Murder At Wittenham Park (3 page)

“Brilliant,” Dee Dee said savagely. “Blame me, that's the easy way out. You're supposed to be the brains of the outfit. What do we do?” She knew the answer, of course, but let Buck sweat it out for a few minutes. “We have eight paid-up guests. We have Welch's lady lawyer ready to sue us if the toast is burnt. We have two Agatha Christie buffs. They all arrive tomorrow afternoon; and now we have no characters and no plot. What are you going to do?”

All Gilroy could bring to mind was the classic military message: “The situation is desperate, but not serious.” That pretty well summed up their predicament.

“We'll have to work out another plot,” he suggested.

“Great.” She gave him one of those looks which implied that with his intellect he ought to be a road sweeper. “I suppose I'll have to do that. And I tell you what, Welch can be the first victim.”

“Leaving him with nothing to do except harass me?” Gilroy did not often become indignant with his wife. She might be relatively penniless, but he loved her. However, this idea was carrying conjugal fidelity too far. “To hell with the actress,” he insisted, “I have to keep Welch out of my hair. He can be the murderer.”

“When we have a story-line,” Dee Dee said, getting in the last word. “Damn Agatha Christie!”

2

T
HE NEXT
day, while Buck and Dee Dee Gilroy were still struggling to eliminate Agatha Christie from their murder plot, some of their guests were involved in arguments that would have worried the noble lord even more than the prospect of being sued by the Queen of Crime's executors.

Imagination was not a gift with which the Creator had over-endowed Lord Gilroy. He had shuddered with horror when he first saw Welch's apple-green Rolls-Royce defacing his driveway, because it was so obviously ghastly. But he would never have guessed at the cold-blooded conversation going on inside it on this sunny afternoon, as its owner drove down the motorway towards the leafy lanes of rural Oxfordshire and the unexploited acres of Wittenham Park.

George Welch's robust physical appearance owed a great deal to the breweries. Drinking as a young construction worker had given him a beer belly, which later dietary intrusions by his wife Adrienne had not greatly reduced. At forty-nine, his complexion had a ruddiness unconnected with a healthy open-air life, even though in the tweed jacket which he reckoned appropriate to an upper-class weekend he could have passed for a choleric farmer. But the impression other drivers gained, as the outrageous Roller swept past them, was of a fleshy-faced photofit of road rage, who would cheerfully carve anyone up if they dared overtake him. If Welch had been an actor he would have been in constant demand to play self-made bastards like himself.

Seated beside him was a pretty blonde in her thirties who might have been assumed to be his wife, but was in fact his lawyer, Dulcie McMountdown. His wife, Adrienne, was behind in the deep white leather cushions of the back seat, together with Hamish McMountdown, making the most of the walnut-veneered cocktail cabinet and listening to stereo music, while the two in the front talked business.

Dulcie was petite, with thick, short-cut blonde hair, a tip-tilted nose, a determined little chin, and a wide, generous mouth that had prompted Hamish to nickname her “frogface” when they were first married. Now that he was heavily into an affair with the wife of a neighbour she refused to be called “frogface” any more, just as she refused to let their terrier be mated with the neighbour's bitch. A woman had to draw the line somewhere!

In fact, if her philandering husband didn't stop, she was going to draw that line in the divorce court, though she could hardly believe he could be serious over such a feather-brain as Loredana. Not that Hamish knew that she knew. He and Loredana both thought they were being blissfully clever and discreet and that neither of their spouses suspected a thing. Quite possibly Loredana's husband, Trevor, didn't. But for the moment Dulcie had other things on her mind. She was George Welch's legal adviser and George was being difficult.

Dulcie was a hundred and four pounds of bounce and energy, while the sleekly brushed thatch of blonde hair concealed an acute brain. Anybody who treated her as a bimbo would live to regret it, a point which had not yet occurred to Loredana. Now Welch was suddenly treating her as one. Why?

“Is the bloody contract watertight?” Welch was asking. “If Gilroy signs, can he back out?”

