Peter Robinson - Final Account

“Yes. My wife and I dined with the Rothwells on several occasions.”

“Were you friends?”

Pratt took another sip of Cognac, put his hand out and waggled it from side to side. “Hmm. Somewhere between friends and colleagues, I’d say.”

“Why did he leave Hatchard and Pratt?”

Pratt broke eye contact and looked into the liquid he swirled in his snifter. “Ambition, maybe? Straightforward accountancy bored him. He was fond of abstractions, very good with figures. He certainly had a flair for financial management. Very creative.”

“Does that imply fraudulent?”

Pratt looked up at her. She couldn’t read his expression. “I resent that implication,” he said.

“Was there any bad feeling?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When he left the firm. Had there been any arguments, any problems?”

“Good lord, this was five years ago!”

“Even so.”

Pratt adopted a stiffer tone. “No, of course there hadn’t. Everything was perfectly amicable. We were sorry to lose him, of course, but… ”

“He wasn’t fired or anything?”

“No.”

“Did he take any clients with him?”

Pratt shuffled in his chair. “There will always be clients who feel they owe their loyalty to an individual member of the firm rather than to the firm as a whole.”

“Are you sure this didn’t cause bad feeling?”

“No, of course not. While it’s unprofessional to solicit clients and woo them away, most firms do accept that they will lose some business whenever a popular member leaves to set up on his own. Say, for example, you visit a particular dentist in a group practice. You feel comfortable with him. He understands how you feel about dentists, you feel safe with him. If he left and set up on his own, would you go with him or stay and take your chances?”

Susan smiled. “I see what you mean. Do you think you could provide me with a list of names of the clients he took?”

Pratt chewed his lower lip for a moment, as if debating the ethics of such a request, then said, “I don’t see why not. You could find out from his records anyway.”

“Thank you. He must have made a fair bit of money somehow,” Susan said. “How did he do it?”

Pratt, who if truth be told, Susan thought, suppressing a giggle, might not be entirely happy about his name, either, made a steeple of his hairy hands. “The same way we all do, I assume,” he said. “Hard work. Good investments. Excellent service. Arkbeck Farm was in pretty poor shape when they bought it, you know. It didn’t cost a fortune, and he’d no trouble arranging a fair mortgage. He put a lot into that house over the years.”

Susan looked at her notes and frowned as if she were having trouble reading or understanding them. “I understand Mr. Rothwell actually owned a number of businesses. Do you know anything about this?”

Pratt shook his head. “Not really. I understand he was interested in property development. As I said, Keith was an astute businessman.”

“Did Mrs. Rothwell work?”

“Mary? Good heavens, no! Well, not in the sense that she went out and made money. Mary was a housewife all the way. Well, perhaps ‘house manager’ or ‘lady of leisure’ would be a more appropriate term, as she didn’t actually do the work herself. Except for the garden. You must have seen Arkbeck, how clean it is, how well appointed?”

“I’m afraid I had other things on my mind when I was there, sir,” Susan said, “but I know what you mean.”

Pratt nodded. “For Mary,” he went on, “everything centered around the home, the family and the immediate community. Everything had to be just so, to look just right, and it had to be seen to look that way. I imagine she was a hard taskmaster, or should that be taskmistress? Of course, she didn’t spend all her time in the house. There were the Women’s Institute, the Church committees, the good works and the charities. Mary kept very busy, I can assure you.”

“Good works? Charities?” There was something positively Victorian about this. Susan pictured an earnest woman striding from hovel to hovel in a flurry of garments, long dress trailing in the mud, distributing alms to the peasants and preaching self-improvement.

“Yes. She collected for a number of good causes. You know, the RSPCA, NSPCC, cancer, heart foundation and the like. Nothing political – I mean, no ban the bomb or anything – and nothing controversial, like AIDS research. Just the basics. She was the boss’s daughter, after all. She had certain Conservative standards to keep up.”

“The boss’s daughter?”

“Yes, didn’t you know? Her maiden name was Mary Hatchard. She was old man Hatchard’s daughter. He’s dead now, of course.”

“So Keith Rothwell married the boss’s daugher,” Susan mused aloud. “I don’t suppose that did his career any harm?”

“No, it didn’t. But that was more good luck than good management, if you ask me. Keith didn’t just marry the boss’s daughter, he got her pregnant first, with Tom, as it turns out, then he married her.”

“How did that go over?”

Pratt paused and picked up a paper-clip. “Not very well at first. Old man Hatchard was mad as hell. He kept the lid on it pretty well, of course, and after he’d had time to consider it, I think he was glad to get her off his hands. He could hardly have her married to a mere junior, though, so Keith came up pretty quickly through the ranks to full partner.”

Pratt twisted the paper-clip. He seemed to be enjoying this game, Susan thought. He was holding back, toying with her. She had a sense that if she didn’t ask exactly the right questions, she wouldn’t get the answers she needed. The problem was, she didn’t know what the right questions were.

They sat in his office over Winston’s Tobacconists, looking out on North Market Street, and Susan could hear the muted traffic sounds through the double-glazing. “Look,” Pratt went on, “I realize I’m the one being questioned, but could you tell me how Mary is? And Alison? I do regard myself as something of a friend of the family, and if there’s anything I can do… ”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure they know. Can you think of any reason anyone might have for killing Mr. Rothwell?”

“No, I can’t. Not in the way you described.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I suppose I could imagine a burglar, say, perhaps killing someone who got in the way. You read about it in the papers, especially these days. Or an accident, some kids joyriding. But this…? It sounds like an assassination to me.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“About a month ago. No, earlier. In March, I think. Shortly after St. Patrick’s Day. The wife and I went for dinner. Mary’s a splendid cook.”

“Did they entertain frequently?”

“Not that I know of. They had occasional small dinner parties, maximum six people. Keith didn’t like socializing much, but Mary loved to show off the house, especially if she’d acquired a new piece of furniture or something. So they compromised. Last time it was the kitchen we had to admire. They used to have a country-style one, Aga and all, but someone started poking fun at ‘Aga-louts’ in the papers, so Mary got annoyed and went for the modern look.”

“I see. What about the son, Tom? What do you know of him?”

“Tom? He’s travelling in America, I understand. Good for him. Nothing like travel when you’re young, before you get too tied down. Tom was always a cheerful and polite kid as far as I was concerned.”

“No trouble?”

“Not in any real sense, no. I mean, he wasn’t into drugs or any of that weird stuff. At worst I’d say he was a bit uncertain about what he wanted to do with his life, and his father was perhaps just a little impatient.”