Treasure Up in Smoke Read online

  A delightfully offbeat murder mystery amid West Indian hi-jinks of an extraordinarily wacky nature

  Banker-Detective Mark Treasure’s first two adventures were related in Unholy Writ (“a first novel, educated and refreshingly traditional, involving mayhem and wickedness in the English middle classes”—Library Journal) and Treasure by Degrees (“in the best traditions of the classic British mystery”—N.Y. Times Book Review). Now, in an antic change of pace, Treasure and his actress-wife Molly visit a bizarre island that is straight out of the fantasies of Evelyn Waugh. The descendents of a 17th-century pirate named O’Hara have traditionally ruled this West Indian paradise, but their preeminence is now threatened by the ambitious industrial plans of a firebreathing parvenu. Treasure ’s role, intended to be one of financial consultation, takes a more active turn when the last surviving O’Hara is found decapitated during a traditional ceremony, and Treasure ’s junior banking colleague is seen making his escape in a state of undress. It all adds up to a colorful and wildly exuberant romp from one of Britain’s fastest rising literary stars.

  David Williams was born in South Wales, read history at Oxford, and began a career in advertising which has taken him to the top. He is chairman of David Williams & Ketchum Ltd, and a director of Ketchum, MacLeod & Grove, Inc. in the USA.

  He is well known in the advertising industry, has been a Council member of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising since 1959, and at various times has been Honorary Secretary of the IPA and chairman of its working party on the Royal Commission on the Press, as well as a Council member of the Advertising Association and of the Advertising Standards Authority.

  His interests include architecture, music, golf and gardening. He is married, with two children, and lives at Wentworth, Surrey.

  Copyright © 1978 by David Williams

  All rights reserved. For information, write:

  St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Ave.,

  New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Williams, David, 1926-

  Treasure up in smoke.

  I. Title.

  PZ4.W72254Ts [PR6073.I42583] 823’.9‘14 78-4010

  ISBN 0-312-81648-0

  This one for

  Linda and Jonathan

  All the characters and incidents in this book are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  CHAPTER I

  ‘One never drops names – as I said to the Prince this morning.’ Lord Grenwood intended no witticism. He poked a finger into the hairy orifice of his left ear, examined the result of this exploration with close interest and then continued. ‘I see no reason, though, why you shouldn’t tell the Governor – what’s the chap’s name?’

  ‘Rees – Sir Archibald Rees.’

  ‘Archie Rees, that’s the fellow. Eton and Christ Church.’

  ‘Brecon and London University,’ Mark Treasure corrected firmly, anticipating the momentary expression of displeasure that followed. The venerable Lord Grenwood, Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps and Co., respected Merchant Bankers in the City of London, harboured fixed notions about what he considered a seemly educational provenance for colonial administrators. Treasure, chief executive in the same establishment, but Grenwood’s junior by some thirty years, nurtured no such predilections. He was himself the product of a lesser public school and what had been an unfashionable Oxford College; such distinctions had been meaningful at one time.

  Lord Grenwood rallied; in view of the general drop in standards, he reflected, there was some compensation in knowing that Her Majesty’s representative on King Charles Island had been„ educated at all. ‘Socialist appointment, was it?’ he asked, resignation in his tone.

  ‘Tory, actually. He’s been there some time. You were saying?’

  Grenwood leant forward to press an electric button on his desk. His hand returned to touch the knot of his bow tie. ‘Oh yes. No harm in your telling this . . . er . . . Rees –’ Archie had been relegated as an impostor – ‘we’ve got more than just a Commonwealth Office blessing on this one.’

  ‘You mean the Royal Family . . .’

  The Chairman glanced about him to ensure his office had not been infiltrated by republican spies. ‘No need to be too specific, dear boy, but the island does have rather special ties with the monarchy . . .’

  ‘With the House of Stuart,’ Treasure interrupted irreverently.

