by Iain Pears
It sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. Eye of a needle, and all that. But it was Franklin’s nature; he could do no other. Just as some people simply are incapable of loving a woman who is not beautiful, so Franklin could only think of the divine in terms of the endless flow of capital. His piety was no less for being so strange in origin, just as a man’s love for a woman is no less passionate merely because it may require a decent inheritance to make it flower. He believed that the rich were better people than the poor, and that to be around them made him better as well. Wealth was both the indication of God’s favour, and provided the means to carry out His wishes on earth.
Harry Franklin, you will understand, had no trouble whatsoever in reconciling God, Darwin and Mammon; indeed, each depended on the others. The survival of the fittest meant the triumph of the richest, which was part of His plan for mankind. Accumulation was divinely ordained, both a mark of God’s favour and a way of earning more benevolence. True, Christ was a carpenter but, had He been living at the start of the twentieth century, Franklin was sure that the Messiah would have paid good attention to His stock levels, steadily expanded His business into the manufacture of fine furniture, while also investing in the latest methods of mass production by means of a stock market flotation to raise the additional capital. Then He would have brought in a manager to free Himself to go about His ministry.
Inevitably, I suppose, the idea of being allowed into the hallowed halls where once trod the feet of the supreme capitalist of the age gave him pause. In fact, the mere idea of Ravenscliff terrified him, and when he arrived at the house in St. James’s Square on the following Sunday morning he was more nervous than I had ever seen him. He seemed to shrink as we were let in, gazed around with reverence as we walked up the stairs, tiptoed past the doors which led to the reception rooms on the first floor, and said not a word until I had firmly shut the door to Ravenscliff ’s study.
“I don’t want to disturb your reverie,” I remarked, “but can we get started?”
He nodded, and looked anxiously at the chair—the very chair—on which the divine bottom had once rested as its owner perused his books. I made him sit on it, by the desk. Just to torment him a little.
“I will read the letters, if you take care of anything with numbers on it.”
“So what am I looking for?”
He had asked me this before. Several times, in fact. But so far I had avoided answering him. While I had Lady Ravenscliff ’s permission to use him, I was not allowed to tell him exactly what all this was about.
“I want you to look for interesting payments,” I said lamely. “Nothing to do with his business interests, although you may look through that if you wish. I want to get an idea of how he spent his own money, in the hope that it will tell me what he was like. Did he buy paintings? Bet on horses? How much on wine? Did he give money to charities, or to hospitals or to friends? Did he have an expensive tailor? Bootmaker? A French chef? Paint me a financial portrait of the man. I need all the information I can get, as everyone I have talked to so far has given me nothing but generalities. I meanwhile will read through everything else, and see what there is.”
Franklin found the idea of columns of money reassuring, although the thought of prying into Ravenscliff ’s private papers made him apprehensive. As it did me. But somewhere in those huge piles of paper might lie the little nugget that would answer all my questions. I had searched the room again the previous day and still found nothing.
So we set to work, each in our different way. I worked like a reporter: spending ten minutes reading, then jumping up and staring out the window, humming to myself. Picking up this pile, then the next, more or less at random, hoping that luck would give me something of interest. Franklin, in contrast, worked like a banker; starting at the top of the first sheet, working his way steadily down through the pile, then on to the next. Number after number, column after column, file after file. He sat still and impassively, only his eyes flickering across the tallies, his pen occasionally jotting a brief note on a pad of paper before him. He made no noise; he seemed almost to be in a dream—and a happy dream at that.
“Well?” I asked after about an hour and a half, when I could stand it no longer. “Have you found anything? I haven’t.”
Franklin held up a hand for quiet, and he continued reading, then jotted down another note. “What did you say?”
“I said, What have you got so far?”
“I’ve only just started,” he began. “You can’t expect…”
“I don’t. But I want a break. Do you have any idea how bad his handwriting was? Each word is a torture. I want a diversion for a few moments so my eyes can recover.”
“I’ll look at them myself another time,” he offered. “This stuff, in contrast, is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. But I suspect of no earthly use to you at all.”
I groaned. The worst of both worlds. Franklin was going to tell me more about stock prices.
He did. I absented myself mentally from the room after a few minutes, as he waxed lyrical about debenture stocks and dividend payouts, and operations in the market.
“Not as sound as everyone thought, you see,” he concluded some time later. How long—ten minutes or an hour I could not say.
“What isn’t?”
Franklin frowned. “Have you been paying attention?”
“Of course,” I replied robustly. “I’ve been hanging on every word. I’d just like a useful summary. I’m a journalist, remember. I don’t like detail.”
“Very well. A summary. Ravenscliff ’s enterprises in England have been burning up cash. He has been sucking money out of the operation at a quite phenomenal rate for almost a year.”
I stared hopefully at him. This was more my line. I could understand this. Hand in the till to pay for wine, women and song. Gambling debts. Racehorses. Jump out of the window to avoid the shame of ruin. How very disappointing. “How much?”
