The Old Vengeful

Then he swivelled towards Audley. 'What the hell do we want, David? That's a good question!'

Audley was watching her over his spectacles. 'Tell me about the safe deposits, Miss Loftus.'

'There isn't much to tell.' All the stuffing had gone out of her. 'Father gave me a parcel one day, and told me how to open a deposit—what to do . . .'

'In your own name?'

'That's the only way you can do it. And then he gave me other parcels . . . and there were other accounts . . . And I gave him the keys each time, of course.'

'Of course!' He thought for a second. 'And you always do what you're told—you didn't ask what was in them?'

Put like that it hurt, and she couldn't bring herself to answer it directly. But somehow it had to be answered.

'David—' began Paul Mitchell.

'No. Let her answer.' Audley waved him off. 'Weren't you at dummy3

least curious?'

There was no way of answering that without humiliation.

'You never met my father, Mr Audley?'

'No. That pleasure was denied me, Miss Loftus.'

The funeral came back to her: the rain gusting across the churchyard in sheets and falling through the saturated summer leaves of the trees on to the mourners—the smell of the wet earth and damp uniforms.

'He should have commanded a battle-squadron, Mr Audley

— that's what they said. But all he had was me.' She managed to look him in the eye. 'After he died there was a letter in his deed-box at the solicitor's, with the keys. It's still there, so you can see it for yourself. And the keys, too.'

Paul Mitchell stirred. 'But he didn't say where he'd got it?'

'He said he'd taken a gamble. And he said that it was now all rightly mine, and no one else's. That's all.'

Audley nodded slowly. 'How much?'

It was the inevitable question. 'I don't know—not exactly.

There are gold coins as well as bank notes . . . sovereigns, and also those South African coins.'

'Krugerrand,' murmured Paul. 'Nice!'

'Roughly—how much?' Audley wasn't letting her go.

'In bank notes . . . about ?100,000. I don't know what the coins are worth. But there are a lot of them.'

'And the tax-man doesn't know about any of it!' Paul dummy3

grinned like a schoolboy. ' Very nice!'

'I don't know whether I should have reported it. . .' When it came to the crunch, pretending to be an unworldly schoolmistress lacked credibility, decided Elizabeth. But if she was to salvage something from the wreck she had to do her best. 'But if you think I ought to, then I will, Mr Audley.'

'Good Lord—I wouldn't!' exclaimed Paul. 'She doesn't have to, does she, David? I mean . . . can't we declare her prize-money between ourselves, as it were?'

Elizabeth's heart warmed to him. But also, at the same time, she had the impression that Audley was reading her like an open book.

'What you do with it isn't our business, Miss Loftus—as Mitchell said, we don't want it.' Audley closed the open book.

'But where it came from is our business.'

They were back to the unanswerable question.

'The notes will have numbers,' said Mitchell. 'Are they new ones, Elizabeth?'

The look on her face answered him even before she shook her head.

'Pity.' Almost unwillingly, he turned to Audley. 'That amount of money in used notes . . . means it's been professionally laundered, David.'

'It's not the money that matters.' Audley studied her. 'Tell me, Miss Loftus . . . did the parcels come to you after the trips to France?'

dummy3

'I don't know . . . no, I don't think so . . .' Her memory sharpened as she realised the point of the question. 'No . . .

there were more of them—he didn't go nearly that often . . .

and . . . and they started before he went the first time—' she stopped suddenly as the absurdity of the connection became apparent.

'Yes?'

'He went to France to research the book, Mr Audley.'