by Cyril Hare
“My dear idealist, these things happen, you know. As a matter of fact, it was not until 1931 that Heppenstall began to be a little unconventional in his treatment of other people’s funds. He had been speculating a good deal—the man about the City working overtime to keep up the appearance of the man about the West End, I suppose—and the slump caught him short. He borrowed a little from one account to put himself right, helped himself out of another to get the first account straight, and so it went on. Then just when the Law Society was beginning to interest itself in the affaire Heppenstall, the Shaver went on to the Bench, and the pair of them met again at the Old Bailey. Comprenez?”
“Yes. It must have been a pretty dreadful moment for them both.”
“If you think that, you miss the whole point of the story. It was dreadful enough for Heppenstall, no doubt. He pleaded guilty, of course, and somebody or other put up the usual palaver in mitigation. But the Shaver—who, if he had had any bowels, would never have allowed himself to try the case at all—he positively gloated over the wretched man. It wasn’t only the sentence he gave him, though that was stiff enough in all conscience, but the way in which he behaved. I wasn’t there myself—thank goodness; but I have talked to people who were, and I read the reports in the papers afterwards, and I tell you it was beastly—beastly—beastly!”
Whisky had made Derek bold.
“Is that the reason why you dislike him so much?” he asked.
Pettigrew seemed to shrink into himself.
“I said just now that this isn’t my story but Heppenstall’s,” he answered stiffly. “But I’ll go this far—that if Heppenstall is giving him a few bad nights, I shan’t be sorry, and I don’t think I’m the only person to feel that way, either. Can you wonder?” He looked at the clock. “What about your train?” he added.
Derek saw that he was dismissed, and rose to his feet.
“I must be going,” he said. “But I ought to mention that the Inspector didn’t take very kindly to the notion that Heppenstall was responsible for everything that has happened.”
“So you’ve said already. Did he suggest anybody who was?”
Derek began now to regret that he had spoken, but it was too late to draw back.
“Well,” he said. “He went through all the possibilities in a methodical sort of way, and he seemed to think that if one person was at the back of everything—which he didn’t altogether believe——”
“Yes?”
“The one person must be you.”
For the life of him, Derek could not say whether Pettigrew was amused or not. Certainly his lips twitched at the corners as though he were about to laugh, but his eyes remained grave and his voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet and serious.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”
“But please don’t think that I——” Derek stammered in confusion.
“My dear chap——!”
“It was only just a suggestion of the Inspector’s. I don’t think he meant it seriously. And Hilda wouldn’t hear of it for a moment. She fairly snapped his head off.”
“Oh, Hilda did, did she? That was kind of her. You might thank her for me. No, on second thoughts, better not. By the way, have there been any more developments in that unfortunate affair with the car at Markhampton?”
“None that I know of. I think the Judge has had some letters about it, but of course I haven’t been told anything——”
“H’m. For what it’s worth, I have a notion that that’s a good deal the most serious thing threatening the Shaver at the present moment. In his position, a writ can do more damage than a dozen poisoned chocolates. Well, good night, and thank you for your company. I’ve enjoyed our talk. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it so much that I don’t somehow think I shall want now to get anywhere nearer the verge than I am at this moment, and that’s a long way off. So if anybody asks you why you’re so late home to-night, you can explain that you’ve been occupied in saving an old gentleman from a nasty headache to-morrow morning. Good night!”
*
Derek travelled home on a slow train in utter darkness. He felt that he had spent an interesting day. His one regret was that it was to be followed by another day of boredom and stagnation at home. Never was regret less justified. For on the next morning, chance brought him into contact with Sheila Bartram, and his whole world was instantly transformed.
Chapter 12
SOMEONE HAS TALKED
Sheila Bartram was tall and fair, with large, rather protuberant, grey eyes and a pale complexion which some would have classified as anaemic but which others found “interesting”. She was nineteen and was occupied in trying to qualify as a Red Cross nurse. Her father was the managing director of an important manufacturing firm and spent most of his time travelling about the country from one branch to another superintending its different Government contracts. Sheila and her mother meanwhile had been evacuated from London to the house of an aunt in the neighbourhood. All this, and a great deal more Derek learned within the first half hour of their acquaintance. He had been with difficulty induced to drive his mother over to the next village for a committee meeting which was to deal with comforts for the forces, he had been left hanging about for most of the morning and had there encountered Sheila, who was in much the same case. Before either of them knew what had happened, the morning’s boredom had become an enchantment, and Derek drove his mother home and Sheila returned to her hospital, each in a condition utterly besotted, entirely natural but completely inexplicable, to be envied or pitied by the rest of the world according to the rest of the world’s taste or experience.
That was on a Saturday. Derek was due to rejoin the Judge at the station on Monday afternoon when the circuit would resume its travels. He contrived to spend almost the whole of Sunday in Sheila’s company and the hours when he was not actually with her in meditating on her perfection and marvelling at his good fortune in meeting her. How Sheila spent the same hours can only be judged by her surprising and disastrous failure to pass her examination a few days later. On Monday, after a leave-taking as intense in its affection as if Derek had been en route for the Western Front, the lover reluctantly returned to London.
