The Decayed Gentlewoman

by E. X. Ferrars

  “Poor Mother,” Ginny said as they went down the stairs past all the little paddle steamers. “I expect he was sorry for her too. No wonder my father never got his divorce. And times have changed for the worse too. In the days when her grandfather was advised by Grandfather Ogg, or it may even have been by Vickerman himself, though I’ve never heard anyone mention him, there was quite a lot of money in the family to advise about. Of course, the advice didn’t stop it from disappearing, but I expect it got a little more attention.” They had reached the street. Ginny started towards the nearest bus stop. But Colin stood still. He took her by the arm.

  “Listen, Ginny, I’m not sure if I meant to tell you this,” he said, “but I’ve got an appointment with another solicitor this afternoon. I made it because I didn’t trust your mother’s solicitors and I may as well tell you, I didn’t trust them because I didn’t quite trust her. Now I know I don’t trust them. But that’s got nothing to do with your mother. I simply don’t intend to let a dull, lazy bastard like that have any influence on my actions.”

  She was standing close to him, looking into his face. He did not know what her expression meant, except that she did not mean him to know.

  “Won’t you find it a bit expensive,” she said, “going round visiting lots of lawyers?”

  “It won’t break me,” he answered. “But do you want to come with me?”

  “Do you want me to come?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Her stiff features relaxed. But there was something subdued in her voice as she said, “Well, let’s go and have lunch and you can tell me about this solicitor of yours. Look, there’s a milk bar just over there. They’ll have sandwiches.”

  “Sandwiches! By and on behalf of the owner of my stomach, let me tell you,” Colin stated, “we need steak for once!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  « ^ »

  Mr. Dickman, of the firm of Copsey, Costelloe and Dickman, was about half the size of Mr. Ogg. To make up for this, he talked twice as fast and with a shining-eyed delight in the mere act of talking which promised at least a greater value in wordage. He had short, stiff, sandy hair, arching sandy eyebrows and a small, eager, excitable face. Its dark tan did not seem quite to belong in a solicitor’s office, nor did his greenish tweed suit, his rough woollen tie, or his thick-soled country shoes.

  “Market overt?” he cried in a tone of incredulous joy almost as soon as Colin had begun to describe his problem. “Oh, oh, this is what I’ve been longing for all my life! A real honest-to-goodness case of market overt! More fun if I’d been called in on the other side, of course—wonderful to have a chance to defend a man’s right to hang on to stolen property! A legal daydream. But still, go on, go on!”

  He rubbed his hands together, his eyes shone, and all his features twitched.

  This unexpected explosion of enthusiasm made Colin lose the thread of his story.

  Ginny picked it up. “You see, Mr. Dickman, I saw this picture in Lake’s Saleroom—I saw it there on Wednesday, in with a lot of rusty old rubbish—and I got in touch with Dr. Lockie and told him it would be up for sale on Thursday and asked him if he’d like me to buy it back for him. I never dreamt it would go for more than a few pounds, I just thought he and his family might like to get it back without starting up a lot of fuss with the police.”

  “The actual value of the picture,” Mr. Dickman said, “doesn’t affect the matter at all. No doubt you understand that.”

  “But if I’d thought of its being valuable,” Ginny said, “I’d have gone to the police straight away. And certainly I’d have said something about it to Joe Lake. Then he’d have withdrawn it from the sale till we knew where we were and it wouldn’t have got into this market overt mess.”

  “Yes, I see.” Gripping the edge of the desk with his brown little hands, the solicitor swung his chair rapidly from right to left, his gleaming, happy gaze shifting quickly between Ginny’s face and Colin’s. “So you want to know a little more about the matter. Well, you can read it up for yourselves, if you’re interested, in Kenny’s ‘Outline of Criminal Law.’ Wait a minute!”

  He bounced out of his chair, shot across the room, and reached for a volume on one of the bookshelves.

