When Charles got back to Hereford Road, there was a Swedish scrawl on the note pad-JERRY VENERAL RING. After a few moments’ deciphering he rang Gerald Venables’ number.
‘Charles, look, we can’t talk on the phone.’ Gerald was obviously taking all the detective bit to heart, and entering into it with the spirit of a child’s game of Cops and Robbers. ‘Listen, I’ve found out about the “you-know-what”. We must meet somewhere and talk.’
‘OK. Where and when?’
‘Two o’clock. The back bar of the Red Lion in Waverton Street.’
‘Why? Is it quiet there?’
‘No, but you can be overheard in quiet places. The Red Lion’s so noisy, nobody’ll hear a word,’ said Gerald with complete seriousness.
‘All right, Peewit.’
‘What do you mean-Peewit?’
‘Code-name. I’ll be wearing a carnation. What’s the password?’ Charles put the phone down, imagining the expression on Gerald’s face.
He was out of costume and looked like Charles Paris when he arrived in the back bar of the Red Lion. Squeezing past the milling lunch time crowds he found himself pressed closely between Gerald and a rather busty Australian. ‘Who’s she?’ he hissed.
‘No idea. Where’s your carnation?’
‘That was a joke.’
‘Oh.’ Gerald sounded genuinely disappointed.
‘Well, you recognise me, don’t you?’ Gerald was forced to admit he did. ‘So, what gives?’ Charles shouted above the din.
‘Ssh.’
‘What gives?’ Softer.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
Eventually, as the lunch time crowds subsided officewards and the pub was left to a few loud tourists, they found a quiet corner and sat down with their drinks. Charles had a pint and Gerald a dry martini (Charles almost expected him to ask for it ‘shaken not stirred’). The solicitor looked round with conspicuous caution.
‘The will is very interesting,’ he hissed. ‘Well, not so much the will as the whole situation. Basically, Nigel gets everything, but he’s got a lot of it already.
‘Marius Steen made over his three houses and about 75 per cent of his other assets to his son some years ago. You know, the old gift inter vivos dodge, to avoid estate duty.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know the old gift inter vivos dodge. I’m very stupid about the law.’
‘So’s everyone. That’s what lawyers thrive on. What it basically means is that if someone makes a gift during his lifetime and doesn’t die for a given period, that gift is free of estate duty, or partly free. There’s a sliding scale. If the donor dies more than seven years after the gift, there’s no duty at all payable. If he dies in the seventh year the whole duty is reduced by 6o per cent, if in the sixth by 30 per cent, and in the fifth 15 per cent.’ Gerald was talking very fast and fluently, as he always did on the subject of money, but Charles reckoned he had got the gist. ‘When was the gift made, Gerald?’
‘Nearly six years ago.’
‘So Nigel had absolutely no motive to kill his father. In fact, it was in his interests that the old man stayed alive.’
‘Ah. That’s it, is it?’ Gerald’s eyes narrowed in the manner of a thousand television thrillers. ‘I think you’d better tell me the whole story, Charles.’
So he got the whole story, and when it was spelled out, the catalogue of suspicions and circumstantial evidence did sound pretty feeble. Gerald was clearly disappointed. ‘That all hinges on Nigel Steen having a financial motive to kill his father, and, as you just observed, he very positively didn’t have such a motive.’
‘And it wouldn’t have made any difference even if Marius Steen remarried?’
‘It would have made a difference in the disposition of that part of the estate which hadn’t been given away. But the gift of the rest couldn’t be revoked. He had given away all rights in the property. You know, the freeholds were made over by deeds of gift by way of conveyance, and the-’
‘Please talk English.’
‘All right. Basically, all of the property is Nigel’s-exclusively. Marius could not have any beneficial interest in any part of it. In other words, he couldn’t benefit from the property or the dividends on the shares, or any part of the gift.’
‘So what did he live on?’
‘Interest from the remaining shares. Still quite a substantial amount, but only a tiny part of the whole.’
‘And how could he still live in the houses?’
‘He actually paid rent.’
‘So if Nigel had wanted to, he could have turfed his father out of his own houses.’
‘Yes. Because they weren’t his own houses. They were Nigel’s.’
‘And what about the business? He still seemed in charge there.’
‘Only in an advisory capacity. He made no profit from any of it.’
‘Good God. So there again Nigel could have ousted him.’
