If the world of Flawse Hall on Flawse Fell close under Flawse Rigg, Northumberland, had played a large part in persuading Jessica that Lockhart was the hero she wanted to marry, the world of Sandicott Crescent, East Pursley, Surrey, had played no part in Lockhart's choice at all. Used as he was to the open moors of the Border country where the curlews, until he shot them, cried, Sandicott Crescent, a cul-de-sac of twelve substantial houses set in substantial gardens and occupied by substantial tenants with substantial incomes, was a world apart from anything he knew. Built in the thirties as an investment by the foresighted if late Mr Sandicott, the twelve houses were bordered to the south by the Pursley Golf Course and to the north by the bird sanctuary, a stretch of gorse and birch whose proper purpose was less to preserve bird life than to maintain the property values of Mr Sandicott's investment. In short it was an enclave of large houses with mature gardens. Each house was as different in style and similar in comfort as the ingenuity of architects could make it. Pseudo-Tudor prevailed, with an admixture of Stockbroker Spanish Colonial, distinguished by green glazed tiles, and one British Bauhaus with a flat roof, small square windows and the occasional porthole to add a nautical air. And everywhere trees and bushes, lawns and rockeries, rose bushes and ramblers were carefully clipped and trimmed to indicate the cultivation of their owners and the selectness of the district. All in all, Sandicott Crescent was the height of suburbia, the apex of that architectural triangle which marked the highest point of the topographical chart of middle-class ambition. The result was that the rates were enormous and the rents fixed. Mr Sandicott for all his prudence had not foreseen the Rent Act and Capital Gains Tax. Under the former there was no way of evicting tenants or increasing the rent they paid to a financially profitable sum; under the latter the sale of a house earned more for the Exchequer than it did for the owner; together the Rent Act and the tax nullified all Mr Sandicott's provisions for his daughter's future. Finally, and most aggravatingly of all, from Mrs Sandicott's point of view, the inhabitants of the Crescent took plenty of exercise, ate sensible diets and generally refused to oblige her by dying.

It was in large part the knowledge that she was saddled with twelve unsaleable houses whose combined rents barely covered the cost of their maintenance that had persuaded Mrs Sandicott that Jessica had reached the age of maturity she had so assiduously delayed. If Mr Flawse had rid himself of the liability of Lockhart, Mrs Sandicott had done much the same with Jessica and without further inquiry into the extent of Mr Flawse's fortune. It had seemed enough that he owned five thousand acres, a Hall and had but a short life expectancy.

By the time they had disembarked she had begun to have doubts. Mr Flawse had insisted on immediately catching a train to London and thence to Newcastle and had absolutely refused to allow Mrs Flawse to collect her belongings first or to drive him north in her large Rover.

'Ma'am,' he said, 'I place no faith in the infernal combustion engine. I was born before it and I do not intend to die behind it.' Mrs Flawse's arguments had been countered by his ordering the porter to put their baggage on the train. Mr Flawse followed the baggage and Mrs Flawse followed him. Lockhart and Jessica were left to move straight into Number 12 Sandicott Crescent with the promise to have her belongings packed and sent by removal van to Flawse Hall as quickly as possible.

And so the young couple started their married but unorthodox life in a house with five bedrooms, a double garage and a workshop in which the late Mr Sandicott, who had been handy with tools, had made things. Each morning Lockhart left the house, walked to the station and caught the train to London. There in the offices of Sandicott & Partner he began his apprenticeship under Mr Treyer. From the start there were difficulties. They lay less with Lockhart's ability to cope with figures – his limited education had left him mathematically exceedingly proficient – than in the directness of his approach to the problems of tax avoidance, or as Mr Treyer preferred to call it, Income Protection.

'Income and Asset Protection,' he told Lockhart, 'has a more positive ring to it than tax avoidance. And we must be positive.'

Lockhart took his advice and combined it with the positive simplicity his grandfather had adopted towards matters of income tax. Since the old man had transacted all possible business in cash and had made a habit of hurling every letter from the Income Tax authorities into the fire without reading it while at the same time ordering Mr Bullstrode to inform the bureaucratic swine that he was losing money not making it, Lockhart's adoption of his methods at Sandicott & Partner, while initially successful, was ultimately catastrophic. Mr Treyer had been delighted at first to find his IN tray so empty, and it was only his early arrival one morning to discover Lockhart using the toilet as an incinerator for all envelopes marked, 'On Her Majesty's Service' that alerted him to the cause of the sudden cessation of final demands. Worse still, Mr Treyer had long used what he called his Non-Existent Letter device as a means of confusing Income Tax officials to the point where they had nervous breakdowns or demanded to be transferred to other correspondence. Mr Treyer was proud of his Non-Existent Letter technique. It consisted of supposed replies which began 'Your letter of the 5th refers…' when in fact no letter of the 5th had been received. The consequent exchange of increasingly acrimonious denials by tax officials and Mr Treyer's continued assertions had been extremely beneficial to his clients if not to the nerves of Income Tax officials. Lockhart's arson deprived him of the ability to start letters beginning 'Your letter of the 5th refers…' with any confidence that one didn't.

'For all I know there may well have been half a dozen bloody letters of the 5th and all of them referring to some vital piece of information I know nothing about,' he shouted at Lockhart who promptly suggested that he try the 6th instead. Mr Treyer regarded him with starting eyes.

'Which since you burnt those too is a bloody useless suggestion,' he bawled.

'Well, you told me it was our business to protect our clients' interests and to be positive,' said Lockhart, 'and that's what I was doing.'

'How the hell can we protect clients' interests when we don't know what they are?' Mr Treyer demanded.

'But we do,' said Lockhart. 'It's all there in their files. I mean take Mr Gypsum, the architect. I was looking in his file the other day and he made £80,000 the year before last and all he paid in income tax was £1,758. The rest went in expenses. Let me see. He spent £16,000 in the Bahamas in May and…'

'Stop,' yelled Mr Treyer, on the verge of apoplexy, 'I don't want to hear what he spent… Dear Christ!'

'Well, that's what he said he did,' objected Lockhart. 'It's there in his letter to you. £16,000 in four days. Whatever do you think he did with all that money in only four days?'

Mr Treyer leant forward and clutched his head with a hand. To be lumbered with a mentally deficient creature with a photographic memory who went around burning Her Majesty's Official correspondence with a disregard that bordered on the insane was shortening his life.

'Look,' he said as patiently as he could, 'from now on I don't want you to go anywhere near those files, you or anyone else, do you understand?'

'Yes,' said Lockhart. 'What I don't understand is why the richer you are the less tax you pay. There's Gypsum earning a whacking £80,000 and paying £1,758.40 pence while Mrs Pon-sonby who only got £6,315.32 pence in income had to shell out £2,472. I mean…"