“There's no cooling-off period, if that's what you mean, George. It's not like one of those time-share contracts the law forces us to offer.” Dulcie bridled. Was she likely to draw up a document that wasn't enforceable the moment it was signed and witnessed?

“And how's the land marked out? Thought of that, have you?”

“We have large-scale maps of the whole area. Plus photocopies.” What had got into George today? Normally he would trust her grasp of detail. “The real question,” she added grittily, “is how you're going to talk Gilroy into agreeing.”

“He needs the money, doesn't he?”

“He's lost a lot on Lloyds.” Dulcie kept her comment brief. This was dangerous ground.

“As who hasn't.” Welch glanced sideways at her. “As who hasn't, eh, my girl?”

In the silence that followed, Dulcie was tempted to reply that since he had been fool enough to let her husband Hamish manage his Lloyds insurance commitments, he deserved to lose his shirt. But she held her tongue. And anyway, Hamish had only done the same as most Lloyds professionals, even if collectively they had created a catastrophe which had shattered thousands of people's lives and was threatening now to bankrupt Welch himself.

When the Lloyds insurance market had turned into an international can of worms, Hamish unquestionably ranked among the canners. He didn't rank high, but he had been in there exploiting the weaknesses of an eighteenth-century organization that existed on mutual trust and which had become a British institution. Its top men always had become extremely rich. Even Hamish had made a modest pile out of Lloyds. But any City institution that depended on mutual trust was wide open these days. Unsurprisingly, the fraudsters had moved in.

And yet, she thought, gaining time by swinging down the sun visor in front of her to inspect her make-up in its little mirror, and catching Hamish's unhappy eye in it as she did so, she did not want him ruined. She was not vindictive. She wanted to kick him in the teeth, of course, but that wasn't the same thing. And if George Welch sued him for fraud, which she was afraid he might, Hamish would be ruined. She was always pretty sure that he had never actually broken the law, not because he was clever, but because he'd never needed to.

The Lloyds system was what her Australian cousins would have called a “beaut.” The managing agents like Hamish could hardly fail to get rich. Through them, wealthy individuals, known as “names,” pledged their assets to make money as insurers by joining underwriting syndicates. The agents collected a percentage on their “names” profits, but suffered no deduction on losses. It was an absolute beaut of a situation. Whether their advice was good or bad, they could not lose.

It was highly attractive for the “names” too. All the professional work was done for them and they made their assets work twice, once as stocks or property or whatever they were, a second time through Lloyds. When Hamish was wooing potential “names,” he became quite ecstatic about it. With Welch he had needed to be. Anyone who persuaded George to part with money had to be convincing; and he had underwritten huge amounts.

Poor old sod, Dulcie thought as she wielded her lipstick and tried to anticipate Welch's next remark. “So proud of being one of the Perthshire McMountdowns, and what happened? He joined a gentleman's club and discovered he actually had to work.”

Two hundred years ago, fifty years ago, even thirty years ago, Lloyds was effectively a gentlemen's financial club. And it was prudently run, even when accepting such bizarre risks as insuring Marlene Dietrich's legs.

In the rare event that claims were not covered by premium income, then the “names” had to pay up. So they took out “stop loss” policies to protect themselves against being wiped out. This was where some of the fraud began in the 1980s.

“If what's been going on ain't fraud, I'd like to know what is,” Welch said, mirroring Dulcie's thoughts.

By the late 1970s the gentlemen had been ousted by, or themselves turned into, ambitious and greedy salesmen, who took on open-ended risks that their forbears would never have touched. Lloyds itself relaxed one crucial rule, namely that a person's home could not be counted as an asset. With that barrier out of the way, the managing agents went down-market and courted people who could not really afford the risk. The lure of easy money was powerful. The downside featured very little in their expansive—and expensive—lunch-time briefings. The cut they made was never mentioned. It was not the sort of thing gentlemen discussed. Hamish was always skilful at implying this. Lloyds was still presented as an exclusive and profitable club.

Tennis stars, authors, actors, army officers and widows were among those suckered into signing up. So were Buck Gilroy and George Welch. Gilroy could not afford it because Wittenham Park was his only major asset, George Welch because his capital was tied up in his business. A further call from Lloyds for a few hundred thousand could wreck the lives of either of them.

