The King's Shilling

by Fraser John Macnaught

  The original house itself, known locally as The Castle, was actually quite an attractive construction, solid local stone with discreet columns and broad, arched windows, paved terraces stretching out back and front, leading to ornamental gardens and the obligatory lake with a folly – a domed summer-house - nestling among a copse of weeping-willows on a tear-shaped island reached by a Japanese-style bridge. But the next generation of Hartleys had seen fit to add a series of horrendous faux-gothic turrets and rows of hideous gargoyles to the roofs and an additional ‘modern’ wing to one side, ruining any sense of balance and proportion the original building may have had, creating a hybrid architectural monster that was strangely unsettling and eerie. They had also added some over-ornate church-style stained-glass windows depicting scenes from factory life: multi-coloured mosaics, religious icons paying tribute to Mammon, of turbines and steam-hammers and spinning-machines and piston-driven looms… where the people – no children visible – were totally out of scale; distorted, tiny, forlorn creatures swarming around the miracles of the mechanical age, pygmies kneeling before their iron gods, Lilliputian manpower dwarfed by gleaming steel idols, an army of miniature soldiers who had taken the industrialist king’s shilling to lay down their lives in a battle for productive progress at any cost, in a revolutionary war for Great Britain’s economic glory…

  The images were twisted and warped and perverse and every time he saw them he had a violent urge to smash them to pieces.

  When the textile bubble finally burst and the factories fell into decline in the fifties and sixties, Sarah’s grandfather, Charles Hartley, was one of the few to see the writing on the wall, and he made some radical changes to the firm’s policies and strategies. He concentrated the company’s activity on up-market textiles only, fine carpets and luxury-grade materials for high-end clothing manufacturers, limiting production to a few of the more modern installations, while gutting and stripping the older buildings and transforming them into housing units. His property developments soon generated almost as much income as the core business itself. A full generation before the trend became widespread, he saw the potential for industrial-style homes, loft apartments and designer conversions, cleaning up the canals that often ran alongside them, creating parking and play facilities, and charging an arm and a leg for rental fees, as he sold less than half the properties, leasing the others out, keeping control over the running of the buildings, investing the profits in buy-outs from other, less inspired competitors who often had to sell off their once-flourishing installations for a pittance.

  Sarah’s father, Greville, took over when his father died – after being blessed with a CBE from Margaret Thatcher – and although he oversaw the textile business to a certain extent, he was essentially a landlord and developer, and his interests extended far beyond the Yorkshire moors and valleys, with shares in international consortiums in the Caribbean and the Middle East. To his credit, Greville wasn’t the flash sort; he seemed quite happy to feed the family fortune with small, well-chosen tasty morsels, rather than gorge on the profiteering diet of get-rich-quick schemes that seemed to afflict most of the greedy chancers in his line of work that one read about or saw on TV being arrested for tax evasion or fraud or money-laundering. He didn’t flaunt his money, and even sent his only daughter to the local school to mingle with the plebs, and he had a decent reputation in the area as a fair employer and honest citizen. His nickname was The King, or King Greville, and the generally discreet media coverage of his life and work was usually limited to articles discussing his apparent obsession with his own succession. His only brother had died in a skiing accident several years ago, and the male Hartley line was about to die out. The heir to the throne would be his beloved daughter, Sarah.

  Paul’s connection with the Hartley’s began well before he was born.

  His grandmother, Mary, whom he never knew, was employed at Calderwood Hall as a housemaid at the age of 15, just after the war. Her duties soon extended to looking after the young Hartley boys, Jeremy and Greville, and she proved to be a devoted, industrious and well-loved employee. At the age of 22, she married Derek Boyd, who was also a member of the Hartley household. He was a jack-of-all trades: a chauffeur, gardener, handyman and general overseer who, it was told, bossed and bullied the other members of staff with an almost perverse degree of authority and discipline. The couple were housed in a small gate-house built as part of the wall at the back of the estate, which would become known as The Cottage. They had six children. When Derek died in 1973, his widow retired and moved to Ireland, where most of her family were based, along with four of the children, leaving behind his Uncle Frank and his Dad, Alan Boyd. Alan took over his father’s job, continued to live in the cottage, and when he married his Mum, Joanne Thornton, in 1978, she too was taken on at Calderwood, as general housekeeper, companion to the ageing (and soon to die) Mrs Charles Hartley, and potential nanny to the newly-wedded Mr Greville’s offspring, should any be produced.

  If there was anything oddly anachronistic about this trans-generational continuity and about the Upstairs-Downstairs angle to the families’ relations, it certainly hadn’t seemed strange to him as he was growing up, it was just the way things were. They lived in a cottage next to a big house, where Mum and Dad worked. And it was almost as if they shared a garden with the Hartleys, as the estate lawns and meadows came right up to a rickety wooden fence and privet hedge that marked out their own private garden outside the back door. His parents seemed to be sincerely appreciated by the Hartleys and they were sometimes invited to the house for certain social events, at Christmas, for example, when Greville would give them token presents and break out a magnum of champagne. Dad had the use of a company Land Rover and was allowed to take produce from the vegetable garden whenever there was a surplus. Both before and for a few years after he was born, Mum had often accompanied Mr Hartley’s wife, Rebecca, on trips abroad to health spas and sanatoriums, as she was frequently poorly, suffering from chronic respiratory ailments.

