Injury Time (17 page)

In spite of the political overtones of his name—his father had been a great admirer of Benjamin Disraeli—it was the fact that the Mordaunt Club was close—as Lady Bracknell might have put it—to the greater London termini that was now so helpful to Sir Coningsby Falconer. He could walk to the Mordaunt Club from the railway station and thus save himself the expense of a cab. And in these hard times, this was important.

Henry Tyler, who was his host today, went up to the library to find Sir Coningsby with whom he had been wont to have lunch on the first Tuesday in the month ever since Henry had been back at the Foreign Office in London. In happier days Sir Coningsby had been in the habit of combining their monthly meeting with visits to his wine merchant, his hatter and his bootmaker in St James's Street and his barber and cheese-merchant in Jermyn Street.

These were errands of a palmier past. The only people whom Sir Coningsby visited in London in these sadder days were his accountants. Henry Tyler was an old enough friend to be able to enquire how things were without upsetting the luncheon atmosphere.

‘Pretty bad up to Monday and a hell of a lot worse since,' said the baronet tersely.

Henry Tyler had been in the diplomatic service long enough, too, to be able to raise an enquiring eyebrow and convey sympathy at one and the same time without saying anything at all.

‘Honestly, I didn't think they could possibly have got any worse, Henry, not after everything …'

Henry nodded sympathetically. He knew—where the casual acquaintance might not—that Sir Coningsby's troubles stemmed from an unlucky involvement in not one but two failed syndicates at Lloyd's of London. As the losses of the insurance and re-insurance syndicates had spiralled upwards, so had the fortunes of the house of Falconer of Almstone in the County of Calleshire spiralled—not to say plummeted—downwards.

‘Just as I thought I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, too,' said Sir Coningsby.

‘It was another train coming the other way, was it?' postulated Henry Tyler not unsympathetically.

‘Caught me a real side-swipe, I can tell you,' said Sir Coningsby, mixing his metaphors with abandon. ‘Oh, thank you. Yes, a decent sherry would go down very well …' He groaned. ‘I've told 'em all at home that I've had to give up alcohol on doctor's orders … Dammit, Henry, there's no need to laugh like that. How would you like it if you'd had to sell your cellar?'

‘I shouldn't,' said Henry unrepentantly, ‘but abstinence is said to be good for the liver, you know, as well as the soul.'

‘That's all very fine and large,' said Coningsby Falconer plaintively, ‘though I shouldn't have minded so much if I'd been a proper rake-hell and had some fun for my money. You know, the Hell-Fire Club and all that. Losing one's inheritance on the throw of a dice or the turn of a card has—well, a certain panache about it.'

‘You did have some fun,' said Henry briskly. ‘And you did lose on a wager.'

Sir Coningsby wasn't listening. He was looking round at the portraits on the walls of the Mordaunt Club. ‘I bet some of those fellows up there had a real run for their money. Some of 'em 've got quite a glint in their eyes.'

‘Sir John Mordaunt was as hard-working a parliamentarian in his day as you could hope to find,' said Henry Tyler.

‘That's all very well,' grumbled Sir Coningsby gently, ‘but …' He was diverted by the arrival of the waiter.

‘All right then,' said Henry. ‘Tell me, what's gone wrong now?'

His friend took a sip of sherry. ‘You know that since our troubles we've had to take in lodgers?'

‘Having well-heeled visitors pay for the privilege of staying at the Lodge and fishing in one of the best chalk streams in the country,' observed Henry mildly, ‘ought not in my book to be described as taking in lodgers.'

‘Mother doesn't like it.'

‘That may be the kernel of the matter,' agreed Henry, who had met old Lady Falconer, ‘but it's not the same thing.'

‘Oh, all right, then,' said Coningsby, aggrieved, ‘it is fun having people one knows down for the fishing and it's no fun at all having people one doesn't know—and wouldn't want to know …'

Aye, thought Henry to himself, there was the rub.

‘… swarming all over the house and staying for dinner.'

‘Into the bargain,' said Henry.

‘Oh, it isn't a bargain,' said Sir Coningsby a trifle naïvely. ‘It costs a bomb. That's the whole idea.'

