High Stand

1

My mind didn’t register for a moment. It was nine-forty, a Friday in mid-August. Everything was always a rush on a Friday and I was trying to complete the draft of an affidavit before my first appointment at ten. ‘There’s a Mrs Halliday to see you.’ My secretary was on holiday and the girl standing in for her got the name wrong.

‘I told you, I don’t see people without an appointment.’

‘She said she was an old friend.’

It took a moment even then… My God! I thought — Miriam. I looked out of the window, at the long sweeping back of the downs running towards Ditchling Beacon, a smooth flowing line against a cloudless sky, streaks of cirrus forming in the west. More than a year ago, April or May, driving back late at night from a dinner party… May. It must have been May, the hedges long lines of white in the car’s headlights. Tom Hall’day’s wife,’ I said. ‘You typed that codicil for him to sign. Remember?’

‘It’s spelt Halliday,’ she said firmly, putting a slip of paper in front of me. ‘And she says it’s urgent.’

‘They pronounce it Hall’day,’ I told her, wondering what the hell Miriam wanted. Did she know he had changed his Will? I pushed the draft affidavit aside, my mind searching for an answer. Miriam I had liked more than most, but it was the cognac and the May moon, that was all, the only occasion, in fact, we had ever been alone together. The last time I had seen her had been about six months ago, at a dinner party at their house just after Tom Halliday got back from another of his Yukon trips. I told the girl I would ring when I was ready and leaned back into the shaft of sunlight streaming in through the open window, bracing myself for an awkward ii

interview. She hadn’t told her husband, I was certain of that. If she had he would have behaved quite differently. So it was either the Will, or else her sex life had suddenly become so complicated she needed advice. That was a development of the practice I hadn’t expected, women whose husbands had found them out, or who had got themselves pregnant, or, even worse in a way, men whose involvement with somebody else’s wife had come out into the open.

I picked up my pipe, but I didn’t fill it. I just sat there sucking at it and thinking of Halliday, remembering how he had looked, sitting in the chair opposite me — a compact, nervously tense man with a shock of black hair and a small moustache, the eyes bright, intensely alive, and the hands restless. Miriam was a lot younger and I had wondered then if his hair wasn’t dyed, it was so uniformly black.

Why had he done it, adding a codicil that switched the forestry property in BC from Miriam to the younger of the two sons by his first marriage? And that nervous tension. He wasn’t normally tense — a rather extrovert man with a fondness for good wine and showy cars. Bit of a show — off really, with an unpredictable streak that seemed to go with the fact that he was rich and had not had to earn a penny of it. I sucked at my pipe, staring out towards the downs, brown in the sun. I could almost smell the scent of the grass, but the picture in my mind was of Tom Halliday sitting over the port at the end of that dinner talking compulsively about his father, about Dawson City and the dreadful haul up from Skagway, talking so fast that the words seemed to spill out of him. I had heard most of it before, the incredible story of the phoney gold mine, but never in such detail and never told with such a sense of excitement. He had seemed lit up by the memory of it, and then he had taken us through into his study where the walls were hung with pictures and relics of the gold rush, a great moose head over the fireplace. But it was the faded photograph of his father that remained most vividly in my mind, a photograph of his father as a young man, with a drooping moustache, braces and a battered hat, standing against a rickety wooden sluice box that was half-covered in snow and ice, holding in his hand a panning dish, his mouth wide open and his teeth showing in a grin as he danced a jig over the contents. Strange to think that all his life Tom Halliday had been living off that pan. Well, at least Miriam had still got the mine, so what was she worrying about? Or hadn’t she realized it was only the trees he had come to see me about?

I put down my pipe and reached for the intercom. Better get it over with, whatever it was. ‘Show Mrs Halliday in, will you.’

