The other’s voice hardened too. ‘I deny having anything to do with Miff.’
‘Stout fellow! And Cruba?’
‘The whole truth if necessary. I took it on myself to cut down that bastard. An impulse I don’t regret.’ The delivery quickened. ‘He’s so plausible, of course. If they had him back. The oil. He’d steal it . . . as before. He doesn’t care about the people. He’d do a deal with the Americans. That’s what he and Opac have been fixing. I know what’s been happening, don’t you see? Even they don’t understand the danger.’ Now he was practically pleading.
‘You mean your Ngongan friends?’
‘That’s right. He had to be stopped. The chance was there. I acted on my own. There wasn’t time. Something like it might not have come up again. We didn’t want a martyr. We wanted a close-fisted swine trying to hold on to the asking price for his own son. Risking his son’s life and losing his own for greed.’
‘Great scenario, Freddy. Pity you blew it. So you did it on impulse? No orders? Now that could have been embarrassing.’ Treasure brought the car to a halt on a patch of scrub.
The track had opened out to finish near the head of a small creek running in south from the river. There was a path leading to a short wooden jetty: the boats on either side floated on the rising tide. Both vessels were cruising yachts: the bigger one, a Westerly Longbow, had Refuge stencilled on the bow.
‘You sure about that trawler, I suppose? Seems awfully short notice. Rotten if we’re left milling about in the North Sea.’
‘My . . . my friends have gone to a lot of trouble . . . quickly.’ But the assurance had gone from his voice. ‘Now, if you don’t mind.’ He motioned with the gun for the banker to get out.
Major Copper stood up as they were making for the boat. He had been lying behind a mound about fifty yards from the car. Treasure, carrying the luggage, had just stepped on to the jetty. Freddy was limping some distance behind him with the pistol levelled at his back.
‘Put the gun on the ground, Hinterton,’ the Major snapped loudly. He was standing Firm, chin up, feet slightly apart, hands grasped behind his back. The bowler added authority. For a moment all three men stood motionless. ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I said . . .’
‘Come any closer and I’ll shoot you.’ Freddy’s gaze darted between the others. ‘It’s Copper, isn’t it?’
‘And Gold,’ came a thin voice behind him. ‘We made it Mr Treasure. Some drive. Cab’s behind the barn.’
Freddy swung around. Benny was about the same distance away as Copper, but on the other side. He had come from behind a stunted willow.
The man with the gun stepped backwards until he was leaning against the car. He had widened the gap between himself and Treasure but he had all three men in view, ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone but . . . You! Stop!’
But the Major continued to move forward purposefully. ‘Hard to hit a barn door with that thing even close to. Thirty-two, isn’t it?’ he called.
‘Hold it, Major. He’ll shoot all right.’ This was Treasure. ‘Look, I think you’d be better going for help. He can’t get far . . .’
‘If either of you run off I’ll . . . I’ll kill Treasure.’ The others sensed panic in the voice.
The Major had stopped on the banker’s words. Now he was moving again towards Freddy. His pace was easy and determined. Curiously he felt no urge to hurry—to get it over: no need to shorten the savouring.
From the moment the two had stepped out of the Jaguar—when he knew Treasure had guessed right in sending them ahead as witnesses— Roderick Copper had accepted the danger. But after he stood up the sense of fear left him.
He was a professional soldier doing what he had been paid to do—all those years ago. What did it matter he’d been passed over? Who cared now if both his medals had been given to everyone in uniform in 1939? There was no one here who’d scoff about his spending D-Day on Lake Windermere—under orders.
‘Stop, man. He’s a murderer.’
He ignored the entreaty: he was the senior officer present, after all. So Hinterton was proved a traitor to the West—just the role to stiffen a soldier’s resolve. The Major measured the ground ahead: another twenty-five yards yet—twenty before that pistol got dangerous in the amateur way it was being held. Head high, now: look the enemy in the eye.