  “Here we are—sixteenth edition, published 1952.” Walking up and down, he turned the pages. “Now let’s see… Section 315. ‘Fairs and markets brought together men from places so distant that in mediaeval days…’ Well, you won’t want me to read you the whole of it. What it comes to is that in those times a purchaser might know so little about the vendor, might find it so impossible to find out anything about him, that he needed some kind of protection. I mean, supposing he was some law-abiding character in a place like Oldersfield and he was offered something for sale by someone he’d never seen before from—oh, even fifty or a hundred miles away. No need to bring in anything as exotic as the Highlands. How was he to know if it had been honestly come by or not? So it was settled that if he bought it in good faith on a market day, in a place that was an established market for that particular kind of goods, he became the proprietor of the goods.”

  He shut the book, tossed it on to a pile of books on the floor and thudded back in his heavy shoes to his chair.

  “That point’s important, by the way—the market being for the particular kind of goods,” he said. “If you bought, say, some nice jewellery in a corn or cattle market, you wouldn’t be protected. You couldn’t sell clothes at Smithfield and claim the privilege of market overt—that’s been decided. There was a case in 1596 when it was held that the privilege of market overt didn’t apply in the case of the sale of some plate in a scrivener’s shop. I should explain, perhaps, that in the City of London a shop can sometimes be an open market, but only its ground floor. And the goods, in all cases, have to be displayed beforehand, where the public can come to look at them, and the sale has to begin and end in the market. You can’t start the transaction elsewhere and complete it in the market, or vice versa. Also, it must take place between sunrise and sunset. No shady dealings in the dark.” Mr. Dickman’s cheerful glance settled on Ginny’s face. “Is that what you want to know, Miss Winter?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, “though it doesn’t look too good for us. This sale started at nine in the morning. It’s a regular sale too—it’s held there every Thursday. And they’re always selling pictures. And the saleroom opens straight on to the market-place. They actually display a lot of stuff outside on the pavement. That’s where I saw this picture of ours.”

  “Remarkable!” cried Mr. Dickman, beaming. “It has a sort of beauty, hasn’t it? A sort of perfection. And to think that only this morning I never dreamt that anything of the sort would ever come my way. It’s so utterly unlikely, after all. There I was on the Berkshire downs—I spent the week-end walking, I often do, I couldn’t stand the office at all if I didn’t—well, there I was, walking to the station, thinking gloomily this damned great metropolis was going to swallow me up again for the next five days. And all the time this was waiting for me!”

  “What you’re telling me then,” Colin said, “is that Greer was right in what he told us. He did buy the picture in market overt and there’s nothing we can do about getting it back.”

  “No, no, no!” The revolving chair swung agitatedly. “Naturally things aren’t exactly as they were in 1596. I didn’t mean to give you that impression. Modern facilities of intercourse have reduced the need for the sort of protection we’ve been talking about, so it’s rather less than it used to be. Even when goods have been bought in market overt, it’s possible for the original owner to regain possession of them if the thief or the guilty receiver is convicted of stealing or receiving.”

  “But a man isn’t guilty of receiving stolen property if he doesn’t know it’s stolen, is he?” Colin asked. “You see, Miss Winter’s convinced Joe Lake didn’t know anything about how the picture got into the Sibbald attic.”

  “If that’s true, then he isn’t g
uilty of receiving,” said Mr. Dickman.

  “And they never caught the thief.”

  The swaying chair became still. Screwing up his features into an unreadable knot, the solicitor folded his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling.

  “God, how glorious it was up on the downs,” he murmured. “The morning sunshine, spring in the air, the birds… I wish I could tell you something more helpful, Dr. Lockie. But it does rather look to me, you know, as if your man Greer may have got away with it. For one thing, going to law is the most expensive pastime in the world.”

  “So it’s a fact there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Except that I’ve a sort of feeling in my bones there’s something a little too perfect about all this. It’s almost as if Greer must have known… No, that’s going too far. If you could prove, however, that he did know the picture was stolen, the fact that the sale took place in market overt wouldn’t help him.”

