‘… we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a mediaeval conception.’
Von Bork, ‘His Last Bow’
Dudley Hambrough’s unstinting desire to somehow recover a semblance of his former wealth and lifestyle saw to it that he, Tot and Monson (aided by a motley cast of supporting characters) embarked on a series of outlandish and ill-fated financial schemes. Their dealings were marked by evolving mutual distrust, shifting loyalties and outright dishonesty. Moreover, the substance of much of the negotiations they each entered into was illusory. Figures were routinely plucked from the air, offers made and sums of money guaranteed without their having any basis in real assets. At the heart of their various plans was a shared belief – held with far greater optimism than it surely deserved – that they might each make a tidy sum by the mere juggling of the Hambrough finances in order to open up new credit lines. Just as Monson believed his family’s reputation was enough on its own to stock a warehouse, they each laboured under the illusion that Hambrough’s once good name could be manipulated to make money. But did this shared sense of entitlement create a chain of events that rendered the death of Cecil Hambrough a grisly inevitability?
Major Hambrough’s finances had been managed by the firm Messrs Kyne & Hammond until sometime in 1889 when they conceded that they could see no way to raise the capital to pay off the Eagle Insurance Company and save his Steephill estate. After Eagle Insurance took possession of the Major’s life interest in Steephill in 1890, Hambrough and Tot then began to discuss how he might recover his stake in it. With Hambrough barely able to muster a farthing in his own name, it was a tall order. But Tot was not one to let a chance pass and he came up with what he hoped was a master strategy. Hambrough had a number of life insurance policies that Tot believed could be exchanged for new ones offering better terms for lower premiums. The Major could surrender his existing policies (freeing up, he was led to believe, some £5,000 or £6,000 of capital) and then borrow against the newer, more advantageous policies, using the money to pay off Eagle Insurance and so reclaim Steephill (and its revenue of several thousand a year).
There was a problem, though. The Major may have been only in his mid-forties but he was not in sufficiently good health to pass the medical examination demanded by the insurance companies. In due course, the health of both the Major and his son would become the subject of public speculation. The Major would always claim that neither he nor Cecil suffered any significant condition, his own failure to pass the medical being merely a temporary glitch. It would subsequently be rumoured that the Major and Cecil both suffered from Bright’s disease, a condition characterized by inflammation of the kidneys and often associated with high blood pressure and heart disease. However, there is limited evidence that this was the case. Certainly, Tot did not believe that Hambrough Snr was a lost cause. He employed one Dr Hambleton on a fee of £3 a week to supervise the Major’s health and get his fitness levels up. Tot also provided Hambrough with a weekly allowance of £7 to tide him over in the meantime. Hambleton, incidentally, was an acquaintance of Monson, whom he had first met around 1882 or 1883 through a colleague at a hospital where the doctor had worked.
When Tot spent on others, it was usually with a view to getting his money back and a bit more, too. In what was effectively a paper exercise, the Major granted him mortgages worth £2,500 over his assets to cover whatever outlays Tot had to make, as well as a chunk of commission. Quite what the real worth of these mortgages was given Hambrough’s precarious situation is unclear, but they served well enough as a negotiating chip for Tot, and later Monson, in their dealings with other financial institutions. Nonetheless, as the months ticked past in 1890 it was clear that the Major was still not in good enough shape to pass a medical and so Tot’s careful plot unravelled. By then, though, Monson was on the scene and keen to act for the Major, too.
This seems to have been a situation that initially suited everyone. Monson was, of course, employed as Cecil’s tutor on £300 a year, but all must have known that there was little prospect he would see any of that until Hambrough Snr’s situation was resolved. Indeed, as Monson’s own finances took a turn for the worse, he became every bit as reliant upon Tot’s bankrolling as the Major. Perhaps that is why he took on the challenge of reviving the Hambrough family fortunes with far more gusto than he showed for teaching the boy. Tot, meanwhile, was able to slip into the shadows, leaving the frontline negotiations to Monson but providing the oof (his memorable expression for money) so that the other two were placed firmly in his debt.