  Grenwood chose not to be confused by historical minutiae. ‘Suggest – very obliquely, you understand – there could be a peerage in it . . . er, life peerage, of course.’ The Grenwood title was hereditary; courtesy of Lloyd George for services and other considerations rendered. ‘We’re all human, after all.’ This last generalization was charitably intended to include graduates of London University, and if this was an unguarded overindulgence on the part of the speaker, the reason was plainly due to a distraction.

  In answer to the electronic summons a well built and loudly attractive young woman had entered and moved with confident steps to where Grenwood was sitting – a relatively considerable distance. Lord Grenwood watched the girl’s progress with undivided attention, his straightened frame pushed well to the back of the chair, stomach in.

  ‘Mark, you’ve met . . . er . . . Dorothy?’

  ‘Deirdre,’ the girl corrected: notwithstanding, she had been baptized Ethel.

  ‘Deirdre, of course. This is Mr Treasure, my dear, ViceChairman of the Bank.’

  Treasure half rose from his seat, nodded and smiled. George Grenwood changed attractive secretaries practically with the seasons and invariably following one of his wife’s carefully spaced visits to the office. This connection was obvious, but the reason for it as perceived by even close observers – including Grenwood himself – was invariably wrong. Lady Grenwood was a tolerant and wise woman who believed change and challenge to be the best defence against waning libertarianism and the prospect of her husband retiring – or even coming home too early. He rarely came home late.

  ‘We’d like some coffee, wouldn’t we, Mark?’ Treasure nodded. ‘Oh, make it for three, and ask Mr Peregrine Gore to join us, there’s a good girl.’ The gaze that accompanied these instructions and lingered on the retreating form of his secretary suggested that goodness might not be the exact virtue Lord Grenwood expected in his new employee. ‘What a corker, eh, Mark? Fooled the old girl again.’

  Lady Grenwood’s only confidant smiled in apparent agreement. ‘And you want Peregrine to come with us?’

  ‘Not exactly with you, Mark, no. To go on ahead, I thought, soften the ground; get the locals teed up for you and Molly, as it were. Then he can be your ADC while you tie things together.’ Grenwood finished with an especially engaging smile – a sure indication that he felt uncomfortable.

  Grenwood, Phipps were acting for an Anglo-Australian consortium bidding for an interest in the West Indian island of King Charles. In financial terms the project was not massive, and in normal circumstances would have been handled by one of the Bank’s four Joint Managing Directors – with Treasure exercising a supervisory role from London. It would certainly not have involved Lord Grenwood, nor put Treasure in the situation of having to be instructed by the non-executive Chairman. But the circumstances were not quite normal. The British company involved in the consortium – a client of the Bank’s for more than fifty years – was controlled by a chairman nearly as decrepit as Grenwood himself. The two men were old cronies and had enjoyed progressing the proposals in principle – that is, up to the point where the necessity for real-application had appeared imminent. That was when Grenwood had grandly promised Treasure’s personal invo
lvement.

  For his part, Treasure had accepted the obligation with a good grace – the more so when he discovered that his usually busy actress wife would be free to join him on the necessary visit to the island. He was aware that his brief involved out-manoeuvring an American hotel group – rival bidders for the business concession available on King Charles Island – but he savoured the prospect of competition. He had personally taken a view on his mission from the Commonwealth Office. The Minister had been predictably enthusiastic about a project aimed at improving the prosperity of a Crown Colony; he had been unspecific about the likelihood of financial backing from the Commonwealth Development Fund (which he controlled), but richly optimistic about the prospect of massive support from the United Nations Development Programme and the Caribbean Development Bank whose available assets were no concern of his.

  Treasure was as Royalist as the next man but he doubted the alleged encouragement from Buckingham Palace could be converted into a negotiating tool – always supposing it had been offered at all; Lord Grenwood was given to fantasizing in such matters.

