by V. Penley
Phillip stepped between the clerk and Mrs. Styles. “Why don’t you get lost?” he said, quietly. “We are here to talk to the bank president. Not a lowly clerk.”
The clerk snapped his head back, like a tree blown over in a storm. “And who are you, sir? If you don’t mind me asking. You’ve walked in like you are the owner, but I know the owner. He hired me to run this here place.” But the clerk’s voice was somewhat softened as the eyes took in the fine cut of Phillip’s suit and the gold that glimmered on Phillip’s watch chain. “Are you my boss, governor? Has the bank been sold?”
“Why don’t you find your boss?” Phillip said, and flashed several bills to the clerk. “For you,” he said, “to help you on your way.” Then he reached into his jacket and removed a calling card. “You may keep the money. But give this to the bank president. Please.”
As this conversation continued, Eugenie attempted to comfort Mrs. Styles, rubbing her forearm and whispering, “Everything will be fine.”
The clerk stalked off, head held high; slipping the pounds in his pocket, he went to the back of the bank, where an elderly gentleman sat behind a glass window. That must be the bank’s President, Phillip thought. He wished that he had actually deposited money in this bank. But he kept everything with his investors in London. He would have more influence here as a client, even with his title. Titles were, as he realized, too nineteenth century. Real influence could be measured not in title, but in pounds.
The clerk handed the bank’s president the card. After reading it, the white-haired gentleman looked through the glass, his mouth a tiny “O.” He rose immediately and came to the door. The clerk preceded him and returned to Phillip. His manner, Eugenie observed, was still that of one who thought he owned the place.
“Mr. Prescott will see you,” the clerk said, and as the group moved as one toward the man behind the glass window, the clerk made sure to bite at the air in Mrs. Styles’ direction.
Phillip boldly led the group into the office, extending his hand to Mr. Prescott.
“Welcome, Duke Phillip,” the bank President said, shaking Phillip’s hand. He spoke in a dignified, slow manner.
Mrs. Styles audibly cried as Eugenie, practically holding her in her arms, delivered Mrs. Styles into the chair in the center of the ring that fronted Mr. Prescott’s desk.
“I’ve been meaning to stop in,” Phillip said off-handedly, “except I always seem to be called back to London at inconvenient times.”
Phillip and Eugenie sat on either side of Mrs. Styles, who shook.
Mr. Prescott smoothed down the front of his three-piece suit and sat behind his impressive desk. Judging from his accent, he was American—or had spent considerable time in North America.
“I should have made it a priority to stop by your Grange,” Mr. Prescott said. “But I have been busy here handling the community’s credit.”
“Another time,” Phillip said. “I have some investments I have wanted to talk over with someone.”
“Oh. What kind of investments?” He quickly glanced at Mrs. Styles; his look asked, Why are you here? No doubt it was a shock that a Duke should be troubling himself with one of the bank’s worst creditors.
“I’m not yet fully exposed to stocks,” Phillip said. “I have been meaning to ask someone who might perhaps be more knowledgeable about it than I.”
“A royal peer would be a welcome customer,” the president said.
Eugenie coughed—and all eyes turned to her. “But for now,” she said.
“Is this your wife?” the president asked.
“No,” Phillip responded deprecatingly.
“And who are you, Madame?” Mr. Prescott asked, blinking twice behind his wire-rim glasses.
“I am here on behalf of Mrs. Styles,” Eugenie said. She touched the woman’s arm again. Mrs. Styles, though seated between Eugenie and Phillip, had sat so far back in her chair that she seemed to be reclining, legs nearly straight out. Obviously terrified of Mr. Prescott, she was attempting to launch herself back out the door. “We are here to talk about her account.”
“Yes. That.” Mr. Prescott pinched the tip of his nose. His neat, white mustache quivered at the word account. “I had no inkling that the Styles family debt has drawn the attention of Parliament.” He shuffled some papers around and then looked over the tips of his glasses. “Though it certainly is large enough to warrant attention as a national security threat.”