According to the Major, he was under the impression that Monson was to act as his agent in renewed talks with Eagle Insurance – a not unreasonable assumption. However, it was not long before the dynamics of the relationship changed. For much of 1891, the Major expected Monson to strike a deal that would see Eagle Insurance offer him a contract allowing him to reclaim his life interest – a contract, he believed, that would be on the table for several months in return for a deposit somewhere in the region of £600. This would, theoretically, give him the time to get his fitness levels up sufficiently to renegotiate his life insurance and then raise the required capital.
However, between May and September 1891, the Major signed over to Monson a number of additional mortgages on his assets, worth about £10,600 altogether – far beyond an ordinary agent’s fee. Monson in turn used them to raise several loans of a few hundred pounds each, with the Major claiming he only saw a small percentage of that money coming his way. Furthermore, by then Monson had become the main conduit for the cash Tot provided to Hambrough. It must have been truly humbling for the Major, who was reduced to sending begging letters to a man who was meant to be in his employ. Monson responded by clearing some of the Major’s low-level debts and paying for his accommodation, as well as flinging small amounts of money in Hambrough’s direction – all part of a process that saw him able to dangle the Major on a string.
Critically, around this time the Major put his name to a letter permitting Monson to negotiate on his own behalf, rather than as an agent for the Major. Quite why Hambrough agreed to this is unclear, although it is likely that he received dubious legal advice suggesting that since he (Hambrough) was subject to bankruptcy proceedings, it would be necessary for Monson to sign paperwork in his own name. The Major certainly understood it as a means to an end – perhaps naively, his expectation was that Monson would undertake the legal formalities to take nominal possession of Steephill before passing the estate back to Hambrough in return for a fee. Hambrough’s new solicitor, Morris Fuller, appointed in February 1892, certainly saw the danger, noting that were Monson to have the estate signed over to him in his own name, ‘when the boy [Cecil] came of age, Monson and the boy would be in such a position that Monson could do what he liked’.
It was also about now that there was the first suggestion that, given the Major’s problems in passing a medical, they should look at insuring Cecil instead. A plan was mooted that would have seen Cecil’s life insured for £60,000, upon which enough capital might be raised to free up the Hambrough estate and leave a few thousand over for Monson. It was, however, quickly rejected by the Major and there the matter seemed to lie.
By the end of 1891, Monson’s powers of persuasion had seen him reach an agreement in principle with Eagle Insurance to take over the Hambrough estate – in accordance with the rights the Major had assigned to him – but by then Monson had a lawyer, Mr R. C. Hanrott, with aspirations of his own. Hanrott had recently endured a run-in with the law, having earlier in the year faced charges (later dismissed) of conspiring to defraud a certain Sir Eustace Piers and the shareholders of Ormerod, Grierson and Co., a long-established Manchester engineering firm. When Monson was unable to pay the required deposit to Eagle Insurance, Hanrott moved to take over the agreement in his own name. Monson began legal proceedings against his solicitor and the courts duly found in his favour, forcing Hanrott to reassign the contract to his client. However, Monson still lacked the necessary funds to furnish the deposit so struck a new deal that gave Hanrott a 25 per cent share of the deal. But the agreement, forged amid mistrust and bad will, was dead by the middle of 1892, the funds for the purchase never materializing.
Major Hambrough was by then done with Monson, his faith that his son’s tutor might see him right utterly exhausted. His correspondence tells us that the Hanrott sideshow confirmed his growing suspicions that Monson was out for himself. Where once it had seemed that the tutor yearned merely for a sizable commission by renegotiating the Major’s financial affairs, it was now evident that he had his eye on taking over the estate wholesale – a step too far even for the gullible Major. The schism had been building for several months. For instance, in February 1892 the Major instructed his solicitor, Mr Morris Fuller, to send a letter demanding a full breakdown of the monies Monson had spent in the interests of the Hambroughs. Monson gave the request short shrift. In an antagonistic reply, he suggested to Fuller that he ought to consider the merits of representing the Major given that Hambrough was an undischarged bankrupt who could be subject to criminal proceedings for racking up yet further debt. This was not strictly true – while the Major was facing bankruptcy proceedings he was never declared bankrupt and so, while operating within an admittedly grey area of the law, he was not in breach of it. It was also somewhat rich for Monson to be casting such allegations, given that he himself would be declared bankrupt just a few months later.