  What Treasure found unnerving was the news that his labours in the Caribbean were to be lightened by the presence of Peregrine Gore – though on quick reflection he could find no fair reason to offer for eschewing such aid. Some days later he came to regret not having voiced an unfair one – but by then it was too late.

  Certainly the presence of a junior executive would be helpful – but there were a dozen young men in the Bank’s employ that Treasure would have chosen before the nominated Gore. It was not that he disliked the boy – Treasure, despite his still dashing good looks, was far enough into early middle-age subconsciously to classify any male under thirty as juvenile. Charitably he considered that Peregrine Gore might even be a good fellow to have beside him in a tight corner – even if he could immediately think of no one more likely to get him into one.

  The famous general who had made a similar observation about one of his officers had been spared the witness of Peregrine’s shorter than most short-service commissions in the Brigade of Guards. Sound family connections had ensured his safe passage through Sandhurst Military Academy and into a famous Regiment – too famous. It was the chapter of accidents – or near misses – which followed that had prompted the late and face-saving discovery of colour blindness, a handicap which while not incapacitating had been sufficient excuse for honourable retirement with very little seniority. This recourse had been the invention not of an army doctor but of a lieutenant-colonel, who considered that Peregrine’s mistaking an off-duty Indian porter on Camberley Station for the important Arab ambassador he had been sent to meet as convenient evidence of serious ocular deficiency.

  In mitigation, it ought to be recorded that Peregrine never endangered the lives of his men – even before the time those in authority decided he should not be given further opportunity to do so. He brought a good deal of happiness to many: for instance, the off-duty porter had never ridden in a Daimler before. Changing the guard at St James’s Palace twice during the first morning of British Summer Time was a mistake that might have been made by anybody called on duty at short notice before resetting his watch. The soldiers had found a good deal of amusement in this harmless episode: unfortunately it had occurred only a few weeks before the Camberley incident, which in turn had been quickly compounded by the mishap involving the Field Marshal’s mistress.

  Thus it could be said there were any number of reasons why Peregrine Gore had entered merchant banking. As Treasure watched him sitting alert and upright before Lord Grenwood he wondered again whether he and others had misjudged the chap. Gore had been with the Bank nearly eighteen months, and while he had not been asked to shoulder any great responsibility, he applied himself with enthusiasm and there had been good reports from some quarters. Only the day before, Wilfred Jonkins, Assistant Manager of the Trust Department, had described Peregrine to Treasure as ‘a most well-informed young gentleman’. Jonkins had not specified the particular area of information on which he had been seeking enlightenment during the month the ex-officer had been assigned to him for training: it had concerned the construction of explosive devices. The mild-mannered Jonkins had been passively planning new ways to liquidate his wife for more than twenty years: it helped him to sleep.

  ‘It’s a splendid opportunity for you, my boy.’ Grenwood had been explaining the King Charles assignment to Peregrine in some detail. ‘Mr Treasure here is a hard task-master, but I’m sure you’ll justify the confidence we’re . . . um, we’re both placing in you.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely sir.’ Peregrine answered Grenwood but addressed Treasure: he recognized where the confidence might be weakest. The Vice-Chairman warmed visibly. It was part of Peregrine’s charm that he could inspire too much trust from people – while still leaving them in no doubt about his limitations. He turned again to Lord Grenwood. ‘Just one thing, Uncle. Where exactly is King Charles Island?’

  Molly Treasure stood at the sink; she was clad in an elegant shantung kaftan and pink rubber gloves. Better known as Margaret Forbes, the deservedly celebrated actress, she was applying the same seemingly effortless poise to washing up as she had lavished on her final performance in the part of Elvira Condomine the night before at the Queen’s Theatre. Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit had been acclaimed as the most charming revival in the London theatre for many seasons, and Molly a captivating and marvellously ethereal first Mrs Condomine.