She wasn’t pregnant, that was my first thought, every detail of her revealed by the close-fitting jeans and her stomach flat as a boy’s. And though the sight of her made my blood run faster, I knew at once that the reason she was here didn’t concern me, for she’d taken no trouble with her clothes — just the jeans and a pair of sandals, a chequered cotton shirt, hardly any make-up and her hair straggling in wisps across her face. She smiled at me, briefly and without any special warmth, her eyes blank. She didn’t even say she was glad to see me again, her mind totally preoccupied as she took the chair I indicated.

Even then she didn’t look at me. She just sat there across the desk from me, staring blankly at the wall behind my head. She seemed at a loss for words. This isn’t a social call, I take it?’ I tried to keep my voice light.

She shook her head. ‘No. I need some advice. Your help, Philip.’

The large eyes focused suddenly and I felt something stir in me and was surprised that just a glance and the knowledge that she needed my help could do that to me. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Tom,’ she said. ‘Have you seen him recently — since he got back?’ And when I didn’t say anything she nodded to herself. ‘Tuesday, wasn’t it?’ And she added, ‘About his Will?’ She was staring at me, teeth clamped on her lower lip.

‘You know I can’t give you the reason for his visit.’ He could have phoned me about it, but he’d been in a hurry, wanting the codicil typed out there and then while he waited, and then the temp and I had witnessed it. ‘You’re his wife, I know, but a solicitor — ‘

‘Rubbish.’ She shook her head quickly, a gesture of impatience. ‘I knew you’d say that. He came to you about his Will. There’s no other reason he would have come here. Is there?’ It was said as an afterthought, almost under her breath, and she added, ‘I don’t care about the Will, but how did he seem?’ She leaned suddenly forward so that I could see the swell of her breasts in the V of her shirt, her hands clasped, very tightly. ‘You’ve met him a number of times over the last two or three years. Was he any different — worried, upset, tense? Was there tension?’

‘Why?’ There was an edge to my voice. If it wasn’t the Will, then why was she so upset ‘He seemed just the same.’ I said it quickly, angry with myself, and with her for the effect she had on me.

‘Then why change his Will? Just then — right after his return.’ Her voice faded, became uncertain. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No need for you to worry,’ I answered her, thinking of the trees and that son of his. ‘You’re very well provided tor.’

She brushed that aside. ‘I can always look after myself.’ I thought I caught the glimmer of a smile. ‘But I happen to be very fond of Tom and there’s something wrong.’ Her eyes flickered round my office as it searching for some indication of what that something might be. ‘Did he give any reason?’ And when I didn’t answer, she said, ‘It’s Brian, I take it.’

I didn’t say anything, wondering how she had guessed. I had asked him about that — why the younger son? But when he said he had had the boy trained in forestry I could see the sense of it from his point of view. Miriam still got the mine, which was what really mattered. And the elder boy, Martin, inherited all the shares in Halliday Special Bodies, which was presumably what he wanted since he more or less ran the works for his father. ‘Martin’s an engineer,’ Halliday had said. ‘He doesn’t know one end of a tree from the other.’

‘Was it the mine or that land in British Columbia?’ She was watching me closely, her eyes searching. ‘Not the company, surely. That wouldn’t suit Brian, it’s been losing money for years. It must be the trees — that land Tom’s father planted fifty years or more ago.’ Her eyes, still fixed on me, caught the light, a sort of turquoise blue with flecks of green, very striking. I hadn’t seen them so clearly before, the sun straight on her. And that hair of hers, almost red. ‘Did he give any reason5 Brian has a feeling for trees, I know that. But there has to be a reason, something that impelled Tom to come and see you — right then, just after he had got back from Canada.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t discuss it. I really can’t.’

‘Balls! Really, Philip.. ‘She was suddenly more like herself — vital, very alive, with that sharp intelligence that had so attracted me. ‘He came here last Tuesday, and Brian came back about a month ago, straight from some Godforsaken village in the Himalayas where he’d been sitting at the feet of a Muslim fakir — a guru, a wizard, I don’t know what you’d call him.’ And she added, quite softly, ‘He’s wild, that boy, always has been. Tom said once he ought to have some trees of his own. The only trees he could give him are on the Halliday Arm. One of the finest stands of western red cedar in BC. That was how he described it to me once, and the only business he had with you was his Will.’ She stopped there, almost breathless, for it had come out in a rush, her eyes still fixed on mine. She seemed on the point of saying something more, but then she turned her head away, locking whatever it was up inside herself, the silence dragging.