‘So what went wrong, then? No fish?'

The baronet looked pained. ‘Of course there were fish, Henry. You know that. The Alm's pretty well the finest trout river in the whole of the south of England, let alone Calleshire.'

‘All right, then,' said Henry Tyler, who, in his time in the Foreign Office had been equally patient with rebelling tribesmen, righteous economists and petty dictators too. ‘I'll buy it. The visitors didn't know how to catch trout?'

‘Wrong again.' Sir Coningsby drained his schooner of sherry before he answered. ‘The one that mattered knew very well how to go about fly-fishing for brown trout. He'd even brought a Blue Upright with him …'

Henry raked through his memory. ‘A trout fly?'

‘Pale peacock-quill body,' said Coningsby lugubriously, ‘and a blue dun cock. The fish loved it.'

‘I'm glad there was some happiness about,' said Henry.

Even mild sarcasm was wasted on Coningsby in his present frame of mind. ‘Oh, the fellow could fish all right. He was the last one I'd have suspected.'

Since this said more about Coningsby Falconer than it did about the fisher, Henry once again enquired what had gone wrong.

He only got an oblique answer.

‘You know my mother, don't you, old chap?'

‘I do.' Henry Tyler had been taught at school that it was grammatically permissible for verbs to remain unqualified by an adverb. He thought this one of those occasions.

‘Sheila had to go down to Devon to see her people this weekend so Mother stood in as hostess.'

‘Surely she would have enjoyed doing that?' Presiding in one's son's house in the absence of a daughter-in-law didn't sound too arduous to Henry. A lot of dowagers he knew would have given their eye-teeth for the chance.

‘Oh, yes, she enjoyed it all right,' said Sir Coningsby gloomily. ‘I just had the one problem with her.'

Henry Tyler regarded his old friend with affection. Actually Coningsby had had no end of problems with his mother from childhood onwards but hadn't ever recognized them as such.

‘You see, Henry, we just can't get her to see how bad things are. She thinks we should carry on as if everything's all right and it isn't.'

‘No,' agreed Henry. ‘It isn't.' Nevertheless he applauded the spirit that did not admit to difficulties. ‘What did she do?'

‘Show the flag. You know, carry on as if these people were her own guests …'

‘That would have been what they wanted, too, wouldn't it?'

‘Oh, yes, she went down a bomb with them,' he said pallidly. ‘One especially. The man who fished with the Blue Upright.'

‘So?'

‘So she did as she always did at a big dinner party and put on her pearls.'

‘I should have thought the guests would have liked that, too.'

‘They did.' Sir Coningsby followed Henry out of the library and down to the Mordaunt Club dining-room. ‘One in particular. Mind you, they're pretty famous ones. They're not Falconer pearls. She had 'em from her father. Perfectly graded. Took years to collect and match.'

‘Even I've heard of them,' agreed Henry, to hurry the story along.

‘Bit of a sore point with Sheila and me, those pearls,' said Coningsby.

‘Really?'

‘I don't mind telling you, Henry,' he leaned forward confidentially, ‘because you don't talk.'

‘Telling me what?' asked Henry, who had been paid to listen to sundry tribesmen, economists and dictators.

‘About the pearls.'

‘What about them, man? Is your mother going to leave them out of the family or something?'

‘No, of course not, Henry.' The baronet looked quite shocked. ‘What on earth could have given you that idea? Oh, the steak and kidney pudding, please … No, what got us is that Mother wouldn't let us raise money on them to get us out of this Lloyd's business.'

‘And she could?'

‘Could have,' amended Sir Coningsby. ‘But wouldn't. Said her father wouldn't have liked them to be used for that. He had a good head for business, you know.'

‘Yes, well …' Henry forbore to say anything about Sir Coningsby's business head.

‘I tell you, Henry, we—Sheila and I—thought it was the same as being in one of those prisons built like the inside of the top of a wine bottle upside-down …' He waved his fork in a graphic gesture. ‘You know … where they had a stream dripping within earshot but out of reach until the prisoner died of thirst.'

‘An
oubliette
,' supplied Henry.

‘That's it.' He laid the fork back on the table. ‘Those pearls could have saved us like the water could have saved the prisoner …'

‘If he could have got his hands on it,' pointed out Henry unkindly.