  ‘Then we should get a dishwasher that does do knives.’ The Vice-Chairman of Grenwood Phipps was standing at the draining board, tea-towel at the ready, but not liking it. There was a fitness in most things, but he found it hard to make a case for wiping up.

  Mr and Mrs Pink, the Treasures’ resident chauffeur and cook, had the night off; so had Molly – the first for many months. She had elected to prepare dinner at home herself. ‘Nonsense,’ she said with characteristic, comic imperiousness.

  Molly had first won a place at acting school by playing Portia’s ‘quality of mercy’ speech from The Merchant of Venice in the manner of a suburban grande dame admonishing the milkman for overcharging. That was eighteen years ago, and she had sustained her career by producing elegant variations on that same characterization ever since – to the delight of theatre and screen audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Tall and striking – more statuesque than beautiful – Molly was a thoroughbred patrician to the tip of her aquiline nose, and once admirably described as the unchallenged mistress of withering heights. Her talent to amuse by projecting comic disdain, outrage and offended innocence if it was in a sense limited had kept her in constant demand – for revivals of Sheridan, Wilde and Coward, and latterly for stylish new works by Michael Frayn and William Douglas Home. The scene she was now playing was the closest she had ever been to a kitchen sink drama. ‘Wiping four knives is as good for your ego as it is for their handles,’ she added.

  ‘And an elephantine dish.’ Treasure peered into the receptacle searching for damp.

  ‘Better and better. You didn’t call the souffle elephantine.’

  ‘It was quite edible – like you.’ He kissed her on the neck.

  ‘Oh sir, I’ll ’ave to tell the mistress.’ Molly emptied the plastic bowl and began removing the gloves as though in preparation for taking tea with Lady Bracknell. ‘Is Peregrine Gore the good-looking blond one?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ After spending half the day with Peregrine on the Caribbean project the young man’s appearance was not the characteristic uppermost in Treasure’s mind. He bunched the tea-towel and deposited it on the kitchen table ‘He’s Aigy Grenwood’s step-son by the second wife.’

  ‘That’s much too complicated.’ She rescued the towel and arranged it neatly on a hanger. ‘I remember him, though. Wasn’t he the one who courageously put out the fire at the Phippses’ cocktail-party?’

  Treasure had no memory of this, but he considered there was a quite logical reason why Peregrine might have been the person close
st to the outbreak. ‘I don’t remember,’ he answered truthfully. ‘Actually, he’s got lots of charm and it’ll probably amuse you to have him along . . .’

  ‘While you decide the fate of nations. Why exactly are we going?’

  The two ascended the stairs to the living-room of the house in Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk – their home for more than a decade.

  ‘You’re going because you’ve promised to take a rest.’

  ‘You mean because I’m out of work, and no one’s offered me a play.’ Molly seated herself at the piano and began picking out the melody of a Chopin Nocturne.

  ‘A play you want to do,’ Treasure corrected. He knew his wife had been more than usually selective about her work in the months ahead so that they could spend more time together. ‘What about The Rivals in April?’

  ‘That’s for TV, it’s three months away, and I know the part – which means I only need to unlearn the actions and deftly woo the upstage camera.’ She smiled. ‘You still haven’t told me why I have to behave like a banker’s wife for once.’

  Treasure was turning the pages of a large atlas. ‘We’re putting together a simple little deal for King Charles Island. It’s so simple even your precious Peregrine understands it – I think. Anyway, it’s a Crown Colony, we’re staying with the Governor, and since your opportunities for social advancement are so few, I thought . . .’

  ‘I’ll have you know I’ve appeared in more palaces than you, young man,’ Molly interrupted in her best Edith Evans voice. ‘Including the old Victoria.’ She continued playing. ‘Incidentally, where exactly is King Charles Island?’

  Treasure placed the open atlas on the music stand of the Bechstein. ‘Somehow I thought you’d ask that question. It’s known colloquially as KCI and it’s there.’ He placed his finger below the tiny dot on the quite large-scale map.