  “Because he’d then be guilty of resetting—I mean, receiving —himself.”

  “Just so, though so long after the original theft, it would be very difficult to prove… Suddenly Mr. Dickman tipped himself forward and gave Colin another of his happy, excited looks. ”Resetting! That’s the Scots word for receiving, isn’t it? And the theft happened in Scotland. Why didn’t I think of this before? Because it’s all quite different in Scotland. Quite different.”

  “This law about market overt.”

  “Yes. The trouble is, though, I don’t know nearly as much as I should about Scots law. But I do happen to know that on this point it’s quite different from the English. The Scots don’t recognize market overt at all. As I understand the matter, if the picture remained in Scotland, your family would have retained their right to it, however many hands it had passed through since the theft and however openly and honestly it had been bought. I’ve an idea too there wouldn’t be any question of your having to bring an action yourself. It would be a job for the public prosecutor. Well, well, what a pity we aren’t in Scotland. All the same, I wonder if it mightn’t be worth your while to look into it when you return home. No, I don’t suppose it would, except for the interest of the thing. The sale took place in England and the picture’s in England. But the whole subject’s wonderfully interesting —wonderfully. Of course, now that it’s too late for my advice to be any good to you, I can tell you what you ought to have done as soon as you saw the picture.”

  “What ought I to have done?” Colin asked.

  “Helped yourself to it! Because in a doubtful situation like this, I think you’d find possession was nine tenths of the law.”

  Colin smiled, which he supposed was what was expected of him.

  “Perhaps it isn’t too late for that,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll think about it.”

  Mr. Dickman bounced up out of his chair. “But I’m serious! A man has the right to take reasonable steps to recover what he honestly believes to be his own property. That isn’t stealing. If you’ve lent a friend a book and he can’t be induced to return it, it isn’t stealing if one day, when you’re in his house, you put it in your pocket. So if you’d gone to Greer’s house and removed the picture before coming to me, you could always have pleaded that that was what you’d done. But since you came to me and learnt that the ownership of the goods had been divested by the sale in market overt, you can’t plead any more that you believe the picture is yours. Such a pity. But no, perhaps it isn’t. Dangerous ground I’m getting on to, very.”

  “Mr. Dickman,” said Ginny, who had not moved from her chair, although the two men were now at the door, “I believe you’re advising us to burgle that house at Hopewood and then go hell for leather for Scotland.”

  “Miss Winter!” Mr. Dickman gave a little strangled crow of laughter. “My dear Miss Winter, it’s precisely what I’m telling you not to do. Not on any account. I’ve just explained, you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  “But you put it into our minds, all the same.”

  “Did I really? It wasn’t there before? Well, perhaps not. I do get carried away by my own imagination rather easily. No reason to suppose everyone else has the same problem.” He opened the door.

  Ginny still did not move.

  “Mr. Dickman, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, after all the trouble you’ve taken to explain things to us,” she said, “but really it’s all gone right over my head. I’ve hardly understood a single word of it.”

  She smiled with a caricature of her mother’s manner. “I’m not clever like Dr. Lockie,” she went on. “I haven’t a trained mind. I’ve a very slow and muddled one. And I’m afraid I’m in a complete muddle over everything you’ve said except that a man has the right to take reasonable steps to recover what he honestly believes to be his own property. You put that so cleverly and well, Mr. Dickman.”

  At last she stood up, walked to the door and held out her hand.

  “Thank you so much. Good-bye.”

  He took her hand. He did not let it go at once, but held it as if he were wondering what to do with it. When he relinquished it, it was with a gesture of passing on some responsibility connected with it to Colin.

  Going down the stairs with them to the entrance, standing there looking out at the lawns and the great trees, he remarked, “There’s sometimes an immense difference between theory and practice and almost the only advice I ever give with my whole heart is ‘Forget about it, whatever it is.’ I hope that’s clearly and simply put, Miss Winter. Forget it and try walking.” His glance dropped to Ginny’s feet, which were not as sensibly shod as his own. “Or something,” he added as he withdrew into the building.

