Ancestral Vices by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page B

the ring of smoke, like some ectoplasmicripple of personality, wafted its way towards the fireplace.
    ‘If I read you right,’ he said, ‘what you’re saying is that you are prepared to give me a free hand to research the history of the Petrefact family with all the economic and financial data made available to me and that there will be no interference with my socio-economic deductions from that data.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Lord Petrefact, ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
    Yapp sipped his brandy and wondered at this remarkable generosity. He had prepared himself to turn the whole proposition down if there had been the slightest suggestion of his being asked to write a puff for the Petrefacts – and in fact had been rather looking forward to this demonstration of his high principles – but the last thing he had expected was to be given a free hand. It took some getting used to. Lord Petrefact eyed him closely and savoured his confusion.
    ‘No let or hindrance, sir,’ he said, evidently feeling that ham was paying off. ‘You can go where you like, look at whatever documents you want, talk to anyone, read the correspondence, and there’s enough of that I can tell you, most revealing stuff too, and all this for the . . .’ He checked ‘princely sum’ just in time. There was no point in alienating the young fool just when he had him hooked. Instead he felt in his pocket and produced a document. ‘One hundred thousand pounds. There’s the contract. Twenty thousand on signature, afurther twenty on completion of the manuscript and sixty thousand on publication. Can’t put it fairer than that. Read it through carefully, have whoever you like check it out, you won’t find a flaw in it. Drew it up myself, so I know.’
    ‘I’ll have to think about the offer,’ said Yapp, fighting down a sense of quite extraordinary euphoria and glancing at the first page of the contract. And as if to indicate that he was the last person to bring the pressure of his personality to bear on anyone Lord Petrefact whirred across the room to the door and with a final remark about helping himself to anything he wanted and not worrying about the lights because the servants would see to them, he wished Yapp goodnight and disappeared from the room. Yapp sat on, stunned by the suddenness of it all and with the heady feeling that he had been in the presence of one of the last great capitalist robber barons. Twenty thousand pounds on signature and twenty thousand . . . And no preconditions. Not a single thing to prevent him from documenting the exploitation, the misery, and the rapacity which lay behind that misery, which the Petrefacts had caused their workforce over more than a century.
    There had to be a snag somewhere. Walden Yapp emptied his glass, poured himself another brandy and settled down in comfort to read through the contract.

5
    In the next room Lord Petrefact sat in the darkness for some time savouring his cigar but cursing himself for his stupidity. He also cursed Croxley for the episode of the foreshortened pig and would, if he could have reached him, have given the swine a week’s notice and a piece of his mind. But Croxley had chosen to sleep upstairs. Fawcett House was ill-equipped with elevators and Lord Petrefact too sensible even to consider attempting to manoeuvre his wheelchair up the marble staircase, particularly a marble staircase that had already demonstrated its lethal propensities in the case of Great-Uncle Erskine. Lord Petrefact could recall the tragedy with vivid satisfaction, though it remained a mystery why his great uncle should have first urinated against the balcony before stepping to his death clad only in a partially unveiled condom. Presumably the old goat had mistaken one of the marble statues in a niche for a housemaid.
    But that was beside the point. What was closest to it was that the egregious Croxley was upstairs and he was downstairs and he would have to wait until morning before