The New Collected Short Stories (52 page)

After they had banked the first million, Henry felt that they could risk a celebration dinner. Angela wanted to go to Mosimann’s in West Halkin Street, but Henry vetoed the idea. He booked a table for two at La Bacha. No need to draw attention to their new-found wealth, he reminded her.

Henry made two other suggestions during dinner. Angela was quite happy to go along with the first, but didn’t want to talk about the second. Henry had advised her to transfer the first million to an offshore account in the Cook Islands, while he carried on with the same investment policy; he also recommended that in future whenever they cleared another hundred thousand, Angela would immediately transfer the sum to the same account.

Angela raised her glass. ‘Agreed,’ she said, ‘but what is the second item on the agenda, Mr Chairman?’ she asked, teasing him. Henry took her through the details of a contingency plan she didn’t even want to think about.

Henry finally raised his glass. For the first time in his life, he was looking forward to retirement, and joining all his colleagues for a farewell party on his sixtieth birthday.

Six months later, the chairman of Pearson, Clutterbuck & Reynolds sent out invitations to all the firm’s employees, asking them to join the partners for drinks at a local three-star hotel to celebrate the retirement of Henry Preston and to thank him for forty years of dedicated service to the company.

Henry was unable to attend his own farewell party, as he ended up celebrating his sixtieth birthday behind bars, and all for a mere £820.

Miss Florence Blenkinsopp double-checked the figures. She’d been right the first time. They were £820 short of the amount she had calculated before the uninvited guest dressed in a pinstriped suit had walked into the ballroom with his little bag and disappeared with all the cash. It couldn’t be Angela who was responsible; after all, she had been one of her pupils at St Catherine’s Convent. Miss Blenkinsopp dismissed the discrepancy as her mistake, especially as the takings were comfortably up on the previous year’s total.

The following year would be the convent’s one-hundredth anniversary, and Miss Blenkinsopp was already planning a centenary ball. She told her committee that she expected them to pull their socks up if they hoped to set records during the centenary year. Although Miss Blenkinsopp had retired as headmistress of St Catherine’s some seven years before, she continued to treat her committee of old gals as if they were still adolescent pupils.

The centenary ball could not have been a greater success, and Miss Blenkinsopp was the first to single out Angela for particular praise. She made it clear that in her opinion, Ms Forster had certainly pulled her socks up. However, Miss Blenkinsopp felt it necessary to triple-check the cash they had collected that night, before the little man turned up with his Gladstone bag and took it all away When she went over the figures later in the week, although their previous record had been broken by a considerable amount, the cash entry was over two thousand short of the figure she had scribbled on the back of her place card.

Miss Blenkinsopp felt she had no choice but to point out the discrepancy (two years running) to her president, Lady Travington, who in turn sought the advice of her husband, who was chairman of the local watch committee. Sir David promised, before putting the light out that night, that he would have a word with the chief constable in the morning.

When the chief constable was informed of the misappropriation, he passed on the details to his chief superintendent. He sent it further down the line to a chief inspector, who would like to have told his boss that he was in the middle of a murder hunt and also staking out a shipment of heroin with a street value of over ten million. The fact that St Catherine’s Convent had mislaid – he checked his notes – just over £2,000, wasn’t likely to be placed at the top of his priority list. He stopped the next person walking down the corridor and passed her the file. ‘See you have a full report on my desk, Sergeant, before the watch committee meet next month.’

Detective Sergeant Janet Seaton set about her task as if she was stalking Jack the Ripper.

First, she interviewed Miss Blenkinsopp, who was most cooperative, but insisted that none of her gals could possibly have been involved with such an unpleasant incident, and therefore they were not to be interviewed. Ten days later, DS Seaton purchased a ticket for the Bebbington Hunt Ball, despite the fact that she had never mounted a horse in her life.

DS Seaton arrived at Bebbington Hall just before the gong was struck and the toastmaster bellowed out, ‘Dinner is served.’ She quickly identified Angela Forster, even before she had located her table. Although DS Seaton had to engage in polite conversation with the men on either side of her, she was still able to keep a roving eye on Ms Forster. By the time cheese and coffee were served, the detective had come to the conclusion that she was dealing with a consummate professional. Not only could Ms Forster handle the regular outbursts of Lady Bebbington, the Master of Hounds’ wife, but she also found time to organize the band, the kitchen, the waiters, the cabaret and the voluntary staff without once breaking into a gallop. But, more interesting, she seemed to have nothing to do with the collecting of any money. That was carried out by a group of ladies, who performed the task without appearing to consult Angela.

When the band struck up its opening number, several young men asked the detective sergeant for a dance. She turned them all down, one somewhat reluctantly.

It was a few minutes before one, when the evening was drawing to a close, that the detective sergeant spotted the man she had been waiting for. Among the red and black jackets, he would have been easier to identify than a fox on the run. He also fitted the exact description Miss Blenkinsopp had provided: a short, rotund, bald-headed man of around sixty who would be more appropriately dressed for an accountant’s office than a Hunt Ball. She never took her eyes off him as he progressed unobtrusively around the outside of the dance floor to disappear behind the bandstand. The detective quickly left her table and walked to the other side of the ballroom, coming to a halt only when she had a perfect sighting of the two of them. The man was seated next to Angela counting the cash, unaware that an extra pair of eyes was watching him. The detective sergeant stared at Angela, as the man carefully placed the cheques, the pledges and the cash in separate piles. Not a word passed between them.

