Stone's Fall

by Iain Pears

“I thought he fell out of a window.”

  “So he did. Open window of his study on the second floor. He was working alone and his wife was out. Pacing up and down, tripped on a carpet.”

  “So?”

  “He hated heights. He was terrified of them, and deeply embarrassed by the fact. He never went near an open window if it was anywhere but on the ground floor, and used to insist that all windows were tightly shut.”

  “And does Lady Ravenscliff share your worries? She never mentioned anything to me.”

  He gave me a sidelong look, and I realised what he meant.

  “You think…?”

  “All I know, Braddock, is that this is a matter of the utmost importance.”

  He said it with such intensity that I didn’t quite grasp his meaning. “Why?”

  “Because,” he said quietly, “Ravenscliff owned the Chronicle. And I don’t want it falling into the wrong hands. Find out for me, please, what his will said, where his assets go. Who is our new master.”

  CHAPTER 6

  I walked back to my lodgings, something I often did when I needed to think. It was more than six miles, from the city to Chelsea, and it took me well over an hour even though I walked at a fast pace all the way. The sight of the black-painted front door gave me none of the pleasure that the prospect of home should give a man. It was all that separated me from the boiled cabbage and wax polish, the smells that gather in an overoccupied house whose windows have not been opened for a quarter century. It was a dingy house, in a dingy street, in a dingy part of town. Nearly every second house, I believed, was occupied by widows who let out rooms to people like me. Opposite was one that functioned as a school for young ladies, turning them into operators of the typewriter, so they could push men out of their jobs as copyists and clerks. A few houses were owned by shopkeepers or clerks desperately clinging to respectability by their fingertips. All of human life, from a particular stratum of society, could be found in Paradise Walk, behind the grubby windows and cracking stucco. Paradise Walk! Never was a street more badly misnamed. I can only assume that the speculative builder who threw up the ill-built, utterly anonymous houses some half century previously had possessed a strange sense of humour.

  Even worse was that my window, second floor at the back, looked over the grand gardens and opulence of bohemian London. Successful artists had congregated in Tite Street, parallel to my own, but lived in a very different fashion. One garden in particular I could see, and used to gaze at the two children—a boy and a girl, dressed in white as they played in the sunshine—the lovely woman who was their mother, the portly father who was a member of the Academy. And dream of such an idyllic existence, so unlike my own childhood, which had contained no sunlight at all.

  Not all journalists are editors, not all artists are members of the Academy. John Praxiteles Brock, my fellow lodger, was not then a success; his torment at having to look out every morning at the proof of unattainable glory in the next street was balanced by his desire to rub shoulders with the famous, who might assist him in his career. He would come home occasionally bubbling with excitement and pride: “I said good morning to Sargent this morning!” or “Henry MacAlpine was buying a pint of milk in front of me today!” Alas, it was rare that either said good morning in return. Perhaps his desperation frightened them; perhaps the fact that his father was a sculptor (hence his unfortunate middle name) of retrograde opinions and unpleasant temper put them off; perhaps they felt that youth has to fight on its own. Now he is more successful, Brock gives little encouragement to others, either.

  I awoke the next morning with a formidable hunger, as I had eaten little, and walked much, the previous evening. So I dressed swiftly and went down to the eating room, where Mrs. Morrison prepared breakfast for her boys every morning. She was the only reason I stayed in the house and I believe it was the same for the others who lodged with her. As a housekeeper she verged on the hopeless, as a cook she was very much worse. Her breakfasts tended towards the obscene, and she boiled her vegetables in the evening with such vigour that we were lucky if they were merely yellow when poured onto the plate in a pool of steaming water, there to mix with the grey, tough meat that she cooked in a fashion so personal that no one could ever really figure out how, exactly, she had reduced a once-living animal to such a sorry wreck. Philip Mulready, a man who wished to win fame through poetry (he later settled for a wealthy heiress instead) used on occasion to declaim verses in honour of the poor animal sacrificed on Mrs. Morrison’s altar. “There thou liest, unhappy pig, so grey, so pale and wan…”; although, sensitive to our landlady’s feelings, he made sure that she was in the kitchen when Calliope touched his forehead with inspiration.