‘Could have done, but wasn’t daft. He knew the business depended completely on his father’s skill and instinct. No, Steen had organised it all very meticulously to avoid death duties. Nigel has been an incredibly wealthy young man for years.’
‘How wealthy?’
‘Certainly worth more than a million.’
‘Shit.’ Charles was impressed. ‘And if none of this had been done what sort of death duties would have been charged?’
‘80 per cent.’
‘Blimey. The Government gets its pound of flesh, doesn’t it. But Steen didn’t go the full seven years.’
‘No, he died just before the six came up. So estate duty is only going to be reduced by 30 per cent. Makes a nasty hole in Nigel’s assumed possessions.’
‘And certainly rules out any motive for murder.’
‘Yes. The only motive for killing Marius Steen could he sheer bloody-mindedness on somebody’s part-a desire to make things really difficult for Nigel. Is there anyone around who hates him that much?’
Though everyone seemed to despise Nigel, Charles hadn’t met anyone whose feeling seemed strong enough to amount to hatred. It was Marius Steen who inspired violent emotions, not his son. ‘And there’s no mention of any legacy to Jacqui in the will?’
‘None at all.’
‘Hmm. I wonder what Marius Steen’s letter meant.’
Charles felt depressed as he walked through Soho to Archer Street that evening. For a start there was the gloomy news he had to pass on to Jacqui. And then London itself was depressing. It was cold and dark. Display lighting was out, as Edward Heath began his schoolmasterish campaign of mass deprivation, keeping the whole country in until the miners owned up that they were in the wrong. Time would show that the campaign had misjudged the reactions of the British public. Shops were dark, cold and uninviting. Familiar landmarks, like the neons of theatres and cinemas, disappeared. It was like the blackout, which Charles could suddenly remember with great clarity. A fifteen-year-old in grey flannel wandering around London in school holidays with an adolescent’s apocalyptic vision, praying that he would lose his virginity before the bombs came and blasted him to oblivion.
He took a couple of wrong turnings in the gloom and was angry when he reached Jacqui’s flat. He prepared an account of the will situation to break to her brutally. There was no point in kid gloves; she had to know sooner or later.
But he didn’t get the chance to drop his thunderbolt. Jacqui opened the door in a state of high excitement, more colour and animation in her face than he had seen since the Steen affair started. ‘Charles, come in. Bartlemas and O’Rourke are here!’
William Bartlemas and Kevin O’Rourke were a legend in the world of British theatre. They were a middle-aged couple, whose main activity was the collection of memorabilia of the two great actors, Edmund Kean and William Macready. Bartlemas had an enormous private income, and the pair of them lived in a tall Victorian house in Islington, which was filled to the brim with play-bills, prints, prompt copies, figurines and other souvenirs of their two heroes. They identified with them totally. Bartlemas was Kean, and O’Rourke Macready. In theory they were writing a book on the actors, but long since the fascination of collection for its own sake had taken over and work on the collation of evidence ceased. They spent all their time travelling round the British Isles, visiting auctions and antique shops, following hints and rumours, searching for more and more relics of their idols. But they always rushed back to London for the first night of every West End show. It was a point of honour that, if they were in the country, they’d be there, sitting in the middle of the fifth row of the stalls, both resplendent in Victorian evening dress, clutching shiny top hats and silver-topped canes. Quite what their role in British theatre was, was hard to define, but they knew everyone, everyone knew them and managements even came to regard their presence on a first night as an essential good luck charm. In the camper and more superstitious regions of the theatre world you’d often hear the sentence, ‘My dear, Bartlemas and O’Rourke weren’t there. The notices’ll be up within the week’.
In appearance they fell rather short of their ideals. William Bartlemas was not tall, probably only about five foot seven, but his angular body gave the illusion of height and his knobbly limbs moved with adolescent awkwardness. His head was crowned with an astonished crest of dyed hair. It had that brittle crinkly texture born of much hairdressing, and was ginger, of a brightness to which nature has always been too shy to aspire. Kevin O’Rourke was tiny, with the pugnacious stance of a jockey and all the aggression of a butterfly. He was balding, and had countered the problem by combing what remained forward in a Royal Shakespeare Company Roman Plays style. The dyed black hair was as tight as skin over his head, except at the front where there was a curly fringe like the edge of a pie-crust. The two always dressed identically-a grotesque pair of Beverley sisters. Today they were in oyster grey velvet. Meeting Bartlemas and O’Rourke was an unforgettable experience, and a fairly exhausting one. They talked non-stop in an elaborate relay race, one picking up the thread as soon as the other paused for breath.
