"Will she indeed," said Mrs. Sharpe, contemplatively.
"What is much worse, there is evidence that she mentioned the screams before there was any rumour of the Betty Kane trouble."
This produced a complete silence. Once more Robert was aware how noiseless the house was, how dead. Even the French clock on the mantelpiece was silent. The curtain at the window moved inwards on a gust of air and fell back to its place as soundlessly as if it were moving in a film.
"That," said Marion at last, "is what is known as a facer."
"Yes. Definitely."
"A facer for you, too."
"For us, yes."
"I don't mean professionally."
"No? How then?"
"You are faced with the possibility that we have been lying."
"Really, Marion!" he said impatiently, using her name for the first time and not noticing that he had used it. "What I am faced with, if anything, is the choice between your word and the word of Rose Glyn's friends."
But she did not appear to be listening. "I wish," she said passionately, "oh, how I wish that we had one small, just one small piece of evidence on our side! She gets away-that girl gets away with everything, everything. We keep on saying 'It is not true, but we have no way of showing that it is not true. It is all negative. All inconclusive. All feeble denial. Things combine to back up her lies, but nothing happens to help prove that we are telling the truth. Nothing!"
"Sit down, Marion," her mother said. "A tantrum won't improve the situation."
"I could kill that girl; I could kill her. My God, I could torture her twice a day for a year and then begin again on New Year's day. When I think what she has done to us I—"
"Don't think," Robert interrupted. "Think instead of the day when she is discredited in open court. If I know anything of human nature that will hurt Miss Kane a great deal worse than the beating someone gave her."
"You still believe that that is possible?" Marion said incredulous.
"Yes. I don't quite know how we shall bring it about. But that we shall bring it about I do believe."
"With not one tiny piece of evidence for us, not one; and evidence just-just blossoming for her?"
"Yes. Even then."
"Is that just native optimism, Mr. Blair," Mrs. Sharpe asked, "or your innate belief in the triumph of Good, or what?"
"I don't know. I think Truth has a validity of its own."
"Dreyfus didn't find it very valid; nor Slater; nor some others of whom there is record," she said dryly.
"They did in the end."
"Well, frankly, I don't look forward to a life in prison waiting for Truth to demonstrate its validity."
"I don't believe that it will come to that. Prison, I mean. You will have to appear on Monday, and since we have no adequate defence you will no doubt be sent for trial. But we shall ask for bail, and that means that you can go on staying here until the Assizes at Norton. And before that I hope that Alec Ramsden will have picked up the girl's trail. Remember we don't even have to know what she was doing for the rest of the month. All we have to show is that she did something else on the day she says you picked her up. Take away that first bit and her whole story collapses. And it is my ambition to take it away in public."
"To undress her in public the way the Ack-Emma has undressed us? Do you think she would mind?" Marion said. "Mind as we minded?"
"To have been the heroine of a newspaper sensation, to say nothing of the adored centre of a loving and sympathetic family, and then to be uncovered to the public gaze as a liar, a cheat and a wanton? I think she would mind. And there is one thing she would mind particularly. One result of her escapade was that she got back Leslie Wynn's attention; the attention she had lost when he became engaged. As long as she is a wronged heroine she is assured of that attention; once we show her up she has lost it for good."
"I never thought to see the milk of human kindness so curdled in your gentle veins, Mr. Blair," Mrs. Sharpe remarked.
"If she had broken out as a result of the boy's engagement-as she very well might-I should have nothing but pity for her. She is at an unstable age, and his engagement must have been a shock. But I don't think that had very much to do with it. I think she is her mother's daughter; and was merely setting out a little early on the road her mother took. As selfish, as self-indulgent, as greedy, as plausible as the blood she came of. Now I must go. I said that I would be at home after five o'clock if Ramsden wanted to ring up to report. And I want to ring Kevin Macdermott and get his help about counsel and things."
"I'm afraid that we-that I, rather-have been rather ungracious about this," Marion said. "You have done, and are doing, so much for us. But it was such a shock. So entirely unexpected and out of the blue. You must forgive me if—"
"There is nothing to forgive. I think you have both taken it very well. Have you got someone in the place of the dishonest and about-to-commit-perjury Rose? You can't have this huge place entirely on your hands."
"Well, no one in the locality would come, of course. But Stanley-what would we do without Stanley? — Stanley knows a woman in Larborough who might be induced to come out by bus once a week. You know, when the thought of that girl becomes too much for me, I think of Stanley."
"Yes," Robert said, smiling. "The salt of the earth."
"He is even teaching me how to cook. I know how to turn eggs in the frying-pan without breaking them now. 'D'you have to go at them as if you were conducting the Philharmonic? he asked me. And when I asked him how he got so neat-handed he said it was with 'cooking in a bivvy two feet square. "
"How are you going to get back to Milford?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.
"The afternoon bus from Larborough will pick me up. No word of your telephone being repaired, I suppose?"
Both women took the question as comment not interrogation. Mrs. Sharpe took leave of him in the drawing-room, but Marion walked to the gate with him. As they crossed the circle of grass enclosed by the branching driveway, he remarked: "It's a good thing you haven't a large family or there would be a worn track across the grass to the door."
"There is that as it is," she said, looking at the darker line in the rough grass. "It is more than human nature could bear to walk round that unnecessary curve."
Small talk, he was thinking; small talk. Idle words to cover up a stark situation. He had sounded very brave and fine about the validity of Truth, but how much was mere sound? What were the odds on Ramsden's turning up evidence in time for the court on Monday? In time for the Assizes? Long odds against, wasn't it? And he had better grow used to the thought.
At half-past five Ramsden rang up to give him the promised report; and it was one of unqualified failure. It was the girl he was looking for, of course; having failed to identify the man as a resident at the Midland, and having therefore no information at all about him. But nowhere had he found even a trace of her. His own men had been given duplicates of the photograph and with them had made inquiries at the airports, the railway termini, travel agencies, and the more likely hotels. No one claimed to have seen her. He himself had combed Larborough, and was slightly cheered to find that the photograph he had been given was at least easily recognisable, since it had been readily identified at the places where Betty Kane had actually been. At the two main picture houses, for instance-where, according to the box-office girls' information, she had always been alone-and at the ladies' cloakroom of the bus-station. He had tried the garages, but had drawn blank.
"Yes," Robert said. "He picked her up at the bus-stop on the London road through Mainshill. Where she would normally have gone to catch her coach home." And he told Ramsden of the new developments. "So things really are urgent now. They are being brought up on Monday. If only we could prove what she did that first evening. That would bring her whole story crashing down."
"What kind of car was it?" Ramsden asked.
Robert described it, and Ramsden sighed audibly over the telephone.
"Yes," Robert agreed. "A rough ten thousand of them betwee
n London and Carlisle. Well, I'll leave you to it. I want to ring up Kevin Macdermott and tell him our woes."
Kevin was not in chambers, nor yet at the flat in St. Paul's Churchyard, and Robert eventually ran him to earth at his home near Weybridge. He sounded relaxed and amiable, and was instantly attentive when he heard the news that the police had got their evidence. He listened without remark while Robert poured out the story to him.
"So you see, Kevin," Robert finished, "we're in a frightful jam."
"A schoolboy description," Kevin said, "but exquisitely accurate. My advice to you is to 'give' them the police court, and concentrate on the Assizes."
"Kevin, couldn't you come down for the week-end, and let me talk about it to you? It's six years, Aunt Lin was saying yesterday, since you spent a night with us, so you're overdue anyhow. Couldn't you?"
"I promised Sean I'd take him over to Newbury on Sunday to choose a pony."
"But couldn't you postpone it? I'm sure Sean wouldn't mind if he knew it was in a good cause."
"Sean," said his doting parent, "has never taken the slightest interest in any cause that was not to his own immediate advantage. Being a chip off the old block. If I came would you introduce me to your witches?"
"But of course."
"And would Christina make me some butter tarts?"
"Assuredly."
"And could I have the room with the text in wools?"
"Kevin, you'll come?"
"Well, it's a damned dull country, Milford, except in the winter"-this was a reference to hunting, Kevin's only eye for country being from the back of a horse-"and I was looking forward to a Sunday riding on the downs. But a combination of witches, butter tarts, and a bedroom with a text in wools is no small draw."
As he was about to hang up, Kevin paused and said: "Oh, I say, Rob?"
"Yes?" Robert said, and waited.
"Have you considered the possibility that the police have the right of it?"
"You mean, that the girl's absurd tale may be true?"
"Yes. Are you keeping that in mind-as a possibility, I mean?"
"If I were I shouldn't—" Robert began angrily, and then laughed. "Come down and see them," he said.
"I come, I come," Kevin assured him, and hung up.
Robert called the garage, and when Bill answered asked if Stanley was still there.
"It's a wonder you can't hear him from where you are," Bill said.
"What's wrong?"
"We've just been rescuing that bay pony of Matt Ellis's from our inspection pit. Did you want Stan?"
"Not to speak to. Would you be very kind and ask him to pick up a note for Mrs. Sharpe on his way past tonight?"
"Yes, certainly. I say, Mr. Blair, is it true that there is fresh trouble coming about the Franchise affair-or shouldn't I ask that?"
Milford! thought Robert. How did they do it? A sort of information-pollen blown on the wind?
"Yes, I'm afraid there is," he said. "I expect they'll tell Stanley about it when he goes out tonight. Don't let him forget about the note, will you?"
"No, that's all right."
He wrote to The Franchise to say that Kevin Macdermott was coming down for Saturday night, and could he bring him out to see them on Sunday afternoon before he left to go back to town?
16
"Does Kevin Macdermott have to look like a tout when he comes to the country?" Nevil asked, the following evening as he and Robert waited for the guest to finish his ablutions and come down to dinner.
