David Williams [Williams - Treasure by Degrees

University College, Itchendever, Hants, is long on brains, short on funds and up for grabs. It seems to be facing a take-over either by the American Funny Farms Foundation or by the calculating Crown Prince of Abu Byat.

Banker sleuth Mark Treasure tries to adjudicate but finds baffling murder on his hands.

Of course the vital question is who did it, not to mention other knotty problems that have a bearing on the case. Who sent the gory sheeps head and worse to the eccentric American matron with millions of dollars in her gift? Was her neurotic attorney entirely to be trusted ? Was the celebrated Dr Goldstein, senior tutor and TV personality, behind the Arab bomb scare? Why did the Arabs kidnap the lecturer in English Literature?

Readers of David Williamss first book, Unholy Writ, which Patrick Cosgrave in the Spectator called by far the best written detective story I have read for months, will not be surprised to find the college housed in a stately home with an impeccable architectural provenance and peopled by a wealth of memorable characters. A tantalizing choice of suspects and a pervasive humour make this indeed a Treasure for the connoisseur.

The Author

D AVID W ILLIAMS was born in South Wales, read history at Oxford, and began a career in advertising which has taken him to the top. He is chairman of David Williams & Ketchum, Ltd, and a director of Ketchum, MacLeod & Grove, Inc. in the USA.

He is well known in the advertising industry, has been a Council member of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising since 1959, and at various times has been Honorary Secretary of the IPA and chairman of its working party on the Royal Commission on the Press, as well as a Council member of the Advertising Association and of the Advertising Standards Authority. He is a frequent broadcaster, speaker and writer on the ethics of advertising and modern marketing.

Mr Williams is an active Anglican, Governor of Pusey House, Oxford, and churchwarden of St Mary Aldermary in the City of London, of which he is also a Freeman. He has for some time been vice-chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind.

His interests include architecture, music, golf and gardening. He is married, with two children, and lives at Wentworth, Surrey.

TREASURE BY
DEGREES

DAVID WILLIAMS

ST. MARTINS PRESS
NEW YORK

TREASURE BY DEGREES . Copyright 1977 by David Williams. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Williams, David

Treasure by degrees.

I. Title.

PZ4.W72254Tr3 [PR6073.I42583] 823.914 77-76658

ISBN 0-312-81643-X

All the characters and incidents in this book are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

This one for Rene and Jenny

B UT , MY DEAR chap, you must have played Funny Farms at some time in your life. Mark Treasure, Vice-Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps & Co., merchant bankers, punctuated this remark by affecting a look of benign good humour over the gold-rimmed half-glasses. He had been cultivating this particular expression chin down, eyebrows raised, the long, lean face still undeniably youthful under the hardly receding hairline. He doubted anyone would credit he had reached forty; he could scarcely do so himself. The glasses, recently accepted as inevitable like the last birthday were adapting nicely as a prop to sagacity. Vanity and middle age were also coming to terms.

The histrionics were entirely wasted upon Wilfred Jonkins, Assistant Manager of the Trust Department for the last twelve of his fifty-nine years. For his part he perceived Treasure as the promising young graduate who, despite the lack of any family connection to speak of, had been tipped to achieve great heights when he joined the bank nearly two decades earlier. This promise long since fulfilled, Jonkinss image of Treasure was unaltering and would have remained so even if his superior had appeared with a long, white beard and a hearing trumpet.

The fact remained that Wilfred Jonkins had never played Funny Farms. Further, he had never even heard of Funny Farms until the day before. Since he had no enduring corporate ambition save the attainment of pensionable age two years hence, he had no hesitation in imparting this extra intelligence to young Mr Treasure.

Well, I never, said Treasure. How surprising. Dyou know, I remember playing it in the nursery, before we were old enough to grasp Monopoly. Then there was Lexicon, and I suppose Scrabble came next... or perhaps that was much later: strange how the fashions change. But Funny Farms was always my favourite really to quite a ripe age. This was followed by a good-natured grunt, consciously intended to emphasize the obviously relative nature of the last remark.

I did once play Monopoly, volunteered Jonkins, recalling that single experience with distaste. The wife and I... that is, bridge is more...

More in your line, interrupted Treasure. Very sensible too. Tell me, how is Mrs Jonkins? he enquired opportunely on the strength of the information that such a person existed.

Very nicely, thank you, sir. Jonkins displayed none of the disappointment he felt at this galling admission. He had been passively plotting the womans destruction for years.

Good, said Treasure, unconscious of his innocent solecism as well as the secret criminal propensities of Jonkins, who not only looked like a churchwarden, but also was one. Treasure glanced down at the documents on his desk. Well, despite the lack of your personal patronage, Funny Farms appears to have been in the top selling league of what are called board games for more than forty years. And a highly profitable operation it is too.

The company does make other games, sir.

Yes. Funny Schools, Funny Films, oh, and I see here Funny Golf never heard of that before. Treasure had played golf for Oxford.

Hardly your style, sir, Jonkins put in deferentially. I dont believe they earn much from the other games.

No, theyre just spin-offs. Our research people say that Funny Farms is still the breadwinner, and Funny Farms Incorporated made twenty million dollars before tax last year which would seem to underwrite the stability of the Funny Farms Foundation. Well, no doubt I shall hear more about that at lunch.

Yes, sir. The capital value of the Foundation is just over fifteen million dollars. Most of the assets are in Funny Farms Incorporated preference and ordinary stock made over by the late Mr Hatch during his lifetime.

Mmm, the Foundation business is clear enough, though I must say I find the whole thing a bit eccentric. Whats potentially embarrassing is the prospect of all this manna from Pennsylvania being showered on University College, Itchendever. Anyway, you think Lord Grenwoods going to feel cock-a-hoop when he hears?

CI dont believe theres any conflict of interest, Mr Treasure, said Jonkins earnestly. In any event, you should be able to contact the Chairman through the Sydney office in the next twenty-four hours. We telexed last night.

Treasure privately wished that the Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps would spend more time tending the good works he espoused and less of it inspecting mining explorations in the Australian outback. See for yourself was an excellent motto for a merchant banker but an impracticable one when it led a septuagenarian with indifferent health into making an uncomfortable expedition to antipodean fastnesses. It also made normal and necessary communication tiresomely difficult.

I think I agree on the interest of the parties being compatible, said Treasure slowly. Im more concerned about Lord Grenwoods view on whether his pet educational establishment should house the Funny Farms Faculty of Agriculture. Are they absolutely immovable about the name?