“About three million pounds.”
I looked at him aghast. That was a lot of racehorses. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. That is, I’ve looked back at the past seven years’ accounts. They are very complicated, but he had a private set prepared every year, which summarised his total operations. I imagine no one else ever saw them. Without those, I doubt I could ever have noticed what he was up to. But these are quite clear. Do you want me to show you?” He brandished a thick folder of complicated-looking papers in my direction.
“No. Just tell me.”
“Very well. If you take the amount of cash at the start of the year, add on the cash received, subtract the cost of operations and other expenses, then you get the amount of cash at the end of the year. Do you understand that?”
I nodded cautiously.
“The official accounts use one figure. These,” again he waved the file in the air, “use another which is very different. All the shareholders, except for Ravenscliff, who evidently knew better, believe that the businesses have considerably more money than, in fact, they do. Three million, as I say.”
“And that means?”
“That means that if anyone ever found out, then not only Rialto but all the companies it owns shares in would drop like a stone. If you’ll forgive me.” Franklin seemed momentarily alarmed that he could be frivolous on such a subject, even accidentally. “The companies are not bankrupt, but they are worth nowhere near as much as people think. Including these people.”
I looked. It was a list of names, with figures on them. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary. Their opposite numbers in the Conservative party. And many other MPs, judges and bishops.
“What are these numbers?”
“Their shareholdings in Rialto. Multiply by the price. The Prime Minister in the case of a total collapse would lose nearly £11,000. The Leader of the Opposition £8,000.”
“Enough reason to get Barings in to prop up the share price?”
“More than enough, I’d say
.”
“So what do I do about this?”
“You keep your mouth firmly closed. If you must do something, try to find out if any of the people on this list have been selling their shares. I have savings of £75, and £35 of these are in the Rialto Investment Trust. I intend to sell them first thing on Monday morning. It has taken me four years to save that much, and I don’t intend to lose it. I imagine anyone else who knew about this would have the same reaction.”
He looked protective as he thought of his nest egg. For my part, I had not a penny saved in the world, as yet. But I could imagine how I would feel at the prospect of losing the result of several years’ parsimony.
“Where has this money gone, then?”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
“There is nothing else to say? I can’t imagine that such a quantity of money could just vanish.”
“I quite agree. But it’s not here, or at least I haven’t found it. I told you I wasn’t finished. And there are some files missing. I only found this one because it was in the wrong place.”
“So what do I do?”
“If I were you? I’d forget I’d ever seen it. If you say so much as a word you will start a financial storm the likes of which London has not seen for decades.”
I could see that he was enjoying this brush with the occult secrets of the mighty. I wasn’t. I knew better than he realised what we were dealing with. He was right. I should leave this alone; forget all about it. But I was a reporter. I wanted to know what was going on; where that money had gone. The fact that it had nothing to do with Ravenscliff ’s child was irrelevant. I had completely forgotten about the little brat.
Franklin brought me back to myself. “I must go,” he said. “I have to go to church.”
How he could think of such a thing, when he had just discovered proof that all these people he liked to associate with in the pews were not quite what they seemed I did not know. But Franklin was not the sort who would allow one sinner to call into question his entire outlook on life. I suspected he would pray fervently that God would show him His favour by allowing him to get a good price for his Rialto Ordinaries the next morning.
I nodded. He left, but not without reminding me of his advice. “One other thing,” he added as he opened the door. “File three/twenty-three. Personal disbursements. Try that. Apart from anything else, it seems that His Lordship has been supporting the International Brotherhood of Socialists for the past year.”
I sat in Ravenscliff ’s study for the next hour in a reverie, occasionally emerging from my mood to study the notes Franklin had made. I did quite well. Not that I uncovered any significant new financial information, of course. That was quite beyond me. But I at least managed to understand it. And I discovered, by comparing handwriting, that the accounts detailing the true situation at Rialto had been prepared for Ravenscliff by Joseph Bartoli, his right-hand man. My simple solution to the problem—simply asking Bartoli what was going on—disappeared. If Bartoli was part of some elaborate fraud, he was hardly going to open up to me.
Eventually I put down the file, and took out file three/twenty-three. It was, as Franklin had said, Ravenscliff ’s personal expenses, and exactly the sort of documents I should have been studying. If there were any payments for illegitimate children they should be here, buried amongst the itemised notes for clothes, shoes, household expenses, food, servants’ wages and so on. The lists went back to 1900, and there were many entries which were ambiguous. I realised after a while that detailed study would yield nothing: an entire schoolroom of bastards could easily have been hidden under the heading of “miscellaneous expense” (1907: £734 17s 6d). All it established was that, by the standards of the wealthy (if, perhaps, no longer quite as wealthy as I had imagined) Ravenscliff was not at all extravagant. His greatest expense was his wife (1908: £2,234 12s 6d) and he spent more on books than he did on clothes. The payments Franklin referred to were on a separate sheet on the top of the file. Easy enough to understand, they were headed “Provisional list of payments to the International Brotherhood of Socialists.” No ambiguity there. And a list of dates and amounts. This was curious. It was a lot of money; nearly £400 in the past year. Nor did it occur in the more detailed sheets of expenses underneath it. And what on earth was someone like Ravenscliff doing giving money to a group who, one assumed, were dedicated to abolishing everything he stood for? Had he had a Damascene conversion? Did that explain the sucking of money out of his own companies? I went back to his appointments diary and there, jotted down for a few days after his death, was the entry, “Xanthos—ibs.”