‘Not that that matters now …'

‘Why not?' In Henry's not inconsiderable experience, troubles did not roll away as simply as that.

‘Didn't I tell you? One of the people staying for the fishing stole them.'

‘Your mother's pearls?'

‘Gone.' Sir Coningsby looked even more lugubrious. ‘Oh, the police are pretty sure who had them but they can't prove anything.'

‘He with the Blue Upright?'

‘Him. We all had to be fingerprinted after the ebony case with the pearls in disappeared. Mother didn't like that.'

Henry hadn't imagined that she would.

‘Blue Upright turned out to be one of a pair of international jewel thieves.'

‘What did the other one fish with? A February Red?'

‘I didn't ask,' said Sir Coningsby with dignity. ‘I never saw him. He stayed at the Dog and Duck down in the village. They found his fingerprints in his room there. That was after the police worked out how the pair of 'em got away with the pearls.'

‘Tell me,' invited Henry.

‘Blue Upright takes them from Ma's room while she's asleep, puts them in his tackle bag and goes down to the river first thing …'

‘Before she knows they've gone? Oh, by the way, what'll you have to drink?'

‘I thought you'd never ask,' said his friend, taking the wine list. ‘Yes. Said he wanted the early light.'

‘Since they're still missing I take it the river bank has been searched?'

‘Ratty and Mole couldn't have done a better job,' said Coningsby, who had had a proper grounding in English literature. ‘That's when they went looking for the other fellow. Downstream, of course.'

‘As I remember, the river picks up steam below you, doesn't it?'

‘Goes straight down from my beat into the old mill pool opposite the Dog and Duck,' said Coningsby. He tapped the wine list. ‘The Gamay would go well, I think, if it's all right with you, old chap …'

‘Meantime Blue Upright comes back indoors asking what the fuss is all about?'

‘He even had the nerve to come back with a couple of quite decent brown trout,' growled Coningsby, ‘while his pal further downstream …'

‘Whom I shall call “February Red”,' murmured Henry.

‘… was picking up the ebony box from the mill pool with his net.'

‘The Dog and Duck is reckoned to be a fishing inn, isn't it?' observed Henry.

Coningsby Falconer scowled. ‘The police think he—Blue Upright—chucked the box in the Alm from the little bridge and just let it float downriver to his accomplice.'

‘He whom we are referring to as February Red,' put in Henry helpfully.

‘Actually, Henry, I tried it myself later with some bits of wood and it worked. Like Poohsticks, though I don't think the police chappie knew what I was talking about …'

‘No,' agreed Henry thoughtfully. ‘Tell me about this ebony box.'

‘It was something the mater had picked up in Ceylon on her honeymoon. Quite small but beautifully carved and all that.' He roused himself to recollect yet another grievance. ‘She was very fond of that box—sentimental associations and so forth.' He plunged his face into the glass of Gamay and said: ‘If you ask me she minds as much about the box as she does about the pearls she won't let us raise the ante on.'

‘Funny things, women …'

‘Sheila's all right,' said Sheila's husband stoutly. ‘She's been an absolute brick all through our troubles. Oh, thank you, waiter. Yes, I'll have all the vegetables please …'

‘Oh, no, you won't,' said Henry suddenly. ‘At least, not just yet. Waiter, take Sir Coningsby's steak and kidney pudding back to the kitchen and keep it hot. He's got an urgent phone call to make …'

‘I have?' said the bewildered baronet, watching his luncheon disappear with an expression of schoolboy regret on his face.

‘You will ring the Calleshire police at once,' instructed Henry Tyler, sometime Foreign Office official in Mauritius, ‘and ask them to institute an immediate search of the river bed below the bridge …'

‘The bridge …'

‘Where I am pretty sure they will find a small ebony box containing your mother's pearls, Pooh-sticks notwithstanding. No, on second thoughts leave that last bit out …'

‘But …' spluttered Coningsby, who was taking the precaution of finishing his wine before that, too, was put on ‘hold'.

‘Tell them instead that ebony wood doesn't float.'

‘It doesn't?'

‘It's too heavy. It sinks.'