Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles 3)

'You'd remember Cyrus Feldman's name well enough if he had a vote in your constituency,' Emma had mocked.

He hadn't attempted to deny the charge.

Giles smiled as he jumped out of his car and spotted a group of children coming out of Old Jack's Pullman carriage. Badly neglected in his father's day, it had recently been returned to its former glory and become a museum in memory of the great man. School parties paid regular visits to see Old Jack's VC and be given a history lesson on the Boer War. How long would it be, he wondered, before they were giving history lessons on the Second World War?

As he ran towards the building, he wondered why Emma had felt it was so important to meet the new chairman tonight, when the general election was almost upon them.

Giles didn't know a lot about Ross Buchanan, other than what he'd read about him in the Financial Times. After Fettes he'd studied economics at Edinburgh University and then joined P&O as a graduate trainee. He'd worked his way up from the ground floor to win a place on the board, before being appointed deputy chairman. He'd been tipped for chairman, but was denied the post when a member of the family decided they wanted the position.

When Buchanan accepted the Barrington board's invitation to succeed Sir William Travers, the company's shares rose five shillings on the announcement of his appointment, and within months they'd returned to the level they'd reached before Sir William's death.

Giles glanced at his watch, not just because he was a few minutes late, but because he had three more meetings that evening, including one with the dockers' union, who didn't appreciate being kept waiting. Despite his campaigning for a forty-eight-hour week and two weeks' guaranteed holiday on full pay for every union member, they remained suspicious of their Member of Parliament and his association with the shipping company that bore his name, even though this would be the first time he'd entered the building for over a year.

He noticed that the exterior had been given a lot more than a fresh lick of paint, and as he pushed through the door he stepped on to a thick blue and gold carpet that bore the new Palace Line crest. He stepped into a lift and pressed the button for the top floor, and for once it didn't feel as if it was being laboriously hauled up by reluctant galley slaves. As he stepped out, his first thought was of his grandfather, a revered chairman who had dragged the company into the twentieth century, before taking it public. But then his thoughts inevitably turned to his father, who had nearly brought the company to its knees in half the time. But his worst recollection, and one of the main reasons he avoided the building, was that this was where his father had been killed. The only good thing to come out of that dreadful incident was Jessica, the Berthe Morisot of the lower fourth.

Giles was the first Barrington not to become chairman of the board, but then he'd wanted to go into politics ever since he'd met Winston Churchill when he'd presented the prizes at Bristol Grammar School and Giles had been school captain. But it was his close friend Corporal Bates, killed while attempting to escape the Germans, who'd unwittingly turned him from blue to red.

He dashed into the chairman's office and gave his sister a huge hug before shaking hands with Ray Compton, who'd been the company's managing director for as long as he could remember.

The first thing that struck him as he shook hands with Ross Buchanan was how much younger he looked than his fifty-two years. But then he recalled the Financial Times pointing out that Buchanan didn't smoke or drink, played squash three times a week, turned the lights out at 10.30 p.m. and rose at 6 o'clock every morning. Not a regime that would suit a politician.

'It's a pleasure to meet you at last, Sir Giles,' said Buchanan.

'The dock workers call me Giles, so perhaps the management should as well.'

The laughter broke any slight tension that Giles's political antennae had picked up. He had assumed this was a casual get-together so he could finally meet Buchanan, but from the looks on their faces, something far more serious was on the agenda.

'This doesn't look good,' said Giles as he slumped into a seat next to Emma.

'I'm afraid it isn't,' said Buchanan, 'and I wouldn't have bothered you so close to the election if I hadn't thought you ought to be briefed immediately. I'll get straight to the point. You may have noticed that the company's share price fell quite dramatically following my predecessor's death.'

'Yes, I did,' said Giles. 'But I assumed there was nothing unusual in that.'

'In normal circumstances you'd be right, but what was unusual was how quickly the shares fell, and how far.'

'But they seem to have fully recovered since you took over.'

'They have,' said the chairman, 'but I don't think I was the sole reason for that. And I wondered if there could be another explanation for the inexplicable downturn in the company's share price after Sir William's death, especially after Ray brought to my attention that it wasn't the first time it had happened.'

'That's correct, chairman,' said Compton. 'The shares dropped just as suddenly when we announced our decision to go into the passenger liner business.'

'But if I remember correctly,' said Emma, 'they also returned to a new high.'

'They did indeed,' said Buchanan. 'But it took several months before they fully recovered, and it didn't do the company's reputation any good. While one can accept such an anomaly once, when it happens a second time, one starts to wonder if a pattern is emerging. I don't have the time to be continually looking over my shoulder, wondering when it might happen again.' Buchanan ran a hand through his thick, sandy hair. 'I'm running a public company, not a casino.'

'You're going to tell me that both these incidents took place after Alex Fisher joined the board.'

'You know Major Fisher?'

'That's far too involved a story to bore you with right now, Ross. That is, if I'm going to make the dock workers' meeting before midnight.'

'All the indications do seem to point in Fisher's direction,' said Buchanan. 'On both occasions a trade of two hundred thousand shares was executed, which happens to be almost exactly the seven and a half per cent of the company he represents. The first was just hours before the AGM at which we announced our change of policy, and the second immediately followed Sir William's untimely death.'

'It's too much of a coincidence,' said Emma.

'It gets worse,' said Buchanan. 'On each occasion, during the three-week window, after the share price had fallen so precipitously, the broker who sold them repurchased exactly the same amount, making his client a handsome profit.'

'And you think that client was Fisher?' asked Emma.

'No, it's too large a sum for him,' said Giles.

'I'm sure you're right,' said Buchanan. 'He must have been acting on behalf of someone else.'

'Lady Virginia Barrington would be my guess,' said Giles.

'That had crossed my mind,' admitted Buchanan, 'but I can prove that Fisher was behind it.'

'How?'

'I had the stock exchange records for both three-week periods checked,' said Compton, 'and both sales came out of Hong Kong, through a dealer called Benny Driscoll. It didn't take a lot of research to discover that not so long ago Driscoll left Dublin only a few hours ahead of the Garda, and he certainly won't be returning to the Emerald Isle in the near future.'