by Cyril Hare
“Heppenstall! Oh, yes, quite! Heppenstall!” the Judge murmured. He was not looking at the Chief Constable as he spoke and there was a pained expression on his face that suggested extreme distaste for the name and the subject.
“We know that he was in this city the day before yesterday,” the Chief Constable went on hurriedly. “He is out on ticket of leave, of course, and should have reported to the police.”
“Then why can’t you do something about it?” said Barber irritably. “Arrest him, or something? After all, it’s your duty——”
“Quite so, my lord, I appreciate that. Unfortunately, we have lost sight of him, for the time being. It is very difficult to keep touch with people in this blackout, and at the moment I have a number of men on special duty for the Assizes. But there it is. This man is at large and we can’t help being a little uneasy about it.”
“I should have thought I was the one to be uneasy,” said the Judge with a short barking laugh.
“That is just the point, my lord—to save you from uneasiness. Now of course normally, our axiom is that people who intend crimes of violence of this kind don’t advertise the fact beforehand. But this man, since his imprisonment, is not quite normal. So far as—so far as his particular grievance is concerned, if you follow me, my lord.”
From Barber’s expression it was plain that he followed him perfectly, and that he did not greatly enjoy the journey.
“Well?” he said.
“All that I was going to suggest, my lord, was that in the circumstances it might be advisable for us to afford you police protection—in addition, I mean, to the ordinary escort to and from the court. The Lodgings here are rather easily accessible, for instance. I should like to post a man at the door and another at the back of the house. They would be quite unobtrusive—in plain clothes, if your lordship prefers it. Then, in addition, when your lordship goes out for a walk after the court rises, it would be as well to have a man to follow, just in case——”
“I have my Marshal,” the Judge objected.
The Chief Constable’s face showed fairly clearly that he did not think much of Marshals.
“I should be happier in my mind if you had police protection as well,” he said. “After all, it is only for a day or two, and it is my responsibility. If anything were to happen——”
“Very well, if you think it necessary. You have, of course, no proof that the ridiculous letter I received was in fact from this fellow?”
“Not the smallest, my lord. But it is a coincidence which we can’t overlook. I only hope we may be wrong. Very likely we shall hear no more about him.”
At this point Savage entered the room, and humbly suggested that it was time his lordship robed for Court. The Chief Constable accordingly took his leave.
*
Pettigrew reached the Lodgings while Barber was in conference with the Chief Constable. He asked for Marshall, and found the young man in a somewhat depressed state of mind.
“So the Judge is talking it over with the Chief, is he?” said Pettigrew cheerfully. “I suppose they’re putting their heads together to keep things quiet?”
“That is the idea, I take it,” answered Derek in an unexpectedly bitter tone.
“Well, isn’t it everyone’s?” said Pettigrew. “I imagined it was yours when you suggested it to the constable last night.”
“Mine? I simply wanted to get away from the place as soon as I could. I hate hushing things up.”
“But my dear fellow, it would never do to have a thing like this proclaimed from the house-tops. Surely you can see that?”
“Things oughtn’t to be hushed up,” said the young man obstinately. “After all, if there is such a thing as justice——”
“Good Lord! This sort of talk will never do if you mean to be a lawyer,” Pettigrew reproved him. “I’m afraid you suffer from ideals.”
“I am an idealist, sir, and I’m not ashamed of admitting it.”
“Please don’t call me ‘sir’, it makes me feel even older than I am. But seriously, what had you in mind? Having the Judge tried before the local beaks for offences against the Road Traffic Act?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. I don’t see why he should be treated differently, because he is a judge.”
Pettigrew shook his head.