Monson also threatened to stop the albeit limited funding he was providing to the Hambroughs, suggesting that he could see the Major thrown out on his ear from the rooms on London’s Jermyn Street that he was then inhabiting. Fuller, though, saw no reason to turn his back on his client, instead seeking to find a workaround with Monson. He suggested that the tutor might continue negotiations with Eagle Insurance in his own name while the Major got his finances in order, but on the understanding that Monson would sell any agreement on to Hambrough Snr at a later date for a pre-agreed price. The Major, justifiably, remained nervous, fearing what Monson might do were he to get his hands on Steephill even under these terms.
There were other sources of tension. Hambrough Snr not only feared what Monson might intend for Steephill but believed he was losing his son to him, too. He was particularly annoyed that Cecil had not been signed up as planned to the same Hants Militia in which he himself had served. Instead, in May 1892, Cecil joined the West Yorkshire Regiment in direct contravention of his father’s orders. The Major felt thoroughly hoodwinked. Monson was supposed to be buying Cecil’s uniform for the Hants regiment when he claimed his London tailor could not fulfil the order. The Major thus agreed to allow Monson to take Cecil to York to buy the uniform there. Instead, it was on this trip north that Cecil signed up with the Yorkshires. As the Major’s ire grew, so Cecil reduced his contact with his mother and father, instead encamping with the Monsons. Invitation after invitation to visit his parents in London was rebuffed, and allegations of misconduct against Monson rejected by the impetuous son. On 24 March, Cecil wrote to his father that ‘I cannot see any good in coming to town. I could not do any good, and should only be an extra expense to you, and, goodness knows, money is scarce enough …’ A few days later there was another missive:
My dear Father,
I am truly sorry if I have added to your troubles, and can only say that I had no intention of doing so. I think you greatly mistake Mr Monson’s intentions. I am sure he has not misrepresented things to me, and I cannot see what nefarious ends he has in view. He has always been straightforward to me. How has he attempted to defraud you? He has only tried to save the estates from being sold by the Eagle. If it had not been for him Hanrott would have bought them. I can assure you I mean no disrespect to you whatever. I am only doing what I am sure is for the best. I would sooner not leave my studies now, but in the holidays I should very much like to come and see you. The Eagle, as you are aware of, have foreclosed, and have got the foreclosure made good by the Court of Chancery, so it is impossible to upset it. Mr Monson is going to pay off so as to cut off the entail when I come of age. If he does not succeed, and it passes into other hands, even when I come of age I do not see what could be done. I do not see how anything can be done at all except through him, so I think it is bad policy, if nothing else, to quarrel with him. I shall never forget how good both you and my mother have been to me. I am sure this grieves me very much. But you know I must have an education; I cannot go about utterly ignorant all my life.
Undeterred, the Major continued his attempts to, in his own mind, liberate his son from Monson’s grip. On 20 June, he wrote:
My dear Cecil,
Your training with the Yorks Militia will now be over in a few days, I am writing to tell you that it is our wish that you should join us here, and not return to Riseley. On no consideration whatever can I permit you to continue your studies under Mr Monson. Your mother and I have our own very good reasons for our decision in this respect, one of which is the gross and unpardonable deception which was practised upon us with regard to your joining the Yorkshire Regiment. We have made our own arrangements as regards you until you are of age; though, of course, we shall be anxious and willing to meet your wishes so far as lies in our power and our duties as your guardians will permit. I am arranging an allowance for your education and maintenance, which will enable us to give you everything necessary for your comfort, not, of course, permitting of extravagance.
But Cecil had no intention of swapping his life of freedom and pleasure with the Monsons for the strictures and deprivations that his parents offered. By now, the Major was speculating as to how Monson had brought Cecil so thoroughly under his spell, even suggesting that the tutor had used hypnotism to subdue the boy. The Major’s animosity ramped up as the year went on. In October 1892, he wrote directly to Monson, informing him that ‘I have once more written to my son requiring his presence in town, and will thank you to see that my wishes are obeyed,’ adding that Cecil would continue his studies ‘but certainly not with you’. Monson replied: ‘I beg to say that I am not your son’s keeper’, echoing the sentiment from a letter he had sent back in July: ‘I hereby give you notice that I am not custodian of your son, as you seem to suggest in your letter. Your son is perfectly at liberty to go when and where he pleases, as far as I am concerned.’