‘Suppose you tell me what the problem is?’

She gave a slight movement of the head, a negation. ‘I thought you might be able to help, that he might have told you something.’ Another long silence, and then suddenly she had turned to me again. ‘He was in Canada, a longer trip than usual, and when he got back… That was the weekend — Sunday morning. He saw you on the Tuesday and left for London that same evening. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘So he’s been gone two and a half days, that’s all.’ I didn’t understand why she was so concerned. London, his club, the company, which was at a place called Haverhill near Cambridge, old car rallies and motor shows. Miriam was the daughter of a professor of archaeology at Cambridge. She was interested in ancient buildings, timbered buildings in particular. She knew a lot about hammerbeam roofs and old oak carvings. Nothing about cars, except as a means of getting somewhere. As a result she was often on her own, which was how it had happened, the two of us paired at a dinner party, and then the starter motor of my car packing up just as we were leaving. ‘Did he say why he was going to London?’

She shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t tell me anything.’

I reminded her then that she had told me herself he would quite often leave at a moment’s nonce to meet some fellow car enthusiast at his club, see an old crock that could be rebuilt in the company’s works or go off to a show he’d only just heard about, but again she shook her head. ‘He’s sold his fleet of old cars, you know. There’s only that lovely Rolls tourer left.’ And she added that she had tried the RAC in Pall Mall, all his usual haunts, the works at Haverhill, even Beaulieu where she knew he was trying to get the Rolls put on display.

Another woman, then? There was always that possibility, particularly at his age. But when I hinted at some personal attachment, she brushed it aside. ‘No!’ She said it explosively, adding with a little smile, ‘Whatever you may think, Tom and I are very close ‘

I hesitated then, not sure how serious this was. ‘Can we go back a bit?’ I said. ‘He returned from Canada at the weekend, you say?’ She nodded. And he had seen me on the Tuesday. ‘Did he have any meeting, anything he didn’t tell you about — did anybody come to see him?’

‘No, nobody. I picked him up at Gatwick early Sunday morning and the rest of that day we spent at home. He slept a lot of the time. Monday we were at a drinks party in the morning — the Griesons, do you know them’ Lovely place near Firle. That afternoon he dealt with a pile of post that had accumulated, dictated a lot of letters, then in the evening we dined out at a nearby restaurant.’

‘And he saw nobody between his arrival back in England and last Tuesday when he left for London. By car?’

‘Yes, by car.’

‘And nobody had contacted him?’

‘Not as far as I know — nobody who was a stranger to me, if that’s what you mean.’

Telephone calls?’

‘Yes, several.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘There was his accountant, I know. Otherwise they were social calls.’ And she added, ‘He never talked to me about money. Never needed to, I suppose. He was a Canadian citizen, as you probably know, and we’d always had what we needed. But I had the feeling — I’ve had it for some time now — that things were getting a little difficult. And there was one call, just before he returned — a man named Josef Wolchak, an American I think. He wanted to know when my husband was expected back. He had to see him — urgently, he said. I remember the call because I’d never heard of the man before and when I mentioned it to Tom he seemed quite shaken for a moment.’

‘Perhaps that was why he went to London,’ I suggested.

But she didn’t seem to think so. ‘I’m sure he would have mentioned it. And why hasn’t he phoned me?’

I didn’t tell her he had mentioned Wolchak at our meeting on Tuesday, asking whether anyone of that name had contacted me. And when I had said no, he had seemed relieved. Even so, it wouldn’t account for his sudden silence. I could still see him sitting there in the chair where his wife was now seated, his features so strained, and his manner, that sense of tension. ‘This son of his,’ I said, thinking of the codicil. ‘I’ve met the other one, Martin, but not Brian.’

