by Gavin Lyall
Jay, looking like a playboy who has unaccountably got up before noon, moved off to deploy his rakish charm. That left Ranklin, who wanted a word with Quinton, and the unacknowledged O’Gilroy. Since Ranklin hadn’t the Irishman’s talent for loitering, it was lucky that, after almost a week of sunshine, other Londoners had finally decided they could risk simply standing around in the open air.
It was twenty minutes before Quinton came out, and Ranklin intercepted him. The solicitor seemed quite ready to speak to him, smiling in a somewhat interrogatory way, and letting Ranklin lead off.
“I gather that the police now have Guillet chalked up as murder?”
“They must have got a new pathologist’s report.”
“Is that good or bad for Ma’mselle Collomb?”
Quinton shrugged. “I believe he was struck a quite heavy blow – for but an iron bar would do that by itself, you wouldn’t need much strength. If they knew this happened some distance from the river, that would imply a slip of a girl dragging a heavy manthat distance – which is unlikely. But if it happened at the top of some landing steps, all she’d need do is roll him down them.”
“D’you think they’ll ever find out where?”
“It seems highly unlikely now, after two days. Unless they find a witness, which would add a whole new dimension anyway.”
For a moment, Ranklin thought of producing such a witness, and wasn’t even shocked at himself. But that would call for very careful scripting – certainly better than Guillet himself had got. “And for how long does Mrs Finn have to nursemaid her?”
“Until the police have lost interest in her, I’m afraid. Or changed the terms of her bail.”
“Are they likely to call her in for more questioning?”
“Not until they’ve got far more to go on, now they know they’ve got me to deal with.” Which was perfectly reasonable, but could have been said more humbly.
Ranklin nodded vaguely. There didn’t seem much more to say.
But Quinton went on: “I had a little talk with my client.” He paused, smiling. “Aren’t you going to ask me what he said?”
Ranklin just nodded, but felt lead in his stomach.
“He told me about his putative father. I can now see, I confess, why your people have been acting as you have. But that does not, to my mind, excuse your interference in the legal process.”
Ranklin thought quickly back. As far as he could recall, the legal process was about the one thing they hadn’t interfered with. Yet. “Sorry, but I don’t follow.”
Quinton adopted a foursquare stance in front of him, a bit like an outraged bantam. Oddly, Ranklin only now noticed they were much the same height. Usually he was very conscious of men’s heights.
“Word has seeped out,” Quinton said, “that if this case goes to the King’s Bench on a writ of habeas corpus, it is to be heard by judges who are sympathetic to the boy’s plight – for or at least theKing’s.”
The Palace. The damned Palace.
Ranklin shook his head slowly. “Not our doing, I’m afraid. We simply don’t have that sort of influence.”
Quinton eyed him closely. “I’m certainly glad to hear that – and on balance, I’m inclined to believe you. I suppose,” he mused, “you’d have to tell someone closer to the King that . . . yes, I think I see what would have happened. But Captain, I believe I am doing a good job of representing my client, and have a reasonable chance of getting the case against him dismissed on grounds that even the French authorities will accept. I can manage very well without string-pulling in high places, and especially the implication that I need that. Perhaps you can find a way of passing that on.”
“If the opportunity arises, yes.”
“And in regard to what I learnt from my client, I can assure you that I am not breaking any confidences.” Quinton seemed anxious to prove his own legal virginity. “He spoke out because he’s concerned that nothing seemed to be happening in that area. I said that I was sure steps were being taken.”
“Did he have a view about Guillet’s death?”
“Oh yes. He believes that was punishment for Guillet failing to tell his lies properly. And that the capitalist sheepdogs at the Préfecture must be rehearsing a new witness to take his place.
“Single-minded little bugger, isn’t he?” But Ranklin’s vehemence was aimed at more than just Langhorn.
Quinton smiled coldly. “You might tell your Commander Smith that I’ll be in my chambers the rest of the day, if he wishes to speak to me.” He got into his limousine.
Ranklin watched it go, saying several un-bright-spring-day things under his breath. Trying to stifle this scandal was like trying to stop ripples on water . . . And they couldn’t even be sure whether it was true, dammit.