“Then why did you keep lending to Mr. Styles?” Eugenie snapped, drawing a look of rebuke from Phillip. “I mean…it seems to be a bad investment to continue to give to someone who is in financial distress.”
Mr. Prescott, however, appraised Eugenie coolly. “The money was advanced before my tenure here,” he said and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I am not responsible for the lending practices of my predecessor. But it is my fiduciary duty to collect on debts owed. I have been trying, with substantial difficulty, to do so from the Styles family.”
“And we have reason to believe,” Duke Phillip said, “that Mr. Styles, the husband of this dear woman, has paid off some debts recently. Perhaps today, in fact.”
“I have no idea,” Mr. Prescott said simply. “If he paid on his debt, he wouldn’t have given the money to me. He would have paid the clerk out front.”
“Can you ask him?” Phillip said.
“Unfortunately,” the bank President interjected, “our fiduciary duties only allow that information to be given to bank clients. I’m quite sorry.”
“But it’s my husband,” Mrs. Styles said. She had deflated a little, perhaps out of exhaustion, and sat slumped in her chair. “You’ve sent letters saying that I am responsible for my husband’s debts, though only he took out the money. Money I have never seen. That’s why I work all day. To help pay these debts.”
Mr. Prescott sat, unmoved, a pillar of finance.
Eugenie thought a different approach might be appropriate. “Do you have a wife, sir?”
Mr. Prescott refused to answer. His look, already cool, now began to show signs of frost bite.
Oh, dear, Eugenie thought.
“What I mean,” Eugenie embroidered, “is that you can surely imagine the difficulty a woman would have if she were working very hard to pay off her debts but didn’t know how much she owed.”
“I am sure that would be quite difficult,” he said, hands folded in front of him on the desk.
Eugenie raised her eyes. “And wouldn’t you think it best if she understood the amount of her current account debt?”
“Indeed,” the President said. “Which is why she should talk to her husband.”
“Ah,” Eugenie said.
“I imagine spouses speak,” Mr. Prescott said. “Even in the lower classes.”
Eugenie felt a sting at that. She imagined Mrs. Styles felt the blow even harder.
They had reached an impasse. This was precisely the type of man Eugenie was teaching her girls how to handle—rigid, rule bound, unyielding. Someone who wrote the rules and then used them against you, aghast that you should challenge any kind of system you had no opportunity to help create.
Eugenie looked briefly at Phillip, who was looking at her. He, too, was part of the system, and she realized the system was much larger than any of them.
“Well then,” Eugenie said, annoyed. She reached down to gather her skirt in her hands in preparation for rising. She took a breath, disappointed, but then heard a voice suddenly ring out behind her: “Is that my daughter’s hat I see in there?”
Eugenie stopped, trying to place the voice. Was that…
Suddenly, the clerk’s voice shouted, “Ma’am, you can’t go in there! You can’t go behind the barrier!”
And then there was a commotion in the bank lobby, the sound of scuffling and feet moving, as well as the sound of something striking another object.
“You will not tell me where I can and cannot go!”
“You aren’t allowed in there!”
“Don�
�t you touch me!”
“Ma’am…!”
“Vermin!”
And suddenly the Marchioness appeared in the doorway to Mr. Prescott’s office.
Eugenie turned around. “Hello, Mum.”
“Well, I had been told you would be here!” the Marchioness said. The clerk, who was trying to get past the Marchioness’s considerable bulk, only managed to push her further into the office, and she began hitting him with her parasol. His bleating was muffled.
“Marchioness Carlyle…” Mr. Prescott whispered, rising slowly. His face wore a mask of wonder. “You have never graced us with your presence.”
He quickly moved to the door to take her hands. The clerk, mouth open, fell back, his little red-rimmed eyes full of hate. Finally addressing him, Mr. Prescott hissed, “Return to your stool!” And then he led the Marchioness into his office.
Mrs. Styles happily gave up her seat to the Marchioness and stood near the door.