Meanwhile, heartfelt appeals to Cecil himself (‘You are killing mother and causing untold trouble,’ read one telegram) continued to fall on deaf ears. In November, the Major went as far as to threaten legal action against anyone attempting to obtain money for Cecil without parental authorization. ‘I do not understand what you have further found out against Mr Monson,’ Cecil flashed back, ‘but after he has done everything for me that he possibly could I think that it would be extremely mean of me to come away as you propose.’ His father’s suggestion that his son’s ‘most unjustifiable conduct’ was ‘not of [his] own thought or desire’ may well have only fanned the flames of Cecil’s discontent. The Major apparently saw no risk in consigning the young man eager to carve his niche in the world to the role of a dupe.
The net result of all these machinations was that by the middle of 1892 there were two competing alliances going after the Major’s former life interest. On one side was the Major himself, Dr Hambleton (who had assumed a role something akin to the Major’s trustee), and a solicitor called Prince, who had been brought in as a replacement for Fuller. On the other was Cecil and Monson, with Tot the spectre in the background, drip-feeding money to Monson (and via him, to Cecil and the Major). Following his bankruptcy in August 1892, Monson needed the oof from Tot as much as the Major needed his handouts from Monson. It was clearly an unhealthy state of affairs – Monson and the Major, daggers-drawn and both intent on keeping up a standard of living that would collapse without the largesse of their puppet-master, Tot.
Around this time, a new and rather mysterious figure entered the scene – Adolphus Frederick James Jerningham. Like others in this story, he came from noble lineage – the Jerninghams had held the baronetcy of Cossey in Norfolk since the seventeenth century and more recently had also claimed the barony of Stafford – but was himself low down the familial line of succession and found himself in straitened circumstances. Although only a fairly distant relative of the incumbent baronet, Fitzherbert Stafford-Jerningham, by some quirks of inheritance, Adolphus’s son, William, would nonetheless become the last baronet in 1913 on the death of his second cousin once removed.
Adolphus was a civil engineer who had not practised at all since 1876. Prior to that, he had hardly a stellar career – for instance, a building company he had been associated with had gone bankrupt in 1869. As of 1892 he was living in rooms a little outside London, making do on money generated by some property in the capital that he had gained through marriage. He was unsure as to quite how much the property brought in but he hoped that he would not be reliant on it forever, since he believed he had a good expectation of ‘succeeding to a position of some distinction’. It would be fair to say that Jerningham, already fifty years old, lived a life unhindered by specifics. The terms of his relationship with Monson and Cecil were characteristically vague. He first got to know Monson in early 1892 when Monson had sought to secure a loan for Jerningham. Within a few weeks he had been co-opted into negotiations for the Major’s life interest. Exactly why is unclear. Presumably, his gentlemanly air – even if based on shaky foundations – persuaded Monson that he might be of some use. Even so, it seems an eccentric decision. ‘I was asked by Monson to be Cecil Hambrough’s trustee and guardian,’ Jerningham would recall, ‘but nothing was settled; I never heard that I was appointed.’ Nonetheless, Monson represented him as such in assorted dealings. What Jerningham was to be offered in return for acting as a figurehead was never clear. By his own admission, there was no prospect that he might be able to put up the money for the purchase himself and he also claimed that Monson never discussed remuneration with him. He would also reflect that Cecil ‘knew very little about business and only went by what Mr Monson told him’. It was an altogether strange arrangement.
There was yet another twist in proceedings in early 1893 when Agnes Monson took Cecil to court and received a judgment in her favour for £800 for monies owed for board, lodgings and education. The suit went undefended and Agnes promptly sold the debt to Tot for £200 in cash. There is no indication that the case did anything to dent Cecil’s affection for the Monsons and, indeed, there is the suspicion that he was quite happy to go along with it. For the Monsons (and by extension, Cecil), it created a nugget of new capital from Tot, while Tot was doubtless happy to absorb the hit for the time being in return for cashing in his chips later on. The more indebted he could make the Hambroughs to him, the greater the potential rewards if they could eventually recover the gleaming diamond that was Steephill.