“It wouldn’t do,” he said. “Don’t you see, the whole system depends on their being treated differently from ordinary people? It’s apt to be rather bad for them as individuals, and to give the weaker brethren swollen heads, but it’s good for the administration of the law as a whole, and that’s why we’ve got to back it up for all we’re worth. No,” he continued, “the problem that really interests me is whether any court would be competent to try a Judge for an offence committed on circuit. You see, he’s supposed to be the equivalent of the King, and all that, and the King can do no wrong, but I don’t think the question has ever been tried out. Nobody’s ever had the courage to prosecute in such circumstances.”
“I don’t suppose any Judge has ever done such a thing before,” suggested the Marshal hopefully.
“For Heaven’s sake don’t run away with that idea! Judges in the past have done the most outrageous things on circuit. Haven’t you ever heard the story of Mr. Justice——”
He launched out into a series of scabrous anecdotes, which left Derek deeply shocked, but helpless with laughter.
“And the moral of that is—hush it up!” he concluded. “None of these stories ever got out. In fact the last one I told you never has got out until this moment, because I made it up for your benefit as I went along. And in return for that kindness I want one from you. Will you keep your mouth shut about this business to all and sundry?”
“Of course I will,” said Derek, somewhat hurt. “You needn’t really have asked me that.”
“Good! I thought there was a limit to your idealism somewhere. Well, I must be off. I’m afraid this business has been rather upsetting to everybody. I shall be surprised if it doesn’t leak out somewhere, but if we all keep it under our hats and lie like troopers if necessary there shouldn’t be too much harm done. The great thing is there weren’t any independent witnesses of the poor Shaver’s confession of his identity.”
*
The confidence which Pettigrew had instilled into Derek’s mind on this last point was not long-lived. A few minutes later, his lordship, wigged and robed, was about to leave the house, when Beamish handed him another letter. It was similar in appearance to the former one, but its substance was a good deal pithier. It consisted, in fact, of one word only: “Murderer!”
Barber read it and shrugged his shoulders. He did not on this occasion show it to anyone else, but crumpled it up and thrust it into his trousers pocket. With a serious expression he climbed into the Rolls Royce, and was driven to the court. There, the criminal business having been disposed of on the previous day, he sat in simple state for the trial of civil actions. The first two cases in the list were actions for damages arising out of motor accidents. Barber tried them admirably, but the damages which he awarded were perhaps rather on the small side.
Chapter 5
LADY BARBER
The Judge had intended to travel to Southington, the next circuit town, in his own car, but in the circumstances this was clearly out of the question. The guilty vehicle was left behind in a garage at Markhampton until such time as it could be moved without offence to the law, and he and his Marshal went with the rest of the ponderous machine of justice by train. It was a tiresome journey. The progress of the Southern Circuit from county to county was still along the path that had seemed good to it since the reign of Henry II. Unfortunately, the railway speculators of the Victorian age, actuated by sordidly commercial considerations, had laid down their lines with little regard for the convenience of the judiciary. Their ideas did not soar beyond the provision of a main line between Markhampton and London, and another from London to Didbury Junction, whence a branch line meandered slowly to Southington. Their sou
lless, urban minds, preoccupied with the problem of moving passengers and goods to and from the capital, had never entertained the idea of anybody seriously wishing to travel direct from Markhampton to Southington. At all events, perhaps because the two towns were on different railway systems, they made it as difficult as possible. The circuit, which moved with the times, but a pace or two behind them, had discovered, during the course of the nine-teenth century, that travel by rail, even along this route, was somewhat quicker than by coach, and had accepted the railwaymen’s grudging facilities. Nowadays, the Southington bus, which does the journey in an hour and a half, passes the Judge’s lodgings at Markhampton three times a day, but this development of civilization has so far escaped its official notice.
