Diana by R. F Delderfield

Author:R. F Delderfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480490482
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter Eleven

THE NEXT morning every London paper carried the story in headlines. There had been no accident but there had been a resounding stock-market crash, involving a group of large trusts and a string of other firms, some of which had names that were household words. It was a Hatry scandal on a smaller scale, but a scale big enough to prompt Gayelorde-Sutton, as one of the most prominent figures in the group, to attempt suicide. He had swallowed two dozen sleeping tablets and had been found unconscious by his secretary. Two of the papers carried a stop-press announcement that he had died soon after midnight.

I bought all the London papers and went into the office, locking the door and telling the foreman printer that I was not to be disturbed. The old fellow looked at me anxiously.

“You feeling all right, John?” he asked and his eye took in the bundle of papers I was clutching. One flaring headline was visible—CITY FINANCIER’S DEATH FOLLOWS MARKET CRASH—and the name Gayelorde-Sutton in the subsidiary headline. It was common knowledge in the printing shop that I had been mooning after Gayelorde-Sutton’s daughter for years. You could never keep a secret of that kind in a town like Whinmouth.

“Yes, I’m all right, Fred,” I told him, “but I’ve had a bit of a shock over this and I’ve got some important phoning to do. Keep everyone away for a bit!”

“ ’Ee b’ain’t caught you for aught, ’as ’ee?” demanded Fred, whose knowledge of stocks and shares were as vague as mine.

“Good God, no!” I snorted, and slammed the door on him.

I read the reports but they did not make very much sense to me. As far as I could understand, Gayelorde-Sutton’s firm, or the one in which he figured most prominently, had gone bankrupt for over half a million pounds, and their ruin involved other groups in which he and his partners were concerned. One of the partners had fled to the Argentine and it was on his account that the Fraud Squad had been called in. The story was written in the consciously dramatic style that Fleet Street bestows upon this kind of news. There were pictures of Gayelorde-Sutton and his wife at Ascot the previous year, and another at Heronslea, labeled: A financier’s place in the country. The caption implied a sneer and it was obvious that the journalists knew a good deal more about the scandal than they could safely print at this stage.

When I had read all I could find on the subject, I asked for directory inquiries and tried to get through to Diana’s town house but, as I suspected, the line was blocked and no calls could be put through, although I tried several times.

Afternoon came but no call from Diana. I raced through the most urgent of my work and then rang Hawthorne and told him that I had no alternative but to abandon the Observer to the printing staff and hurry to London. I just told

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