  She might well have missed the irony in any case. Mrs. Morrison was a good woman, a widow doing her best to survive in a hard world, and if the food was vile and the mantelpiece thick with dust, she created a jolly, warm atmosphere. Not only that, she was prepared to mend our clothes, do our washing and leave us alone. All she required in return was a moderate rent and a little company now and again. A pound a week and some chat was little enough to pay.

  Though a journalist (now, I remembered, a former journalist) I was not much of a gossip, alas; unlike Brock, who delighted in any excuse that kept him away from work. Mulready was also a conversationalist, although he liked to amuse himself by talking in a way so convoluted, and on subjects so obscure, that the poor woman rarely understood what he was going on about. Harry Franklin was her favourite; he worked in the City in some lowly capacity, but it was obvious he would not remain in servitude for long. He was a serious man, the sort any respectable mother would like to call her own. Every evening he retired to his room to study the mysteries of money; he intended to learn his business so thoroughly that no one could deny him the promotion he craved. He often returned late, working for his employers without charge and all alone, so that he could be on top of his job at all times.

  He was an admirable fellow but (dare I say it) a little dull. He was easily shocked by Brock and Mulready, went to church every Sunday and spoke rarely at dinner. He missed little, though, and there was more to him than was obvious. I could occasionally see a faint shine in his eye as he listened to the exuberance of his fellow lodgers; sometimes see the effort that lay behind all that mortification of the soul and discipline of the body. And he lived with us, in Chelsea, not in Holloway or Hackney, where most of his sort congregated. Franklin considered himself a man apart; different, superior perhaps to his colleagues, and was desperate to match reality with his dreams.

  It was not for me to decry his ambition; not for me to say that being the general manager of a provincial bank (presumably the sort of thing he aimed at—I seriously underestimated his ambition there) was a poor sort of thing to dream of at night, when those in the rooms above and below saw themselves as Michelangelo or Milton. His dream was as powerful as theirs and he pursued it with more determination and ability.

  “I need your help,” I told him as he prepared to leave for work. He paused as he put on his bicycle clips. It was typical of his general approach to life that he pedalled right across London twice a day, because he would not pay the twopence for the omnibus. Besides, an omnibus meant depending on others and risking being late. Franklin did not like being dependent on others.

  He looked at me cautiously and didn’t answer.

  “I’m being serious,” I assured him. “I need to learn about money.”

  He remained silent.

  “Can I walk with you a little?”

  He nodded and we went out together. He was a curious sight. Mrs. Morrison had stitched him a large, stiff canvas bag to contain his top hat, which might have been blown off or become soiled as he cycled, and this he tied carefully to the back of his machine. Then he began to pull on two cloth leggings, which he tied around ankle and thigh to protect his trousers, and a form of scarf which went around his neck to defend his stiff white collar against the filth of the London streets.

  �
�You do know that you look ridiculous in all that?”

  “Yes,” he said equably, speaking for the first time. “But my employers are sticklers for appearance. Many a lad has been sent home without pay for not being properly turned out. What do you want to know about money for? I thought you disapproved of it.”

  Franklin had once heard me discoursing on the evils of capitalism, but had not seen fit to defend his god against the heresies I spoke.

  “Have you heard of someone called Lord Ravenscliff?”

  Instantly I could see a look of mingled surprise and curiosity pass over his face.

  “I have been asked to write his biography. But I’ve been told that his life was money. Or that money was his life. One or the other.”

  “Why on earth would anybody ask you…?”

  I was getting heartily sick of that question. “I have no idea,” I said testily, “but his widow decided I was the right person and is paying me for the job. I will happily pass some of my good fortune on to you if you will allow me to use you as a sort of reference dictionary for anything I do not understand. Which is nearly everything.”

