Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

5

Stephen awoke at about 5.30 am. He seemed to have been heavily, dreamlessly asleep, but as soon as he came to, the nightmare started again. He forced himself to use his mind constructively, to put the past firmly behind him and see what could be done about the future. He washed, shaved, dressed and missed college breakfast, occasionally murmuring to himself ‘Harvey Metcalfe.’ He then pedaled to Oxford station on an ancient bicycle, his preferred mode of transport in a city blocked solid with juggernaut lorries and full of unintelligible one-way systems. He left Ethelred the Unsteady padlocked to the station railings. There were as many bicycles standing in the ranks as there are cars in other railway stations.

He caught the 8.17 train so favored by those who commute from Oxford to London every day. All the people at breakfast seemed to know each other and Stephen felt like an uninvited guest at someone else’s party. The ticket collector bustled through the buffet car and clipped Stephen’s first-class ticket. The man opposite Stephen produced a second-class ticket from behind his copy of the Financial Times. The collector clipped it grudgingly.

‘You’ll have to return to a second-class compartment when you’ve finished your breakfast, sir. The restaurant car is first class, you know.’

Stephen considered the implication of these remarks as he watched the flat Berkshire countryside jolt past, and his coffee cup lurched unsampled in its saucer before he turned his mind to the morning papers. The Times carried no news of Prospecta Oil that morning. It was, he supposed, an insignificant story, even a dull one. Not kidnap, not arson, not even rape; just another shady business enterprise collapsing — nothing there to hold the attention of the front page for more than one day. Not a story he would have given a second thought to himself but for his own involvement, which gave it all the makings of a personal tragedy.

At Paddington he pushed through the ants rushing around the forecourt, glad that he had chosen the closeted life of a university or, more accurately, that it had chosen him. Stephen had never come to terms with London — he found the city large and impersonal, and he always took a taxi everywhere for fear of getting lost on the buses or the underground. Why didn’t the English number their streets so Americans would know where they were?

‘The Times office, Printing House Square.’

The cabby nodded and moved his black Austin deftly down the Bayswater Road, alongside a rain-sodden Hyde Park. The crocuses at Marble Arch looked sullen and battered, splayed wetly on the close grass. Stephen was impressed by London cabs: they never had a scrape or mark on them. He had once been told that cabdrivers are not allowed to pick up fares unless their vehicles are in perfect condition. How different from New York’s battered yellow monsters, he thought. The cabby proceeded to swing down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner, past the House of Commons and along the Embankment. The flags were out in Parliament Square. Stephen frowned. What was the lead story he had read over so inattentively in the train? Ah yes, a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. He supposed he must allow the world to go about its daily business as usual.

Stephen was unsure how to tackle the problem of checking Harvey Metcalfe out. Back at Harvard he would have had no trouble, first making a beeline for his father’s old friend Hank Swaltz, the business correspondent of the Herald American. Hank would be sure to have supplied him with the inside dope. The diary correspondent of The Times, Richard Compton-Miller, was by no means as appropriate a contact, but he was the only British press man Stephen had ever met. Compton-Miller had been visiting Magdalen the previous spring to write a feature on the time-honored observance of May Day in Oxford. The choristers on the top of the College tower had sung the Miltonian salute as the sun peeped over the horizon on May 1st:

On the banks of the river beneath Magdalen bridge where Compton-Miller and Stephen had stood, several couples had clearly been inspired.

Later, Stephen had been more embarrassed than flattered by his appearance in the resulting piece written by Compton-Miller for The Times diary: academics are sparing with the word brilliant, but journalists are not. The more self-important of Stephen’s Senior Common Room colleagues had not been amused to see him described as the brightest star in a firmament of moderate luminescence.

The taxi pulled into the forecourt and came to a stop by the side of a massive hunk of sculpture by Henry Moore. The Times and the Observer shared a building with separate entrances, The Times’s by far the more prestigious. Stephen asked the sergeant behind the desk for Richard Compton-Miller, and was directed to the fifth floor and then to his little private cubicle at the end of the corridor.

