where she had parked the car, I saw that I had been singularly obtuse.
“What a splendid car,” I said. “A Mercedes, I believe. Does it belong to Sir Robert or to one of his co- directors?”
“Oh no, Professor Tamar, it’s a company car. We have a fleet of four of them, actually — so even when one of them’s being serviced, there’s always one available for the Chairman and each of the directors.”
“But I suppose there are differences between them?” I said a little desperately, seeing that the solution was after all about to elude me. “Surely the Chairman’s car must be grander than the others?”
“Oh no, Professor Tamar,” she said, laughing, at ease with me now that she knew my name. “We’re a very democratic organisation — apart from the licence plates, they’re all identical.”
As is the way of the Scholar when Truth proves unexpectedly elusive, I was unable to dismiss from my mind the problem I had failed to solve. Finding no escape from it in my researches in the Public Record Office, I spent the afternoon walking restlessly in the gardens of the Inner Temple, pausing but seldom for refreshment or repose. I could hardly believe, having learnt so much, that I was no nearer to knowing whether it was Albany or Bolton whom Isabella had been blackmailing.
And yet it was so. Certainly, I had now no doubt that whichever one it was had been her visitor in the black Mercedes: with four Mercedes motorcars provided by Renfrews’ Bank, it would have been logically preposterous to invent a fifth. This information, however, now seemed to count for nothing: when it was put in the balance, the scales remained equally poised.
There was a further thought which I found slightly disturbing: the last visit of the Mercedes to Parsons Haver had been on the night of Isabella’s sudden and unexpected death. I had dismissed rather lightly, as my readers may recall, the suggestion that she had been poisoned; but I had not known then that she was a blackmailer, or that the man in the black Mercedes was one of her victims.
Selena seemed not altogether grateful for my efforts to find the solution to her problem. Remark was made, when I told her of them in the Corkscrew that evening, on the readiness of Oxford academics, too idle to pursue their proper researches, to meddle instead with things that were none of their business.
“My dear Selena,” I said, “do be careful — you’re beginning to sound like the Bursar. Tell me, what happened at your conference? What opinion did you form of the suspects? Did you reach any conclusion?”
“Hmm,” said Selena, with another of her sideways looks. She softened, however, under the benevolent influence of her wine. “Well, as a matter of fact, there isn’t much to tell. So far as the insider-dealing problem is concerned, it was a complete waste of time — I had none of the miraculous insights that Sir Robert was evidently hoping for. He rang me later and I had to tell him I still couldn’t help. Poor old chap, I’m afraid he was very disappointed.”
“Which of them do you think he’d prefer it to be — Albany or Bolton?”
“I don’t know. Albany’s a sort of cousin of his, and Lady Renfrew’s nephew into the bargain, so it would be fairly embarrassing if he turned out to be the insider dealer. On the other hand, recruiting Geoffrey Bolton was very much Sir Robert’s personal decision, and so far it’s been a great success and he’s very proud of it. It would be quite painful for him to find that it was a misjudgement.”
“Would it be unfair to suspect that Albany owes his position at Renfrews’ rather to his family connections than to his personal qualities?”
“Well,” said Selena, “I certainly wouldn’t suspect him of owing it to his intellectual abilities. But then, he doesn’t claim to be an expert on the technical side. They all agree that Bolton is the one with the technical expertise. Albany’s the one who talks to clients and so on.”
“Miss Tavistock said that he specialised in interpersonal skills. I understood her to mean that his chief asset was personal charm.”
“Yes,” said Selena, after some reflection. “Yes, I think that’s how he would understand it, too. He has a way of treating one just like his social equal which one would find very charming, I expect, if one happened to think of oneself as his social inferior. On the other hand, you might understand it to mean that he went to the same school as a number of people who have money to invest and who like the idea of its being looked after by someone from their old school.”
“While Bolton, having not been to a school of that kind, is considered to be something of a rough diamond?”
“That’s how Sir Robert sometimes puts it, but all he really means is that Bolton has a Lancashire accent. As a matter of fact, I’d say that Bolton has infinitely more personal charm than Albany.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Not at all,” said Selena, sounding a little vexed. “As you know, Hilary, I am devoted to Sebastian, and there can be no question of ‘ah.’ ”
I hastened to assure her that I had not used the word in any sense to which she could reasonably take objection.
“I was merely noting that you found Bolton a more attractive personality than Albany — it might follow that you thought Albany the more likely suspect. More likely, that is to say, to have done something sufficiently disgraceful to expose him to blackmail.”
“Only if I thought that an attractive personality could be relied on as evidence of good character. As you may perhaps have noticed, that isn’t always the case. No, I’m afraid I’d have to say that at the moment Geoffrey Bolton looks to me like the more likely suspect.”
“Merely because he’s the more attractive? My dear Selena, isn’t that a rather prejudiced attitude?”
“No,” said Selena, “not because of that. Because no one knows who he is.”
She rose and went to the bar to replenish our glasses, leaving me in some perplexity. I gently suggested, on her return, that her previous observation was palpably untrue.
“Well, it depends on what you mean by knowing who someone is. My client met Bolton about five years ago, when he was working for a bank in New York, and offered him a job straightaway, simply on the basis of personal impression. Exactly how long he’d been in New York and what he’d been doing before he got there Sir Robert has no idea — as far as I can see, he could have come from outer space.”
“But surely he made enquiries of some kind about him before offering him a senior position at Renfrews’?”
“What sort of enquiries would you expect? If you meet a man in his forties, occupying a senior position in a bank of international standing, you don’t ask him to prove that he’s qualified to do it — you just assume he is. You don’t mind if he started his career as an office boy — if he did, it’s a sign of his ability that he’s progressed so far. And you don’t want to ask his present employers too many questions about him, in case they guess that you’re trying to poach him.”
“Didn’t he even want to know about Bolton’s educational background?” The fervent pursuit by the young of certificates, diplomas and degrees, of impressive curricula and favourable references — was it all mere wasted effort?
“Well, it was clear from his accent that he hadn’t been to the kind of school Sir Robert had. He mentioned having been to a grammar school in Lancashire and then to some sort of college in some town in the Midlands. Sir Robert didn’t see any point in pressing him for details — he was happy to accept him as more or less self-educated and rather admired him for it.”
“But when he started work at Renfrews’, weren’t there forms to fill in? What about income tax and national insurance and pension schemes and all that sort of thing?”
“If he’d spent all his working life outside the United Kingdom, you wouldn’t expect him to have been paying tax or insurance. When you come down to it, the only document one needs to prove that one exists is one’s birth certificate. The bank’s personnel department has a copy of Geoffrey Bolton’s birth certificate and I dare say he was born when it says he was. But after that there’s a period of over forty years unaccounted for.”
He had been with Renfrews’, however, for over five years: it seemed to me inconceivable that none of his colleagues should in that time have learnt any more about his previous career than had been known when he was first appointed. In the course of his ordinary day-to-day conversations, he must surely sometimes have said something, however trivial, which would give some hint of what he had done, whom he had known, where he had lived, during his twenties and thirties.
“Apparently not. He sometimes mentions things that he did in New York, but apart from that he simply never
