The Lorimer Line (25 page)

One of the earliest pieces of property to be impounded by the Receiver had been the jewellery which John Junius gave to his wife on the occasion of the ball for the Prince of Wales. She had worn it only for that one event, the last social occasion of her life. The jewels had been sent to the bank for safe keeping on the day after the ball and were found there when the chairman's strong boxes were opened by court order. Like the jade, they were sent to London to be valued and sold. Their magnificence had so much impressed the fashionable society of Bristol that rumour increased their value with every day that passed. This made the news which finally arrived from London nothing short of a sensation. Every piece - necklace, ear rings and hair ornament - was made of paste! The imitation was of good quality and had been set with consummate skill, but as jewels the stones were worthless.

Margaret heard this news with bewilderment. The local newspaper, which printed it at length, filled even more of its space with an account of how imitation jewellery was made, describing in detail how much in such cases the colour owed to the foil which was used to back the paste. Margaret recognized that her opinion was uninformed, but she remembered the pile of stones which she had been allowed to slide through her fingers. Their colour and beauty even then, before they had been set, had taken her breath away. She had been certain that they were worth a fortune. Could she really have been deceived?

Others in the city shared her doubts. The affairs of the rubies took a prominent place in many subsequent issues of the
Bristol Mercury.
Mr Parker, the jeweller, was interviewed and made a statement. He had been given the larger stones by Mr John Junius Lorimer, who had asked him in addition to purchase a sufficient number of tiny diamonds and then to set the whole to a design which was supplied. The stones which he had set were the stones which he had been given. He believed them to be genuine. He had nothing more to say.

Mr Parker's situation was not a happy one. The correspondence columns of the
Mercury
were filled with theories from which he could not hope to escape with credit. Was he so unskilled as a jeweller that he could not distinguish between real and false stones? If he still maintained that he had been given real rubies, what had he done with them after replacing them with imitations? As he maintained his silence, other comments and accusations flooded in. There was someone who had been sure at the time and was prepared to swear now that Mrs Lorimer's jewels on the night of the ball, although showy, were worthless. There was someone else who had no doubt at all that on that occasion she had been wearing a small fortune round her neck, and that its subsequent disappearance must mean that her husband had abstracted it because of his advance knowledge of the collapse of Lorimer's Bank. Mr Parker, no doubt, had been asked by his client to prepare duplicates of all the pieces so that the real jewels could be hidden away in preparation for the time when the chairman emerged from that prison sentence which he appeared richly to deserve. Mr Parker should realize that although he had committed no criminal act in making an imitation at the request of his client - for it was well known that many wealthy women were content to wear replicas of the real jewels which they kept in the bank - his silence now
constituted an act of fraud against those innocent creditors to whom all the Lorimer property rightfully belonged.

Mr Parker remained silent but consulted his lawyer. The Receiver took note of the correspondence and consulted the police. John Junius Lorimer asserted in a signed statement that he had commissioned the captain of one of the Lorimer Line's trading ships to buy rubies on his behalf, that the stones he had received from the captain were those which he had handed to the jeweller, and that the jewellery which his wife had worn to the ball was the jewellery which had been placed in his strong box the next morning and not removed by him at any time since then.

None of these statements did anything to quieten the public debate. It was as though a community which found the complicated financial dealings of the bank too difficult to understand had decided to base its estimate of the chairman's guilt or innocence on one comparatively small transaction, and was discovering that even this was far from simple. Into this atmosphere of surmise and suspicion another newspaper announcement fell like a bombshell: a
Mercury
reporter had visited Mr David Gregson's apartments and discovered that he had fled the country.

At once there was a swing in public opinion. Leading articles were written demanding to know why regular visits to the police had not been made a condition of his bail. In a new spate of correspondence it was pointed out that the manager of a bank must have more opportunity than anyone else for abstracting articles from his own strong room. The assumption that he had been responsible for fraudulent accounts was used to justify the accusation that he had somehow managed to steal and copy the jewellery; the assumption that he had in fact committed such a theft and had the replicas made was turned back on itself to prove that he was the sort of man who would have no compunction in defrauding his depositors.

As the accusations against David mounted, Margaret's
tears began to flow again. She thought that she had managed to control her emotions and reconcile herself to losing him. But if she had needed any proof that she still loved him, it was to be found in the distress she felt now. While unable to accept his criticisms of her father, she had recognized that they were sincerely felt; in fact, it was because he was sincere that he had so irremediably damaged their relationship. She still trusted her judgement of his sincerity; and if she was right, David himself could not be guilty of all the terrible things that were being said against him. She took her troubles to the library one afternoon when William had come to see her father. It was the day before the trial was at last due to begin, and all of them were feeling the strain of its imminence.

The lack of sympathy which greeted her suggestion that David could not possibly be such a villain as the newspapers were trying to suggest shocked her. William, in particular, gave the faint, contented smile which had irritated her ever since the days of their nursery quarrels.

‘He should have faced it out like a man,' William said. ‘If he was innocent, he would have been a fool to run. You must accept his flight, Margaret, as a confession of guilt. It will certainly be seen in that light tomorrow.'

Margaret turned to her father in the hope that he at least would provide reassurance. ‘He only followed your instructions, Papa,' she said. ‘You did everything for the best. So must he have done.'

‘He was not equal to responsibility,' said John Junius dismissively. ‘I am sorry, Margaret, that you should have had this disappointment. We were all mistaken in him, I fear. I blame myself for allowing you to become too greatly attached. I hope you will soon be able to forget him and to make a new life for yourself.'

Margaret stared at him for a moment. Then she ran from the room. For almost an hour she lay on her bed, sobbing with despair and helplessness that, in an affair
whose truth she was incapable of judging, the views of the two men she loved most in the world should prove irreconcilable.

