“About her honesty.”
Peter thought for a moment. “Yes, you could say that. The definition of business honesty is a tricky thing, but it certainly covers what you don’t say just as much as what you do say.”
Isabel knew what he meant. There were many situations where failing to say something one should say could seriously harm somebody else; the difficulty, though, was judging just when there was a duty to say something in the first place.
“My understanding,” Peter continued, “is that Minty Auchterlonie has been accused of withholding information from an investor in her bank, a man called George Finesk. He’s furious as a result and is muttering about suing her. Nothing’s happened yet. But people have heard about it and that can’t be doing her much good.”
“And did she do this?” asked Isabel.
Peter hesitated before replying.
“Perhaps,” he began. “She’s not a crook. I suspect that she’s far too clever to break the law. But she is what I call flaky. She bends the rules to suit her own interests. She’s got to the top in a man’s world at a very young age, and she has an extraordinary record of bringing home the bacon. So people have been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, as you did, wrongly in my view, over that insider-dealing affair, when she managed to push the blame on to a largely innocent colleague of her fiance. And I am aware of several other occasions when she has taken unprincipled shortcuts.”
Isabel absorbed this. Peter was careful in his judgements, and if he had reached this view of Minty there would be good grounds for it. “And this George Finesk?” she asked. “What about him?”
Peter leaned back on the bench. “As it happens I know him reasonably well. He used to own a large tea estate in Darjeeling—the Finesks had stayed on in India after Independence, through difficult times politically and financially, and eventually George inherited the estate from his father in the late nineteen-eighties. He ran it for a while before he sold out to some big Bengali investment company. George loved India but his wife had an aged mother in the Borders, and for one reason and another he thought it better to come home.
“They had money in Scotland too—they used to be shipping people from Glasgow, on his mother’s side. George used this to set up a family investment company—quite a successful one. Minty would know this, of course, and so when she was looking for a new investor in the bank, he was an obvious person to approach. George proved amenable and came up with one and a half million. That’s quite a bit of money, even for him.”
Peter stopped, and they sat in silence while Isabel thought over what he had said. She wondered whether there was a connection between the threats that Minty had been receiving and this argument between her and George Finesk. Could George Finesk have been so outraged that he might have started some sort of campaign against Minty, fighting underhand dealings with underhand methods? It seemed improbable, and yet the whole issue was unlikely if one stopped to think about it. It was unlikely that Minty would have an affair, and let herself become pregnant, and yet she had. It was unlikely that the father of that child would suddenly develop a burning interest in getting to know his son, and yet Jock Dundas had done exactly that. It was unlikely that she, a total stranger to these issues, should be enlisted as an intermediary—at the child’s birthday party, no less—and yet she had. It was all unlikely.
“So what’s going to happen?” asked Isabel. Peter had explained it clearly enough, but she still felt a bit out of her depth. In particular, she felt that she was no match for Minty Auchterlonie and her machinations. The world of finance was not Isabel’s world, yet it was the very air that Minty breathed.
Peter shrugged. “It depends on whether George continues to make a fuss. He may give up. Or he may not. I suppose that Minty and her co-directors are hoping to keep a lid on the whole thing—but I imagine they’ll still be frightened that George may be so angry that he’ll expose the matter regardless of the consequences to his investment.”
They sat on the bench for a little while longer, joined after a few minutes by Susie, who brought out glasses of diluted elderflower cordial. “From the garden,” she said. “We have an elder at the back that never fails us.”
“I have one too,” said Isabel. “Each year I say this will be the year I make elderflower cordial, and each year I forget, or put it off, or think of an excuse. I suppose I’m just weak.”
Susie shook her head. “You’re not. You’ve got a journal to run, as well as a child and a fiance. You’ve got more than enough in your life.”
“But I could do something about elderflower cordial. It’s not a big thing.”
“Well, you have to draw the line somewhere,” said Susie.
“The problem, though, is where to draw that line,” observed Isabel. “Don’t you think?”
Peter looked at her. “Yes, that’s right. And it seems to me that you have difficulty with that. Hence your getting involved in other people’s problems.” He paused. “Are you doing that right now? Are you getting mixed up in Minty’s affairs?”
She knew that she could not conceal anything from Peter; he would know immediately. And yet she could not tell him about Minty’s approach to her, as she had promised that she would pass that secret on to nobody but Jamie.
“A bit,” she said. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it. I hope you’ll understand.”
Peter did. “But I really feel I should warn you,” he went on. “Be careful. That woman is dangerous. Just be careful.”
Susie looked anxious. “I’ve never liked her,” she said quietly. “She’s …” She looked around for the right word. Susie was charitable.
“Wicked,” said Peter. “Susie’s too kind to say it.”
Isabel looked over the lawn at the monkey-puzzle tree that grew in front of the Victorian greenhouse. There was something ruthless about Minty—that was clear enough—but was she wicked? There were plenty of people who were excessively ambitious and self-seeking, who would think nothing of tramping over others to get what they wanted, but were such people
“Wicked,” repeated Peter. He looked intently at Isabel as he spoke, as if to make certain that she understood
