Stay of Execution

by Michael Gilbert

  “If you’ve got no central organisation,” he said, “how do you function?”

  “Mostly we work on our own. Seizing our own opportunities, as they occur. We are, for instance, quite prepared to commit perjury if the need arises. Do you remember the lorry driver who turned up at the last moment and destroyed the Crown case against Annetts? He was a member.”

  “But if you want help – or guidance?”

  “There is a telephone number I can ring. It is manned night and day. And in an extreme emergency there is a man I can see. You won’t expect me to tell you his name. I saw him last night. It’s with his permission that I’ve told you as much as I have. He is making arrangements to get you out of the country. There are still one or two places in the globe which haven’t signed extradition treaties with us.”

  “And until then?”

  “Until then, we suggest you stay exactly where you are. It is, I think, the very last place that anyone will come looking for you.”

  “Damn and blast it,” said Superintendent Lacey. “He must be somewhere”.

  “Hotel reports negative. Boarding houses ditto. Casualty wards, doss houses, and hospitals ditto. Brothels ditto.”

  “All right, all right. I’ve read them. What I want’s a suggestion. Not a list of dittos.”

  Sergeant Knight was on the point of saying, “It isn’t my place to make suggestions,” but reflected that they had neither of them had any sleep for nearly forty-eight hours, and bit it back. “I think, sir,” he said, “that we ought to work on the assumption that he’s got out of London.”

  “Spread the search, you mean?” The superintendent considered. A spread meant involving the Borough and County Forces; and it meant a lot of co-ordination and paperwork. But it also meant that he could go to bed.

  “I’m beginning to believe you’re right,” he said. “If he’d been in London, we’d have him by now. Particularly with his picture in every paper.”

  “With and without beard,” said Sergeant Knight. “That was a good idea of yours, sir.”

  “It’ll be a good idea if it works. All right. We’ll spread the net . . .”

  It is astonishing how quickly the power of routine, even an outlandish routine, will establish itself. Harry left the Court every morning, soon after the doors were opened, slipping out by the Carey Street entrance; was shaved and touched up by Tom Cox, had a leisurely breakfast, and was back in Court by ten o’clock. He spent timeless hours drifting round the corridors resting, from time to time, in the public gallery of one or other of the Courts. He listened to Mr. Justice Neville reading out a long and complicated judgment on the ownership of chattels in transit. He took his midday meal in the dining room on the ground floor which was full of barristers eating mixed grills and reassuring anxious clients. At half past four, he went out and had a large tea. By six, he was tucked into his bed.

  This was the part he found most difficult. Mr. Harbord had rearranged the rampart of files so that Harry’s hiding place was now entirely roofed over, and proof from all but a very thorough search. The difficulty was that once inside this narrow coffin, he had nothing to do.

  On the fourth night, he devised a palliative. There was a five-amp wall socket in the skirting board just outside his hiding place and he plugged one of Mr. Harbord’s table lamps into it. A few experiments convinced him that not a glimmer of light could be seen from the outside.

  The files which walled him in were arranged alphabetically with their titles towards him. He decided to start with Aarvold v. The Random Window Cleaning Company. The file contained what he guessed to be copies of the documents retained by the Court at the conclusion of the case. It started with a Statement of Claim.

  Harry was fascinated to observe the variety and unexpectedness of matters in which litigants had seen fit to invoke the assistance of the High Court. Neighbours had cut down trees, or refused to cut down trees, had played wirelesses too loud or cards too well, had refused to speak to each other, or spoken all too pointedly.

  Towards midnight he had reached Baker v. Lovegrove. Mr. Lovegrove had rashly contracted to supply Mr. Baker with as much whisky as he could consume ‘until Hell froze’. Finding this an onerous undertaking, the defendant had ingeniously argued that ‘Hell’ was the name of a pond in his locality. (‘Settled on agreed terms’, the file concluded.) As he was replacing it, Harry spotted a name which made his heart give a little jump.

  ‘Barker v. Mann’.