“Exhausted,” the Marchioness muttered. “Utterly exhausted.” She reached into her purse and took out a silken handkerchief to wipe her brow.
“Would you like a drink of water?” Mr. Prescott asked. “Are you feeling alright?”
“A moment, please,” the Marchioness said. She finished wiping her face, folded the kerchief back up and stored it in her purse.
“My dear, are you attempting to secure a loan?” she whispered to her daughter, leaning in her direction. “Surely, there are banks in London.”
Eugenie explained the situation: that they had seen Mr. Styles at the bank; he had been indebted; and his wife, Mrs. Styles, wanted to know whether he had either deposited some money into the bank or had paid off some of his debts.
Marchioness Carlyle nodded and, without a blink, turned to Mr. Prescott. “That should be easy enough to check, surely.” She settled her hands on her lap.
“W-w-well,” Mr. Prescott said.
“There are rules,” Eugenie said, to which the Marchioness sniffed.
“Mere rules should not prevent you from helping a woman in need?” She smiled at Mr. Prescott.
“Y-yes,” Mr. Prescott said. He was sweating. His forehead was creased with wrinkles, and each began to glisten with moisture. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Surely,” the Marchioness said, “there is no reason to keep a customer from knowing the current state of her account. I would never have been able to pay off my late husband’s minor debts had that information been kept from me.”
“No,” Mr. Prescott said quickly. “You are absolutely right. There is no reason at all.” He turned to the plate glass. “Sumpkins!” he cried out, and the rat face clerk appeared in the door. “Bring me the ledgers for the Styles account. Please.”
The face disappeared, and the bank’s President spoke confidentially to Marchioness Carlyle. “I quite enjoyed that leg of lamb you served last week.”
Eugenie raised an eyebrow.
“Wonderful,” Marchioness Carlyle said. “I’m serving it again next week. Would Thursday be a good evening?”
“Fantastic,” Mr. Prescott said. “I was unaware you had a daughter,” he said, trying to smile at Eugenie for the first time.
“Yes,” the Marchioness said. “Most of the time, I am unaware as well.”
Mr. Prescott straightened his tie again as Sumpkins walked in carrying the ledger book, out of which innumerable papers threatened to spill and flutter to the floor. The clerk, with a sour face, dropped the entire contraption on the President’s desk, who briskly lined the papers up and flipped to the current account balance.
“Ah,” he said. “We have it all right here. It says that your husband deposited…fifty pounds…” He looked up, as shocked as Mrs. Styles. With eyes blinking, he returned to the page. “…and had that amount credited to his outstanding debts.”
“Fifty…?” Mrs. Styles said. “Where…where could he have gotten that?”
Mr. Prescott looked back down. “It doesn’t say. I have here simply a notation that the bulk has been applied to interest on the loan he secured in February.” He wrote something on a piece of paper. “I can give you a full accounting of your debts, if you would like.”
Mrs. Styles wore an expression that spoke a single message: No, I don’t want to know.
*
“Where do you think the money came from?” Eugenie asked Mrs. Styles. The two women sat in the back seat of Phillip’s motor car. Mrs. Styles looked as if she had soaked through her dress with sweat. The experience of stepping into the bank had been trying.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Styles said. Once outside the bank she had begun to cry. The Marchioness, seated in the front seat, handed her a handkerchief.
Mrs. Styles blew her nose—a loud, honking sound.
“Fifty pounds,” Mrs. Styles said. “I don’t think he ever made that much in all his years of working. How did he get that money?”
“Did your son perhaps save his money?” Eugenie asked again. She had never nailed down just what Jimmie Styles did with his paycheck. No matter how small it might have been, it could accumulate over the course of two years. “Maybe your husband found the money Jimmie made as a paper boy and deposited it into the bank.”
Mrs. Styles thought on this. “No,” she said. “Jimmie once gave me his week’s pay for the delivery and it was but four pence or so. He would not have made that amount of money, not in the two years that he was riding his bicycle and delivering papers.”
“This is certainly awkward,” the Marchioness said.