It was only a little after 10 am when Stephen arrived, and the building was practically deserted. Compton-Miller later explained that a national newspaper does not begin to wake up until 11 am and generally indulges itself in a long lunch hour until about 3. Between then and putting the paper to bed, about 8.30 pm for all but the front page, the real work is done. There is usually a complete change of staff, staggered from 5 pm onward, whose job it is to watch for major news stories breaking during the night. They always have to keep a wary eye on what is happening in America, because if the President makes an important statement in the afternoon in Washington they are already going to press in London. Sometimes the front page can change as often as five times during the night; in the case of the assassination of President Kennedy, news of which first reached England about 7 pm on the evening of November 22nd, 1963, the entire front page had to be scrapped to make way for the tragedy.

‘Richard, it was kind of you to come in early for me. I didn’t realize that you started work so late. I rather take my daily paper for granted.’

Richard laughed. ‘That’s O.K. We must seem a lazy bunch to you, but this place will be buzzing at midnight when you’re tucked up in bed and sound asleep. Now, how can I help you?’

‘I’m trying to do a little research on a fellow countryman of mine called Harvey Metcalfe. He’s a substantial benefactor of Harvard, and I want to flatter the old boy by knowing all about him when I return.’ Stephen didn’t care very much for the lie, but these were strange circumstances he now found himself in.

‘Hang on here and I’ll go and see if we have anything in the cutting room on him.’

Stephen amused himself by reading the headlines pinned up on Compton-Miller’s board — obviously stories he had taken some pride in: ‘Prime Minister to Conduct Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall,’ ‘Miss World loves Tom Jones,’ ‘Muhammad Ali says “I will be Champion Again” ’.

Richard returned fifteen minutes later, carrying a thickish file.

‘Have a go at that, Descartes. I’ll be back in an hour and we can have some coffee.’

Stephen nodded and smiled gratefully. Descartes never had to solve the problems he was facing.

Everything Harvey Metcalfe wanted the world to know was in that file, and a little bit he didn’t want the world to know. Stephen learned of his yearly trips to Europe to visit Wimbledon, of the success of his horses at Ascot and of his pursuit of Impressionist pictures for his private art collection. William Hickey of the Daily Express had on one occasion titillated his readers with a plump Harvey clad in Bermuda shorts and a report that he spent two or three weeks a year on his private yacht at Monte Carlo, gambling at the Casino. Hickey’s tone was something less than fulsome. The Metcalfe fortune was in his opinion too new to be respectable. Stephen wrote down meticulously all the facts he thought relevant and was studying the photographs when Richard returned.

He took Stephen off to have some coffee in the canteen on the same floor. Cigarette smoke swirled mistily around the girl at the cashier’s desk at the end of the self-service counter.

‘Richard, I don’t quite have all the information I might need. Harvard wants to touch this man for quite a large sum: I believe they are thinking in terms of about $1 million. Where could I find out some more about him?’

‘New York Times, I should imagine,’ said Compton-Miller. ‘Come on, we’ll give Terry Robards a visit.’

The New York Times office in London was also on the fifth floor of The Times building in Printing House Square. Stephen thought of the vast New York Times building on 43rd Street and wondered if the London Times had a reciprocal arrangement, and was secreted away in their basement. Terry Robards turned out to be a wiry American wearing a perpetual smile. Terry immediately made Stephen feel at ease, a knack he had developed almost subconsciously over the years and which was a great asset when digging a little deeper for stories.

Stephen repeated his piece about Metcalfe. Terry laughed.

‘Harvard isn’t too fussy where they get their money from, are they? That guy has discovered more legal ways of stealing money than the Internal Revenue Service.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Stephen innocently.

