The American Boy (52 page)

“I did not cause the collapse of the bank, sir,” snapped Mr Noak. “That is quite inaccurate. The collapse was inevitable once Mr Carswall withdrew his capital and Henry Frant took over the direction of the bank's affairs. I merely hastened it, and made sure that Frant would be implicated in the ruin, and his embezzlement exposed.”

“You bought bills at a discount and presented them for payment?”

“I find you are surprisingly well informed. Yes, that and other tactics. For example, I encouraged Mr Frant to believe I was contemplating a substantial investment in an English bank – that was what we were discussing when we dined together on the night of Mr Wavenhoe's death. The intelligence I gained was remarkably valuable. When one has a little knowledge, much can be achieved by sowing a word in the right ear. A bank is like a hot-air balloon held in the air by the gas of public confidence. If the balloon is punctured, then the machine tumbles to earth.”

“And so we come to Mr Frant's murder,” I said flatly.

Noak regarded me in silence for a moment. “It was very convenient, was it not? It saved him and his family the mortification of a trial, and the public hanging which would inevitably have followed. It also meant that a number of questions were left unanswered because only Henry Frant could answer them. For example, there was a considerable sum in securities that was never recovered. His confidential clerk gave me a list of the missing bills that were in the possession of Wavenhoe's Bank at the end of August.”

“Arndale? Was it not he who identified his master's body at the inquest?”

“You imply that he may not be an unimpeachable source? Possibly. But I have confirmed at least some of his information elsewhere, and I am inclined to think that he no longer has any motive to conceal the truth. But to return to the securities: Frant might have gambled them away or sold them at a discount before his presumed death on the twenty-fifth of November. But I do not believe it.”

“They could be turned into ready money? Even now?”

Noak nodded. “They were all negotiable by bearer. You would need to know what you were doing, and of course the transactions would leave a trace.” He walked back to his chair and sat down slowly. “Two weeks ago, one of the bills on the list was presented for payment in Riga. The sum involved amounted to nearly five thousand pounds. It was not presented directly but through a local intermediary.”

“It is nigh on six months since Mr Frant died,” I pointed out.

“Or disappeared.” Noak glanced at Harmwell, who had retreated into the shadows. “I think it likely, however, that Frant did not have the securities at his disposal until some way into January this year.” He paused and looked steadily at me.

I said, “You believe he deposited them at Monkshill?”

Noak stared impassively at me.

“He knew Monkshill and its environs intimately,” I continued. “As only a boy who had grown up there could have known it.” I stared back at Noak, and thought I saw an almost imperceptible nod. “The recess in the ice-house sump, where Mr Harmwell and I found the ring. It is the sort of hiding place that an inquisitive little boy might have found.”

“What age was Frant when he left Monkshill. Do you know?”

“Ten or eleven.” I remembered Sophie telling me on the night of the ball, as we sat beside the fire at Fendall House. I yearned with sudden urgency to have her beside me now. “I have it from an unimpeachable source. Or perhaps he discovered it later. When he was at school in England, he often stayed with the Ruispidges at Clearland-court. It is no distance for an active youth. He might well have revisited the scenes of his childhood.”

“Ah.” Noak pulled back his lips, exposing his gums. “So – if we allow this – why should Frant have not retrieved the securities before January?”

“Because when he deposited the securities, he must have reached the sump by the drain. The ice-house was full and he could not reach it from the chamber above, could he? He could not have foreseen the accident of the autumn gales, of the landslide which blocked the shaft down to the drain.”

“Quite so, Mr Shield. And why Monkshill? Why Monkshill, out of all the hiding places in the world?”

I smiled at him, for suddenly I sensed that I knew as much as he did, that for once we were on an equal footing. “Mrs Johnson.”

“She was his confederate,” Noak said flatly. “There is no shadow of doubt in my mind on that score.”

“I saw her in London in October, hard by Russell-square. Miss Carswall glimpsed her in Pall Mall. But at Monkshill she denied having been in town.”