However, the hopes of the Monson–Tot axis received a mighty blow at the beginning of April 1893 when Eagle Insurance agreed to transfer the life interest in Steephill back to the Major’s consortium in a deal scheduled to be completed by 1 August. Desperation is evident in a letter sent ostensibly by Cecil (although the voice of Monson echoes through it) to Henry Richards, solicitor for the Eagle Insurance, on 29 March 1893:
The question appears to be as to whether the directors will accept Mr Jerningham’s offer or that of Mr Prince [the Major’s solicitor]. I hope, however, that the directors will take my position into their consideration and accept Mr Jerningham’s offer, and that they will distinguish what a very great difference there is between the bona fides of the two offers. The one made by Jerningham, with a deposit of £5000, is a substantial offer made by a gentleman of considerable position, and one from which I shall benefit; while the other, made through Mr Prince, with a small deposit, is merely a speculation in the name of a person of no position whatever, and with a view to making money out of me when I come of age, ostensibly for the benefit of my father, but really for the benefit of others. If the directors accepted the offer made by Mr Prince I should absolutely be deprived of any further interest in the estate to which I am the tenant entail, because, when I come of age, I should have either to disentail or take the consequences, which might be very serious. My father has the benefit of his life estate, besides which he has recently charged the estate with an annuity of £400 per annum to my mother, which has been already mortgaged with a policy on her life; he has also charged the estate with £5000 for the benefit of my sisters and brother, and thus I am left quite unprovided for, and made to suffer the consequences. – I am yours truly, W. D. C. Hambrough.
The deal with the Major was essentially an act of goodwill by Eagle Insurance, who could have opted to follow the letter of the law and retain the life interest so as to dispose of it however they saw fit. A counter-offer in Jerningham’s name was meanwhile set aside, with the possibility of taking it up should the Major fail to make the required payments by the cut-off date. At the end of July, Monson learned that there had been little progress on the Major’s part and saw a glimmer of a new opportunity from which Jerningham would now be sidelined. ‘I understand from a letter from Dr Hambleton that nothing has been done by them in regard to the purchase of the Hambrough life estates,’ Monson wrote to Richards. ‘Therefore I assume your clients will be open to negotiations otherwise for the sale, as the time mentioned was in August.’ What he proposed was a deal with a completion date of June 1894, whereby his wife would pay a deposit of 5 per cent towards a £40,000 buy-out price. ‘Cecil Hambrough is staying here with us,’ he added. ‘I do not see it concerns your clients what arrangements Mrs Monson may enter into with Cecil Hambrough, so long as you are satisfied there is a bona fide purchase for your clients and a substantial deposit made.’ Quite where the bankrupt Monson and his wife (who at this point was reduced to pawning household items to get by) were going to raise the £2,000 for the deposit was never explained. Regardless, Richards was unconvinced and rejected the offer. Moreover, he revealed that the deal with the Major was delayed only because Eagle Insurance’s secretary had been so busy that the paperwork had been stalled on their side.
Cecil and the Monsons had moved to Ardlamont back in May 1893, renting it from the owner, Major John Lamont, for £450 for the season. Edith Hiron, governess to the Monson children, also came with them, and before long the domestic staff had expanded to include a cook and kitchen maid, a housemaid, a butler and a nursemaid, not to mention gardeners, gamekeepers and other estate staff employed by Lamont. Tot granted Cecil an allowance of £10 a week and covered much of the expense incurred by the move. After life at Riseley Hall had turned sour, this handsome, out-of-the-way house on the arresting Cowal Peninsula promised yet another new beginning. Crucially, Cecil was thoroughly cocooned from his parents, the Monsons cementing themselves into their role of surrogate family. Here he could commune with nature – as he loved to do – while enjoying the personal freedom craved by most young men finding their way in the world, all while accessing the comforts of a fine and well-tended home.