‘He’s wild, like I said. Suddenly turns up at the beginning of the month looking like death. It was dysentery, but he still insisted on seeing his father. Money, of course. He wanted money tor this guru he’d been with in the Himalayas. It’s always the same, always money. Whenever he turns up. Though I’ll say this for him, it’s not for himself, always some cause.’ And she added, ‘It was trees this time. Before that it was seals. He wanted Tom to produce something in the works that would jam the Canadian sealers’ instruments. He’s crazy,’ she added softly. ‘Quite crazy.’

‘But you like him?’

‘Oddly enough, yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. He’s a very strange, very exciting person to be with.’

That was something, I thought. At least she wouldn’t go to law when the time came and she discovered the land and the trees in British Columbia really were going to another woman’s son. I was trying to recall Tom Halliday’s words, everything he had said. But it wasn’t much. He had virtually written the codicil himself. All he’d wanted was for it to be drawn up properly. There’d been no discussions, no explanation. I’d simply done what he’d wanted and that was that. True, his features had looked drawn and rather tense, and he seemed to have a cold. But people often pick up a germ at the end of a long hard trip. ‘His health all right5’ I asked.

She looked at me quickly. ‘Why? Did you dunk he looked ill?’

‘No. A bit strained, that’s all, but one always wonders when a man starts fiddling about with his Will.’

‘Physically he’s all right. I had him go for a check-up before he went to Canada this last time. We were in London, one of those receptions to launch a new car.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘Dr Wessler’s report arrived just after he had left: all systems functioning normally, only the cholesterol slightly high. More exercise and lav off the fat. That was all, bar a reference to nervous tension and the suggestion that I should get him away for a holiday somewhere in the sun, preferably an island with no roads and no cars.’ She gave a snort of derision. ‘Seychelles. That was what he advised. Boat to hotel by bullock cart, can you imagine?’ She looked down at her hands, that warm Titian hair of hers falling across her face. ‘We’ve never had a holiday together since our honeymoon, and that was at Brighton. We drove there in a 1913 de Dion Bouton.’ She gave a suppressed giggle. ‘It’s almost as ridiculous as the colonel, married to his regiment, who took his bride round the battlefields of the Second World War.’

The girl came in then to tell me my ten o’clock appointment had arrived. Miriam didn’t move. ‘What am I going to do, Philip?’

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t really my problem if the man hadn’t been home for a couple of days. I’d heard talk that he had been away a good deal these past few months, so she ought to be used to it by now. But when I said as much, she insisted he always rang her every evening when he was away. ‘Always,’ she insisted. ‘Even in the Yukon, when he’s visiting the mine, he still telephones me most days — they’ve got radio-telephone in the trucks up there. And if he can’t get hold of me he gets quite upset. Sometimes,’ she added, ‘he forgets the time difference and wakes me in the middle of the night.’ She smiled. ‘He did that twice on the last trip when he was down in BC.’

‘Could he be suffering from amnesia, then?’ I suggested. But she brushed that aside. ‘Not Tom. He can remember every old crock he’s ever seen.’ I was on my feet then and she muttered something about ringing round some more people who might have some idea where he was. ‘I’ll give it another day, then if I still don’t know — ‘ She left it at that and got slowly up from the chair. ‘At least I know now why he came to see you… But to change his Will and then go off- I don’t like it, Philip. Do you think something’s happened to him?’ And when I didn’t answer, she added, ‘You’re sure he didn’t say anything — about where he was going? Not even the vaguest hint5’ I shook my head and she said again, ‘I’ll give it another day.’

She turned then, very abruptly and without another word, and after she’d gone I went back to my desk and sat there for a moment thinking about Halliday, trying to imagine what must have been going on in his mind as he’d waited here in my office for the girl to type the codicil. He hadn’t talked. He’d just sat there, his grey eyes staring out to the high ridge of the downs, quite expressionless, so that I had had the feeling he was mentally far away.