Her misery could not last. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair might be, David had gone out of her life for ever. She must be loyal to her father, because no one else was at hand to accept loyalty from her.

Taking a deep breath to bring her emotions under control, she put on her warmest cape and went to refresh her body with a walk in the gardens. The atmosphere of the neglected house was cold and damp, but she felt as much stifled by it as in the heaviest days of summer. Although she had by now emerged from the two-month period of mourning in which a bereaved daughter was expected to stay at home, the disaster which had struck the family had continued to confine her there, just as the need for economy prevented her from changing her dress from plain paramatta to the black silk which by now would have been allowed by convention. She felt the need of exercise and took no account of the cold as she walked briskly to the edge of the lower terrace and stood looking down over the river.

Down this channel, she supposed, David had sailed soon after their quarrel. Was it her fault that he had destroyed his reputation by leaving the country? She had offered to go with him at first, and later had allowed him to leave without her: at no time had she had the good sense to warn him that he would be criticized for going. If she had accepted his suggestion and gone to William to ask for the money for her own passage, her brother, with his greater worldly sense, would have pointed out the dangers of such a disappearance. Unsophisticated as she was, the conclusions which would be drawn from David's flight had not even occurred to her.

Again she reminded herself that it was too late for regrets. She made her way past the ice-house which would
not be filled this year, and walked down through the wilderness which began where the formal part of the garden ended. The paths here were steep and rough, shaded with high banks of rhododendrons and accompanied by runnels of water which at this season became waterfalls, splashing their way down to the Avon. The climb back would be a hard one, although the paths zig-zagged to reduce the gradient, but she looked forward to the exertion.

She came to the point where the ground dropped sheer away in a cliff above the riverside road. The land still belonged to the Lorimers — or, rather, to the unknown gentleman who had bought it - but it was too steep here to be climbed. Instead she made her way to the side boundary of the garden.

Once upon a time, when she was a little girl, she had come this way often to play with Lydia. It was only about five years ago that the area adjoining this side of the garden, like the streets off Joy Hill, had acquired an undesirable reputation. Respectable families had moved out as unmarried but well-dressed females moved in. A half-crescent of bow-windowed houses came to an end here in a gazebo which afforded a view of the curving river, and which gave the whole street its name. Because of the steepness of the hill, and the erratic courses of the roads which climbed it, the entrance to The Gazebo was a considerable walking distance from the front door of Brinsley House. But for anyone whose legs were strong and who was not afraid of shadows, the path through the garden had made a good short cut. She had even persuaded her father to provide a small gate in the fence in order that she need not be tempted to climb it in a tomboyish manner.

The gate was still there, although several years had passed since Lydia and her family had moved to Bath from their home at the end of the street. Margaret pulled down her veil and stepped through, staring sentimentally through the window of the house which for a short time she had
known almost as well as her own. As she did so, she was startled to recognize the occupant of the front room.

She ought not to have been surprised. David had mentioned - on the evening their engagement was announced -that Luisa had moved to live in The Gazebo. But the news had been pushed into the back of Margaret's mind first by the happiness of her few hours at the ball, and then by the disasters and tensions which immediately followed it. Reminded now of her friend's whereabouts, she was tempted to call, but was at once held back by doubts: the hour was late, and there was something about Luisa's quick movements which seemed furtive, as though she hoped not to have been observed. No one normally had any occasion to pass the house at night, since the street led to nothing beyond except the viewpoint.

While she hesitated, Luisa straightened herself, carrying a pile of clothes. She caught sight of Margaret through the window as she turned, and for a moment her expression was one of fear. It changed so rapidly that Margaret wondered whether she had imagined it. She stood still, waiting to see what was expected of her.

Luisa put down the bundle of clothes and a few seconds later appeared at the door of the house. This time there was no doubt about the furtiveness of her behaviour. She was making sure that no stranger was about to see her. Only then did she smile and invite Margaret to come in.

Once inside, Margaret looked curiously around the untidy bow-fronted drawing room. The little girl whom she had seen as a baby eighteen months earlier was standing in a corner of the room, sucking a finger and staring wide-eyed at the stranger. Luisa picked her daughter up and hugged her to her shoulder as if providing herself with a defence against Margaret's reproaches.

‘How long have you lived here, Luisa?' Margaret asked.

‘A year perhaps. No, less than that. I'm sorry.' She sounded as though she sincerely regretted the hurt which
Margaret was feeling. Almost as though it altered the situation she added, ‘But tonight we leave.' She gave a short laugh. ‘Doing a moonlight flit. This was one of the first English phrases I learned. Running away in the middle of the night, so that the landlord cannot claim my possessions.' She looked at Margaret with defiance in her eyes, daring her to criticize. ‘There is two months' rent due, and I have hardly enough money for food. When times are hard the music teacher is the first to be turned away. This is no longer a good city in which to live. You know that better than most.'

Margaret nodded unhappily. Once before she had found Luisa in difficulties, and it had been the simplest thing in the world to make an excuse for providing her with food and a new gown and a present of money. One lesson which poverty was teaching her was that she could no longer afford the luxury of generosity. She could not offer even words that would be of any real comfort. After kissing Luisa and pretty little Alexa goodbye, Margaret climbed the steep path back to Brinsley House with a heavy heart. It seemed that the lives of all those who knew the Lorimers had been infected with ill-fortune.

The days which promise the most suffering are often the earliest to start. On the next morning, the morning of the trial, Margaret awoke at six o'clock after a night of uneasy sleep. As she looked from her window she saw the light of a lamp glowing in the tower room, and wondered whether her father had spent the whole night awake. Whatever the outcome of the trial might be, every day of its progress was bound to be an ordeal for a man who had never been accustomed to hearing his decisions questioned.