Little wonder that before long there was talk of taking up an option on Ardlamont on a more permanent basis. In July, Tot travelled up from London to discuss how they might go about it. Shortly after his return to the capital, he received a message from Monson in which he claimed to have struck a deal to buy the estate in Cecil’s name for £48,000. He suggested that he and Tot should factor in a further £1,000 each for their efforts in securing the property, so that Cecil would need to raise a total of £50,000 to complete the purchase. If Tot could supply capital for the deposit – a mere £250 – then they would have until June 1894 to raise the remainder. In fact, since the estate was burdened with £37,000 of debt that Cecil would be taking on in the purchase, he needed only to find a further £13,000 to cover the house price and Monson and Tot’s commission.
All of this might have worked out quite nicely but for one thing – Monson had reached no such agreement with the agents of Major Lamont. Indeed, he had not even approached them with the proposal. They were in fact asking for £85,000 and later revealed that they would never have considered a figure as low as that quoted by Monson. Furthermore, even if they had done so, they would have required a down payment of several thousand, not several hundred. Nor was it the first sharp move that Monson had pulled in relation to Ardlamont. The rental, it would transpire, was secured on the signature of Cecil’s ‘guardian’ Jerningham, who had in fact never seen the contract let alone knew that Monson had forged his signature upon it.
So, what possible motivation could Monson have had for misrepresenting to Tot, of all people, the potential purchase of Ardlamont? It is difficult to see the ruse as anything other than an attempt to defraud a further sum out of a man who was already covering most of the Monsons’ outgoings. But to what end? By now, Monson had hit upon a new scheme – insuring the life of Cecil in the name of his wife. But he needed a cash injection to cover the premium. It was a precarious undertaking, made all the more complicated by the fact that Cecil was a minor and the law required that anybody taking out life insurance on another must show an insurable interest – in other words, the insuring party must prove that they will derive benefit from the continuing existence of the insured individual. This had not always been the case. Until 1774, literally anybody could take out a policy on anybody else, no matter how they were connected or indeed whether they had a connection at all. While it might have been feared that such a system would give rise to an increase in murders by those set to benefit from the deaths of complete strangers, it was actually concerns about gambling that prompted a change in the law. Laying a wager on the death of a stranger – often a celebrity – became a popular pastime for gents in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was said that in some London clubs, such bets constituted a quarter of all wagers in the 1770s. The Gambling Act of 1774 aimed to quell such ‘mischievous kind of gaming’.
Monson therefore needed to show that he, or more specifically Agnes, had an insurable interest in Cecil. This should not have been too taxing a task. Cecil had been provided with board and upkeep and had, in theory at least, received tutoring, none of which had been paid for by his father. There was a sizable bill racking up month by month, which the Monsons might legitimately believe would be met once Cecil reached adulthood and had independent means of his own. Monson and Agnes could convincingly argue that they had an interest in Cecil’s ongoing existence, and that should that existence come to an end they qualified for compensation. The £250 extorted from Tot would do very nicely to cover the early premiums.
But the temptation to stretch a legitimate claim of interest was to undo Monson’s early attempts to agree a policy. For instance, he approached the Scottish Provident Institution in search of £50,000 cover when he must have known he had no chance of proving such a large insurable interest. In due course, he would reduce the figure to £10,000 to, in his own words, ‘cover the money actually due from Mr Cecil Hambrough on his attaining twenty-one’, but never got around to proving an interest at that level, either. He then began talks with the Liverpool, London and Globe Company, asking variously for coverage of £15,000, £50,000 and £26,000. On 31 July 1893, Cecil even sent a letter to the company declaring: ‘I am requested by Mrs Agnes Maud Monson to write to inform you that she has an interest in my life to the extent of £26,000. I have given her an undertaking to pay her this sum on my attaining twenty-one, if I should live until then.’ ‘If I should live until then …’ Those words would gain a devastating poignancy within a mere fortnight of Cecil writing them. The request, meanwhile, was rejected at a meeting with Monson in Glasgow on 2 August. ‘It is a pity,’ Monson told the company’s secretary.