Seeing Hilda, elegant and slim, chatting to an obsequious guard at the door of the reserved carriage, Derek felt a slight but unmistakable qualm. It was a qualm which he instantly suppressed, but the memory of it lingered, and with the memory a faint sense of guilt. For in the state of mind in which he then was (if indeed his mind could be said to have anything to do with his condition) it was inevitable that the sight of Hilda, or any other woman, necessarily provoked a comparison with his adored. And the first fruits of comparison, in this instance, were something very near to disloyalty to Sheila—or rather, to the idea of Sheila which he had been occupied in building up during the last two days. He had forgotten quite how attractive Hilda was. Of course, she was a much older woman—positively elderly, in fact. There was no true comparison possible. At the same time, judged by the touchstone of Hilda’s poise and tact, her cool assurance in any surroundings, was there not something a little too naïve about Sheila, was not her delightful ingenuousness just the least bit lacking in savour?
The suspicion disappeared almost as soon as it had arisen and long before Derek’s conscious mind had acknowledged its existence. Five minutes later he would have conscientiously taken his oath that it had never been. But its passage was not after all without its effect. Deeply embedded beyond the reach of memory it remained thenceforth as a minute source of irritation, while over it the compensating forces of imagination laid layer after layer of glamorous fancy, producing in the end a pearl of inhuman perfection—an ideal Sheila, whom the flesh and blood article would in time discover to be her most dangerous competitor.
*
Meanwhile, the source of all this disturbance was not without troubles of her own. If to Derek’s eyes she appeared at this moment calm and serene, it was a greater tribute to her self control than he im
agined. She had, indeed, spent an agitating weekend. She had returned home from her club, feeling a good deal more reassured by the placid stolidity of Mallett than she had thought fit to acknowledge at the time, only to find the Judge, just back from the Athenæum, sunk in utter dejection. A letter from his brother-in-law, in which he expressed the gloomiest views on the prospect of negotiations with Sebald-Smith’s solicitors, was open before him; but he soon made it clear that this, though serious enough, was the least of his anxieties. What really preyed upon his mind was an incident which had occurred that afternoon within the quiet precincts of the club itself. Over the tea-cups, he had been engaged in conversation by a brother Judge, Barber’s senior by several years, a man whose immense fund of learning he openly admired and whose caustic tongue he secretly feared. In the course of a few casual words, which to any third party would have conveyed nothing beyond a friendly interest in the doings of the Southern Circuit, the hapless Barber had been given quite clearly to understand that the speaker was perfectly familiar with all that had passed at Markhampton. Having instilled the poison in the mild and paternal manner for which he was famous, the torturer had callously lighted a cigar and departed, leaving behind him an infuriated and badly frightened man.
“Someone has talked!” Barber groaned, as he recounted this to his wife. “After all our precautions, someone has talked!”
“Well, that seems obvious,” said Hilda, rapidly making up her mind that an air of brisk efficiency on her part would be the best antidote to her husband’s collapsed condition. “After all, that was to be expected, wasn’t it? Things like this are certain to get round sooner or later.”
“Who could it have been?” Barber went on. “I could have sworn that that boy was reliable. And Pettigrew went out of his way to insist on his anxiety to keep the thing quiet. … Of course, the police officer was very young and inexperienced, but still…. You don’t think Pettigrew could have let me down, do you, Hilda? After all, we are such old friends….”
Hilda’s lips tightened.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think he would have let you down. In my opinion since the affair has come out, it doesn’t seem to me to matter in the least who was responsible for it. But if it is of any interest to you, William, I should have thought the answer was fairly obvious.”
The Judge looked at her in surprise.
“You seem entirely to have forgotten that there are two parties to an accident,” she said impatiently. “And of the two, it is the person who is knocked over and his friends who are the most likely to do the talking. Sally Parsons has a pretty large acquaintance and I have no doubt that she has let them all know about it.”
Barber threw up his hands in despair.
“It will be all over the Temple by now,” he moaned. “All over the Temple!”
“William! You must really pull yourself together! If it is all over the Temple, what substantial difference is it going to make? You can be quite certain that if this can be settled without an action, it will never get into the papers, and that is the only thing that matters. Really, you are behaving like a child!”
Under her chiding, Barber recovered some of his dignity.
“There are things that matter quite as much to a man in my position as an open accusation in the newspapers,” he said. “Don’t you understand, Hilda, what an intolerable situation it will be for me, with this thing a subject of common gossip among my brother judges? How far it has gone yet I don’t know, but at any moment now I may have the Lord Chief Justice sending for me and suggesting——”
“Suggesting what?”
“Suggesting that I should resign.”
“Resign?” said Hilda in spirited tones. “Nonsense! He can’t make you resign. Nobody can. Nothing can.”
“Except a resolution by both Houses of Parliament.”
“Well, there you are.”
But the Judge refused to be comforted.
