Page 131 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘Yes. He’s in the nursery – do you want to see him?’

‘I suppose so. She’s lucky she had a boy first time. If I hadn’t had a girl first I wouldn’t have had to have two. Half the trouble and half the expense.’

Poor Gerald, Caroline thought. She had begun by thinking it callous of Linda to leave him behind with the children (presumably to save on the railway fares), but now she thought he was probably relieved to be rid of her for a while.

Vogel, the Staintons’s banker, had offered to attend Giles in Berkeley Square, but he had preferred to go to the bank, and when he said he was going to discuss the Harvey’s Jam business, Kitty asked shyly if she could go with him.

‘If you want to, of course,’ Giles said, surprised. ‘But it will be dull, you know – talk of money and business and so on.’

‘But I should like to understand where the money comes from,’ Kitty said. ‘I always knew I was an heiress, but at home no one would tell me anything more than that. Mama used to say talking about money was vulgar, but it can’t be, with a banker, can it?’

He laughed. ‘No. What else would you talk to a banker about? Certainly Vogel is a very dull dog. I don’t think you’d get very far with chat about balls and dinners and plays and so on.’

‘So I can come?’

‘Of course,’ Giles said. Despite the words, there was the faintest impatience in his tone. But it was her inheritance, and she wanted to know, so she didn’t back down.

Vogel was a tall, thin man, with a long, sharp nose on which gold-rimmed pince-nez perched like some exotic but very tame bird. Behind them, his eyes were large and blue and heavy-lidded; his hair was fluffy and white, curling like feathers, and left the front of his head shiningly bare. He looked frighteningly intelligent and serious, which was what you would want in a banker, but his wide, thin-lipped mouth stretched into a charming smile as he greeted Kitty, and she didn’t think him at all a dull dog. When she said hesitatingly that she wanted to understand her inheritance, he said that it was a very good idea, and that he was a great advocate for females to understand finance. ‘They, after all, are so often the victims of financial accident or mismanagement – far more than men are, because there’s so little they can do about it. I shall be happy to tell you anything you want to know, Lady Stainton.’

The story behind Harvey’s Jam was an interesting one, he said. ‘Your great-grandfather, Josiah Harvey, first came to Cambridgeshire to farm in 1817. It was just after the Napoleonic Wars, and there was an agricultural slump. Corn prices were very much depressed, so he went in for market-gardening, and did quite well. Then in 1847 the railway came to that part of the country. Josiah took the opportunity to acquire a large piece of land to grow fruit, which of course he could transport quickly to London by rail and sell at Covent Garden.’

Vogel looked enquiringly at Kitty, to see if he was giving too much detail. She said, ‘Please go on. I knew nothing of all this.’

‘Very well, your ladyship. The business was thriving, and whenever there was an adjacent parcel of land for sale, Josiah bought it and expanded. By 1873 he had two hundred and fifty acres under production. He also had two sons, your grandfather John and your great-uncle William. They were the ones who accompanied the fruit up to London to sell it, and they reported to their father that it was mostly jam-makers who were buying it. That year happened to be a bumper year with a very heavy crop, so they persuaded their father to let them try making a batch of jam, and selling it. It proved so popular that two years later they built a factory next to the railway station and went entirely into jam-making.’

‘I never knew my grandfather,’ Kitty said. ‘I think he died when I was quite small.’

Vogel nodded. ‘By the 1880s, the company had expanded into making marmalade, so as to be able to keep a permanent workforce, rather than laying them off in the winter. By the 1890s they owned five hundred acres of land, and had added clear table jellies, custard powder, lemonade, and mincemeat for the Christmas market to their products. It was a remarkable tale of success. When your grandfather died in 1890, everything went to your great-uncle William, and he, being unmarried, left it to you.’

‘I never knew him either,’ Kitty said sadly. ‘I remember my father telling me he had died, but I never met him. I seem to have been unlucky with my relatives.’

Vogel bowed. ‘In that sense, yes. But the company continues to flourish. When your grandfather died, your great-uncle took on the son of a family friend, and trained him up to manage the day-to-day business. Charles Logan is a very able man and runs everything efficiently. It was he, I believe, who came up with many of the new ideas the company has pioneered. And he has now come up with another one, which is what I wanted to put to you today.’

He looked at Giles at this point, and Giles nodded and said, ‘Carry on.’

‘Logan believes the company should be exporting its products, which would mean a very significant expansion – and also, of course, a large increase in profits. To take full advantage of export markets, he believes the jam should be put into tin cans, rather than glass jars as at present. Cans are much lighter than glass; and glass, of course, is breakable, which is a consideration when the goods are travelling long distances, perhaps over rough terrain. And if you were providing jam on a large scale, say to the army, the navy, ocean-going passenger vessels, foreign administrations and so on, you would want to sell it in larger units. The domestic market, I understand, is mostly for a two-pound glass jar. That would not go far when catering for a company of soldiers: you would want your jam in a ten-pound container.’

‘I see,’ said Giles. ‘A ten-pound glass jar would be heavy and unwieldy.’

‘And if it breaks, it’s a lot of jam to be wasted.’

Giles saw the point. ‘The company cook couldn’t scrape it off the floor and use it, for fear there would be shards of glass in it.’

Vogel permitted himself a small smile. ‘Precisely.’

‘Would they do that?’ Kitty asked, slightly shocked.

Giles smiled at her. ‘My dear Kitty, I do advise you not to enter a kitchen while it is actually preparing food. You would never eat again. So, Vogel, what is the catch to this plan of Logan’s?’

‘No catch, my lord. Simply, it requires a large investment to build and equip the canning factory. Logan also wants the business to make its own tin cans – it has always been self-sufficient and, of course in the long run, it would mean more profits for Harvey’s than if cans were being bought in from elsewhere.’

‘I see. And how much would it all cost? How much does Logan want me to invest?’

Vogel mentioned a sum. To Kitty it sounded enormous, but she knew she had no idea of how that related to anything commercial.

Giles, it seemed, also thought it large – too large. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t agree to that. It’s too big a slice of our capital.’

‘It is a lot, but I believe the investment very sound, and certain to yield substantial profits longer term. There is a limit to the potential for expansion in the domestic market, but the world is effectively limitless. Even to secure a contract with the British army would be a major coup.’