After his unsuccessful meeting in Glasgow, Monson promptly visited the nearby office of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. He now adopted a different tack, seeking a policy directly in Cecil’s name. In a meeting with John M’Lean, the company’s district manager, Monson presented himself as Cecil’s trustee and guardian. His charge, Monson said, was due to come into a fortune of £200,000 on reaching his majority and was currently intent on buying the Ardlamont estate. In order not to miss the opportunity by delaying the purchase until he turned twenty-one, so Monson said, Cecil was being advanced £20,000 by Agnes. Cecil therefore required £20,000 coverage to be actioned, subject to a medical, by 8 August – the purported day of the sale.
There was the question of the validity of the insurance policies, Cecil being below the age of twenty-one. As things stood, were he to die before attaining his majority, the policy would be paid out to his next of kin – his parents. To do otherwise required a reassignation of the policies, which would require the permission of Major Hambrough. Any reassignment undertaken by the underage Cecil on his own account had no legal status in either England or Scotland. To what extent Monson was aware of this would become a question of deep significance. Regardless, Cecil set about naming Mrs Monson as beneficiary of the policies. He wrote to the Mutual Life, requesting:
Will you kindly deliver my two insurance policies of £10,000 each [this was how the £20,000 cover was to be structured] to Mr and Mrs Monson, as I have assigned the policies to Agnes Maud Monson for proper considerations received. Mrs Monson will therefore be the person to whom the insurance is payable in the event of my death. Kindly acknowledge receipt of this notice and oblige,
Yours truly, W. D. C. Hambrough.
To Agnes he sent a separate note. ‘I am willing,’ he wrote, ‘that you should hold the policies as security for all monies due to you from me, and as security against all liabilities incurred by you on my behalf, and in the event of my death occurring before the repayment of these monies you will be the sole beneficiary of these policies.’
On 8 August, the Mutual Life duly granted the two policies of £10,000 each on condition of payment of a premium of £194 3s 4d. This money was drawn on Agnes’s bank account in anticipation of Tot’s cheque for £250 – for the non-existent deposit Monson had claimed was due – clearing. He had post-dated it for 10 August, given he was experiencing some cash flow problems. ‘I have an awful lot of irons in the fire,’ he had told Monson, ‘and the oof don’t always turn up as expected.’ It was only after securing the deal with Mutual Life that Monson travelled to Edinburgh to meet William Murray of Messrs Anderson, the agents handling the Ardlamont sale. Murray emphasised that the property was available for £85,000, while Monson explained Cecil Hambrough could not possibly go above £60,000. The negotiations ended before they had begun. What Monson hoped to achieve by the slightly surreal encounter is uncertain. Perhaps he believed it might head off any initial enquiries by the Mutual into the story of Cecil’s purchase of Ardlamont. Monson could surely spin the meeting as a step in his ongoing negotiations with the estate agents. Maybe he hoped that it might also hold off Tot if he wanted to check out exactly how his £250 was being used. Indeed, at one point Monson even suggested that Tot make the cheque out to the agents before it was decided instead to put it in Agnes’s name.
Clearly, though, Tot had his concerns about what his business partner was up to. Monson was certainly acting with a new level of recklessness. On 8 August, for instance, he met with James Donald of the engineering and shipbuilding firm, Hanna, Donald & Wilson, to talk over the sale of a steam yacht, Alert, on behalf of Cecil. The proposed price was £1,200 – money that Monson had no hope of raising. Tot seems to have smelled a rat, for not only did he post-date his cheque for £250 but he ultimately had it cancelled, although not before Agnes’s bank had unsuspectingly honoured it.
The situation on 9 August was such that the Monsons were in possession of two temporary policies insuring the life of Cecil for £20,000 – policies granted on the basis of a fallacious real estate deal and paid for with a bouncing cheque. Moreover, they were essentially worthless to the Monsons until Cecil turned twenty-one and could legally reassign them. But who of Cecil and the Monsons understood this? If they knew the policies could not be activated, why the rush to obtain them? Just what did Monson believe he had in his grasp? An indemnity safeguarding his considerable investment in the young man, should tragedy somehow befall the lad? Or did he think he had set in motion the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme?