A Sticky End (5 page)

“I see.”

“He must have read my mind. Because he said that he'd like to offer me a helping hand.”

“A loan?”

“Not a loan, exactly.”

“A gift?”

“I suppose so. That's not exactly how he put it. He said he'd be prepared to put down a deposit on a house of my choosing.”

“Oh, Morgan. How could you be so stupid?”

“It was just until we got ourselves on our feet. He said that I'd be promoted by the end of the year, my salary would go up—he'd talked to my boss at the bank, and it was as good as done. He said he just wanted the best for Belinda and Margaret and Edward—that they had become like his own family, his and Vivie's. They both wanted to help us. And so—I said yes. What else could I do? It was a dream come true. We'd never have been able to afford the house without him. It was no skin off his nose, he said, and it would mean so much to him to see us better provided for.”

“What did you tell Belinda?”

“I told her we'd had some good luck on the stock market.”

“You lied.”

“Frank thought it would be better to keep the details to ourselves.”

“How much did he give you?”

“I say, old man, I'd rather not—”

“Morgan,” I said, turning toward him, “I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but are you one hundred percent certain that your Frank Bartlett was on the level? Because from what I could read between the lines of what friend Godley was saying, there's more than a whiff of embezzlement here.”

“Don't be daft.”

“Then what, Morgan? Why else would a man like Frank Bartlett kill himself?”

“Because,” said Morgan, staring out across the Common, “I tried to finish with him.”

THE COMMON WAS STARTING TO GET BUSY WITH NANNIES pushing prams, workers on an early lunch break, and the leisured classes taking a preprandial stroll. Morgan got up, stretched his legs, and headed back to the house. “Just in case the police need me,” he said. “I suppose it wouldn't look good if they thought I'd run away.”

I glanced up at him, hoping to see a smile on his face. It wasn't there. “You weren't thinking of doing that, were you, Morgan?”

“Not really,” he said, in a dreamy voice, as if that's exactly what he wanted above all else. “It's just…” He sighed, then sounded more like himself. “Of course not. I'm ready to face the music, and all that. It's just I can't stand those coppers looking at me as if I'd done something.”

“That's their job.”

“What—making innocent men feel guilty? Is that what we pay their wages for?”

Better let him blow off some steam, I thought, so I listened to his rantings until we were safely back indoors.
Sometimes Morgan sounded like the crustiest colonel in the stuffiest club in the whole of the British Empire. It was one of the contradictions in his character that I found charming; he could switch in a moment to the sparkling-eyed, mischievous boy who couldn't wait to get my dick in his mouth.

I was hungry by the time we got in, and rustled up some sandwiches, which we ate in the kitchen while Morgan continued to talk.

“The whole thing was becoming too much for me, Mitch. The money for the house, the time we spent together, the hiding and sneaking around—it was wearing me out. I wanted to get back to how I was, to being a proper husband to Billie and a proper father to the children. But every time I struggled, the bonds seemed to get tighter. He never said as much, but Frank Bartlett was determined to keep me, and nothing that I said convinced him that I wanted to break with him.”

“Perhaps you just weren't very convincing. Did you really want to finish it?”

“I did and I didn't. That's the truth. Part of me dreaded seeing him, but part of me wanted him more than ever.”

“I know which part that was.”

“Yes, well, you understand.” He was embarrassed by such direct references. “Anyway, it got to the stage that I couldn't very well finish with him, because he'd done so much for us. He lent us that money, and I knew perfectly well that he didn't expect to get it back. He even helped us to find this house. It belonged to an old client of his who sold it for a song when he went bust. Bartlett made sure we got first dibs. Belinda was thrilled—it's just the sort of house she always wanted to live in.”

“It's a very nice house.”

“I hate it now.”

“Come on, Morgan. Don't be ridiculous.”

“It feels like a trap.”

“You'd better not tell that to the police.”

“There's a lot I'm not going to tell the police, Mitch.” He looked at me across the kitchen table. “But you… Well, I'm rather hoping that if I tell you everything, you might be able to find a way out of this—” He waved his hands in front of his face, as if brushing away cobwebs. “This muddle.”

Only an Englishman of Morgan's class could call a queer suicide with overtones of financial wrongdoing a “muddle.” “Go ahead,” I said.

“The first time I told him that we ought to stop, he just wouldn't listen. He told me I was confused, that I didn't have enough experience to judge these things rightly, and that was that. The next thing I knew, the boss called me in to say how pleased he was with my work on the Bartlett and Ross account, that he was giving me a raise, and that Mr. Bartlett wanted me to take over a much larger investment portfolio now that his partner, Ross, was moving towards retirement.”

“A honey trap,” I said. Morgan nodded.

“So I had to spend even more time at Bartlett's office, and my life was even more intimately tied up with his. I was working almost exclusively on his business; the bank was so happy to have this important client that they didn't want me to be distracted by other matters. If I'd tried to break with Bartlett, I'd have had a lot of explaining to do. I owed him my house, and now I owed him my job.”

“If you'd really wanted to break with him, Morgan, you could have done so.”

“Maybe. Is that what you'd have done, Mitch?”

“I don't know.”

“You see? It's not always black and white. Anyway, I was happy. I put all the worries out of my mind and concentrated on the good things. The house was fine, work was successful, and I really enjoyed being part of Bartlett and Ross. It was a privilege to work there. Walter Ross is a fine man, Mitch. He made a great deal of money, and he was planning to spend the rest of his life enjoying it. He was always laughing at
Bartlett and me, calling us worker ants, saying that we should stop slaving away and start enjoying life—if only he knew! We were still together at every opportunity, and it seemed that any time we had a break, we came back even stronger than ever. The personal side of things was… Well, I'll spare your blushes, old man. You don't want to hear me talking about all that.”

He was right, there. However exciting it was to think about Morgan being fucked by a powerful, athletic older man in principle, in practice it hurt me, right in the gut.

“I was spending more time at B and R than I was at the bank. There was so much stuff to go through—they had their fingers in a lot of pies, and part of my job was to consolidate all their investments into a streamlined, efficient portfolio that would carry on making them lots of money without them having to lift a finger. That meant shifting things around, buying this, selling that, like an enormous juggling act. Bartlett did what he could, but he had clients to work with. Thank God they had an efficient office manager. Tippett, his name was. One of the best damn men I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He came from a very humble background, did Tippett, but he'd done well for himself just through brainpower. Not like me. Good education and a bit of charm gets me a long way, but next to Tippett, I'm as thick as two short planks.”

I was about to say something unkind, but I held my peace. This degree of self-knowledge was a new development. Perhaps Bartlett had been a good influence after all.

“Anyway, thanks to Tippett I got everything shipshape, Bartlett was pleased, the bank was pleased, old man Ross was bloody delighted, and swanned off on an extended holiday in Italy as soon as he knew the money was in the right place. I got all the glory, but to be honest with you, Mitch, it was Tippett who deserved the credit. He was brilliant—he knew every shortcut in the book, how to make the most of
money, how to work just within the rules. I could see why Bartlett relied on him so heavily. You wouldn't have thought it to look at him, but Tippett had a mind like a steel trap.”

“What is he like?” I asked, envisaging some shaky, thin-legged man in late middle age, hunched from years of bending over a ledger.

“Oh, not much older than you and me,” said Morgan. “Slight little chap—quite short—slim as a whippet. Dark hair. Nice looking, once you really look at him—but not the sort of man you'd ever pick out in a crowd. Tends to sort of blend in with the background. Self…self… What's the word, Mitch?”

“Self-effacing?”

“That's the feller. Self-effacing. Bit self-conscious, I suppose. Grew up in Kent, or Essex, or somewhere like that. His people were shopkeepers. I suppose that's where he learnt the tricks of the trade. Dragged himself up by his bootstraps, put himself through night school to qualify as an accountant, got a job at Bartlett and Ross as little more than an office boy, and he's been there ever since. Frank's right-hand man, you might say.”

“Were they—?”

“Certainly not.” Morgan scratched his chin. “At least, I don't think so. God, Mitch, you've got a dirty mind sometimes. That had never occurred to me.”

“And did you have a go?”

“No, I didn't,” he said, “although I wouldn't have said no. I saw how he looked at me sometimes. Nice little arse,” he said, kneading it in the air, “and I bet he'd know what to do with it.”

I made a mental note to meet Mr. Tippett, the organizational paragon with the promising rear end.

“Tippett took care of a lot of Frank's more delicate business dealings,” said Morgan. “For instance, after I'd made one final attempt to cool things down between us, Tippett
happened to mention that Frank had transferred some stock into my name, ‘for tax purposes,' he said, but I knew that this was yet another gift. If Frank had given it to me himself, I'd have turned it down—maybe. But if it came through Tippett, if it was presented as nothing more than a business arrangement, it was so much easier to accept.”

“Did Tippett know about you and Bartlett? Did he suspect?”

“I don't think so. He never said anything.”

“You don't always notice these things, Boy. Sometimes you have to be hit over the head.”

“Well, if he did have his suspicions, he kept them to himself. He wasn't married or anything; I think he lives with his mother, or an aunt or older sister or something—in any case, he's the confirmed bachelor type. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was like…you.”

I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Anyway, after that I didn't even try to get out of the affair. It just seemed to make things worse, and I was worried that Bartlett would do something really compromising. So we carried on as we were, seeing each other most days at work, several times a month at each other's houses when we entertained, and then sneaking off to hotels or empty houses to be together. I kept waiting for him to tire of me, but he never did. He was just as passionate as he was that first night. And—well, I have to be honest with you, Mitch. He made me feel the same way. The things he did to me… I don't know. It was like electricity.” He shuddered. “God, it was wonderful. And now I'll never feel that again.”

Did I never make you feel that way?

Poor Morgan—he was deeply distressed, and there was no one he could tell but me. But something was nagging at my brain. What was it? I held his hand while he struggled to compose himself—and then it came to me.

“Morgan—earlier on you said that you thought you
knew why Frank Bartlett killed himself.”

“Did I?”

“You said you tried to finish with him. What did you mean?”

“We had a big row.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. No—when was it? My God, yes, it was yesterday. It seems like a lifetime ago.”

“What happened?”

“He came here so full of beans. I think he'd been looking forward to this weekend more than anything else in his life—to have me to himself for two whole nights, in the home that he'd bought for me, without having to make do with hotel rooms, without hiding and lying and sordid arrangements. And he was being very mysterious—he said he'd done something special for me, but he wouldn't say what. Something to show me how much he cared. I knew exactly what it would be—another of these damned awkward cash gifts. I told him I couldn't accept it, that he was making things difficult for me, and we ended up fighting. God, it was awful. Like two—well, like a man and his mistress. I felt so ashamed. And the worst thing was, the servants must have heard.”

“The servants? I thought they had the weekend off.”

“They did. They do. But they were still here when Frank arrived, they were clearing up after lunch. We were in the living room with coffee. They must have heard. It's so…so bloody awkward.”

“And you said things that might have driven him to… you know?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Yes, I think I did. I said that this couldn't go on, that we would have to finish. I lost my temper, Mitch. I felt trapped, and I hate feeling trapped. I loved him in a way, but at times I hated him. My life had been jogging along quite nicely before I met Frank Bartlett, and suddenly it was all tied in knots. I told him we should stop,
and he said he couldn't. He said he couldn't do without me. That I was his whole life. That's when we both realized that we were not alone in the house. We heard the front door closing very quietly; it must have been cook or the maid letting themselves out.”