  “Or something,” Ginny echoed with a laugh as they walked away. “What do you think we should do now, Colin?”

  “Sit down here for a little while,” he said, stopping at a bench at the side of the walk. “It’s one of the peacefullest spots in the whole of London.”

  “I meant,” she said as they sat down, “what’s the next step?”

  “Forget the whole show,” Colin answered. “Dickman gave us good advice.”

  “It may sound good to you,” she said.

  “Why not to you?”

  She frowned, looking away from him down the walk across the almost empty courtyard. Some pigeons had come hopping around their feet, hoping for crumbs. Over their heads in one of the tall trees a cloud of sparrows was making a great twittering. The slanting afternoon sunshine lit up the swelling buds on the twigs.

  “As a matter of fact, I think you know,” she said. “Not that it matters very much to me what happens to the picture. I’d like you and your family to have it back, if it’s valuable, but what matters to me more than that…” She turned to him, looking at him with harrowed eyes. “I keep wishing I’d never seen the thing at all, or never given it a second thought and never got hold of you. But since I did stumble right into the middle of whatever’s going on, I’ve got to find out what it is.”

  “Because you believe your mother’s mixed up in it?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He wanted to say that he didn’t, to say it warmly and convincingly and take that look from Ginny’s face. But the words stuck. To his own surprise, he heard himself asking with jerky suddenness, “Ginny, who’s John Clitheroe?”

  Her eyes opened wide in bewilderment. “Who’s—? But I told you.”

  “Yes, I know.” Colin’s face went bright red. He was wishing desperately that there were some way of withdrawing the ill-timed question. Yet now that it was out, there was nothing to do but to plough on. “Look, Ginny,” he said, taking his diary out of his pocket, “you told me John Clitheroe was someone in the History or Economics department at Edinburgh University. But if that’s what he is, his name would be here, and it isn’t.”

  “It isn’t?” She reached for the diary. As she turned the pages, she did not look as if she were seeing them.

  “He isn’t in any other department either,” Colin said, trying to keep his voice
gentle, not to turn what he was saying into an attack on her. “Yet you told me he was the person who told you where I was.”

  “Yes,” she said. “What’s the date of this diary, Colin? This year’s, I suppose. Yes, naturally. Do you get a new one every year?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I meant, is all of it new every year? All these names and addresses?”

  “Oh yes, they’re kept up to date.”

  “Then that explains it. John’s in Canada now. He went there last year. It was quite soon after he first went to Edinburgh that he told me he’d met you. Don’t you remember anything about it?”

  “No, but that needn’t mean anything. It could have been at some meeting or party, when his name didn’t register with me, for some reason, when mine did with him.” He was in a hurry to reassure her, feeling profoundly reassured himself because there was such a simple explanation of John Clitheroe, because he was real. “I’m sorry I had stupid ideas about him. It was not being able to track him down here, together with not being able to work out how you and your mother ever heard about the theft of the picture, when I was sure your mother never read it in any newspaper… Oh, Ginny!” She had turned away from him, was gazing away down the walk, was rigid and very white.

  “Ginny, please, I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I’m a complete fool. I didn’t really distrust you—”

  “Sh!” she said fiercely, turning towards him again and suddenly moving closer to him. “Don’t look up suddenly, Colin, but try to get a look at the man who’s just coming along. Only don’t let him see you notice him.”

  Colin’s instinct, naturally, was to look up at once. He might not have stopped himself in time if Ginny had not grasped his arm, raised her face to his, and with an expression of utter absorption in him, started talking swift gibberish. Colin stopped it by bringing his mouth down on hers.

  As he heard slow footsteps approaching, his arms went round her. He did not look up. The rigidity melted out of Ginny’s body, her breath came faster. Colin had just time to wonder if quite all of it was play-acting, because there was none about the way that his own heart was pounding, when the footsteps drew level with them and he had to snatch a glance over Ginny’s head at the man who strolled by.