He was about to nod O’Gilroy off duty when Corinna’s Daimler rushed back down the street, stopped with a jerk, and she jumped out long before the chauffeur could get round to the door.
“That bloody little tramp! She’s shut herself in a room there and won’t come back with me! Can I let the police have her back? Never mind the bail, I just want shot of her.”
Ranklin made soothing noises whilst thinking quickly. There wasn’t time to check with the Commander, he had to act himself.
He pointed up the street, as if giving her directions, and muttered: “This isn’t for your benefit, I’m trying to instruct O’Gilroy. Ah, he’s got it.”
The shabby figure was moving away at a slouching amble.
“Right, get the motor-car turned round, we’ll pick him up further along.”
In the dingier and less public surroundings of Endell Street, Ranklin swung the door open, O’Gilroy stepped in, and they zoomed off. Well, not zoomed, in a Daimler, but definitely hurried – through the wide tangle of traffic near the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, across New Oxford Street and up Bloomsbury Street. By then O’Gilroy knew as much or as little as there was to tell.
“What’s the address of this place?” Ranklin asked.
“14 Bloomsbury Gardens.” He knew that address, and checked with a card in his wallet: it was the one Gorkin had given him.
He hadn’t time to work out what that meant. “Are you armed?” he asked O’Gilroy and got a nod. That meant a .38 semi-automatic Browning: O’Gilroy was a modernist in these matters.
“Good, but keep it out of sight until I say so.”
It was a middle-middle class area which the young of the upper class regarded as daringly slummy. Most of it was squares like this: rows of tall, narrow terraced houses that had been built of yellow brick now black with London’s soot (like the rest of London), around a private but communal garden across the road. There were no front gardens, just a handful of steps leading up from the pavement to the front door, which had a fanlight above to align it with the tall windows.
Ranklin pressed the bell. After a while the door was opened by a tall young woman. It took a moment for Ranklin to decide that anarchists wouldn’t have maidservants, so she couldn’t be one. She had long, very definite pre-Raphaelite features and gingery hair drawn back into a bun. She wore a pale violet garment like a smock that went straight from ankle to throat without being visibly distracted.
She looked past Ranklin at the Daimler. “And who would you be?” Her voice was light, pleasant, educated.
“We’ve come to collect Ma’mselle Collomb.”
“She doesn’t want to go.”
Ranklin nodded. “The problem is, the police released her from custody to Mrs Finn. They think they’ve got first call on her. So, if Mrs Finn doesn’t get her, the police will.”
“That will be an example of police oppression.”
“Did you want an example?”
That hadn’t been the expected answer. She frowned.
Ranklin went on: “You do know that it’s a death they’re questioning her about?”
A slight, cool smile. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. They have no evidence—”
“They seem to have now; I’ve just come
from the court. It’s murder, now. And a rather embarrassing one, a French witness. So the police feel a bit on their mettle. They’d rather like a Frenchwoman to have done it – keeps the British out of it, one might say. And an unworldly little girl from La Villette . . . by the time they’ve finished, she’ll have confessed to everything and the Jack the Ripper murders as well.”
She frowned again. “Do you really believe that?”
“Don’t you?”
She licked her thin lip s. “You’re just saying that.”
“I asked you if you believed it.”
“Well, yes. I certainly believe the police are . . .” She wasn’t quite sure what.
“Capitalist sheepdogs?” Ranklin suggested cheerfully. “I think they’re actually more complicated than that, but it still leaves the question of how you’re going to protect Ma’mselle Collomb from them.”
“They’d never dare come tromping in here.”
“Ah, that’s what you really believe, isn’t it? That they’re nice friendly men in uniform who tell you the way when you’re lost, just like nanny said. Well, probably they are to people who live in houses this size, but not to Berenice Collomb. And I think it would be rather sad for you to learn that by putting her on the gallows. Still, it’ll be a good chapter for your memoirs, so maybe you think it’s cheap at the price.”
She jerked the front door wide. “You’d better come in.”
A few steps down the narrow hallway was Gorkin, who had obviously been hearing every word.
“Hello, Dr Gorkin,” Ranklin called. “Sorry I haven’t had time for you to convert me, but been rather busy. Still am, as a matter of fact.”