While Dulcie was wondering just how deep in the mire George had got himself, the man who had sweet-talked him into it was sneaking an early Scotch and soda in the back of the Roller, earnestly wishing that he were somewhere else. The wish was redoubled when he overheard Welch's next comment.

“Something bloody well has to be done by Monday, my girl.” Welch spoke roughly, but with intensity. Inviting Hamish along to this weekend was far from from being a gracious gesture. Whatever role he might have in the forthcoming “murder,” he had a far more important one in Welch's plan. But Welch did not intend to spring it on him until escape was impossible.

“Such as?”

“Telling Lord Toffee-Nose as how the call what's been posted off today is for the worst losses ever. Even if they ain't. ‘Sign with me now, be safe on Monday,' that's the message.”

“And just why should Hamish do that?”

“Call it a favour to a client what's suffered.”

“You can't blame Hamish for your losses,” Dulcie said. “You wanted to be on high-profit syndicates.”

“Risky maybe, fraudulent never.”

Fraud was close to the heart of it. A few Lloyds professionals turned out to have been charging for stop-loss insurance but not providing it.

Court cases followed. American “names” refused to pay. Year after year brought more “calls.” All over Britain, country houses, racehorses and heirloom antiques were sold. For George Welch the only way to meet his obligations was to find more building land and then borrow both against its purchase and its future development. Naturally he blamed Hamish.

“If you're accusing my husband of fraud,” Dulcie said coldly, “you can tell him so yourself, not hide behind me.”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won't.” Welch backed off a little. At heart he was frightened of lawyers, even his own. “Who else have yer brought with her to make this flipping party swing? Hope I'm getting value for me money.”

“Our next-door neighbours are coming,” Dulcie said, remembering Welch's pursuit of waitresses in restaurants, and adding mischievously, “Between you and me, Loredana Chancemain quite likes a little bit on the side. She might be delighted to find a new man in her room.”

“What about her husband, then?” Welch lowered his voice conspiratorially.

“Oh, Trevor probably won't turn up. He's in Africa on business.”

“Is he now!” Welch was interested and his attitude changed. “Likes a bit of nooky, does she?”

“Loredana may look cold but she's not underneath,” Dulcie said, getting an unexpected kick out of this situation. When Hamish had suggested, a little too casually, that the Chancemains might make up the numbers, she had known exactly why. Bedrooms in these huge country houses frequently had two doors. Imagine Welch entering by one and Hamish by the other! That would wipe the smirk off Loredana's face for once. “She's quite sexy, in fact,” she added, “Not to mention attractive.” She might have added, attractive if you like them dumb. But he could find that out for himself.

Welch was prevented from asking more by his wife, who leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

“And what are two getting up to, may I ask?”

Dulcie twisted around in her seat, in so far as the seat-belt allowed. “It's the contract details. We can't afford to make any mistakes this weekend”—she included her husband in the glance—“can we, darling?”

“Personally,” Hamish said, sensing double meanings and changing the subject, “I'm hoping they make me Hercule Poirot, the detective.”

“You hardly look like a Belgian with a waxed moustache,” Dulcie commented. In fact, Christie's detective hero had been quite a small man, and so was Hamish, but in every other way they were opposites. Hamish had undistinguished features and a bland, faintly superior expression, which seldom displayed emotion. His personality was a level playing field—at a very good school, of course. What had attracted Dulcie had been their their shared love of opera. It had not proved enough.

“They must expect us to dress the part,” Hamish insisted, earning a look of amazement from Dulcie. What was he up to?

“You really think so?” Adrienne brightened. “Then we might all get a bit of a giggle after all.”

*   *   *

W
HILE
D
ULCIE
was considering how to handle this delicate subplot to the murder weekend, two of Gilroy's other guests, approaching from the London direction in a Ford, were debating quite different concerns. Jemma and Jim Savage were father and daughter, and Jemma was airing a reasoned mistrust of what her father had arranged.