Pity he wasn’t leading the regiment, that there wasn’t even a company of infantrymen deployed behind him . . . a platoon . . . just one thin file of soldiers. Was he imagining the wail of the bagpipes at Alamein?—they sounded real enough. Little Benjamin Gold had heard those pipes—Benny who he could see now starting over the uneven ground towards the man with the gun.
‘All right, Freddy. You’ll need to be a bloody good shot to get three of us.’ Resigned, Treasure had dropped the cases and was making for Hinterton. ‘Put the gun down. You haven’t got a chance.’
‘Leave him to me, Mr Treasure. Stay where you are, Benjamin.’ He, Copper, was the most expendable after all. There was no one to mourn over him, and once you’d made up your mind—as his old mother might have said: except he hardly remembered his mother, and certainly not when she was old. She had abandoned him and his father when little Roderick was five—run off with a commercial traveller. It had been temporary homes with relatives after that, then the cheapest of boarding-schools.
In a way the army should have been the making of him, given him an identity—a transferred provenance, something to build on. No bricks had been supplied. It might have been different if his mother had stayed: funny thing to be thinking about still when someone’s about to take a pot shot at you.
He was very close now—six or seven paces. ‘Give me the gun, please.’ No point in trying to rush him: anyway the Major was too old to take running jumps at people.
Fatalistically, he watched Hinterton lift his other hand to the pistol grip. The Major kept coming. The steadied gun seemed now to be pointing directly between his eyes: two more paces.
Treasure was running forward. ‘Freddy, not more innocent people. For God’s sake don’t.’
Hinterton put the gun barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
No scandal attached to the death of Freddy Hinterton— an overworked member of the Foreign Office who took his own life while under great stress.
Many eminent persons—including the Foreign Secretary and Mr Cruba—were engaged in the conspiracy of silence over the real facts. Some less eminent but equally wise and patriotic mortals were also involved. Major Copper and Mr Gold signed Official Secrets Undertakings with pride and solemnity. Treasure alone knew it was Mrs Miff who made the cover-up possible.
The post-mortem on Clarence Miff indicated death by injuries sustained in a fall—a reasonable deduction in the unsuspicious circumstances. The report also revealed irreversible cirrhosis of the liver.
When Mrs Miff had learned all this she had still not reported the fake suicide note to anyone except Treasure. She destroyed the note shortly afterwards in his presence.
When the banker had told her, in confidence, a full investigation might prove Hinterton had murdered her husband, stabbed Cruba, and more besides, she judged such revelations would only provide satisfaction for sensation-seekers. The muck-raking would not bring her husband back, nor, in any event, could his life have endured much longer. The evidently deranged and fixated Hinterton she deemed had already paid the supreme penalty: things should be left as they were.
Treasure had concurred with this irregular but practical decision.
In view of the post-mortem report on Miff, the police lost interest in Happy Brown’s injured messenger, much to her own relief. The coroner’s verdict later confirmed that death had been accidental. There were no loose ends.
Six months after the officially rumoured Communist attack on ex-President Cruba in London, he and his Party were overwhelmingly victorious in the Ngonga elections. By then Mr Cruba’s third marriage had been annulled, and he had re-married his second wife, Beatrice. The initial
reconciliation had been brought about by their son Pierre who was given time off from Eton to attend the wedding.
Earlier, renewed interest by the CID in reports that Pierre Cruba had been kidnapped was finally quashed by Bishop Clarence Wringle, retired. The aged prelate had volunteered corroborating testimony that on the day in question, the engaging young man, while twice propelling him across Walton Place, had introduced himself, obtained the bishop’s name and address, provided a gift for the poor, offered transport in a waiting cab to wherever he was going (except the bishop was going for a walk), and the information that the boy was off to visit Miss Florence Spotter at Rudwold Park, Surrey.