The New York Times file on Harvey was voluminous. ‘Metcalfe’s Rise from Messenger Boy to Millionaire,’ as one headline put it, was documented admirably. Stephen took further careful notes. The details of Sharpley & Son fascinated him, as did the facts on some wartime arms dealing and the background of his wife Arlene and their daughter Rosalie. There was a picture of both of them, but the daughter was only fifteen at the time. There were also long reports of two court cases some twenty-five years past, in which Harvey had been charged with fraud but never convicted, and a more recent case in 1956 concerning a share transfer scheme in Boston. Again Harvey had escaped the law, but the District Attorney had left the jury in little doubt of his views on Mr Metcalfe. The most recent press stories were all in the gossip columns: Metcalfe’s paintings, his horses, his orchids, his daughter’s success at Vassar and his trips to Europe. Of Prospecta Oil there was not a word. Stephen had to admire Harvey’s ability to conceal his more dubious activities from the press.

Terry invited his fellow expatriate to lunch. Newsmen always like new contacts and Stephen looked like a promising one. He asked the cabby to go to Whitfield Street. As they inched their way out of the City into the West End, Stephen hoped that the meal would be worth the journey. He was not disappointed.

Lacy’s restaurant was airy and bedecked with clean linen and young daffodils. Terry said it was greatly favored by press men. Margaret Costa, the cookery writer and her chef husband, Bill Lacy, certainly knew their onions. Over delicious watercress soup followed by Médaillons de veau à la crême au Calvados and a bottle of Château de Péronne 1972, Terry became quite expansive on the subject of Harvey Metcalfe. He had interviewed him once at Harvard on the occasion of the opening of Metcalfe Hall, which included a gymnasium and four indoor tennis courts.

‘Hoping to get himself an honorary degree one day,’ said Terry cynically, ‘but not much hope, even if he gives a billion.’

Stephen noted the words thoughtfully.

‘I guess you could get some more facts on the guy at the American Embassy,’ said Terry. He glanced at his watch. ‘No, hell, the library closes at 4 pm Too late today. Time I got back to the office now America’s awake.’

Stephen wondered if press men ate and drank like that every day. They made University dons look positively celibate — and however did they manage to get a paper out?

Stephen fought his way onto the 5.15 train to return with the Oxford-bound commuters, and only when he was alone in his room did he begin to study the results of his day’s work. Though exhausted, he forced himself to sit at his desk until he had prepared the first neat draft of a dossier on Harvey Metcalfe.

Next day Stephen again caught the 8.17 to London, this time buying a second-class ticket. The ticket collector repeated his piece about leaving the restaurant car after he had finished his meal.

‘Sure,’ said Stephen, as he toyed with the remains of his coffee for the rest of the hour-long journey, never shifting from first class. He was pleased with himself: he had saved £2, and that was exactly how Harvey Metcalfe would have behaved.

At Paddington he followed Terry Robards’s advice and took a taxi to the American Embassy, a vast monolithic building which sprawls over 250,000 square feet and is nine stories high, stretching the entire length of one side of Grosvenor Square. It was not, however, as elegant as the American Ambassador’s magnificent official residence, Winfield House in Regents Park, where Stephen had been summoned to drinks last year, which was once the private home of Barbara Hutton before it was sold to the American government in 1946. Certainly, either of them was large enough for seven husbands, thought Stephen.

The entrance to the Embassy Reference Library on the ground floor was firmly shut. Stephen was reduced to a close study of the plaques on the wall in the corridor outside, honoring recent Ambassadors to the Court of St James. Reading backward from Walter Annenberg, he had reached Joseph Kennedy when the doors of the library swung open, not unlike a bank. The prim girl behind a sign marked ‘Inquiries’ was not immediately forthcoming on the subject of Harvey Metcalfe.

‘Why do you require this information?’ she asked sharply.

This threw Stephen for a moment, but he quickly recovered. ‘I’m returning to Harvard in the fall as a professor and I feel I should know more about his involvement with the university. I’m at present a Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.’

