Page 36 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)

Bogdan has insisted on driving them and waiting outside.

Joyce honestly can’t see the point. ‘We could have got a taxi, Bogdan. You don’t need to give up your morning for us.’

‘I wait,’ says Bogdan. ‘In case he kills you.’

‘He’s not going to kill us,’ says Joyce. ‘He’s a lord.’

‘What about Lord Lucan?’ says Bogdan. ‘He killed someone. I saw a documentary.’

‘I once met Lord Lucan,’ says Elizabeth.

‘How long before the murder?’ asks Bogdan.

‘Oh, it was after the murder,’ says Elizabeth, at which point Bogdan turns into the driveway of Headcorn Hall.

The house squats before them at the end of the long driveway.

The driveway itself is starting to lose the battle with the nature around it, weeds and wild flowers poking through the gravel.

Joyce wonders why the gardeners haven’t taken care of that.

You wouldn’t see a weed on Downton Abbey .

The grasslands around the house have also seen better days, but perhaps Lord Townes is an environmentalist and goes for the ‘untamed’ look.

A lot of very rich people are environmentalists now.

Ron says it’s the ones who can’t afford helicopters any more.

It was Ron who told them Lord Townes had booked in for a visit to The Compound on Wednesday morning.

Elizabeth is keen to meet him before he goes.

Joyce is hoping that a butler might greet them outside.

Not that she would say it out loud, but on the journey down, as Elizabeth and Bogdan were talking about the best things to do if you got kidnapped, Joyce imagined a butler with a deep voice who had served the Townes family for generations and been unable to find love, after a doomed, fleeting romance with a scullery maid forty years earlier made him close his heart.

Many years later the man – Henderson perhaps, Phillips, Brabazon – meets a woman in a mauve cardigan, and is transported back in time.

Nothing is said, but there is a glance, a stolen look, and, as she leaves, he bows his head and says, ‘Madam,’ and she bows her head and says, ‘Henderson.’ What happens after that is a mystery, as she’d fallen asleep, to be woken by Elizabeth saying, ‘The key thing if you’re tied up in the boot is to kick out the brake lights. ’

As they crunch to a halt, Joyce sees there is no Henderson, so there goes that little dream.

Lord Townes himself has come out to greet them.

Of course there could be a fantasy in which Joyce marries a lord, but that is a lot less likely than a butler, and probably a lot less fun.

Joyce resolves to make do. Meeting a lord is quite exciting in itself.

‘You must be Elizabeth Best and Joyce Meadowcroft,’ says Lord Townes. ‘What an enormous pleasure.’

‘Lord Townes,’ says Elizabeth, and shakes his hand. Joyce curtsies.

‘No need for any nonsense,’ says Lord Townes, grasping Joyce’s hand. ‘Come on in the both of you. I’m Robert to friends, and I can tell we’re going to be friends, so I’m Robert to you. Does your driver need anything?’

‘Bogdan?’ says Elizabeth, looking back at the car. ‘No, he’s going to listen to a podcast about the fall of Carthage.’

Lord Townes escorts them through an immense oak front door into a hallway lit with one small bulb.

Joyce sees portraits and rugs and vases scattered around, but she also sees a lot of dust and peeling wallpaper, and, on this summer’s day, feels an instant chill.

Lord Townes – apologies, Robert – shows them into a drawing room, and Joyce sits in the cleanest chair she can find.

‘I would offer you tea,’ says Lord Townes, ‘but the kitchen is a very long way away. You say this is about Nick Silver?’

‘Yes,’ says Elizabeth.

‘He was my son-in-law’s best man,’ says Joyce. ‘My son-in-law, Paul, he’s a professor.’

‘Well, I know Holly Lewis better than I know Nick Silver,’ says Lord Townes, ‘but do fire away.’

Through an open double doorway to her right Joyce can see a snooker table with a stained cover on it, and a stag’s head sticking out of an oak-panelled wall. The stag is missing an eye.

‘They asked to see you,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Last week. May I ask what about?’

‘May I ask why you want to know?’ Lord Townes says. ‘It was a private conversation.’

‘Somebody killed Holly Lewis,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And Nick Silver has disappeared.’

‘Holly has been killed?’ Lord Townes looks like the victim of a prank.

‘I thought you might already know,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Car bomb.’

‘No,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Impossible, no.’

Joyce doesn’t believe him. Lord Townes already knew this information.

‘What did you speak about?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘You are quite serious?’ Lord Townes asks.

‘Robert, you know who I am,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You know my background.’

Lord Townes had rung someone ‘very high up’ before agreeing to meet them. That person had immediately rung Elizabeth.

Lord Townes nods.

‘We would very much like to find Nick Silver, and find the person who killed Holly,’ says Elizabeth.

Joyce keeps getting distracted by the stag with one eye. Poor thing.

‘What do you know?’ asks Lord Townes. ‘I will fill in whatever else I can.’

‘Holly and Nick run The Compound,’ says Elizabeth. ‘They came to you for advice about a financial matter, a very large sum of money in cryptocurrency, which they had been holding for many years, and had finally decided to cash out.’

‘That’s the long and short of it,’ agrees Lord Townes.

‘Why did they come and see you?’ Joyce asks.

‘My whole career,’ says Lord Townes, ‘such as it was, was banking. City banking, you know, the blue-chip stuff. I understand they also had advice from people who might know more about the modern side of things. Davey Noakes? He is on your radar, I hope?’

‘He is,’ says Elizabeth.