  “Stop imagining things,” he said aloud, “it’s a common enough name.” But it was Janine all right.

  She had been sued by Stewart Barker, her agent, for breach of contract, and had counter-claimed to have her agency agreement set aside. The case had lasted five days and she had won.

  Two o’clock was booming out from the Strand before Harry laid the papers aside and fell into a troubled sleep.

  Next morning, he laid the file on Mr. Harbord’s desk.

  “I don’t remember it, particularly,” said Mr. Harbord. “My job’s to see they’re in order and put them away. What’s interesting about it?”

  “Anything about Janine’s past interests me,” said Harry. “Because it might lead to the man she was going to visit that night.”

  “It sounds like a long shot to me,” said Mr. Harbord doubtfully. “When did all this happen? Seven years ago?”

  “What happened,” said Harry, “was that she had a contract with this agent, Stewart Barker. She was a rising young star, then. In fact, she had risen. It was after her first big success. Barker was taking twenty-five per cent of all her earnings. She thought it was too much, and refused to pay him. He sued her for breach of contract. Her defence was that she had actually been under age when she signed the contract, and that Barker had altered the date on it.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s the maddening part about your files. Like a serial. They break off just when things are getting exciting. I know she won. But that’s all.”

  “Her solicitors, I see, were Bastwick, Beeding and Co.”

  “That’s right. It’s a one-man show now. Alfred Beeding. He’s my solicitor too.”

  “Is someone taking my boss’s name in vain?”

  Two heads jerked round. A girl had come into the room. Harry recognised her at once. It was Bridget Avery. And it was perfectly clear that Bridget had recognised him.

  For a terrible moment, he thought she was going to scream. Harry measured the distance to the door. He could reach it before she could. He might have to knock her down to gain the necessary start. Not a pleasant thought.

  “What are you doing here?” She spoke softly, as if frightened of being overheard. Her eyes shuttled from him to Mr. Harbord. There was no hostility in them. Shock, perhaps, and fear; but fear for him, not for herself. “I thought – why aren’t you a long way away?”

  Harry was thinking furiously. She wasn’t going to give him away. He was certain of that. Perhaps she was on his side. But he mustn’t give his friends away.

  Mr. Harbord made the decision for him, as calmly as he had taken the one four days earlier.

  “It was safer for him to stay here,” he said.

  “Then you’re—?”

  “Yes. I’m helping him. Are you going to give us away?”

  “As if I would.” The scorn in her voice startled Harry.

  Mr. Harbord looked at her, shrewdly. “We haven’t had time,” he said, “to find out who you are.”

  “I’m Bridget Avery.”

  “You’re Mr. Beeding’s secretary, aren’t you?” said Harry. “I saw you in Court. And you came, once, with Beeding and Hargest Macrea to see me in Pentonville.”

  “I was in the whole case, from beginning to end. I’ve never been more miserable in my life. When you hit that warder and disappeared from the box I nearly stood up and screamed, ‘Go on. Go on. Get away, quick.’ I didn’t think you had half a chance, really.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got more than three-quarters of one now. And anyth
ing I have got’s due to this gentleman.”

  “I was originally going to suggest,” said Mr. Harbord, “that you went away and forgot all about us. If you work in Mr. Beeding’s office, though, I’m not so sure.”

  “You don’t think I’d tell him, do you?”

  “I’m confident you wouldn’t. What I meant was that you might be able to get hold of some information for us.” He indicated the open file. “There was a case, about seven years ago, involving the murdered girl, and her agent—”

  “A man called Stewart Barker?”

  “You remember it?”

  “No, but that’s the reason I’ve come to see you.” They stared at her. “That’s the file I was sent over to find.”

  There was a long moment of silence in the turret room. Remembering it, later, Harry thought it was like the moment of stillness when the orchestra had finished one theme, and the first soft, enigmatic note is struck which heralds the introduction of a new motif. He realised that something of the utmost importance had been said. The difficulty was grasping it.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Mr. Henry – he’s our litigation clerk.”