Stephen’s answer motivated the girl to immediate action and she produced a file within a few minutes. Though by no means as racy as the New York Times’s, it did put figures on the amounts Harvey Metcalfe had donated to charity and gave precise details of his gifts to the Democratic Party. Most people do not divulge the exact amount they give to political parties, but Harvey only knew about lights — no one seemed to have told him about bushels.

Having finished his research at the Embassy, Stephen took a taxi to the Cunard offices in St James’s Square and spoke to a booking clerk and from there on to Claridge’s in Brook Street, where he spent a few minutes with the duty manager. A telephone call to Monte Carlo completed his research. He traveled back to Oxford on the 5.15.

Stephen returned to his college rooms. He felt he now knew as much about Harvey Metcalfe as anyone, except perhaps for Arlene and Detective Inspector Clifford Smith of the Fraud Squad. Once again he stayed up into the early hours completing his dossier, which now ran to over forty typewritten pages.

When the dossier was finally completed he went to bed and fell into a deep sleep. He rose again early in the morning, strolled across the Cloisters to a Common Room breakfast and helped himself to eggs, bacon, coffee and toast. He then took his dossier to the Bursar’s office where he made four copies of every document, ending up with five dossiers in all. He strolled back across Magdalen Bridge, admiring as always the trim flower beds of the University Botanic Gardens beneath him on his right, and called in at Maxwell’s Bookshop on the other side of the bridge.

Stephen returned to his rooms with five smart files all of different colors. He then placed the five dossiers in the separate files and put them in a drawer of his desk which he kept locked. Stephen had a tidy and methodical mind, as a mathematician must: a mind the like of which Harvey Metcalfe had never yet come up against.

Stephen then referred to the notes he had written after his interview with Detective Inspector Smith and rang Directory Inquiries, asking for the London addresses and telephone numbers of Dr Robin Oakley, Jean-Pierre Lamanns and Lord Brigsley. Directory Inquiries refused to give him more than two numbers at any one time. Stephen wondered how the GPO expected to make a profit. In the States the Bell Telephone Company would happily have given him a dozen telephone numbers and still ended with the inevitable ‘You’re welcome.’

The two he managed to wheedle out of his reluctant informant were Dr Robin Oakley at 122 Harley Street, London W1, and Jean-Pierre Lamanns at the Lamanns Gallery, 40 New Bond Street, W1. Stephen then dialed Directory Inquiries a second time and requested the number and address of Lord Brigsley.

‘No one under Brigsley in Central London,’ said the operator. ‘Maybe he’s ex-Directory. That is, if he really is a lord,’ she sniffed.

Stephen left his study for the Senior Common Room, where he thumbed through the latest copy of Who’s Who and found the noble lord:

Stephen then strolled over to Christ Church and asked the secretary in the Treasurer’s office if she had in her records a London address for James Brigsley, matriculated 1963. It was duly supplied as 119 King’s Road, London SW3.

Stephen was beginning to warm to the challenge of Harvey Metcalfe. He left Christ Church by Peckwater and the Canterbury Gate, out into the High and back to Magdalen, hands in pockets, composing a brief letter in his mind. Oxford’s nocturnal slogan-writers had been at work on a college wall again: ‘Deanz meanz feinz’ said one neatly painted graffito. Stephen, the reluctant Junior Dean of Magdalen, responsible for undergraduate discipline, smiled. If they were funny enough he would allow them to remain for one term, if not, he would have the porter scrub them out immediately. Back at his desk, he wrote down what had been in his mind.

Stephen changed the sheet of letter paper in his old Remington typewriter and addressed similar letters to Jean-Pierre Lamanns and Lord Brigsley. Then he sat thinking for a little while before picking up the internal telephone.

‘Harry?’ he said to the head porter. ‘If anyone rings the lodge to ask if the college has a fellow called Stephen Bradley, I want you to say, “Yes, sir, a new Mathematics Fellow from Harvard, already famous for his dinner parties.” Is that clear, Harry?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry Woodley, the head porter. He had never understood Americans — Dr Bradley was no exception.

