“Yes, well, that’s a rotten thing to be doing,” Pat pointed out. “As he well knows, Jimmy, and since he’s the only person who’s trying to give your father a fair hearing—”

“For God’s sake! What do you know about this?”

“Enough to suggest you simmer down,” Pat said crisply. “Bill’s on your side, you oaf.”

“I’m not,” Bill said. “Or—God rot it— Look it would have helped a great deal, still would, if you were honest with me. That’s all.”

“About what?” Jimmy demanded. His eyes were wet. “That I asked Fen to marry me because Father’s lost a fortune and Haworth’s draining us dry? Well, I did, and I’m sorry, and I couldn’t even carry that through, and for all I know your people are planning to gaol my father for his part in the crash so perhaps you could just go away and let me try to face up to this almighty mess with a bit of dignity!”

“It’s a bit late for that,” Bill muttered.

“Do shut up,” Pat told him. There was only one other chair, behind the desk; she pulled it round to sit by Jimmy. “Come on, old thing. We’re not going to leave you in trouble. Fen’s been awfully good about what you must admit was a damn fool thing to do. Why don’t you tell Bill what he needs to know and let him help you?”

“I’m here to do my job,” Bill said. “Not help.”

“Oh, rubbish. The Earl is patently honest.”

“It hardly matters what he is.” Jimmy sounded exhausted. “It’s his name on the papers. He signed everything Maurice told him to sign. I’ve no doubt he signed things he shouldn’t have, things that are probably inexcusable. He was in well over his head, he really believed for a while that he was some sort of speculator, and—oh, the devil. You have no idea what it’s been like for him and Mother with that bloody man in our lives.”

“If Haworth fooled your father into signing things he didn’t understand, he needs to say so,” Bill said. “I am sure we—you—can make his case. This is a complex, clever fraud of which nobody who’d met the Earl could imagine him capable.”

“I suppose you mean he’s not bright enough to be crooked.”

“It runs in the family,” Bill said. “Tell him to talk to me.”

“I can’t. He won’t.”

“You’d better. The alternative won’t be pretty. Other people have lost a lot of money and your father will be the scapegoat.”

“Do you think we don’t realise that?” Jimmy demanded. “Do you think I want to protect that cancerous growth of a man? We cannot act against Maurice!”

“Why the devil not?”