If the journey was tiresome, involving as it did two changes and a wait of forty minutes at Didbury Junction, it was at least made in comfort. A first-class carriage was reserved for the Judge and his Marshal. Another contained the Clerk of Assize, the Clerk of Indictments, and the Associate. Beamish and his myrmidons, as was only proper, travelled third class, but in equal seclusion. The luggage of the party, personal and official, absorbed the services of several porters and almost the whole of a guard’s van. The railway authorities had raised objections to reserving carriages, pleading wholly irrelevant considerations of the difficulties of wartime, but Beamish had soon put an end to them. “I just said to them,” he explained to his admiring audience, as he dealt the hands for a quiet game of nap, “if anyone was to get into the same carriage as one of His Majesty’s Judges——!” There was no need for him to finish the sentence. Everybody present knew that such an event would be enough to blow the whole British Constitution sky-high.
*
The caravan reached its destination in the early afternoon. In the hour that remained before tea, Derek decided that he ought to write a letter home. Before starting out, he had, of course, promised his mother to tell her “all about it”; and equally of course, had failed to keep his promise. For one thing, he told himself in excuse, it wasn’t so easy to tell “all about it”. Like many other people, Mrs. Marshall imagined that business in the criminal courts was a succession of breath-taking thrills, that every case was a drama, every counsel a cross-examiner of genius “who could get anything out of you if he tried”, every speech a torrent of eloquence, every Judge a Solon. If he were to set down a day to day record of his actual experiences so far, she would be, Derek felt, extremely bored and, for she was a prudish woman, not a little disgusted. The only event of real importance that had occurred was the one which he was under an obligation not to mention. For himself, looking back on his experiences so far, he had nothing to complain of. He had learned a good deal and shed quite a number of illusions. His relations with the Judge were as friendly as could be wished, considering the disparity in their ages. At the same time, he had to admit that a prolonged tête-à-tête with him could become somewhat tiresome, and he was secretly rather disappointed that, whether because of the Chief Constable’s precautions or not, the Markhampton Assizes had ended as tamely as they had begun. He felt himself to be in need of some diversion and wondered idly whether Lady Barber, who was to join them at Southington, would supply it. Derek had reached this point in his meditations, and the letter to his mother was still not begun, when Greene stole softly into his room and announced that tea was ready downstairs and her ladyship had arrived.
*
Lady Barber was small, dark, streamlined, and good-looking. She talked a good deal, in clipped, commanding tones, and was obviously accustomed to saying what she thought and to having what she said attended to. Without being aggressively smart, she contrived to make the tall, shambling figure beside her look even shabbier than usual. Derek judged her to be about twenty years younger than her husband. He was, in fact, about eight years out in his guess, but more experienced men than he might well have made the same mistake. She greeted him in a brisk, friendly manner, which just escaped being patronizing.
“How do you do, Mr. Marshall? No, I’m not going to make the obvious joke. I dislike obvious jokes and I am sure you have heard that one quite enough already. Let’s have some tea at once. I’m chilled to the bone by that wretched train. You must pour out, please! Marshals always do, you know. Milk and two lumps for me, please, even if it is wartime. Now tell me, how are you enjoying this comic existence?”
Derek declared that he was enjoying it very much, and by the time that he had finished his second cup of tea was fairly convinced that he was going to enjoy it a good deal more, so long as the circuit was enlivened by Lady Barber’s society. He experienced the slightly exhilarating feeling that in her hands the stately but somewhat lethargic tempo of life in Judge’s lodgings would be accelerated into something brisker. She was not a particularly witty woman, nor, to Derek’s mind at least, a particularly attractive one; it was simply that she had an immense fund of vitality which stimulated everybody with whom she came into contact to put his best foot foremost in thought or conversation, whether attraction or repulsion was the governing impulse. Derek reflected, after she had left the drawing-room, that he had talked more during the last half-hour than he had done during the whole of the last week; and further that he had talked with unexampled intelligence and wit. It was only later that he realized that he had given himself, his deeds, thoughts and aspirations, completely away under the spell of Lady Barber’s practised “drawing out”. He had, in fact, been very skilfully, relentlessly cross-examined, and without in the least realizing what was going on. Like many other ingenuous people, he prided himself on being reserved and even a trifle secretive, and the discovery was somewhat painful. Remembering his mother’s belief in the capacity of cross-examiners to get “anything out of you if they tried”, he told himself, somewhat ruefully, that her ladyship would certainly have made a very good lawyer. This opinion, as it happened, he shared with a number of other people—of whom Lady Barber was certainly one.
