Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘I was this close to the biggest win of my life.’ He held his thumb and index finger together until they almost touched and grinned.

‘One hundred?’

Licking his lips, Nash looked around the hall. ‘Couldn’t we perhaps talk about this somewhere more private?’

‘Did other people at the gaming house see you lose your money?’

Nash bowed his head and didn’t answer.

‘Then it’s not a private matter, is it?’ Pyke felt the blood rising in his neck. ‘Was it more than a hundred?’

When Nash didn’t answer him, Pyke slapped him on his bruised cheek.

The younger man winced and his eyes glowed with indignation. ‘It’s my business, not yours.’

‘You’re a partner in this bank. That means if you can’t pay your debts, the person you owe money to can come after us.’ He hit Nash again, this time on the other cheek and harder, his knuckles closed. ‘More than this, you owe money to someone you’re beholden to. It makes you weak and other people will sniff out your weakness and exploit it.’

In the booths the cashiers had stopped counting their coins and were watching the exchange.

‘I’ll settle my debts.’

This time Pyke almost lifted him by the throat and marched him across to one of the cashiers. ‘Before you gamble away your own money, you can settle your debt with me.’ Turning him around, Pyke pressed Nash’s face against the iron grille of the booth and said, ‘This gentleman here would like to withdraw a hundred pounds from his account. If he doesn’t have the funds, I authorise you to take it out of his next quarterly drawings.’

Terrified, the cashier gathered up the money and, with trembling hands, passed the notes through the grille.

‘That’s for the business with Gold.’ Pyke pocketed the money and wiped the palm of his hand on his coat. ‘I want you to greet Morris here in the hall at three and show him up to my office.’

Glowering and humiliated, Nash nodded but said nothing.

They didn’t make it back to Hambledon until five and it took a further half-hour to gather Emily, Felix and Jo together in order to make the short journey to Cranborne Park where, Morris assured Pyke, Marguerite and another guest, Abraham Gore, awaited them. Pyke knew Gore only by reputation and was curious to meet the man. During the journey from London, Morris had explained that Gore was one of his oldest friends; they’d known one another for thirty years.

To say that Gore was already a legend in London’s world of business would have been a gross understatement. His story was one that fathers told their children in the hope of instilling in them grand ambitions and a hard-work ethic. As a younger man, Gore had inherited a country bank in Warwickshire; by the time he was thirty he’d opened a further ten branches throughout the West Midlands; by forty, he had extended his banking empire into Lancashire as well as moving his headquarters to one of the grandest addresses in the City. Nowadays, Gore’s was not only the largest private bank in London, larger even than Rothschild’s or Coutts: Gore had also opened subsidiary branches in Edinburgh, Brussels and Dublin.

The most curious detail about Gore’s career, however, related to his personal life, or rather his lack of personal life. For years, he had been touted by society columns and gossip magazines as one of London’s most eligible bachelors — he was said, by some, to be the nation’s wealthiest businessman — but he had never taken a wife, nor shown any inclination to do so. Furthermore, throughout his time in the capital Gore had lived in comfortable, but by no means extravagant, circumstances, in a suite of chambers at the Richmond Hotel, paying just a hundred pounds a year for the privilege. He also owned a large estate in the Warwickshire countryside but his modest, even ascetic tastes and his apparent lack of interest in settling down with a wife had, rightly or wrongly, earned Gore a reputation as an eccentric.

Morris had greeted Emily and Felix warmly and told them he hoped they wouldn’t be too uncomfortable in his rickety old carriage. In fact there was more than enough room for all of them and when the carriage came to a halt at the front steps of Morris’s Palladian mansion, Felix was first out of the door, closely followed by Jo. Pyke and Morris alighted last and Pyke looked up towards the portico, where Marguerite had gathered Felix up into her arms. Next to her, an older man, whom Pyke presumed was Gore, smiled amiably and patted Felix gently on the head. When Pyke and Morris joined the party in the entrance hall, Marguerite had already introduced herself to Emily and only reluctantly passed Felix on to Jo. ‘He’s such a sweet, delightful boy,’ Pyke heard her gush to Emily. He was uncomfortable about the whole idea of Emily meeting and perhaps even befriending his old flame, and vice versa. While Emily was formally introduced to Abraham Gore, Pyke took a moment to compare the two women in his mind. With her tall, slim figure and clear, unblemished skin, Emily was unquestionably beautiful, but in a natural way that stood in contrast with Marguerite’s preened sophistication. And while Emily’s preference for Empire waistlines and simple, loose-fitting dresses made her seem wilfully anachronistic, Marguerite’s pale pink dress, laced tightly around the waist to accentuate her figure, reflected the very latest Parisian fashion.

When it was his turn, Pyke shook Marguerite’s outstretched hand, neither of them meeting the other’s eye, and then greeted Gore, who took both of his hands and squeezed them as though they were old friends. Gore’s ruddy cheeks and beaming smile put Pyke in mind of his uncle, and he had something of Godfrey’s warmth. The main difference between the men was that Gore’s shiny head was apparently almost devoid of hair and, perhaps to conceal or indeed to compensate for this, he wore a black top hat even inside the house. It matched his black frock-coat and black trousers. He looked even more like a banker than Pyke’s partner, William Blackwood.

From the entrance hall, Morris led them into the drawing room, where a fire was burning in the grate and a collection of china cups and saucers had already been laid out on the polished mahogany table. Marguerite and Emily complimented each other on their dresses, while Morris, Gore and Pyke hovered at the threshold of the room. Felix, in the meantime, had raced up the main staircase and was being carried back down by Jo, trying to free himself from her grip. ‘A spirited lad,’ Gore said, smiling. ‘I like to see young lads with spirit.’

‘Your dress is so lovely and… simple,’ Marguerite was saying to Emily.

Taking Morris to one side, Pyke asked him very quietly whether everything was all right.

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’ Morris said, glaring.

‘You left my bank this afternoon with ten thousand pounds. Perhaps I have a right to be nervous.’

Morris gave him a hard stare and whispered, ‘It ceased being your money when I signed those documents.’ His look told Pyke he didn’t want to discuss the matter any further and they both rejoined the group.

‘Why are you wearing a hat inside the house?’ Felix had just asked Gore, once Jo had put him down.

Laughing, Gore removed the hat and self-consciously arranged his few strands of hair. He handed it to Felix, who tried to put it on his own head, only to discover it was too large. Morris joined in the laughter and Felix, enjoying the attention, proceeded to repeat the trick.

Emily went across to rescue Gore from the attention of their son. As she did so, Pyke shared a brief glance with Marguerite and wondered whether she would let anything slip about their shared past. He also wondered why he hadn’t said anything to Emily and whether Marguerite might exploit his silence in this regard, to try to embarrass him. He wondered, too, whether she had said anything to Morris about their past, deciding that she probably wouldn’t have, and probably wouldn’t allude to their liaison. Morris seemed to think she had fallen in love with the house and estate on their own merits and Marguerite wouldn’t want to disabuse him of this notion. No, he was safe for the time being, but this thought didn’t make him feel any more comfortable about the prospect of the next hour or two.