It was about an hour later that a freelance journalist based in Brighton phoned me to enquire whether it was true Tom Halliday had left his wife. He wouldn’t say where he had picked up the information, only that it was another woman, and he then suggested that Halliday had ‘gone walkabout’ did I have any information on that? I said no, I had not; that in fact I had seen Mr Halliday as recently as last Tuesday and there had been nothing to suggest my client was going ‘walkabout’, as he put it. He then asked me a lot of questions, personal questions, mostly about money, which I refused to answer. Finally I put the phone down.

I found that call very disturbing. For one thing, it was a reminder of how little I knew about Tom Halliday; I knew more about his father. But my main concern was the fact that a journalist was taking an interest in his movements; it suggested that there really was something seriously wrong. I must have smoked most of a full pipe while thinking about it. In the end, I put the thought that he might really have disappeared out of my mind and got on with the day’s work. I had been in Ditchling now three and a half years and in that time I had built up a thriving practice based largely on the precept that when it comes to Wills people want a solicitor who is of the locality and readily available, but not living in the same town and thus a part of their own community. Ditchling was perfect, being little more than a village and removed from the seaside towns of Eastbourne, Brighton and Worthing that were my main catchment area by the downland barrier. And now that I’d taken on a junior partner, my weekends were beginning to be my own. I had just bought my first boat, a junk-rigged Jester-type craft, and with it the dream of going trans-Atlantic had come one step nearer.

Next day, Saturday, I was into Shoreham early, driving the long dock road out to the east harbour entrance where I had left my pram dinghy on a dirty patch of gravel among a litter of old rowing boats, rusting buoys and baulks of timber. The boat was over on the far side of the harbour on a borrowed mooring. There was still a lot to be done and I stayed the night on board so that I was there to give a hand when the moonlighting engineer arrived on the Sunday morning to install the single-pot diesel I’d finally bought in preference to an outboard motor. I worked with him for a couple of hours or so, then rowed over to the yacht club for a drink. There was some sort of race on that afternoon and the bar was fairly crowded. I found myself next to a man with one of the Sundays spread out in front of him; that was how I heard about it — not from Miriam or the police or any official communication, but haphazardly, peering at a headline over another man’s shoulder:

GOLD MINE OWNER DISAPPEARS

MILLIONAIRE’S CHEQUES BOUNCE

‘COULD BE SUICIDE’ SAYS SON.

Good God! I must have said it aloud, for the man looked up. ‘Do you know him?’ And when I nodded, he pushed the paper across to me. ‘Help yourself, I’ve finished with it. But a man with a gold mine in the Yukon — you’d think he’d have more sense than to let it run through his fingers, all of it, so that he’s dead broke.’ He turned the pages, laying the paper flat where a large headline screamed across two pages: GOLDEN PLAYBOY COMES TO GRIEF — His Three Loves- Beautiful Cars — Beautiful Women — and Speed. The full story of the ‘lush life’ of Thomas Francis Halliday and his ‘Klondike Gold’ was carried over from the front page to almost two full inside pages. The three investigative journalists involved had clearly been putting in a lot of overtime, for it was a very full, very colourful account of the life of a gold-rich playboy, and it made good reading, the sort of life-style that half the commuters in the country would give their souls for.

Poor Miriam! They had treated her kindly, but it was hard all the same: names, and sometimes the addresses, of several of the girls who had claimed his attentions, including one he had talked to in a club bar in Brighton on the Tuesday evening. A reference to drugs, too, and how he had gone into silver mining in Peru and failed. But the main story was his disappearance, speculation as to the reasons for it and whether he was alive or dead. Somebody answering his description had taken the late night Townsend-Thoresen ferry from Felixstowe to Rotterdam on the Wednesday. He was also thought to have been seen at the Aust service station by the Severn Bridge. That was on Friday. There was a quote from a garage owner at Polegate and a builder at Lewes, both of whom had presented cheques on a joint account signed by Miriam and had been told to refer to drawer. The Hallidays’ bank manager had, of course, refused to comment. The journalists had then gone on to discuss the possibility of suicide and the article finished up with a quote from his doctor — ‘Nothing organically wrong with him, nothing at all.’