Phillip agreed. “I think we need to speak to your husband, Mrs. Styles.”
Miserably, she nodded.
Philip started the roadster and handed the Marchioness a pair of goggles.
*
The four ascended the rickety stairway at the back of the leaning white building. This time, Mrs. Styles led the way. Marchioness Carlyle, rather than wait in the car, also came, and struggled mightily, holding onto her daughter to keep up. The stairs were steep—and practically endless. “Dear me,” she whispered. “One will need snow skis to descend.”
“You should have waited in the motor car,” Eugenie whispered to her. “You won’t like it in here.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I may be of use.”
Eugenie rolled her eyes.
“Was I not of use at the bank, my dear Eugenie?”
“Quite,” Eugenie said. “And how did you know to come in?”
“Why, I saw you. Walking beside the handsome Duke. Though I had hoped you were walking into a chapel, I thought I ought to follow nevertheless.”
They reached the third floor. Without knocking, Mrs. Styles pushed open her own door and stepped inside, calling her husband’s name.
Everyone walked in after her and looked around.
The flat, from inside, was smaller than Eugenie could have imagined. In fact, it was little more than a single room. It was also very dark, because there seemed to be no windows. Eugenie could make out, through the available light, little more than a heavy wash of trash on the floor, something approximating a sofa, and what looked like plates with food encrusted laid out around the floor. An unpleasant odor filled the space and was in no hurry to escape the opened door.
Eugenie turned to her mother, to see once again if she wanted to leave. But the Marchioness, far from shrinking back, actually stepped into the flat and walked toward the seating contraption. Hiking up her skirt, she delivered a hard kick to the sofa.
“Mother!” Eugenie cried. But underneath a mound of clothes and other sundries arose a figure, dislodging the whole mess. He sat up and began to rub its eyes.
“There you are, Bertie,” Mrs. Styles said. “I couldn’t find you.”
“What’s going on?” he asked. And as he looked at the people arrayed around him, his face was quickly gripped by panic. “Who have you brought in here, Joanna?”
It was still too dark inside. “We need some light,” Mrs. Styles said.
Bertie continued to gape at t
he visitors, including the Marchioness, who towered over him with her arms crossed.
“We require an audience,” she said, in short, clipped speech. “About a certain deposit that you made into your bank account.”
“Oh no,” he moaned.
While Mrs. Styles took a candle from the cupboard, Phillip had moved to the wall and found that a window had been covered with a blanket. Tearing down the blanket, some light dribbled weakly through the dirtied glass. Mrs. Styles lit two candles and set them on a small table. In this trembling light, Mr. Styles sat up fully and pushed the remaining clothes and trash off him. Mrs. Styles’ face showed humiliation, that so many strangers should see that she lived this way. But, fortunately, her good friend Mrs. Todderham was not with them. She, at least, would be spared the horror of the reality of her material life.
Mr. Styles rubbed his head and looked at his wife.
Whipped, the Marchioness thought.
Everyone waited for Mrs. Styles to begin, but she only stood trembling in the middle of the floor. Shortly, she began to burst into tears. “What have you done!”
“Fine if I know,” Mr. Styles muttered. He threw glances at his trembling wife.
Eugenie decided to begin the interrogation. “Mr. Styles. May I call you Mr. Styles?”
“Say anything you like.” He peered at her closer. “Aren’t you the lady detective who came by our place earlier? It looks as if it were you.”
“Yes. I am Eugenie Carlyle. I have been employed by your wife to help find your son, Jimmie, who has been missing since this morning. And as part of our investigation, we have found that you deposited 50 pounds into the Bank, which was credited to your account.”
His mouth fell open.
“How…” he began. But Eugenie cut him off.
“Mr. Prescott was kind enough to show us the books. We saw that payment you had made, which was credited to your debts.”
“The pertinent question,” the Marchioness said, “is where did you get that money?” She took a step forward, placing her foot directly onto the trash. “And don’t lie to me, sir. Have the decency not to lie to your wife, either. She misses her child.”