All three men did ring and inquire, as Stephen had anticipated they might. He himself would have done the same in the circumstances. Harry remembered his message and repeated it carefully, although the callers still seemed a little baffled.

‘No more than me, or is it I?’ muttered the head porter.

Stephen received acceptances from all three during the next week, James Brigsley’s arriving last, on the Friday. The crest on his letter paper announced a promising motto: ex nibilo omnia.

The butler to the Senior Common Room and the college chef were consulted, and a meal to loosen the tongues of the most taciturn was planned:

Everything was ready; all Stephen could do now was wait for the appointed hour.

On the stroke of 7.30 pm on the appointed Thursday Jean-Pierre arrived. Stephen admired the elegant dinner jacket and large floppy bow tie that his guest wore, while he fingered his own little clip-on, surprised that Jean-Pierre Lamanns, who had such obvious savoir-faire, could also have fallen victim to Prospecta Oil. Stephen plunged into a monologue on the significance of the isosceles triangle in modern art while Jean-Pierre stroked his mustache. It was not a subject Stephen would normally have chosen to speak on without a break for five minutes, and he was only saved from the inevitability of more direct questions from Jean-Pierre by the arrival of Dr Robin Oakley. Robin had lost a few pounds in the past month, but Stephen could see why his practice in Harley Street was a success. He was, in the words of H. H. Munro, a man whose looks made it possible for women to forgive any other trifling inadequacies. Robin studied his shambling host, wondering whether he dared to ask immediately if they had ever met before. No, he decided; he would leave it a little and hope perhaps some clue as to why he had been invited would materialize during dinner. The David Kesler P.S. worried him.

Stephen introduced him to Jean-Pierre and they chatted while their host checked the dinner table. Once again the door opened, and with a little more respect than previously displayed, the porter announced, ‘Lord Brigsley.’ Stephen walked forward to greet him, suddenly unsure whether he should bow or shake hands. Although James did not know anyone present at the strange gathering, he showed no signs of discomfort and entered easily into the conversation. Even Stephen was impressed by James’s relaxed line of small talk, although he couldn’t help recalling his academic results when at Christ Church and wondered whether the noble lord would in fact be an asset to his plans.

The culinary efforts of the chef worked their intended magic. No guest could possibly have asked his host why the dinner party was taking place while such delicately garlic-flavored lamb, such tender almond pastry, such excellent wine, were still to hand.

Finally, when the servants had cleared the table and the port was on its way around for the second time, Robin could stand it no longer:

‘If it’s not a rude question, Dr Bradley.’

‘Do call me Stephen.’

‘Stephen, may I ask what is the purpose of this select little gathering?’

Six eyes bored into him demanding an answer to the same question.

Stephen rose and surveyed his guests. He walked around the table twice before speaking and then started his discourse by recalling the entire history of the past few weeks. He told them of his meeting in that very room with David Kesler, his investment in Prospecta Oil, followed soon afterward by the visit of the Fraud Squad, and their disclosure about Harvey Metcalfe. He ended his carefully prepared speech with the words, ‘Gentlemen, the truth is that the four of us are in the same bloody mess.’ He felt that sounded suitably British.

Jean-Pierre reacted even before Stephen could finish what he was saying.

‘Count me out. I couldn’t be involved in anything quite so ridiculous as that. I am a humble art dealer, not a speculator.’

Robin Oakley also jumped in before Stephen was given the chance to reply:

‘I’ve never heard anything so preposterous. You must have contacted the wrong man. I’m a Harley Street doctor — I don’t know the first thing about oil.’