‘Well, what do you make of it?’ the owner of the paper asked as I folded it up.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘can’t discuss it.’ I was thinking of Miriam alone in that big flint house below the downs surrounded by the relics of a long-dead gold rush. I couldn’t remember whether her family were still in Cambridge, even whether they were alive and she had someone to fall back on. I knew, in fact, less about her than I had known about her husband, only that I felt impelled to see her and make sure she was all right. Those newspapermen, they would have been on to her, and now there would be others, the phone constantly ringing.

I thanked the man, tucked the paper under my arm and pushed my way out of the crowded bar, running down to my pram dinghy and rowing fast across the harbour to where I had left my car. In Brighton I stopped at a callbox and rang the Halliday home. There was no answer. It crossed my mind then that perhaps somebody had found the body, in which case it would have to be identified. I drove out past the marina, taking the coast road through Rortingdean and Peace-haven and up by Westdean Forest above the Cuckmere.

It was just after twelve-thirty- when I reached the old flint farmhouse nestled into a hollow of the downs not far from the Long Man. Being the weekend, there was no one about and the place had a sleepy look, cows grazing in a paddock of lush grass and everything very still in the leaf} shadow of Bull’s Wood. Miriam opened the door to me herself, her face pale and set. ‘Philip!’ She didn’t smile. She just fell into my arms, clutching me tight for a moment. ‘God! I thought you were another reporter. I’ve had two this morning and the phone … You’ve seen that paper, have you?’

‘That’s why I came.’

‘They must have got it from the police. I notified the police the day after I saw you — Saturday.’ She shook herself free. ‘I didn’t realize you could cause such a stir just by walking away from everything. That’s what he’s done, isn’t it? Just walked out and left other people to pick up the pieces. Unless he’s killed himself. D’you think he’s killed himself?’

‘No, of course not.’

But she didn’t seem to hear me. ‘I should have got it out of him,’ she went on quickly. ‘I knew there was something … But to go off like that — without a word. Why?’ And she repeated it, her voice breaking and a little wild. ‘Why, for God’s sake why?’

‘Would you like to have lunch somewhere?’ I thought it might relax her a little to be away from the house.

She nodded, and when she was in the car and we were out on the Lewes road, she said, ‘We had a row. No, not a row. That needs two. He just exploded, a nervous, end-of-his-tether son of eruption. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, his face all suffused, his hands trembling. He was quite overwrought, so I didn’t press him.’ And she added slowly, ‘Perhaps I should have, but at the time…’ She left it at that. ‘Did you come straight from your boat? I heard it was finished. You never asked us to the launching.’

‘We just dumped it in the water.’

I took her to the Tiger Inn, and because I knew she wanted to be taken out of herself I talked to her about the boat, all my plans. It wasn’t until we had sat down to eat that we got back to the subject of Tom Halliday, and it was she who insisted on talking about him — not about what had happened, but about the man himself. Quite why she decided to tell me about him I’m not sure. Perhaps it was an attempt to explain, even justify, his action to herself. Whatever the reason, once she had started the words seemed to pour out of her, so that I had the feeling she couldn’t help herself, and at the end of it I was just thankful I hadn’t been born with a gold mine round my neck.

He had had everything, the whole world handed to him on a plate. I could see him now, sitting at the end of the table, the little brushed-up moustache picked out in the candle light, his high cheekbones flushed pink as the port made its vintage ruby way round the table, telling the story once again of how his father had gone out to the Klondike as a young man, up the White Pass from Skagway all the way to Dawson, then along something called the Dalton Trail where the wild man who had hacked it out of the bush rode shotgun to keep out intruders who hadn’t paid his toll fee. Somewhere along that trail, or else in Dawson, Josh Halliday, who was the son of an insurance man in San Francisco, was sold that mine. ‘Lucky’ Carlos Despera. That was the name of the man who sold it to him, and the name of the mine was Ice Cold Creek. I remembered the names because of the way Tom had rolled them off his tongue, laughing as he did so — the Noisy Range, too. Then he was telling how his father had packed in to that mine and found it high up near a great mountain mass that roared with the sound of glaciers on the move.