Lady Barber’s husband (it was curious how easily the embodied majesty of the law shrank in her society to “Lady Barber’s husband”) appeared to enjoy her presence at the lodgings as much as did his Marshal, though in a different way. At tea, he sunned himself in the light of her radiance, chuckled at her sallies, and thoroughly relished the spectacle of the young man being put through his paces. At the same time, a closer observer than Derek might have observed that behind his enjoyment lurked a certain apprehension. It would be a gross slander to say that he was afraid of his wife. Rather, he was extremely reluctant to find himself in opposition to her, and if anything had occurred which was likely to cause her annoyance he was in the habit of going to considerable lengths to prevent her knowing it. Experience had told him that as a matter of fact she sooner or later got to know anything of any importance, but at least he did all he could to postpone and so to mitigate the hour of reckoning. It followed that he had said nothing as yet about the accident to his car at Markhampton, and he still hoped against all reason to be able to avoid doing so.
The blow fell sooner than he expected. He had just finished dressing for dinner when his wife came into his room, a packet of letters in her hand.
“These came for you this morning,” she said. “I wish you could persuade people to send all your correspondence to the Courts. It is such a nuisance having to forward them when you are away. They don’t look particularly interesting.”
They did not. Two were obviously circulars, and the rest typewritten envelopes which presumably contained bills. Barber looked at them casually, turning them over in his hand. He had to make one of those minute decisions on which important consequences sometimes depend—whether to stuff them into his pocket or to deal with them at once. He glanced at the clock. There were still five minutes to go before dinner. He decided to open them there and then. By an irony which the Judge, a lover of Hardy, would have appreciated in other circumstances the clock subsequently turned out to be five minutes slow.
He opened one letter and then another, scanning them hu
rriedly and dropping them into the waste-paper basket. Her ladyship meanwhile made use of his looking-glass to remove some imperceptible blemish in her make-up. He opened the third letter, just as the gong sounded from below. Unfortunately, at the same moment his wife looked up from her labours and caught sight of his expression in the glass.
“What is the matter?” she asked, turning round sharply.
“Nothing, dear, nothing,” said the unhappy man in unconvincing tones.
“Nothing? You looked quite upset. Who is your letter from?”
“Oh, nobody in particular. And I’m not upset,” he hastened to add. “You always will jump to conclusions, Hilda. I was only puzzled by a name that seems familiar, and I can’t place it, that is all,”
“What name?”
“Not one that you would know, I expect. It’s a curious one—Sebald-Smith.”
“Sebald-Smith? My dear, I’m not a complete Philistine. Of course I know the name. He’s about the best-known pianist alive, I should think.”
“A pianist? Dear me!” For all his efforts at self-control the Judge’s dismay was manifest.
“What on earth is all this about?” said her ladyship pettishly and with a superbly graceful movement was across the room and had removed the letter from her husband’s nerveless fingers before he was even aware of what had happened.
She read:
My Lord,
We are acting on behalf of Mr. Sebastian Sebald-Smith, who as your lordship will be aware, was injured on the evening of the 12th instant as the result of being knocked down by your lordship’s motor-car in Market Place, Mark-hampton. Our instructions are that the accident was caused solely by the negligence of the driver of the vehicle in question. While we are unable at the moment of writing to make any estimate of the full extent of our client’s injuries, it appears clear that he has suffered, among others, a serious damage to the knuckle-joint of one finger which may entail its amputation—a matter which, to a person in our client’s position is, of course, one of grave consequence. We should be glad to know the name of your lordship’s Insurance Company as soon as possible, and meanwhile must formally put on record our client’s intention of claiming damage in respect of his injuries.