Cat O'Nine Tales and Other Stories - Jeffrey Archer [39]
Aunt Gertrude set the ball rolling. On Christmas Day she presented her niece with a white pawn. Elsie placed the single piece on the empty board. It looked lonely
“And now, my dear, you must see if you can complete the set in your lifetime,” the old lady challenged, unaware of the chain of events she was about to set in motion. What had begun as a whim, while attending a car-boot sale in Pudsey, turned into an obsession, as Elsie began to search the globe for the missing pieces. The first Lord Kennington would have been proud of her.
When Lady Kennington gave birth to their first son, Edward, a grateful husband presented his wife with a white queen. A magnificently sculptured ivory lady adorned in a long, intricately carved royal gown. Her Majesty stared down with disdain on the single pawn.
The next acquisition was another white pawn, acquired by Uncle Bertie from a dealer in New York. This allowed the white queen to reign over two of her subjects.
The birth of a second son, James, was rewarded with a red bishop, resplendent in a flowing surplice and carrying a shepherd’s crook. The queen and her two subjects were now able to celebrate Holy Communion, even if they had to travel to the other side of the board to do so. Soon the whole family began to join in the search for the missing pieces. A red pawn was the next acquisition, when it came under the auctioneers hammer at Bonham’s. He took up his place on the far side of the board, waiting to be taken. By now, everyone in the trade was only too aware of Lady Kennington’s lifetime mission.
Next to find its place on the board was a white castle, which Aunt Gertrude left Elsie in her will.
In 1991 the twelfth Lord Kennington passed away, by which time the white set was only lacking two pawns and a knight, while the red set was short of four pawns, one rook and a king.
On 11 May 1992, a dealer in possession of three red pawns and a white knight knocked on the door of Kennington Hall. He had recently returned from a journey through the outer regions of China. A long and arduous trek, he told her ladyship. But, he assured her, he had not returned empty-handed.
Although her ladyship was in her declining years, she still held out for several days, before the dealer finally settled his bill at the Kennington Arms and left clutching a check for £26,000.
Despite following up rumors from Hong Kong, flying to Boston, contacting dealers as far afield as Moscow and Mexico, rumor rarely became reality in Lady Kennington’s unremitting search for the last of the missing pieces.
During the next few years, Edward, the thirteenth Lord Kennington, came across the last red pawn and a red rook in the home of a penniless peer, who had been on the same staircase as Eddie at Eton. His brother James, not to be outdone, acquired two white pawns from a dealer in Bangkok.
This left only the red king to be unearthed.
The family had for some time been paying well over the odds for any missing pieces, since every dealer across the globe was well aware that if Lady Kennington was able to complete the set it would be worth a fortune.
When Elsie entered her ninth decade, she informed her sons that on her demise she planned to divide the estate equally between the two of them, with one proviso. She intended to bequeath the chess set to whichever one of them found the missing red king.
Elsie died at the age of eighty-three, without her king.
Edward had already acquired the title—something you can’t dispose of in a will—and now, after death duties, also inherited the Hall and a further £857,000. James moved into the Cadogan Square apartment, and also received the sum of £857,000. The Kennington Set remained in its display case for all to admire, one square still unoccupied, ownership unresolved. Enter Max Glover.
Max had one undisputed gift, his ability to wield a willow. Educated at one of England’s minor public schools, his talent as a stylish left-handed batsman allowed him to mix with the very people that he would later rob.