They were delighted to see Charles. He had only met them once briefly at a party, but they remembered him effusively. ‘Charles Paris,’ said Bartlemas, ‘lovely to see you. Haven’t talked since that marvellous Bassanio you did at the Vic’ — that had been fifteen years before-‘lovely performance.’
‘Yes,’ said O’Rourke, ‘you always were such a clever actor…’
‘Sensational,’ said Bartlemas. ‘What are you up to now? My dear, we’ve just been on the most shattering binge in North Africa.’
‘For months and months and months…’
‘In Morocco, of course. O’Rourke disgraced himself continually. So much to drink, my dear, it wasn’t true…’
‘And Bartlemas almost got arrested more than once…’
‘Oh, I didn’t. Not really…’
‘You did, dear, you did. I saw it all. This Moroccan policeman was watching you with a distinctly beady eye. And I don’t think it was your perfection of form that intrigued him…’
‘Well, be that as it may. We go off, we leave the collection and everything, miss all those divine first nights, just simply to have a holiday, to get away from everything…’
‘But everything…’
‘And we come back to hear this shattering news about Marius. Oh, it’s too sad.’
‘Too sad. We were just telling Jacqui here, we are absolutely desolated…’
‘I mean he was so strong. And such a chum too…’
‘I don’t know how we’ll survive without him, I really don’t.’
‘It’s terrifying. If someone like Marius who was so robust…’
‘So full of living…’
‘If he can just pop off like that…’
‘Then what chance is there for the rest of us?’
They both sat back, momentarily exhausted. Charles opened his mouth to speak, but missed the chance. ‘So of course,’ said Bartlemas, ‘as soon as we heard the ghastly news about Marius, we just had to rush round here…’
‘Immediately,’ said O’Rourke. ‘Because of our secret.’
They paused dramatically and gave Jacqui time to say, ‘Charles, they’ve got a new will. Marius made another will.’
Charles looked round at Bartlemas and O’Rourke. They were glowing with importance. ‘Yes,’ said Bartlemas, ‘we witnessed the will and he gave it to us to look after it…’
‘Which is a pity,’ said O’Rourke, ‘because that means we can’t inherit anything…’
‘Not that he had anything we’d really like to inherit. I mean, nothing to do with Edmund and William…’
‘No, but it would have been nice to have a little memento, wouldn’t it, Bartlemas?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, it would. You see, what happened was, we were in the South of France in the summer, when Jacqui and Marius were out there …’
‘At Sainte-Maxime…’
‘Yes. Marius’ villa. Lovely spot…’
‘Oh, lovely…’
‘And suddenly, one night, after Jacqui had gone to bed, Marius suddenly said he was going to make a new will, and there was someone on holiday down there who was a solicitor-’
‘Not his usual one?’ Charles managed to slip in.
‘Oh no, not dear Harold,’ said Bartlemas.
‘No, not Harold,’ echoed O’Rourke. ‘This was a rather sweet young man Marius found in a casino…’
‘And anyway, Marius said this boy was coming over and he was going to draw up a new will, and would we witness it?…’
‘So of course we said yes…’
‘Well, we were so intrigued. It was so exciting…’
‘And we’ve got it with us, and we were just about to show it to Jacqui when you arrived.’
‘Look,’ said Bartlemas, and, with a flourish, produced a sealed envelope from his inside pocket. At this gesture both he and O’Rourke burst out into riotous giggles. ‘I’m sorry,’ said O’Rourke when they had calmed down, ‘it’s just that that was the gesture Edmund Kean is supposed to have used on the “Is this a dagger?” speech in Macbeth at the New Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1823.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, as Bartlemas and O’Rourke went into new paroxysms of laughter. Again it took a little while for them to calm down and when they had, Bartlemas, with mock solemnity, handed the envelope to Jacqui. ‘Of course,’ he said conspiratorially, ‘we know what’s in it, don’t we, O’Rourke?’
‘Oh yes, Bartlemas.’ They both sat back with smug smiles on their faces and looked at Jacqui, like favourite uncles watching a child unwrap their Christmas present.
Jacqui opened the envelope, pulled out a document and looked at the sheet for some long time. Then she looked up, perplexed. ‘It’s all in funny English.’
‘That’s because it’s a legal document,’ said Charles. ‘They are always incomprehensible. It’s a point of honour among lawyers never to be understood.’
