

He was huge, and at one time had been a useful rugger player. He had a booming voice incapable of speaking quietly and was inevitably overheard in all that he said. He had prodigious energy, and once took a bet that he could leave the exchange at six in the evening, walk all the way to Brighton and back, and be at his post (in foreign railways) at nine the next morning. Ninety miles in fifteen hours. Naturally, the betting was intense; some thousand pounds was wagered on the outcome, with Anderson’s, Leighton’s firm, making the book. More or less the whole of the City was there to see him off, and a large number cycled alongside him to make sure that there was no cheating. Even many of these gave up through tiredness or hunger, but Leighton marched on, large, red in the face and sweating profusely until the day cooled enough for him to become chilled. Through the night he walked, never stopping for a moment, even eating his dinner—two bottles of burgundy, three pheasant, and four dozen oysters—as he marched, a member of his firm driving an automobile alongside him laden with food, which was passed to him as required.

His return the next morning was rather like a Roman triumph. No work was done because of the excitement; the finances of the Empire were neglected until all was over. Even the Rothschild’s men emerged from their great palace in New Court to be present at the conclusion, a frivolity never witnessed before or since.

He walked up the steps of the Exchange with fifteen minutes to spare, and was carried shoulder high by his comrades to his place on the floor with firecrackers being let off, bottles of champagne popping and the bread rolls flying. He had become a legend with a job for life, for who could ever dispense with the services of such a fine fellow? Of such things are careers and reputations made in the City of London.

Such was Leighton and, as I could be certain that anything I told him would be all around the Exchange within five minutes of our conversation finishing, I had to be careful about what I said. So I told him simply that I had been commissioned to write a biography, and that I was completely lost.

“Grieving wife, wanting a memorial, eh?” he boomed cheerfully. “Why not? She’s got the money, or will have soon enough. I can’t say that it will be a book I’ll buy, though.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never heard an interesting story about the man. He came, he amassed money, he died. There! I’ve written it for you.”

“I think Lady Ravenscliff wants a little more than that. Did you ever meet him?”

“Once, but not to speak to. Not a very sociable man, you understand. But even he had to show up to the occasional reception and ball. Very handsome wife, I must say. Charming woman.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“Hungarian countess, I think. Who knows anything about Hungarian countesses? I would guess she had not a penny to her name, but the name was something. Run-down old
schloss
somewhere in the Transylvanian mountains…”

“Are they in Hungary?”

“Who knows? Who cares? You get the picture though.”

“What about Ravenscliff?”

He pursed his lips. “Perfectly polite, but a bit frightening. Didn’t say much. Always had a look about him as if he wished he wasn’t there. He rarely showed up to anything at all, and would often enough leave as soon as he could. His wife has little time for City society either, so I gather.”

“Not much of a figure, then?”

“Oh, Lord, yes. He was immensely powerful. That was why there was such a panic when he died.”

“Was there a panic? I didn’t notice anything.”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you, because you don’t pay attention to these things. But there was. Obviously there was.”

“Why obviously?”

“Because the instant reaction when someone like that drops out of a window is to think that maybe he jumped. And then you worry that his investments have gone all wobbly. So people start selling shares, just in case.”

“The Rialto Investment Trust,” I said proudly.

Leighton nodded. “And the underlying investments. What if he had topped himself because Rialto was in Queer Street? It has happened before, it’ll happen again. So the moment the rumour started spreading—”

“People started selling.”

“Right again. But, and this is the curious thing, they didn’t fall much. Even before the stories were in circulation, buyers were coming into the market, picking up every share on offer and supporting the price. We did a roaring trade on behalf of the Consolidated Bank in Manchester. Don’t know who they were buying for, though.”

“So?”

“If you offer something for sale, and no one wants it, then you drop the price until you find a taker, correct? No one will buy shares in a company which might be insolvent, so the quoted price can fall through the floor. If, on the other hand, there is a buyer, then the price stabilises. No panic, the owners of the shares are reassured, and stop trying to unload them. Understand?”

I nodded.

“With Rialto, of course, the price has been very low lately.”

“Why of course?”

“Same with all the armaments companies,” he said reflectively. “No orders. The government isn’t buying. They’ve been going through hard times. Anyway, the point is, all of a sudden, there were buyers all over the place. The shares went up, can you credit it? The question is, who was buying? Somebody knew something, but I’m damned if I could find out what. And later Cazenove came into the market, acting for Barings. And the funny thing was, Barings seemed to be trading on their own account.”

“What does that mean?”

“Buying for themselves, not for a client. So I’m told. The thing is they weren’t trying to make money. They were buying at full price. Whoever heard of a bank not trying to make money? Unless they were doing someone a favour.”

“This was when, exactly?”

“When Ravenscliff died.”

“No, I mean what day
exactly
? The day he died, or the day the news appeared in the papers?”

“There was nothing in the papers. That came two days later.”

“What would have happened if the news had come out immediately? A few hours after he died?”

“Heavy selling, with, presumably, no buyers primed to intervene. Collapse in the share price. Possibly forcing the Trust to sell off the shares it owned in other companies, leading to a general drop of the market.”

“Which is not good?”