I did not like Ravenscliff by instinct, but I was beginning to find him fascinating. A book-reading, socialist-sympathising, child-begetting capitalist fraud. Wilf Cornford at Seyd’s had told me he was nothing but money; he was beginning to be very much more than that. Too much more, in fact.
“They told me you were still here,” came the voice of Lady Ravenscliff from the door. I looked up. It was getting dark in the room and I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nearly eight o’clock. No wonder I felt uncomfortable. I was hungry. No more nor less than that. That was a relief.
“Working away,” I said cheerfully.
“And have you discovered anything?”
“Not on the main question, no,” I said, dragging my thoughts away from the disappearing millions and resolving to follow Franklin’s advice. “Merely somethings which revive the nosy old journalist in me.”
I handed her the sheet of paper about the Brotherhood. She looked at it with a very prettily arched eyebrow, then her glance returned to me.
“Did your husband start going around calling for world revolution in his last months?” I asked. “Tell the butler over the kedgeree that property was theft, and how he should throw off his chains?”
“Not to my knowledge. He rarely said anything over breakfast. He usually read The Times.”
“Then this is a bit of a curiosity, don’t you think?”
She looked again at the piece of paper. “It is. Have you ever heard of these people?”
“No,” I said, a little disingenuously. It was true, but these sorts of people had been talked about at my socialist reading group. If such an admission would have produced in her a look of alarm at my dangerous political associations, I might have mentioned it, but I suspected it would produce nothing more than contempt and even pity. Earnest men in scruffy clothes in a dingy room arguing about things they had no power to alter. Well, it was a bit like that.
“I imagine they are some sort of revolutionary group,” I said lamely.
“How very odd.” She tossed the paper aside, and changed the subject. “I was wondering whether you have eaten? And if not whether you would care to do so? I am not in the mood for company, but do not wish to dine alone. You would do me a great kindness if you accepted.”
I looked up, my eyes caught hers and my world changed forever.
I was paralysed; literally, I could not move. Rather than simply looking at her eyes, I seemed to be peering deep into her soul. I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. How can I put it? Lady Ravenscliff vanished from my mind to be replaced by Elizabeth; I can give no better account of the transformation in my mind. Her vulnerability and her pride were both part of it, I suppose, as were her beauty, and her voice, and the way she moved. A strand of dark-brown hair hanging down over her left eye made all the difference in the world, as did the slightest glimpse of a collarbone above the top of her dark dress.
Something happened to her as well, I believed, although I could not tell whether it was real, or simply a reflection of what was going on inside my head. I could not tell if I truly saw something, or glimpsed only what I wanted there to be. I looked away eventually, and had I been required to move just then I do not know if I would have managed to do so without trembling.
I had no idea what happened, or rather how it happened. I still do not. I was, naturally, aware that it was quite ridiculous. For me, a young man o
f twenty-five, to become transfixed by a woman nearly twenty years older than I, a member of the aristocracy, my employer, and a recent widow still genuinely in mourning for her husband. A woman whose annual pin money was as much as I was likely to earn in the next decade. How much more ludicrous could anything be?
Then I became aware that, although I hoped that Elizabeth had noticed nothing, she too had fallen quite silent, and was looking away from me at the fire.
“You are tired,” I said, trying to be hearty but merely sounding nervous instead. “It is kind of you to invite me, but I really must see what I can discover about this matter tomorrow.” I wanted to get out of that house, out of her presence as quickly as possible. It was all I could do not to bolt for the door.
She looked back at me and smiled wanly. “Very well. I will dine alone. Will you come back with your discoveries?”
“Only if there is something to tell. I do not wish to waste your time.”
We rose, and I shook her hand. She did not look at me, nor I at her.
I was sweating when I got into the street although the air was cool. I felt as though I had just escaped from a furnace, or from some mortal danger. All the way home her face and her perfume and her smile, and those eyes, danced in my head and refused to obey my instructions that they should leave me alone. They were phantoms, nothing more. Again I slept badly that night.
CHAPTER 15
I will not describe the next day. Not because it wasn’t interesting, but more because getting anything done was a supreme act of will when all I wanted to do was sit and stare and think thoughts I should never have allowed inside my mind. And at six o’clock, when I again entered the house, I knew the entire day had been spent killing time, waiting for the moment when I could see her again. And not wanting to, because anything which was likely to take place could only be a disappointment after the previous evening. Even though nothing whatsoever had happened then.
