paneling. “Mary, what happened to the Melvilles?” she called.
“Mr. Harald sent them to London,” Mary called back. “An exhibition, he said.”
After the funeral mass in the family chapel, the line of people queuing to pay their respects snaked out the Great Hall door, and although the enormous fireplace was blazing, chilly eddies swirled around Els’s feet. She felt she was growing heavier with each whispered condolence and sorrowful glance. Ambrose Timmons, minus the expected delegation of bank higher-ups, inched toward her, and when he took her hand he whispered, “We need to talk as soon as we can get a little privacy. You’ve read the news, I presume?”
“Not since Thursday,” Els whispered back. “Nor even bothered with the telly.”
“I’ll explain later,” Timmons said. “The chairman sent his condolences.” He bowed and withdrew.
Els closed the door behind the last guests and went to the dining room, where Mary was clearing away the buffet. Candles guttered onto the damask banquet cloth. Mary put some sandwiches and a lemon tart on a plate and handed it to Els.
“Ye’ve eaten nu’in all day,” she said. “Mr. Timmons is in the study.”
When she closed the study door, Timmons rose from his chair by the fire. She set her plate on the desk and went to the trolley holding Harald’s collection of single malt scotches.
“We’ve both earned a drink, Mr. Timmons.” She poured Laphroaig into Edinburgh Crystal tumblers and handed him one.
She’d first tasted the peaty scotch in hunting camp when she was fifteen, after shooting the day’s largest roebuck. Harald had passed around a flask, and Robbie, the gamekeeper, had handed it to her just like the rest of the men.
Timmons raised his glass and toasted Harald’s life before reclaiming his seat.
Els retrieved her plate of food from the desk and settled into the other chair by the fire. Timmons gazed into his drink. “The bank has crashed.”
She looked at him. “Standard Heb goes back almost to Stonehenge. I read a few days ago about some trading blip. Didn’t sound too serious.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t have been if the guy who started it all had fessed up,” he said. “It’s almost a rerun of Leeson’s nightmare at Barings.”
While she stared into the fire, the plate of sandwiches untouched in her lap, he explained that a rogue trader named Quartermain in the New York office had taken a disastrously losing position, then tried to hide it and work himself out. Everything had spiraled out of control. The bank didn’t yet know the full extent of its losses.
A log shifted in the fire. She took a second’s pleasure in having quit before her job imploded, but the victory was Pyrrhic. She was ruined, her investments obliterated. For years she’d been required to take a large portion of her earnings as deferred compensation in the form of Standard Heb stock, now worthless.
Timmons appeared to sense her absorption of this news. “It’s even worse than that,” he said. “Your father, against my recommendation, got into some schemes that weren’t on—real estate in India and such. His judgment was faltering, as you know. Until he died, I had no idea what he’d done on the side. He used Cairnoch House as collateral for one particularly dodgy deal with a Russian energy baron named Smirnov or something, and that guy was in my office yesterday threatening to foreclose. He’s salivating over the estate as a hunting lodge. It may have been his plan from the beginning to bilk your father out of it.”
“How much did Father owe this Mr. Vodka?”
“Enough so that even if you sold it on the open market—money pits aren’t exactly the rage these days—Cairnoch might fetch only enough to cover his debts with a hundred or so left for you. If we’re lucky.”
“I should have taken over everything sooner.”
Timmons’s little smile showed a career’s worth of patience for the hindsight of his clients. “Sell what remains of the valuable items separately,” he said. “And make your best deal with the Russian.”
A new thought hit her. “Mum’s as dependent on the income as I.”
“She should be the last of your worries,” Timmons said, and explained that Harald had long ago set up an adequate but not overly generous trust. “She’s been living with a man for years,” he said. “A retired doctor, Rinaldo Acquarone. They’re quite comfortable.”
“Do you have her address?” “
I’ll send it, but I’m sure you’ll find it here somewhere,” Timmons said, and stood up. “I’ve left you some paperwork. Once I’ve cleared out my office tomorrow,