‘But I think they also wanted to talk to someone who could connect them with a few old hands they could trust.There is a lot of trickery in the world of cryptocurrency, and I think that, at some point, they wanted to talk to someone in a suit.’

‘And they told you how much was at stake?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘Somewhere north of quarter of a billion,’ says Lord Townes. ‘That was my understanding? To a banker, not an immense amount of money, but to two individuals, certainly enough to focus the mind.’

Looking out of a huge bay window, Joyce sees that a light fog has settled across the garden.

‘And what advice did you give them?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘I promised I would arrange some meetings for them, once the money had become liquid,’ says Lord Townes.

‘And did you speak to anyone?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘I spoke to a few old friends in the City,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But I gave no names, no pack-drill, just said a couple of friends have had an unexpected windfall, how do you fancy it?’

‘So no mention of The Compound,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And no mention of Holly and Nick and the amount at stake?’

‘I told them it would be worth their while,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But nothing else.’

‘And did you hear from Nick or Holly again after your meeting?’

‘Only a note of thanks from Holly, and let’s catch up next week,’ says Lord Townes. ‘I was preparing a document for her, a few runners and riders and what have you.’

‘You’re very kind to help us, Robert,’ says Elizabeth. She will have noticed everything that Joyce has noticed. A man with a big house, and not enough money to keep it, suddenly informed of a large fortune. ‘What is your take on the thing?’

‘Oh, we didn’t discuss a fee,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But the usual –’

‘No, sorry,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Your take on the matter at hand. On Holly’s murder?’

‘Well, it’s a conundrum, isn’t it?’ says Lord Townes. ‘Games are being played.’

‘But the coincidence?’ Elizabeth says.

‘The coincidence?’

‘That Holly and Nick decide to cash out after so many years, and a matter of days after first telling people of their decision one of them is killed and the other disappears?’ Elizabeth gives him a terrifyingly neutral look. ‘That coincidence?’

Lord Townes sits back, and Joyce can see he is considering Elizabeth through new eyes. He smiles and looks down.

‘Your supposition, I suppose,’ he says, motioning to his shabby surroundings, ‘is that a man running low on money and luck suddenly finds a mine full of the stuff right under his feet?’

‘It’s certainly one way of looking at it,’ says Elizabeth. ‘To a suspicious mind.’

Lord Townes nods. ‘How do bankers make their money?’

Joyce has often wondered. Ron once told her, but he becomes quite hard to follow the angrier he gets.

‘Money sloshes around,’ says Lord Townes.

‘Great globs of it haring here and there. Peter paying Paul, Paul paying Mary, Mary leveraging a buyout of Harry’s company, Harry converting his debt into equity.

Around it all swirls. And at the heart of it are bankers, shaking hands, introducing Peter to Paul, and Mary to Harry, and every time that money moves or transforms or grows, they take a tiny piece.

A tiny piece from Paul, a tiny piece from Peter, all day, every day, until they can ski down their very own mountain of money. ’

This was different to how Ron explained it, Joyce is certain of that.

‘So here’s the way to look at the thing,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Holly Lewis and I had developed a relationship of trust over a number of years. Enough trust that when she had a big decision to make, she knew she could come to me. Did you meet Holly?’

‘We did,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Did you take her for a fool?’

‘We did not,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And Holly presents me with an opportunity. To broker a deal worth more than a quarter of a billion pounds. On which I would earn, and you can ask people familiar with deals such as this, a fee of around three per cent. So you see’ – Lord Townes sits forward now – ‘a deal which fell straight into my lap, in which all I would have to do is pick up a phone, put on a suit and get on a train to London, would net me somewhere around ten point five million. And that deal, it seems, might be about to go up in smoke. If you will pardon the expression.’

Elizabeth nods. ‘Of course banking doesn’t always work that way, Robert, as you well know. It doesn’t always nibble around the edges of the cake, leaving everyone else enough to eat. Sometimes it sacks the baker and keeps the cake all for itself.’

‘Not my kind of banking,’ says Lord Townes. ‘I honestly think that Davey Noakes might be more fertile ground for you.’

‘Although of course you would say that,’ offers Elizabeth.

‘And with good reason, Mrs Best,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Because you are talking to a man who may just have lost a ten point five million pound deal.’

Joyce looks out of the window again, and decides she has a question too.

‘And you’re also a client of The Compound?’

‘Safest place in the country,’ says Lord Townes.

‘And what do you keep in there?’ Joyce asks.

‘Well, forgive me,’ says Lord Townes, ‘but that’s my business. Something valuable though, like everyone else.’

Something valuable. That’s interesting. When Joyce looked out of the bay window again, she had realized there was no fog on the lawn; it was simply that the bay window had not been cleaned in a long time.

‘And are you planning to visit any time soon?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘I am not,’ lies Lord Townes. Joyce and Elizabeth don’t even share a glance. They know what they know. ‘You’re assuming that someone is after the money? The whole lot?’

‘It’s a working hypothesis,’ says Elizabeth.

‘If someone is trying to steal this money, it has to be someone who knows it exists,’ says Lord Townes. ‘It certainly isn’t me, I’m a hopeless liar. Which leaves you with only two options. One, Davey Noakes. And two –’

‘Nick Silver,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Who, you tell me, has conveniently disappeared,’ says Lord Townes, standing. ‘So take your pick. One of two.’

It seems the meeting is over. Lord Townes has been charm itself, but, as Joyce takes a final look at the stag with one eye, and the lord who has just lied about his visit to The Compound, she knows that he’s their third option.

The only thing Joyce can be sure of is that the butler didn’t do it. Because there is no butler.