Mrs Hudson came in without knocking while I was having forty winks. I awoke to hear Holmes expostulating “Dear Mrs H, please desist from wipin’ your hands on your apron – so common”. I knew that her intrusion must be warranted.
“There’s a gentleman downstairs ‘ollering at me sayin’ ‘e ‘as to see yer.”
“Well send him up” and a stout, rubicund cove in a frock coat surged in. He started to explain himself but Holmes interrupted, “I can see by your attire that you work in the City and I deduce that you spend little time in your office and are frugal”. “My name is Blore, the L is silent” he gasped. “My deductions are obvious. You have a florid complexion, you are a sailor or possibly a mountaineer, you came here in a hansom cab and did not tip the driver – I heard him complaining from up here.”
Holmes’ eyes were hooded as he watched his visitor. “You have come to me because of a financial problem, I observe.” Blore nodded in surprise.
”Your cuff has an ink stain, only one. You are not accustomed to working in your office but something has happened to your business that you have tried to deal with and now you seek my advice.”
”Indeed I do Mr Holmes. It is most unfortunate that my clerk has stolen £12 million from my customers. Not for his benefit but for the good of my business. He turned a blind eye to a clause in the Consumer Credit Act and I’m at my wits’ end.”
Often I find it hard to keep up with Holmes’ methods and to this day I cannot understand what Holmes meant when he advised putting the money in a golden bottle.
This poor pastiche on Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s stories depicts fictional characters and events.
Now for something completely different. A few readers who are clients of private bank C Hoare & Co (founded in 1672) have sent me a newsletter they received from Alexander S Hoare earlier this month. As it is in the public domain I will quote a paragraph.
No sooner had we bolstered our reserves than we discovered our first serious compliance hit. Over several years we conducted perfectly satisfactory lending business with our customers under the Consumer Credit Act. The Act specifies annual statements we had to send to customers. Somehow we failed to include a couple of standard sentences on these statements. The impact of this omission was a statutory requirement to refund over £12m (sic) of interest we had earned on all such advances. Thank you to those customers who elected to redirect their funds to the Golden Bottle Trust and other charities.
Mr Hoare does not mention the fine levied on his bank for this trivial oversight.