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.He had guessed a lot; he thought he knew a little; but he didn’t know anything like all.So he was surprised as much as others, when a few days after he had made his enquiries about Tom Thirkill he saw the name on the front page of The Times.He had passed on his results, such as they were, to Frank Briers.After that, Thirkill had gone out of his mind.Now he came back.Promotion for Mr Thomas Thirkill.It is announced from 10 Downing Street that Mr Thomas Thirkill, Labour MP for Leicester East, has been appointed an additional Financial Secretary to the Treasury.He will not at present have a seat in the Cabinet, but will have direct access to the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.He will have special responsibility for international financial exchanges.That was the end of the announcement.The newspaper put in its own gloss:Mr Thirkill is an acknowledged expert on the international money market, and has added to his reputation by his recent series of speeches in the Commons and outside.Mr Thirkill is known to be a leading figure on the right wing of the Labour Party, and first indications are that the appointment will not be popular on the left.Reactions of major spokesmen of the Tribune group were – ‘this is a sign that the Government are selling out’ and ‘Thirkill will see that they break all the promises they haven’t already broken in the manifesto’.Official statements had a cryptic eloquence of their own.This one, saying that Tom Thirkill wouldn’t have a seat in the Cabinet, meant that he would have one soon.He had almost certainly bargained and exacted the price.His bargaining position must be strong, Humphrey thought.He must have been used as an emissary in the summer’s dealings with the world financial institutions, not only the IMF – used as an emissary but, it now appeared, as something more.The gossip about Tom Thirkill had for months been subsiding.His lawyers had done their job.Senior ministers must be well assured.Nevertheless, they were taking a risk.Humphrey didn’t like being nagged by the meaner emotions, but he was feeling them.This was too unfair to be borne, he was thinking, just as Kate had cried on hearing of Lady Ashbrook’s death.Only a fool expected life not to be unfair, said the detached side of Humphrey.That was a feeble comfort.Humphrey was thinking, of all the people he knew, most were more tolerable than Tom Thirkill, most were more honest with themselves, and nearly all were more balanced.Thirkill’s kind of derangement, one would have thought, ought to have been a handicap, but it seemed to have proved a strength.Quite a few of Humphrey’s acquaintances were cleverer than Thirkill, and some much abler.None, he had to admit, had his flair for money.Unfair, unfair.Thirkill issued a statement that afternoon, saying that he would not have accepted the position unless he had felt it was his duty to the country and to his party.He had no ambitions but to help the country out of a dangerous patch.The pound should not be allowed to sink farther.It had just reached its lowest level.It would take a long haul to restore confidence, but it could be done.We had to re-establish sound money.But we all had to form ranks and pull together, that was all.We had to build a spring-board for prosperity.He might be something of a film star, he might have a flair for money, thought Humphrey resentfully, but he wrote with his feet.Others cared less about that deficiency.On the exchanges that same afternoon there was a movement.Against the dollar, the pound rose twenty cents.27By this time, Briers had told Humphrey all that the police had discovered about Lady Ashbrook’s finances.They had gone on false trails, they had made mistakes, they couldn’t find any connection with what they had suspected of Loseby and Susan.When they had convinced themselves that Loseby’s account of that night was unbreakable, they concentrated on her.It could have been a collaboration, though no one had yet imagined any reason why.From the beginning, certainly, after the disclosure of the will, they had been sifting out how Lady Ashbrook contrived to live.The will had set them back, but then Flamson, followed by young detectives more vocal than he was, had insisted that it was altogether too tidy.That was no credit to Briers himself.With Humphrey, now Briers was telling all, he took a leader’s pleasure in pointing out where his lads had been clever.He also took a sardonic pleasure in pointing out where he himself had been dense.It was George Flamson, chiefly, though not alone, who had stuck to it.George Flamson looked like a simple puce-cheeked country boy.Actually, he wasn’t a country boy: his father was a minor pithead official on one of the Midland coalfields.He might have been simple, but he had a sense of fact
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