  He considered this. “Very well,” he said briefly. “I will happily oblige, when I have time. I will be free this evening after dinner, if you wish to begin then. What sort of thing do you want to know?”

  “Everything. I mean, I know what a share is, more or less. But that’s about it. It’s not as if I have any money myself, so it’s never been of much interest to me. Just a moment.”

  I ran back inside and up to my room, grabbed the file from Seyd’s and went back outside to the pavement. “Here,” I said, thrusting it into Franklin’s hand. “This is meant to be a summary of Ravenscliff’s business. Could you tell me what it’s all about this evening?”

  He stuffed it into the bag, along with his top hat and his white gloves, and pedalled off.

  I went in to confront Mrs. Morrison’s bacon and open the post. I rarely got letters of any sort, so the envelope which awaited me, propped up against the toast rack, held an obvious interest, as it was thick, made of heavy cream paper and addressed in a flowery hand. London W was the postmark, and it evidently fascinated Mrs. Morrison as well as she referred to it as she poured my tea, made mention again as she brought me my plate and hovered with excitement as she waited for me to open it.

  I could see no reason to deny her the pleasure, so opened it with a flourish using the butter knife as a letter opener. It was from a Mr. Theodore Xanthos, of the Ritz Hotel, who referred to having met me the previous day. Careful thought suggested this must be the little elf I had encountered in Bartoli’s office. He said that, as he had known Lord Ravenscliff for many years, he might be of assistance in my work, and would be glad to help if he could. As he travelled a great deal on business, he was not often in London, but if I wished to come to his hotel before next Friday, then he would be most pleased to talk to me.

  That was useful. It was pleasant to think that someone wanted to help. I tucked the letter in my coat pocket, finished my breakfast, thanked Mrs. Morrison fervently for the excellent repast, and walked out into the cool morning sun.

  CHAPTER 7

  Until that evening the day passed uneventfully. I went to Sloane Square, where I knew there was a bank, and asked to open an account. The Midland and County (a joint stock bank, I learned, as opposed to a private bank—these things become important when you study them) seemed quite enthusiastic when I mentioned the regular payments of £6 14s 8d that would be credited to my account every week. They were not so enthusiastic when I informed them that in fact I had absolutely nothing to give them at that moment, but dealt with the disappointment in a manly fashion. They gave me a book of cheques, with strict instructions not even to think of using one until I had deposited some money.

  I went then to the Chelsea library to plunge into the world of money. Banking—joint stock, private, discount. Bills of exchange. Bills on London for forward delivery. Consols. Debentures. Issue at, below or above par. Yield. Dividend. First preference (or second preference) shares. Bonds, international, domestic, government or commercial. Clearly this capitalism was a more sophisticated beast than I had thought. I had considered it to be a means of theft that was more or less magical in its operation, but slowly realised it had its rules. Arcane and incomprehensible they might be, but rules nonetheless. Some people, at least, understood how it all worked. And what they could understand I could understand as well.

  This determination was the sole result of my morning in the library. That and a headache, and the information that Mr. Theodore Xanthos was, alas, only a salesman working for Ravenscliff’s shipbuilding company. A pity. I had hoped he would have been more important than that, but it seemed he was only a minor figure whose enthusiasm to assist came from a desire for a mention in a book which would never get written anyway.

  I walked down to the World’s End for a sandwich and a pint, and returned to easier, more familiar matters in the afternoon. The death of Lord Ravenscliff. The obituaries. Journalism. Things I could grasp standing on my head. McEwen said start at the end and work back, and it was good advice, even without his own particular interest. I needed to know and understand the man; and a man’s death is often very illuminating.

  I summoned the papers—The Times and the Telegraph, as well as the financial papers, as they always report on their own more fully—and read until my eyes popped out of my head and the library closed. I learned a little, but very far from enough.

  The death first. Here the newspapers were singularly uninformative. Lord Ravenscliff had been discovered by a passerby lying on the ground outside his house at two in the morning of 27 March 1909. He was still alive, but had died soon after. Death was due to head injuries sustained from a fall from a second-floor window. It was believed he had tripped on a carpet. He was sixty-eight years old.