Stephen could see why the Fraud Squad had had trouble with these two and why they had been so thankful for his cooperation. They all looked at Lord Brigsley, who raised his eyes and said very quietly:

‘Absolutely right on every detail, Dr Bradley, and I’m in more of a pickle than you. I borrowed £150,000 to buy the shares against the security of my small farm in Hampshire and I don’t think it will be long before the bank insists that I dispose of it. When they do and my dear old pa, the fifth earl, finds out, it’s curtains for me unless I become the sixth earl overnight.’

‘Thank you,’ said Stephen. As he sat down, he turned to Robin and raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

‘What the hell,’ said Robin. ‘You’re quite right — I was involved. David Kesler was a patient of mine and in a rash moment I invested £100,000 in Prospecta Oil as a temporary advance against my securities. God only knows what made me do it. As the shares are only worth 50 pence I’m stuck with them. I have a shortfall at my bank which they’re beginning to fuss about. I also have a large mortgage on my country home in Berkshire and a heavy rent on my Harley Street consulting-room, a wife with expensive tastes and two boys at the best private prep school in England. I’ve hardly slept a wink since Detective Inspector Smith visited me two weeks ago.’ He looked up. His face had drained of color and the suave self-confidence of Harley Street had gone. Slowly, they all turned and stared at Jean-Pierre.

‘All right, all right,’ he admitted, ‘me too. I was in Paris when the damned thing folded under me, so now, I’m stuck with the useless shares. £80,000 borrowed against my stock at the gallery. And what’s worse, I advised some of my friends to invest in the bloody company too.’

Silence enveloped the room. It was Jean-Pierre who broke it again:

‘So what do you suggest, Professor,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Do we hold an annual dinner to remind us what fools we’ve been?’

‘No, that was not what I had in mind.’ Stephen hesitated, realizing that what he was about to suggest was bound to cause even more commotion. Once again he rose to his feet, and said quietly and deliberately:

‘We have had our money stolen by a very clever man who has proved to be an expert in share fraud. None of us is knowledgeable about stocks and shares, but we are all experts in our own fields. Gentlemen, I therefore suggest we steal it back.

A few seconds’ silence was followed by uproar.

‘Just walk up and take it I suppose?’ said Robin.

‘Kidnap him,’ mused James.

‘Why don’t we just kill him and claim the life insurance?’ said Jean-Pierre.

Several moments passed. Stephen waited until he had complete silence again, and then he handed around the four dossiers marked ‘Harvey Metcalfe’ with each of their names below. A green dossier for Robin, a blue one for James and a yellow for Jean-Pierre. The red master copy Stephen kept for himself. They were all impressed. While they had been wringing their hands in unproductive dismay, it was obvious that Stephen Bradley had been hard at work.

Stephen continued:

‘Please read your dossier carefully. It will brief you on everything that is known about Harvey Metcalfe. Each of you must take the document away and study the information, and then return with a plan of how we are, between us, to extract $1,000,000 from him without his ever being aware of it. All four of us must come up with a separate plan. Each may involve the other three in his own operation. We will return here in fourteen days’ time and present our conclusions. Each member of the team will put $10,000 into the kitty as a float and I, as the mathematician, will keep a running account. All expenses incurred in retrieving our money will be added to Mr Metcalfe’s bill, starting with your journey down here this evening and the cost of the dinner tonight.’

Jean-Pierre and Robin began to protest again, but it was James who stopped the proceedings, by simply saying:

‘I agree. What have we got to lose? On our own we’ve no chance at all: together we might just tweak the bastard.’

Robin and Jean-Pierre looked at each other, shrugged and nodded.

The four of them settled down to discuss in detail the material Stephen had acquired over the past few days. They left the college a little after midnight, each agreeing to have a plan ready for the Team’s consideration in fourteen days’ time. None of them was quite sure where it all might end, but each was relieved to know he was no longer on his own.

Stephen decided that the first part of the Team versus Harvey Metcalfe had gone as well as he could have wished. He only hoped his conspirators would now get down to work. He sat in his armchair, stared at the ceiling and continued thinking.