“I believe the woman was his mistress.” There was a rare note of passion in Noak's voice, as though adultery disgusted him more than theft and murder. “When Frant saw ruin staring him in the face, I suspect he set aside a collection of portable valuables and that he or Mrs Johnson hid them at Monkshill. It is possible that he entrusted her with them on the day you saw her, and that she carried them down to Monkshill. No doubt their intention was to wait until the hue and cry had died down, and then slip abroad under false names. When the blocking of the drain prevented them, they were compelled to wait until the time came to clear out the ice-house, when the sump would become accessible from the chamber itself. On the night in question, they poisoned the dogs and went to the ice-house from Grange Cottage to retrieve what they had left there. And something went wrong – a lover's quarrel that turned sour, perhaps, or even a simple accident – and Mrs Johnson died, leaving Frant with no choice but to take what he had come for and make good his escape. Either way, he would have been hanged if he was caught.”

“This is speculation, sir.”

“Not entirely: and what is speculation is well supported by the evidence.”

I cast my mind back over the events of the last few months. “This does not explain your interest in Mr Carswall.” My voice was hoarse, and I was tired and growing angry. “Nor indeed your interest in me.”

“Mr Carswall.” Noak's lips tightened as he gathered his thoughts. “My inquiries both here and in North America have established beyond any doubt that until a few years ago Frant was Carswall's creature. When Frant joined Wavenhoe's as a young man, he had nothing in his favour except his birth, and even that was tainted by his father's excesses. Yet he prospered, and with enormous rapidity, because he found a patron in Carswall who was then an active partner in the bank. Carswall had sold his West Indian interests just before the abolition of the Trade and invested much of his capital in the bank. George Wavenhoe, even then, was not the man he once was, though the bank's reputation still rested on the City's knowledge of his integrity, both moral and financial. In theory, it was George Wavenhoe who sent Frant to Canada during the late war, to look after and extend the bank's interests there. In practice, however, I have no doubt that it was Carswall's decision. Frant's clerk tells me he took it for granted it was so.”

“Then the question must be: was Carswall fully cognisant of Frant's activities in Canada, and of the murder of Lieutenant Saunders?”

“Precisely. My investigations have pointed the finger again and again at Carswall, but I cannot prove it. And I will have justice, Mr Shield, not revenge: within the law, always within the law.” The blood had rushed to his face, and his hands clutched convulsively at the arms of his chair. He said nothing for a moment and then continued in a quieter, suddenly weary voice. “You will recall that Carswall and I were negotiating over some warehouses in Liverpool. That served a double purpose. On the one hand, it gave me a reason to prolong our stay at Monkshill-park, and on the other it allowed my lawyers to examine the records at the warehouses. These are Carswall's personal property, these warehouses: and there is no doubt that goods destined for Frant's contractors in British North America went through them, and that Carswall charged a fat fee for the privilege. But of course this does not amount to proof of collusion with Frant, or even corruption. And the matter is enormously complicated by the fact that Frant and Carswall quarrelled when Carswall withdrew his capital from the bank five years ago – after Frant had returned from Canada and become a partner at Wavenhoe's. Carswall's departure made the bank's crash almost inevitable, particularly given Frant's loose, expensive way of living. Frant tried to stave off his ruin with embezzlement, but it could not answer for ever. So he and his mistress laid their desperate plan.”

“If it was not Frant who was murdered at Wellington-terrace, then who was it?”

Noak shrugged. “Does it matter? Scores of men go missing in London every day. No doubt Frant found some unfortunate about the same age and build as himself, spun him a tale, and murdered him. I suspect Mrs Johnson played Lady Macbeth's part. My impression of her was of a strong-minded, ruthless woman. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.”

It was more than plausible. But Noak still did not know everything that I knew.