  The details were much as his wife and McEwen had related, and gave little else besides. The similarity between the various reports was striking. Evidently not a single one of the reporters had written the account himself. They all had a common source, who must have more or less dictated the report. More than that, the brief summary of events appeared in all the papers some three days after the death—that is on 30 March, an unusual delay in reporting the sudden and violent death of a peer, even if one of recent creation. Ordinarily events would have proceeded thus: Ravenscliff found, police summoned. Police go back to their station to report, man on desk informs journalist, who comes in for routine enquiries, as one does every morning. If it is not the stuff of which great scoops are made (and this would not have been considered such), he informs his colleagues in the pub at about eleven. All make whatever enquiries they see fit, and the first account appears in the evening, the rest the next morning.

  In this case matters went along differently. The enquiring journalist was not told of Ravenscliff’s death, either that day, or the day after. Why not? I decided that this would be my first enquiry. I had to start somewhere, and it piqued my interest. Besides, I had seven years; I was in no hurry.

  It would give me something to do, and would place no great strain on my patience or intellect. I looked forward to it, for the rest of my time in the library was passed in much less interesting reading. Only the Financial Times gave Ravenscliff much of an obituary, and even there the details were sparse. Ravenscliff was born John William Stone in 1841, the son of a vicar in Shropshire. School, university. In 1868 he had set up the Gosport Torpedo Company. Then followed a blizzard of complicated dealings that made my head spin. Gosport Torpedo had been bought by Beswick Shipyard in Newcastle, which was listed on the Stock Exchange, in 1878. Beswick then combined with the Gleeson’s steelworks in 1885, then bought out the Yarnton chemical works, then the Salford railway factory, iron-ore mines in Yorkshire, and coal mines near Edinburgh. Then in 1890 he had put all his holdings into the Rialto Investment Trust and sold that on the Stock Exchange as well. The result, the obituarist told me, was an extraordinary construction whic
h could begin by taking dust out of the earth and change it, bit by bit, into a fully operational and equipped battleship, without ever having to purchase a single object from an outside company. The entire combine was run with a legendary efficiency, so much so that it boasted that it could go from mine to battle on the high seas in less than twelve months.

  Even more curious was the phrase “amongst his business interests.” The obituary dropped a similar hint later on: “the most publicly known of his financial concerns…” What was the author leaving out? What was he not saying? What more was there? McEwen had said he owned the Chronicle; Wilf Cornford had mentioned hotels and banks. Is that what they meant?

  As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: “a natural raconteur” (loved the sound of his own voice); “Noted for his generosity to friends” (profligate); “a formidable enemy…” (a brute); “a severe but fair employer…” (a slave-driver); “devoted to the turf” (never read a book in his life); “a life-long bachelor” (vice); “a collector of flowers.” (This meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.)

  More browsing through The Times Annual Index produced other articles of a general sort, but I could not face reading them that day. I had enough in my notebook at least to present a tolerably intelligent face to Franklin that evening, and I found the bombardment of names and share prices and capital ratios too bewildering to be contemplated on an empty stomach. So I took the bus back down to Fleet Street, where I went into the King and Keys for a pickled egg and a drink.

  This was the Telegraph’s pub, and a dingy little hole it was, with smelly gas lighting needed even on the brightest day as there were few windows to let in either light or fresh air. It stank of sweat, tobacco and sour beer. Why the Telegraph liked it I do not know, but there is no accounting for the loyalties and tastes of reporters. It just happens like that. On the positive side, Ma Bell, the landlady, was fat and amiable, always ready to extend credit or even lend money to regulars, and kept the place open all day and all night. It was for the Telegraph what a university common room was for dons, or the Reform Club for Liberal grandees. A place to call home. Also, I suspect that the squalor of the place was its main attraction, rather as some people form an affection for a mangy old cat because it is so revolting and unlovable.