  The mantelpiece above the fire-place was strewn with souvenirs from German spa towns and Swiss Alpine health centres, and framed photos of Mum and Rebecca sitting in the sun outside the Hartleys’ villa in the south of France.

  Paul had been looked after by his Auntie Bessie on such occasions, and had few clear memories of his mother’s absences, although he often imagined he could remember her coming back from one such trip, when Mrs Hartley had apparently been advised to give birth in the warmer climes of the Riviera rather than the damp, drab chill of a Yorkshire winter, and he could see Mum arriving home, looking slim and tanned, and introducing him to the baby she said Mrs Hartley had given birth to… a little girl called Sarah.

  He wouldn’t even have been two years old at that time, was it possible that he could really remember that? Or had he merely translated the endless telling of the story in its countless versions into a form he convinced himself was memory?

  In little over half a century the relations between the Hartleys and the Boyds had developed from a strictly master-servant level to something approaching cordiality. There was no friendship there, that would have been unthinkable and impossible, but at least when he was growing up there had appeared to be a degree of mutual respect and consideration that, although it never quite eclipsed the taken-for-granted deference and dependence and awareness of one’s place, it had somehow taken the edge off it. He remembered hearing Greville saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to his father, and taking a certain foolish pride in it. On the rare occasions he saw Rebecca Hartley, his wife, she would ruffle his hair and smile at him with what he took for fondness and she always seemed ready to make sandwiches or drinks for him and Sarah (or to have them made, more like)…

  For Sarah was the real cement between them all.

  In retrospect, he didn’t really understand why all four parents allowed them to spend so much time together. In view of what happened, the decisions they made – or lack of decisions, perhaps – were not irreproach
able. Maybe not even advisable. But they were both only children, they had no siblings or cousins or relatives of a similar age, they lived less than a hundred yards apart, there was just 16 months between them, and they soon developed similar tastes and dispositions. As toddlers, they were encouraged to play together; as young children, they went to school together and did their homework and watched cartoons and read books together; as pre-teens they created imaginary worlds and fantasies together; and as young teenagers, they shared the newness and the wonder of their ideas and feelings, evolving, growing up, maturing, together… as much as many adolescents do, he had often imagined, but perhaps more intensely, more intimately…

  And there lay the problem.

  Of course, there were other factors that he was unaware of at the time, that he had only just begun to understand, more than 20 years later. But as a child, his only centre of interest was his friend, Sarah Hartley. He wasn’t overly concerned with violence, blackmail, treachery and murder.

  Chapter 8

  Monday April 22nd 2013

  He checked into a gastro-pub on the edge of the moors not far from Hebden Bridge. It was part of a chain, and he had been given a Gold Privilege Card for services rendered, which meant that they could pretend not to know he was a travel journalist and he pretended to accept their generosity at face value.

  He unpacked and showered and lay down on the bed and wondered what he was doing there and what he was hoping to achieve.

  His own questions remained unanswered.

  He switched on the TV and flicked to a news channel, the sound down. Before long, the now ubiquitous ‘Missing Heiress’ title appeared and there were shots of Innsbruck station and the Orient Express and then a journalist in Venice standing in front of an official-looking building. He turned the sound up.

  “... this morning, on his way back to the UK. Mr Morgan is said to be devastated and according to our sources, is on the point of offering a reward of half a million pounds for any information that may lead to finding his wife.”

  There was a sequence showing a good-looking, blond-haired man in a crumpled suit, tie-less, badly shaven and puffy-eyed, emerging from the same building earlier in the day. He supposed the man did look ‘devastated’.

  The reporter then re-hashed the same information, i.e. that Sarah had disappeared and no-one knew where she was, in seven different ways and illustrated his in-depth analysis with a couple of photographs that he’d never seen before. In one, she was at a ski resort, smiling for the camera with a group of friends. In another, she was presenting an award at a congress somewhere, looking radiant in an evening dress, her hair tied up and her emerald eyes sparkling. She was gorgeous.

  He pressed the red button on the remote and the picture disappeared. He saw his own reflection in the blank screen. A pale shadow.