‘You read it, and tell me what it means.’ Jacqui handed the document over.
‘We could tell you what’s in it,’ said Bartlemas.
‘Yes, but we won’t,’ said O’Rourke coyly.
Charles read the will.
I, MARIUS LADISLAS STENIATOWSKI, commonly known as MARIUS STEEN, and hereinafter referred to as such, of 173, Orme Gardens, London, W2 and ‘Rivalon’, Streatley-on-Thames in the County of Berkshire, Theatrical Impresario, HEREBY REVOKE all wills and testamentary documents heretofore made by me AND DECLARE this to be my LAST WILL
1. I APPOINT WILLIAM DOUGLAS D’ABERNON BARTLEMAS and KEVIN CORNELIUS O’ROURKE to be jointly the Executors of this my WILL
2. In the event of my dying before remarriage, I DEVISE and BEQUEATH all of my real and personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever not already disposed of as to my freeholds in fee simple and as to my personal estate absolutely to the issue of my union with JACQUELINE MYRTLE MITCHELL, the property to be held in trust for the said issue, the trust allowing a monthly sum of not less than FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS to the said JACQUELINE MYRTLE MITCHELL to pay for the upbringing of the said issue, this arrangement to cease on his or her attaining the age of twenty-one years, whereupon a quarter of the remaining estate-whether in freehold property, stocks, shares or chattels shall be granted in perpetuity to the said JACQUELINE MYRTLE MITCHELL, and the remainder to be granted to the said issue. In the event of the said JACQUELINE MYRTLE MITCHELL dying before the child attains twenty-one years, all of the estate shall devolve upon the said child and be held for him or her in trust, as my executors and their appointees shall devise.
IN WITNESS whereof I the said MARIUS STEEN the Testator have to this my LAST WILL set my hand this fifteenth day of October One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Three.
SIGNED AND ACKNOWLEDGED by the above-named MARIUS STEEN the Testator as and for his LAST WILL in the presence of us both present at the same time who at his request in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses:
William Bartlemas
17, Ideal Road,
Islington
Keanophile
Kevin O’Rourke
17, Ideal Road,
Islington
Macreadophile
Jacqui was looking at him eagerly. Obviously she had understood the gist of the will and just wanted confirmation. Charles grinned. ‘Basically you’ll be all right. You can afford to have that baby.’
‘What, and the baby’ll get everything?’
‘Not exactly, no.’ And Charles explained briefly about the gift inter vivos to Nigel. ‘So what we’re talking about is only 25 per cent of Marius Steen’s assets other than the houses. Mind you, it’s still more money than you’ve ever seen in your life.’
Bartlemas and O’Rourke had been silent too long and burst again into stereo action.
‘Ooh,’ said Bartlemas, ‘fancy all that going to little Arsehole
…’
‘Who?’
‘Nigel,’ said O’Rourke patronisingly. ‘Everyone calls him little Arsehole. Why on earth would Marius make all that over to him?’
‘It’s the family thing, isn’t it,’ said Bartlemas. ‘Marius always wanted to found a dynasty.’
‘But I thought he and Nigel didn’t get on.’ Charles was still rather puzzled by the whole gift business.
‘Well, it varied, didn’t it, O’Rourke?’
‘Oh yes, up and down all the time…’
‘I remember, there was a time when Nigel ran off to America…’
‘With some woman, ghastly actress…’
‘But ghastly. Marius was awfully upset. Nigel stayed away for two, three years…’
‘All of that, Bartlemas, all of that. Then he came crawling back
…’
‘Tail between his legs. Woman had left him…’
‘Who could blame her? Marius really did the prodigal son bit
…’
‘Oh yes, you couldn’t move in Orme Gardens for fatted calf. All the great reconciliation, my son, my son…’
‘It’s the Jewish character, you know. Love of the family. Terribly important to them.’
‘You’re right, O’Rourke. That’s what it is.’ This was pronounced with finality and followed by a breath pause. Charles, who was beginning to understand the technique of conversation with Bartlemas and O’Rourke, leapt in. ‘When was it this reconciliation took place?’
‘About five or six years ago,’ said Bartlemas.
‘Ah, that figures. It must have been then, in a final flush of family feeling, that he made everything over to Nigel.’
‘Yes.’
‘And, so far as one can tell, he regretted it ever after.’
‘Yes,’ said O’Rourke. There was a pause. ‘Jacqui,’ said Charles. ‘I didn’t know your middle name was Myrtle.’