Once Henry had double-checked the amount of cash, he didn’t even give Angela a second look. He placed the notes in his bag and handed her a receipt. With no more than a slight bow of the head, he retraced his steps round the outside of the dance floor and quickly left the ballroom. The whole operation had taken him less than seven minutes. Henry didn’t notice that one of the revellers was only a few paces behind him, and, more important, her eyes never left him.

DS Seaton watched as the unidentified man made his way down the long drive, through the wrought-iron gates and on towards the village.

Since it was a clear night and the streets were empty, it was not difficult for DS Seaton to follow the progress of the man with the bag without being spotted. He must have been supremely confident because he never once looked back. She only had to slip into the shadows on one occasion, when her quarry came to a halt outside a local branch of the Nat West Bank. He opened his bag, removed a package and dropped it into the overnight safe. He then continued on his way, hardly breaking his stride. Where was he going?

The young detective had to make an instant decision. Should she follow the stranger, or return to Bebbington Hall and see what Ms Forster was up to? Follow the money, she had always been instructed by her supervisor at Peel House. When Henry reached the station, the detective sergeant cursed. She had left her car in the grounds of the hall, and if she was to continue pursuing the bag man, she would have to abandon the vehicle and pick it up first thing in the morning.

The last train to Waterloo that night trundled into Bebbington Halt a few minutes later. It was becoming clear that the man with the bag had everything timed to the minute. The detective remained out of sight until her suspect had boarded the train. She then took a seat in the next carriage.

When they reached Waterloo, the man stepped off the train and made his way quickly across to the nearest taxi rank. The detective stood to one side and watched as he progressed to the front of the queue. The moment he climbed into a cab, the detective walked briskly to the top of the queue, produced her warrant card and apologized to the person who was about to step into a cab. She jumped in the taxi and instructed the driver to follow the one that had just moved off the rank.

When the driver pulled up outside the Black Ace Casino, the detective remained in the back of her cab until the man had disappeared inside.

She took her time paying the cab driver before she climbed out and followed her quarry into the casino. She filled in a temporary membership form, as she didn’t want anyone to realize that she was on duty.

DS Seaton strolled onto the floor and glanced around the gaming tables. It only took her a few moments before she spotted her man seated next to one of the roulette wheels. She took a step closer and joined a group of onlookers who formed a horseshoe around the table. The detective sergeant made sure that she remained some distance away from her quarry because, dressed in a long blue silk gown more appropriate for a ball, he might spot her and even wonder if she had followed him from Bebbington Hall.

For the next hour she watched the man remove wads of cash from his bag at regular intervals, then exchange them for chips. An hour later the bag was clearly empty because he left the table with a glum look on his face, and made his way towards the bar.

DS Seaton had cracked it. The anonymous man was siphoning off money from the evening events in order to finance his gambling habit, but she still couldn’t be sure if Angela was involved.

The detective slipped behind a marble pillar as the man climbed onto a stool next to a lady in a blue suit with a short skirt.

Did he have enough money over to pay for a prostitute? The detective stepped out from behind the pillar to take a closer look, and nearly bumped into Henry as he began walking back towards the exit. Later, much later, DS Seaton thought it strange that he had left the bar without having a drink. Perhaps the woman on the stool had rejected him.

Henry stepped out onto the pavement and hailed a taxi. The detective grabbed the next one. She followed his cab as it made its way across Putney Bridge and continued its journey along the south side of the river. The taxi finally came to a halt outside a block of flats in Wandsworth. DS Seaton made a note of the address and decided that she had earned a taxi ride home.

The following morning, DS Seaton placed her report on the chief inspector’s desk. He read it, smiled, left his office and walked down the corridor to brief the chief superintendent, who in turn phoned the chief constable. The chief decided not to mention it to the chairman of the watch committee until after an arrest had been made, as he wanted to present Sir David with an open-and-shut case, one that a jury could not fail to convict on.

Henry deposited the cash from the Butterfly Ball in the overnight vault of Lloyds TSB just a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel where the Masons were holding their annual dinner. He must have walked about another thirty yards before a police car drew up beside him. There wouldn’t have been much point in making a dash for it, as Henry wasn’t built for a change of gear. And in any case he had already planned for this moment, right down to the last detail. Henry was arrested and charged two days before the watch committee was due to meet.

Henry selected Mr Clifton-Smyth to represent him, a solicitor whose accounts he had handled for the past twenty years.

Mr Clifton-Smyth listened carefully to his client’s defence, making copious notes, but when Henry finally came to the end of his tale, the lawyer only had one piece of advice to offer him: plead guilty.

‘I will of course,’ added the lawyer, ‘brief counsel of any mitigating circumstances.’

Henry accepted his solicitor’s advice; after all, Mr Clifton-Smyth had never once, in the past two decades, questioned
his
judgement.

Henry made no attempt to contact Angela during the run-up to the trial, and although the police felt fairly confident that she was playing Bonnie to his Clyde, they quickly worked out that they shouldn’t have arrested him until he’d gone to the casino a second time. Who was the woman seated at the bar? Had she been waiting for him? The Special Crime Unit spent weeks collecting bank stubs from casinos right across London, but they couldn’t find a single cheque made out to a Ms Angela Forster, and even more puzzling, they didn’t come up with one for a Mr Henry Preston. Did he always lose?

When they checked Angela’s events book, they discovered that Henry had always taken responsibility for counting the cash, and signed the receipt. Her bank account was then picked over by a bunch of treasury vultures, and found to be only £11,318 in credit, a sum that had showed very little movement either way for the past five years. When DS Seaton reported back to Miss Blenkinsopp, she seemed quite content to believe that the right man had been apprehended. After all, she told the detective, a St Catherine’s gal couldn’t possibly be involved in that sort of thing.