‘Tom was like a little boy.’ Miriam was leaning forward then, her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her hands, which were closed fists, the knuckles white, her eyes staring at nothing. ‘A brash show-off. It was part of the attraction, that extraordinary charisma of his, all his energy — and he was tireless, quite tireless, bubbling over with vitality — all of it with no outlet. No positive, real, constructive outlet.’

I could see him, so full of himself — and that picture of his father. The mine was a dud, of course. ‘Josh knew that as soon as he’d packed in to the white glacial heart of the mountain. There were men working claims lower down the creek, just managing to pan enough to give them hope, and they all said the upper end of Ice Cold Creek was worked out, gone, finished.’ And still, in desperation, the poor devil had gone on shovelling rock, working his guts out while the food lasted and he still had a few dollars left. Then, the day he decided to pull out — that was probably apocryphal, but when his money was just about gone — suddenly he struck lucky. ‘Not just ordinary pay dirt, but small nuggets of gold.’ And the way Tom said it, you could see the stuff there in the calloused hand, the mouth open in a great cry, the feet pounding to the excited, boisterous jig of joy.

‘Cars, speedboats, Le Mans, the RAC — aircraft, too. He flew his own plane. And women. I didn’t understand that at first. His need of women. I think he’d have liked to bed every one of them that took his fancy. Just to prove something. That he was a man, I suppose.’ She gave a quick shake of her head, smiling. ‘He wasn’t homosexual — I don’t mean that. But when you’ve got a pot of gold up there in the Yukon, where nobody can see it… It’s different for you, Philip. You can take people along to your office and say, Look, this is what I’ve done with my life. I’ve built a practice. You are possessed of an expertise that brings people to you, for your advice, for your help. But Tom had nothing like that.’

‘The factory,’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘It wasn’t his. It was Martin’s. Martin ran it. The thing was his idea. Tom paid for it, that’s all. Just as he paid for his cars, his plane, a speedboat that could flash him around the Royal Yacht at Cowes and into an occasional picture in one of the glamour mags. But nothing of his own, nothing he had created himself. It all came from the mine, everything he possessed. Periodically he’d go out there. I don’t know why. He had an excellent manager. Jonny Epinard. Absolutely straight. But every so often he’d take off for the Yukon. Sometimes I thought it was just to make sure it was still there, that it was real.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I wondered myself sometimes. All those years — through his father’s lifetime, and now his — all that time and steadily yielding its golden harvest, keeping the Hallidays in the manner to which …’ She laughed, a mocking sound. ‘But, oh, the damage a thing like that can do to an insecure youngster! He went out to South America once, did he tell you?’

I shook my head and she smiled. ‘Peru. He bought a silver mine ten thousand feet up in the Andes, just above Cajamarca where Pizarro murdered the Inca King’s helpless retinue. But he didn’t have Pizarro’s luck. He was there several years, the mine steadily yielding less and less, and when it finally petered out he came home. That was the only time he ever made a serious attempt to build an empire of his own. It was just toys after that, playthings. All he got out of Peru was a sense of failure that increased his already well-developed inferiority complex — and a bitch of a wife to make sure he never forgot it. A termagant. That’s Brian’s view of her, not mine. I never met the woman, thank God. She was a mestizo. Mixed Spanish and native Indian blood. She claimed descent from an Inca chieftain slaughtered by the Conquistadors. That’s why Brian is the way he is, why he looks a little strange — those ears, the nose, those broad cheekbones. And his temperament, his hot aggressive, solemn manner, the lightning changes of mood…’ She shrugged. ‘A little of his father — the machismo, the panache, the determination to project himself as an image, a figment of his own imagination if you like.’ She sighed, a deep breath. ‘But Tom was still a wonderful person to be with. All that vitality, and now and then the stars in my lap like a gift from heaven. He plucked them out of the night in the early hours, made me feel I was riding the world — a whirlwind. Sometimes. At others …’ The corners of her lips flickered, a glint of amusement at her own ingenuousness. ‘At other times …’ She turned, her face to the window, her eyes towards the downs humped above the houses and the sea. ‘I could have killed him for his brazen stupidity, his insensitivity, his total involvement in himself — his bloody-minded selfishness. His egotism. Christ! what a bastard!’

