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.Nor could her grandson.He was a little in debt, but very little.Brother officers like Douglas Gimson were well off, and Loseby lived up to their standards.He couldn’t have done that on his pay.The explanation was not complete, and was still emerging in bits and pieces.Humphrey heard it in a more ordered fashion than the detectives collected it, and so might have found it less bewildering or more obvious than at first sight.As to Lady Ashbrook’s sources of income, they were now established.She had a trifle from her investments.She had an annuity of £1500.She had her old-age pension.Some of the grand and rich were too lofty to take their pensions, but not many.Lady Ashbrook was not among them.There was no other income on which she had paid tax.From what Flamson and colleagues at the Yard could identify, she had about enough to pay her rates, heating and lighting, and perhaps the £15 a week she paid to Maria, the cleaner.The bills for rates and the rest, and her minute income tax, she paid by cheques on Coutts Bank.Then what? She existed parsimoniously in food and drink, but it cost something.She still bought good clothes, and frequently, for a woman of her age.A smart hairdresser came to her house once a week.She might be mean, but it seemed that she didn’t stint herself of what she had thought appropriate in her days of fashion.All those accounts, and Maria’s wages, were paid in notes.Where did the money come from? Occasionally, she drew sums from her bank, but only small ones.This expenditure on herself, year after year, was hard to compute, but couldn’t have been less than £2000 a year, and probably much more.Further, there were indications – not yet definite – that she passed quite large tips to her grandson.For weeks, the police could find no answer.They searched among her old acquaintances.A good many were rich and could have helped her.Could even have helped her in some convoluted fashion devised to avoid taxation – for that some experts at Scotland Yard, used to fiscal dodges, were already looking.No sign anywhere.Then what might have seemed like a fluke or an inspired guess broke through.It was neither.It was the apparatus grinding on.The detectives pored over names of her contacts.In the will which had been superseded by her final one, there was a bequest and a message of thanks to Desmond O’Brien, at a Wall Street address.Who was he? The information was easy to gather.He was a well-known New York lawyer, head of a reputable firm, the only oddity of which was that all the partners were Catholics.He had died, nearly eighty, in 1974.More than being a successful lawyer, he was better known as an influence behind the scenes in the Democratic Party.For many years he had been one of the powers in the New Jersey democratic machine, and confidant of presidents.He was said to be in politics one of the toughest of operators.In private, on the other hand, he had a reputation for benevolence and propriety.He was a bachelor, pious, believing and practising.He had a famous collection of pottery.As an Irish Catholic who was on good terms with English politicians, during the last war the White House used him as a high-powered messenger between Washington, London, Dublin.At the same time, the Ashbrooks had been in Washington, as they were again during the second Churchill government.It was common knowledge there that they had been close friends of Desmond O’Brien.He lived an ascetic life, apart from whisky, but he liked escorting beautiful women.It was also possible that he had an amiable weakness for the high-born.When Lord Ashbrook died, the attachment between the other two went on without a break – innocent, so the worldly said, which must have been a change for Lady Ashbrook, while the less worldly were gossiping about the chances of a marriage.O’Brien wrote her letters, telephoned her across the ocean and, while he was still able-bodied enough to travel, visited her in London.Those bits of information had been extracted from his office by the FBI, who had been invoked by Scotland Yard officers in New York.The FBI couldn’t extract much more.O’Brien’s office was drilled to secrecy.But it was discovered, though through other sources, that, quite early in their friendship, she had transferred her holdings in American securities into O’Brien’s name.Very nice of her, said a time-worn FBI executive, trying to keep the wolf from the door of a very rich man.Further, the O’Brien office volunteered that, among the private funds handled by his firm, there was one which he dealt with strictly by himself.It wasn’t a large one, perhaps two hundred thousand dollars, though that was nothing but a guess.In September, that was the extent of the hard evidence.There was not a word on paper
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