“So now we come to the present,” he said, and his thin voice was hoarse with tiredness and talking. “One of the missing bills has changed hands. So we may deduce that Frant is almost certainly abroad, living under a false name and moving from place to place. But Carswall is still here, and I believe him to be as responsible for my son's death as Frant, as the man who pressed his head down in the puddle. If I cannot prove his collusion in my son's murder, then I shall find something else he has done, something he cannot so easily conceal, just as I did with Frant. In these months before his daughter's marriage, his position is particularly delicate.” Noak paused, his jaws moving soundlessly and methodically as though chewing the problem to digestible pulp. “And there is yet another possibility that would make his position even more precarious: if we could show that he and Frant, far from being mortal enemies, were in fact acting in concert.”

“That can hardly be – they hate each other.”

Noak ignored my interruption. “Even now, it is not impossible to kill two birds with one stone. What gives me hope is the bill that was changed in Riga. I have looked into the circumstances which led to its being presented for payment, how it passed from hand to hand. It is like a chain – one end attached to the bill, each link corresponding to a person through whose hands it has passed. But the chain breaks in February. The bill plunges into obscurity until it re-emerges on the schedule that Arndale prepared for me. None of those links has anything to do with Henry Frant. But one of them, a notary in Brussels, is a known associate of Stephen Carswall's.”

The reasoning was too fragile for its conclusion. I concealed a yawn and said, “The inveterate hatred between Mr Carswall and Mr Frant must surely argue against it, and there are other reasons as well.”

“I shall deal with those in a moment,” Noak replied. “In the meantime I shall merely observe that necessity makes strange bedfellows. It would not surprise me to find that Frant found it difficult to operate with sufficient anonymity, even abroad. The money market is not a large place, you understand: it may span the globe but it presents many of the characteristics of a village.”

I shook my head. “I do not see why Carswall should be content to run such enormous risks for a man he so recently loathed.” A man, I thought but did not add aloud, whose wife he desires so ardently that he will overlook her lack of dowry and the crimes of her former husband.

“Ah!” Noak sprang up, as though so bursting with vitality that exercise had become essential. “That is the beauty of it. They hate each other still, I daresay. But each has something to gain from renewing the association, and each knows the other dares not betray him. Frant needs to realise his ill-gotten capital; he must find somewhere to live in safety; he must at all costs avoid the gallows that await him in England. Carswall, on the other hand, would charge handsomely for his services in converting whatever Frant saved from the wreck of Wavenhoe's into ready money. But he has no temptation to betray Frant. In the first place, he too needs the money, rich though he is. Sir George Ruispidge is a very fine catch for his bastard daughter, but a baronet like Sir George comes at a high price. In the second place, Frant would feed him the bills one by one so Carswall would have no incentive to bilk him. And in the third place, if Frant were proved to be alive, he would stand between Carswall and what I fancy he now desires most of all – and desires with all the force of an old man's obsession.”

“I must beg you to enlighten me, sir,” I said coldly.

“I allude, as you must know, to Mrs Frant. As far as the law is concerned, her husband is dead and she is free to marry again. Should Mr Frant choose, however, he could reverse that state of affairs with a few strokes of a pen, written from the safety of a foreign sanctuary. No – as matters stand – the whole complex business is perfectly balanced. Perfectly but precariously.”

It had long since occurred to me that Mr Carswall was not the only elderly gentleman in the grip of an obsession. I said as gently as I could, “Sir, you have erected a prodigiously impressive edifice. But I am not persuaded that its foundations are firm enough to bear its weight.”

Noak drew near to me in my chair, and, small though he was, towered over me. “Then help me test its strength.” Such was his passion that he sprayed a few drops of moisture on my upturned face. “If my hypothesis is correct, Mr Shield, if their fears and their desires are so precariously balanced, then the smallest jar, the slightest shock, will serve to overset them. And who better than yourself to administer it?”

It would not be true to say that I stormed out. I was entirely civil, if a little chilly. But I did leave without further delay. I declined point-blank to hear any further proposals Mr Noak might have, or to listen while he advanced his carefully wrought reasons why I should help him. Nor would I allow Mr Harmwell to fetch me a hackney from the stand, or to accompany me on my way home.