She laughed. ‘Then — when I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer’ — she was shaking her head, as though in wonder at her own behaviour — ‘then there’d be flowers, champagne, and the man, that mercurial, impossible man at my feet, the stars in my lap again.’ She leaned forward, her large eyes suddenly staring at me, almost imploring. ‘Do you understand, Philip? He was so alive, so wonderful to be with. When he was on top of the world.’ I couldn’t help noticing that she was talking about him in the past tense, and she went on, still in a rush of words, ‘Then, when he’d taken too much — flown too high — the reaction would set in, everything crashing down — from the stars to despair in one quick devilish leap — Christian’s Slough of Despond.

‘My God! Living with a man like that, knowing it was that bitch Martina who’d introduced him to the stuff, and nothing I could do about it. He wouldn’t listen. Said he’d been taking coke off and on ever since he’d gone to South America in his early twenties. At times he even had a little mini-spoon, silver-gilt I think, hung round his neck on a thin golden chain. All part of the mystique. Oh, I know, I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but I’ve got to talk to somebody about him.’ And she went on, ‘Cocaine has always been an elitist drug, and it’s not really addictive. Least, that’s what he said, not the good stuff. He had me try it once or twice and I didn’t get hooked. But the way he’s been taking it recently … I don’t know, perhaps he’d reached the age when he found himself looking over the edge and not liking what he saw, his sexual prowess declining, his competitive spirit flagging. Even his interest in cars had lessened and he hadn’t visited Martin at die factory for ages, the mine taking up more and more of his time, his temper short, his face strained, that little stutter of his suddenly noticeable, and sometimes at night I’d hear him muttering to himself. Do you think he’s had a nervous breakdown?’

But I had only seen him a couple of times in the past year and I had had no idea he took drugs until I had read the piece in that Sunday paper. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how people behave on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’

‘No, nor do I. I can only guess. And his doctor didn’t say anything about a breakdown — I phoned him last night. He said he thought his nerves were on edge, that he needed a rest. From what? That’s what I said. What the hell did Tom need a rest from? And he repeated what he’d written in his report — get him out somewhere on his own to lie in the sun, swim, do nothing and take the minimum of food — healthy, natural food — no alcohol. I don’t think Tom had told him about taking cocaine, but he probably guessed. He was overfed, he said, depleted, suffering from nervous exhaustion.’

I didn’t understand it either, and I said so — a man with all the money in the world, a lovely wife, a beautiful home, cars, interests, a man who’d never had to work in his life… he’d no bloody right to be suffering from nervous exhaustion.

‘It’s all very well for you,’ she went on. ‘You’re so solid, so dependable.’ I could have slapped her face the way she had been talking about her husband, but she went on, the words still tumbling out of her — Tom was just a child. A spoilt child, yes. But something more. A sort of real life Peter Pan, with all that creature’s selfishness, and fascination.’ She nodded, her hair glistening reddish in the sunlight. ‘Yes, that’s it — a fair simile — and if Peter Pan had suddenly found himself growing up…’ She sat for a while, her head bowed, thinking about it. ‘But to take off like that, without a word — to me, to anyone. He told nobody, nobody at all. He’s just thrown off everybody, his whole life — like a snake discarding its old skin…’ And suddenly she was crying, her shoulders shaking, but no sound coming.

I took her home then. I think at that point she was just about emotionally and physically drained. I didn’t realize it at the time — though the newspaper article had hinted at it — but it wasn’t only that Tom had disappeared, there was the financial mess he had left behind.

This only became apparent in the following week, the bills rolling in and no cash at the bank to meet them.