  “An elderly man,” said Mr. Harbord, “with a face like a clown – an Auguste – the sad one.”

  “That’s him.”

  “But why did he want it?” said Harry.

  “Because our file on the case seems to have disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “I can’t understand it. You know how carefully papers are looked after in lawyers’ offices. They’re all docketed, and indexed, and put away. When Mr. Henry went to look for this one, it wasn’t there. It seems someone must have taken it out without recording it and not put it back.”

  “But why did he want to look at it, particularly?”

  “He’s been behaving very oddly lately. He keeps talking about Janine. He had some idea that there was a connection between that other case and – and what happened to her.”

  “And that’s why he wanted to look at the old file?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And it wasn’t there?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any idea who could have taken it?”

  “It must have been someone in the office, I should imagine. It could hardly have been a burglar.”

  “No,” said Mr. Harbord. “No, indeed. Most interesting. Mr. Henry, if I remember rightly, is something of a drinker.”

  “He’s been drinking a lot lately.”

  “Has he indeed?” said Mr. Harbord. “It sounds as if he has something on his mind. I wonder what it could be?”

  Harry spent the rest of the morning in Chancery Court No. 2 listening to an interesting case about a disputed will. He was somewhat distracted by the attempts of his neighbour, a middle-aged lady in a daffodil-yellow hat, to draw him into conversation, but he was feeling so cheerful that morning that he was tolerant even of her chatter.

  In the luncheon interval Mr. Harbord locked up his office and descended to the buffet.

  His first objective was a corner table where he found an untidy, aggressive man with the look of a wire-haired fox terrier, called Mr. Tarragon. Since Mr. Tarragon had a second glass of beer ready on the table, it was clear that he was expecting Mr. Harbord. They talked quietly for some time, Mr. Harbord scribbled an address on a piece of paper, and pushed it across the table. Mr. Tarragon finished his beer and went out.

  At the other end of the crowded L-shaped bar, Mr. Henry was standing by himself, drinking whisky. His long, red, heavy face lightened a fraction as he saw Mr. Harbord elbowing his way towards him.

  “How are the files, Charlie?”

  “They’re dead, but they won’t lie down,” said Mr. Harbord. “What’s that? Scotch?”

  “With water,” said Mr. Henry. “Soda water’s too strong for me these days.”

  “Double Scotch and water, miss.”

  “You want something out of me,” said Mr. Henry. “You’ve never stood me a double Scotch before.”

  “I want some advice,” said Mr. Harbord. He slid easily into a technical discussion . . .

  The wire-haired Mr. Tarragon was plodding up a flight of stairs in a tall building in Denmark Street. The pebble glass door on the third landing said Stewart Barker, Theatrical and Musical Agent. Mr. Tarragon knocked and went in. The fat girl wedged behind the desk in the corner said that Mr. Barker was out at lunch. She wasn’t sure when he’d be back. He didn’t usually get back from lunch before three. Mr. Tarragon said that, in that case, he’d get some lunch himself, and call back, and why didn’t they have a lift put in? The fat girl said that it was because the building was due to be pulled down, and as far as she was concerned it couldn’t happen too soon.

  By a quarter to three the atmosphere in the Law Courts Bar was thick; thick with talk, thick with smoke, thick with the exhalation of alcoholic confidence.

  A tear had gathered in the outer corner of Mr. Henry’s right eye. Mr. Harbord had watched it filling and swelling. Any moment now, it was going to fall. Any moment now, Mr. Henry was going to talk.

  Twice he had come to the brink. There was a heavy weight of unshared secrets in the old man’s mind; a load of oppression which it longed to shed, yet dared not; a dammed-up flow of suspicion and guilt, which wanted to burst free, but was held back by a lifetime of professional reticence.

  “Time for one more,” said Mr. Harbord.

  Mr. Henry said, “Look, Charlie. I’m not going back to the office this afternoon. I don’t think I could stand it. There’s a little place I know round the corner. It’s a sort of club.”