What Kevin in country clothes actually looked like, Robert considered, was a rather disreputable trainer of jumpers for the smaller meetings; but he refrained from saying that to Nevil. Remembering the clothes that Nevil had startled the countryside with for the last few years, he felt that Nevil was in no position to criticise anyone's taste. Nevil had turned up to dinner in a chaste dark grey suit of the most irreproachable orthodoxy, and seemed to think that his new conformity made him free to forget the experimentalism of his immediate past.
"I suppose Christina is in the usual lather of sentiment?"
"A lather of white of egg, as far as I have been able to judge."
Christina regarded Kevin as "Satan in person," and adored him. His Satanic qualities came not from his looks-though Kevin did indeed look a little like Satan-but from the fact that he "defended the wicked for the sake of worldly gain." And she adored him because he was good-looking, and a possibly reclaimable sinner, and because he praised her baking.
"I hope it's a souffle, then, and not that meringue stuff. Do you think that Macdermott could be lured into coming down to defend them at Norton Assizes?"
"I think he is much too busy for that, even if he were interested. But I'm hoping that one of his dogs-bodies will come."
"Primed by Macdermott."
"That's the idea."
"I really don't see why Marion should have to slave to provide Macdermott with lunch. Does he realise that she has to prepare and clear away and wash up every single thing, to say nothing of carting them to and fro a day's journey to that antediluvian kitchen?"
"It was Marion's own idea that he should come to lunch with them. I take it that she considers the extra trouble worth while."
"Oh, you were always crazy about Kevin; and you simply don't know how to begin to appreciate a woman like Marion. It's-it's obscene that she should be wasting her vitality on household drudgery, a woman like that. She should be hacking her way through jungles, or scaling precipices, or ruling a barbarous race, or measuring the planets. Ten thousand nit-wit blondes dripping with mink have nothing to do but sit back and have the polish on their predatory nails changed, and Marion carts coal. Coal! Marion! And I suppose by the time this case is finished they won't have a penny to pay a maid even if they could get one."
"Let us hope that by the time this case is finished they are not doing hard labour by order."
"Robert, it couldn't come to that! It's unthinkable."
"Yes, it's unthinkable. I suppose it is always unbelievable that anyone one knows should go to prison."
"It's bad enough that they should go into the dock. Marion. Who never did a cruel, or underhand, or shabby thing in her life. And just because a— Do you know, I had a lovely time the other night. I found a book on torture, and I stayed awake till two o'clock choosing which one I would use on the Kane."
"You should get together with Marion. That is her ambition too."
"And what would yours be?" There was a faint hint of scorn in the tone, as though it was understood that the mild Robert would have no strong feelings on the subject. "Or haven't you considered it?"
"I don't need to consider it," Robert said slowly. "I'm going to undress her in public."
"What!"
"Not that way. I'm going to strip her of every rag of pretence, in open court, so that everyone will see her for what she is."
Nevil looked curiously at him for a moment. "Amen," he said quietly. "I didn't know you felt like that about it, Robert." He was going to add something, but the door opened and Macdermott came in, and the evening had begun.
Eating solidly through Aunt Lin's superb dinner, Robert hoped that it was not going to be a mistake to take Kevin to Sunday lunch at The Franchise. He was desperately anxious that the Sharpes should make a success with Kevin; and there was no denying that Kevin was temperamental and the Sharpes not everyone's cup of tea. Was lunch at The Franchise likely to be an asset to their cause? A lunch cooked by Marion? For Kevin who was a gourmet? When he had first read the invitation-handed in by Stanley this morning-he was glad that they had made the gesture, but misgiving was slowly growing in him. And as one perfection succeeded the other in unhurried procession across Aunt Lin's shining mahogany, with Christina's large face hovering in eager benevolence beyond the candle-light, the misgiving swelled until it took entire possession of him. "Shapes that did not stand up" might fill his breast with a warm, protective affection; but they could hardly be expected to have the same effect on Kevin.
It was odd, Robert thought, looking round the table, that this family party-so gay, so warm, so secure-should be occasioned by the dire need of two helpless women in that dark silent house set down among the endless fields.
He went to bed with the warm aura of the party still round him, but in his heart a chill anxiety and an ache. Were they asleep out there at The Franchise? How much sleep had they had lately?
He lay long awake, and wakened early; listening to the Sunday morning silence. Hoping that it would be a good day-The Franchise looked its worst in rain, when its dirty-white became almost grey-and that whatever Marion made for lunch would "stand up." Just before eight o'clock a car came in from the country and stopped below the window, and someone whistled a soft bugle call. A company call, it was. B Company. Stanley, presumably. He got up and put his head out of the window.
Stanley, hatless as usual-he had never seen Stanley in any kind of head covering-was sitting in the car regarding him with tolerant benevolence.
"You Sunday snoozers," said Stanley.
"Did you get me up just to sneer at me?"
"No. I have a message from Miss Sharpe. She says when you come out you're to take Betty Kane's statement with you, and you're on no account to forget it because it's of the first importance. I'll say it's important! She's going round looking as if she had unearthed a million."
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