Leighton sighed. “Not really.”

I thought about this. It more or less explained the delay in reporting Ravenscliff ’s death; gave one possible explanation, at any rate. Keeping the news quiet meant that Ravenscliff ’s friends had time to prepare. All very well.

“Have you ever heard of a man called Henry Cort?”

Leighton looked puzzled for a moment, then shook his head. “City man?”

“I don’t know. Just a name I heard. Not important.”

I left him ordering another drink and a pork pie, and went to think. I was accumulating information, but so far it didn’t add up to much. Ravenscliff died, assorted people of some considerable authority delayed the news becoming generally known; stockbrokers intervened to stop a run on Ravenscliff ’s company; the Foreign Office was, maybe, involved. Of all the information I had, this was the most curious. At least, that was the only thing I thought FO might mean. Everything else was the usual sort of thing (I believed) one might expect from the City.

I didn’t sleep as well as usual that night; I felt that I was proceeding in an amateurish, haphazard fashion—a bit of information here, a bit there, without having any real sense of what I was doing. I was annoyed with myself, even though I had only been at work for a few days. I felt I should be more organised. More businesslike, in honour of my subject. By the time I finally fell asleep, I had resolved to start again, at the beginning, and go back to question Lady Ravenscliff more thoroughly. She must have known him better than anyone.

I was aware that I was trying to do several things at once. I was, officially, meant to be writing a biography of a financier; I was supposed, unofficially, to be finding a child; and I was also meant, even more unofficially, to be examining Ravenscliff ’s death to find out what it meant for the
Chronicle.
I had to remember to keep in mind which one of these I was meant to be doing at any particular moment.

The next morning, I sent a note to Lady Ravenscliff requesting an interview, another to Mr. Xanthos asking for the same, and then took myself off to visit the family solicitor.

I should have known that Ravenscliff would not have had a solicitor of the Dickensian type, who still existed in those days. Old clerk, brown wooden desks, glasses of sherry or port, and reassuring conversation surrounded by piles of carefully docketed folders and archival boxes. No; Ravenscliff liked efficiency and dynamism; his solicitor matched his tastes. Mr. Henderson was a young man for his job, perhaps in his mid-thirties, and, in my opinion, somewhat bumptious. The sort who had done well at school, never broken any rules, been a favourite with his teachers. Someone who was going to do well in life, and who, as a result, never questioned whether it was worth doing. I didn’t like him much, and he treated me with scant respect in return. The sherry decanter was not disturbed in its rest by my presence.

Still, I was the representative of his most valuable client, trying to do something which he was incapable of doing on his own. He formed trusts and conveyed things. Finding illegitimate children was quite outside his range. As our conversation progressed, I occasionally even felt a slight sense of unseemly interest, as though some long dormant imp buried deep in his well-run life was stirring a little. Perhaps he had really wanted to flick an ink pellet at a teacher, but had never dared.

“You know that for public purposes I am supposed to be writing a biography?”

He nodded.

“And you are also aware of the real reason for my presence?”

He nodded again.

“In that case, I can dispense with all the subtleties. What do you know of this business?”

He sighed in the manner of a man who prefers questions that require a yes or no answer. “Very little more than is contained in the will. That there existed a child, that money was to be left to it, and that material identifying that child was to be found in his safe at home.”

“Which is not, in fact, to be found.”

“So it would seem. It makes the life of the executors of the will very difficult.”

“Why?”

“Because the estate cannot be easily settled until all claims on it are resolved. And that cannot be done while the matter of this child is extant. So the estate will remain in limbo until it is cleared up, one way or the other.”

“Do you know what it was, this material? Wouldn’t it have been wise to leave it with you?”

“As it turned out, it would have been very much wiser,” he said evenly. “I can only surmise that Lord Ravenscliff had a good reason for his decision.”

“What sort of good reason?”

“The obvious one would be that, when he made the will, he had not yet finished accumulating the material, and wished to add to it.”

“Tell me how the will was made. He came here…”

“He came here and said that he thought it best to make his will. He had realised he was not going to live forever. Although, to be truthful, that was difficult to believe. He was in exceptional health, or appeared to be. His father lived until he was ninety.”

“He had not made a will before then? Is that usual for men of fortune?”

“Quite unusual, yes. But men like Lord Ravenscliff do not like to contemplate their mortality. He had given us a rudimentary testament, just enough to ensure he did not die intestate in case of an accident. In that all his possessions passed to his wife. This was a more complicated and complete version.”

“The details?”

“The bulk of his estate passed to his wife, there were legacies to other family members, servants and to his old college. Generous bequests, I might say. A legacy to a Mrs. Esther Vincotti of Venice. Six months later he returned to add a codicil concerning this child.”

“And when he mentioned that, you didn’t ask for details?”

“That is hardly my role.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“No. He simply dictated his wishes.”

“You weren’t curious?”

Henderson looked vaguely affronted at the suggestion. “Many of my clients are wealthy men, and many have discreditable secrets in their lives. It is my job to look after their legal affairs, not their spiritual wellbeing.”

“So you are no wiser than anyone else?”

He inclined his head to indicate that, incredible though it might seem, that was the case.