  Mr. Harbord thought quickly. His door was locked. He rarely had visitors in the afternoon. “Fine,” he said.

  “It was all a long time ago,” said Stewart Barker. “And I don’t see a lot of point in digging it up again. If that bitch had still been alive I’d have moved heaven and earth to get even with her, but as it is—”

  “If you could tell me exactly what happened,” said Mr. Tarragon. “I might be able to tell you what use we could make of the information. Until I know that, I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

  Stewart Barker tried to work this out, but got lost about halfway through it and said, “I’m quite prepared to tell you about it. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Janine Mann first came to us when she was eighteen. She’d been to drama school, but she hadn’t any obvious talent, except a cast-iron determination to get on – which is the only thing that really matters in the long run. I got her a few parts – provincial tours, pier shows in the summer, pantomime in the winter. I doubt if she made two hundred a year the first two years. I took a quarter of it, and was out of pocket by the bargain.”

  Mr. Tarragon nodded. It wasn’t clear to him how Stewart Barker could have twice received fifty pounds and been out of pocket when all he had to do was make a few telephone calls, but he was well aware of the convention that agents lost money promoting hopeful clients.

  “Soon after that she got her first chance in the West End. And she took it, with both hands. I grant her that. One thing led to another: stage, films, television. Nothing succeeds like success – in the world of entertainment, anyway. She made a lot of money. And what stuck in her dear little throat was that she had to pay a quarter of it over to me. A month after she came of age, she signed a regular agency contract – as watertight as my lawyers could make it – Duxford and Timmis. I expect you know them?”

  Mr. Tarragon smiled thinly and said that he did, indeed, know Messrs. Duxford and Timmis.

  “Imagine my surprise when the little so-and-so came along, cool as you like, to my office one morning and said, ‘I’m not paying you twenty-five per cent any more, Stewart. You can have ten, or I’ll change my agent.’ I said, ‘you can’t do that. I’ve got a contract.’ She said, ‘We’ll see about that – good morning.’ Just like that.”

  “I imagine you took her to court.”

  “Certainly I took her to court. I’d got nothing to be
ashamed of, had I?”

  “And I imagine you won the case.”

  “Then you imagine wrong,” said Mr. Barker. “Her story – or rather her lawyer’s story – a man called Beeding was doing the case for her – was that she’d signed the contract before her twenty-first birthday, and I’d put the date in afterwards.”

  “A bit difficult to prove, surely.”

  “She proved it, all right. She produced a letter on my office notepaper, signed by me, dated a fortnight before her twenty-first birthday, saying, Come to my office tomorrow and sign all the papers. I can’t remember the exact wording. That was the effect of it.”

  “And did you write—?”

  “Of course I didn’t. If I’d been trying anything like that, do you imagine I’d have written? I’d have rung her up.”

  Looking at Mr. Barker’s shrewd, if slightly close-set eyes, Mr. Tarragon was well able to believe him.

  “How did she work it?”

  “Pinched a bit of notepaper from my office – she might even have typed it on my girl’s machine – she was alone in the outer office for a quarter of an hour one morning. Forged my signature.”

  “She took a few risks,” said Mr. Tarragon. “Did her solicitor accept the letter at its face value?”

  Stewart Barker laughed sourly. “Accept it?” he said. “It’s my belief old Beeding put her up to it and what she gave him, in return for his services, is anyone’s guess. It certainly wasn’t money . . .”

  Harry spent the afternoon in Queen’s Bench 3, listening to a personal injury case. He was aggrieved to find that the lady in the daffodil hat had followed him; but his mind was not really on her, or on the case. He was thinking what an extraordinarily nice girl Bridget was.

  At six o’clock, Mr. Beeding sat alone in his office in New Square, Lincoln’s Inn. He was considering the problem of his litigation clerk, Mr. Henry. First, there was the problem of his drinking, which had grown worse lately. Secondly, there was the question of his unamiability which had developed into definite truculence. Thirdly, and most disturbing, were the hints he had started dropping.