“I could never face that,” he said. “It would only want a question in the House to make my position untenable. And not only myself, but the whole judiciary would suffer….”
He shuddered at the prospect.
“All that this amounts to,” said Hilda crisply, “is that we have got to settle Sebald-Smith’s action, and we knew that already. Once that is out of the way, neither the Lord Chief Justice nor anybody else will want to rake up any scandal. And people’s memories are very short for this kind of thing, as you know yourself—particularly now they have the war to think about. Let me have a look at Michael’s letter.”
The letter was certainly not calculated to give any comfort. The injured man’s solicitors, it reported, were not showing any signs of abating their demands. A letter from them demanding an early reply was enclosed. A consultation had been held between medical men nominated by both sides, and the report submitted by the doctor who had examined the patient on the Judge’s behalf was, if anything, worse than had been feared. Besides the amputation of the little finger, there was present damage to the muscles of the hand which would for the time being seriously restrict its use and might prove permanent. In any event, remedial treatment would be prolonged and expensive. An opinion from a distinguished musician had reinforced the plaintiff’s contention that the absence of one finger would almost certainly reduce his earning powers as a pianist to zero. There was more to the same effect. The letter concluded by asking for instructions.
Hilda put down the letter with a sinking heart. She stood up and smoked a cigarette half through before coming to a decision. Then she said:
“I think I shall have to go and see him.”
“Perhaps that would be best,” her husband replied. “But in view of his letter I am afraid that there is little more that he can do for us.”
“Who? Michael? I didn’t mean him, though I shall probably see him in any case. I mean to go and see Sebald-Smith.”
“Hilda! You are not serious?”
“Of course I am serious.”
“But it is out of the question. You—you can’t do a thing like that.”
“Why not?”
“Why, to begin with, you know as well as I do that when matters have passed into the hands of legal advisers it is most improper for a party to the case to go behind their backs and——”
“I don’t care what the proprieties are. Something must be done and this seems to me the only thing to do. And if you insist upon technicalities, I am not a party to the case.”
“Hilda, I implore you to think twice about what you are doing. An intervention of this kind can do no good—may, indeed, do irreparable harm. What do you imagine would be the reaction of a complete stranger——”
“He’s not a complete stranger.”
“I grant you that he has been to this house once or twice though I personally was unaware of the fact, but for all practical purposes he is a stranger.”
“I used to know Sebald-Smith pretty well,” said Hilda slowly. “In fact, at one time, very well indeed.”
The Judge looked at her in surprise, a shocked suspicion dawning in his face.
“Oh, no! Not as well as all that!” Hilda protested with a laugh, and kissed the top of his head. Then she sat down on a footstool beside his arm-chair and said coaxingly, “So we can consider that settled, shall we?”
“If you go,” the Judge protested feebly, “it is entirely without my sanction.”
“And you can repudiate me if necessary. Very well, that will have to do. Now the next point to settle is, what terms can we offer him?”
From this point on the tone of the discussion degenerated, as the tone of discussions is apt to do when money becomes their subject. From a consideration of the Judge’s present financial position it passed to the grisly subject of possible economies in the future. Hilda was unexpectedly resigned on this point where her personal expenditure was concerned, though pertinacious in what her husband thought unreasonable demands as to his own. But the colloquy became positively acrimonious, and Hilda increasingly vo
cal, when it drifted, as it did inevitably, to the utterly sterile region of the past. What had become of the huge fees which he had earned in his last years at the Bar, when income-tax and surtax were less than they were to-day, and as nothing compared with what they might be to-morrow? Hilda, her nerves unstrung by an agitating afternoon, lost her usual self-control when she found old accusations of extravagance being raked up afresh. Instead of letting these pass, she began angrily to justify the cost of frocks worn out years ago and dinners long since digested. She became first indignant, then shrill in her self-defence. Every penny that she had spent had been to his honour and glory, had assisted in the furtherance of his career to which she had devoted—her astonished ears heard herself uttering the cliché—the best years of her life. Had it not been for her wise outlay, as he very well knew, he would never have been in the position he was now, a position which his criminal carelessness had put in jeopardy. And if it came to extravagance—Here it was Barber’s turn to repel an attack which, truth to say, was not very well-founded, for his own tastes had always been simple enough.
The injustice of it stung him to make some retorts which were in their turn wholly unjustified and brought the sorry scene to a climax with Hilda in floods of angry tears, the Judge stammering apologies and the original subject of debate wholly forgotten.
By next morning, peace had been restored, but the problem from which the dispute had developed was no nearer solution. If Sebald-Smith did not abate his demands, Barber was financially a ruined man. If the demands could not be met, and an action resulted, he was ruined not only financially but professionally. The only hope appeared to be that the plaintiff, or his advisers, would realize in time that it was not to his interest to push matters to extremities and that a judge of the High Court, drawing his salary and paying a reasonable sum by instalments, was a better debtor than a broken man without income or prospects. And, as Barber eventually agreed with reluctance, a direct approach by Hilda was perhaps the best chance of inducing him to see reason.