The Rudyard Trust was saved through conscientious application by a chastened Mr Edwards, guidance from the Charity Commissioners, co-operation from the Official Custodian for Charities, and help from Mr Cruba.
The Trust was re-formed shorn of Marmaduke’s restrictions and after ex-gratia payments had been made to all Rudyard descendants in full and final discharge of their entitlements. Instead of the millions some had expected, each was offered £10,000.
After first registering outrage, the Crow-Patchers had later meekly accepted the money. This was sensible. Mr Cruba had contracted to underwrite the losses of the unaltered Trust for fifty years, if necessary. Edward and Dina decided not to wait. The undeserving Stephen Spotter made the same decision, asking for cash in settlement to be sent to him Poste Restante, Khartoum.
Prudence Rudyard had expired peacefully before the offer was made. At the time she had been watching part of the fifth repeat television showing of The Forsyte Saga, a story about a family she had lately been insisting was closely related to her own—by marriage.
Mrs Miff and Florence Spotter virtuously refused any money but still renounced their rights as residual beneficiaries.
As arranged, Mr Cruba was then free to cancel his underwriting commitment. In exchange, he provided a substantial interest-free bridging loan for the Trust while it was being re-formed.
The sale of the old Rudyard Club properties, their phased closure, the re-modelling of the mid-eighteenth-century mansion near Oxford bought to replace them, and the transfer of members was all accomplished with exemplary speed and efficiency. This was in great part due to the dedication and capacities of the new resident Director, Edna Rudyard Miff.
Major Copper and Mr Gold did not enrol as new members, although places will always be available for them. Neither was completely certain about institutional life, and together they had accepted a more attractive option.
Miss Spotter, left alone at Rudwold Park, had the building converted into flats. The one next to her own she let at a nominal rent to her two gentlemen friends. She enjoyed preparing the main meal they came to share daily. It was no more than she had done for Prudence—who she missed—and Roderick and Benjamin were much more agreeable company.
The Major renewed early interests in bee-keeping and bird-watching, and found a church in the district entirely to his tastes. Benny enrolled as a biology student through the Open University, visiting the family—and the new baby— as often as he chose: it was only twenty minutes on the train to Putney.
At the bank, it was just before Christmas that Lord Grenwood remarked to Treasure, ‘Heard about the new deal for the Rudyard Clubs. Met young Jonkins in the lift.’ No drollery had been intended: the Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps was quite old enough to consider Jonkins a stripling. ‘Done marvellously well.’
‘Who?’
‘Jonkins.’
‘He’s retiring next week, I believe,’ Treasure commented with enthusiasm.
It was true: the Jonkins were moving to the sea—a bungalow at Bognor Regis. Mrs Jonkins had always set her heart on Bognor Regis.
Grenwood looked surprised. ‘Private income, I suppose? I can’t afford to retire’— everything being relative.
Treasure smiled an indulgence. ‘It was touch and go whether we’d have to get Parliament to alter the Rudyard Deed.’
‘Ironclad job, was it? Built ’em to last in those days. Remember Marmaduke Rudyard? No, ’course you wouldn’t. Failed social climber and a fool about women. Very thick with my father.’ He stopped, thought about correcting the last implication, then didn’t bother. ‘He relied on the bank. Made him a rich man.’ No doubt the bank benefited too—reason enough why the First Viscount suffered an upstart womanizer.’
‘The way he had a trust deed drafted, he must have believed profoundly the dead know what’s best for the living.’
‘Ah, he had his reasons. Convinced the socialists would pinch everything that wasn’t nailed down. They mostly fooled him, though. The Off-Gents is the only one of his charity shows not taken over by the state.’
‘Reds under the bed complex?’
‘In the bed, my dear chap. That’s what Marmaduke thought. Still, with the Off-Gents he stopped ’em even getting upstairs.’
Treasure thought of Miff. ‘Not quite,’ he ended ruefully.
Copper, Gold and Treasure Page 20