  He went down to the restaurant, found a table, ordered a glass of dry white and looked at the menu. Like at many places these days, there was more information about the origins of the ‘locally sourced produce’ and the ethical standards the establishment imposed than about any tastes and flavours one might expect from the dishes themselves. He was flicking through the pages, wondering if he might find CVs of the area’s farmers and genealogical charts of the organic, free-range, non-GM-corn-fed pedigree pigs and sheep that had died happily in their sleep and willed their own bodies to the restaurant’s kitchens when he glanced up and saw an attractive woman waving at him from across the room. Then he realised she wasn’t waving at him, but at a man sitting at the next table. The man waved back. But the woman had seen him, and she frowned for a moment, then turned away. She stepped to the bar and put her arm around another woman and he heard a brief, brittle laugh as she glanced back, pretending not to look in his direction. A waitress appeared and he told her he’d be back in a minute and he walked over to the bar and stood next to the woman. She was wearing a Chanel two-piece and Opium perfume. Her dark brown hair shone in the yellow glow from the spotlights above the bar and she had emerald studs in her ears.

  “Hello”, he said.

  She turned and peered at him, faking a friendly smile. He looked at the mole on her cheek and wondered if her heart was beating at the same pace as the last time they had met.

  “Hello. Do I know you?”

  He smiled for her.

  “You’re Linda Deighton.”

  “Have we met?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Why don’t you remind me, I have a terrible memory for faces.”

  “July, 1997.”

  She mugged confusion and then clearly decided a degree of honesty might be unavoidable. They both knew who they were.

  “A.A.? Gstaad? Or the deli counter at Sainsbury’s?”

  “Your place, Special K and tequila, you had your hand in my trousers.”

  She turned to see if her companion was listening but there was no-one there.

  “What do you want?”, she said, half a life-time of bitterness and lost illusions in her eyes and her voice. She aged five years in less than a second.

  “How’s Pierre?”

  “Pierre? Who on earth’s Pierre?”

  “Sarah’s boyfriend… you said.”

  “Good God! What is your problem?”

  “You made him up, didn’t you? And you just wanted to fuck me to fuck with her?”

  “You piece of shit…!”

  The barman leant over, concerned about the noise level.

  “Is everything all right Madam? Sir?”

  “Everything’s hunky-dory”, he said. “We’re just debating between the lamb and the salmon and can’t quite reach a consensus.”

  “Very well…”, and he turned away, looking doubtful.

  “Paul Boyd”, she said, looking almost wistful.

  “You’re looking well”, he said and smiled to suggest he meant it.

  She tilted her head to one side and looked coy.

  “Have you ever been to a better party?”

  “Probably not”, he admitted.

  “Two husbands, three kids, four spells in rehab… I doubt I ever will either.”

  And she laughed... a good laugh, hearty and sincere.

  “We’ll always have Paris”, he said.

  She smiled and picked up her drink, miming a toast.

  “You’re here for Sarah, aren’t you?”, she said, her eyes narrowing.

  “ Maybe.”

  “Right… maybe… Romeo and fucking Juliet… I never understood it.”

  “Neither did we.”

  “So what are you hoping to achieve exactly?”

  It was a good question.

  “What do you know about her husband?”

  “Neil? I’ve only met him once… I haven’t seen Sarah for years, at least three or four… we sort of fell out after… after university.”

  She took a long thoughtful pull on her G&T.

  “And?”

  “And what? Oh, Neil…”

  Her eyes wandered over his face as she thought about what to say, appraising him as if he were a horse she was vaguely thinking of buying if the price was right.

  “He’s a player… no doubt about it. He talks the talk and he walks the walk, but please… if Sarah had her wits about her she would never have fallen for his spiel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean after the….”

  Her eyes widened.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “The suicide attempt, after her father’s death?”

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Oh you poor boy, you didn’t know?”

  He didn’t need to answer that.

  She put her hand on his chest. He flinched and recoiled and took a step back. Unconsciously, unforgivably. She removed her hand and held it up palm out… a stop sign, a peace offering, a recognition of something unspoken.

  “And I thought I had problems.”

  She drained her drink in two large gulp
s and pushed the empty glass across the bar.

  “Take it easy, Paul”, she said. “Get a life!”, and she walked away.

  The barman came back all smiles and asked him if he’d decided to go with the salmon or the lamb as if it were all a big joke.

  Chapter 9

  Tuesday April 23rd 2013

  The next morning he grabbed a handful of newspapers from a trolley at the entrance to the breakfast room and sat down and looked at them. The story was still on the front pages but only just. And there was news, both good and bad. The good news was that Sarah had been seen. The bad news was that she had been seen in Vienna, Verona, Istanbul, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Dubai.

  As he ate breakfast – the full traditional with local sausages ‘guaranteed 100% free-range local pork’ – he began to wonder what actually might have happened.

  Sarah had gone missing from a train, on her honeymoon…and there was no trace of her.

  Paul thought there were only two possibilities: either her husband Neil Morgan was involved or he wasn’t. That much was clear. Even if there was no foundation for any suspicions he might have…

  If Morgan were involved, what actually went down? He hadn’t harmed her himself… there were too many people who had seen him, and he’d had no opportunity to dispose of a body… and anyway, if he’d killed her in order to inherit the Hartley fortune, the body would have to be found for her to be declared dead… but it hadn’t… at least not yet.