“You have come to return Berenice to the rich Mrs Finn?”
“I have. Mrs Finn doesn’t like it either, but seems ready to go along with it on behalf of a fellow human being.” He turned back to the woman. “Can you fetch Ma’mselle Collomb?”
“You’d better come up and talk to her yourself.”
They went up to the second floor. The house was sparsely furnished, mostly with rather rigid, elongated Art Nouveau pieces, oriental pottery and a lot of paintings in bold primary colours. And William Morris wallpaper, of course: the silly bastard had once proclaimed himself an anarchist, hadn’t he?
The woman rapped on a door and said: “Berenice?”
“Ils sont retourner?”
“Oui,” Ranklin called. “Avec moi —James Spencer. Vous avez un choix: venir avec moi et Madame Finn, ou avec les flics.”
She told him, in colloquial French, to go and fuck himself. Ranklin grinned at the woman. “You’d better talk to her. I’ll let Dr Gorkin show me the error of my ways.” He wanted to get Gorkin out of the conversation to come. He had nothing against the man except for his tendency to be present, watching and listening. For example, he had followed them up the stairs.
So Ranklin took him by the arm, led him aside and launched straight in: “One thing that bothers me about anarchism, especially when it depends on a revolution, is the transition period from the ancien régime to a perfect anarchist state. Can you get people to give up their old dog-eat-dog ways overnight, without a period of education? – and what happens during that period?”
“People – working people – are oppressed, not corrupted. You see it everywhere in working communities, the help they give each other. It is the bourgeoisie who put up fences and have secrets.”
Thinking of Aunt Maud’s house, Ranklin couldn’t but agree. “You could be right – but there’s getting to be an awful lot of the middle class: are they all going to perish in the revolution?”
“They can choose.” Gorkin was looking over Ranklin’s shoulder, trying to hear what the woman was saying to the still-locked door.
“You’re talking to me,” Ranklin reminded him. “So, the middle class can make a quick choice: either join the revolution or off to Madame la Guillotine?”
“Once the revolution has happened, there will be no need for guillotines. It will be secure – in science, a stable state, if you understand that.”
“The only truly stable explosive is one that’s exploded already? Yes, I think – ah.”
He had heard the click of the door behind him. Berenice came out, carrying a small, tattered shopping basket. She gave Ranklin a look of sullen dislike, and he smiled back and gestured politely at the stairs. The woman had got things this far; let her stay in charge. He followed them down, keeping Gorkin well separated.
Outside, O’Gilroy was standing by the open rear door of the Daimler. He let Berenice in, then went to sit by the driver.
The woman had stopped at the foot of the steps and Ranklin paused to ask: “One thing: was Berenice out on Wednesday night? – the night before last?”
“Yes.” Cautiously.
“What time did she get in?”
“About ten o’clock.”
“Was it only you who saw her then?”
“Oh no. There were several of us.” She half-turned towards Gorkin, watching from the doorway. “Including Dr Gorkin.”
“Have the police asked you about this?”
“No.”
“If they get really serious, they will. Tell them the truth. It helps her. Thank you, Miss, er . . .”
“Venetia Sackfield.”
They shook hands, hello and goodbye, and Ranklin got into the back seat of the Daimler and they headed for the Sherring flat in Clarges Street.
“How in hell did you pull that off?” Corinna growled.
“All done by kindness. And threats, of course.”
8
Ranklin left O’Gilroy at Clarges Street with instructions not to use his pistol and not even much muscle if Berenice looked like fleeing the nest again. He half hoped that she would warm to the Irishman’s cynicism, since he suspected that O’Gilroy was something of a natural anarchist himself. He might want to end British rule in Ireland, but the moment the place had its own government, he would be deriding and undermining it.
Ranklin only hoped the citizens of La Villette weren’t as fastidious as most French about hearing their beloved language mangled.
He reached Whitehall Court at about midday and reported the morning’s activities to the Commander, who nodded approvingly. “Sounds as if you handled that quite smoothly – the way you tell it, anyway. Where’s young Jay?”
“I sent him to find what the police are up to. I’ve got a bit of bad news: young Langhorn’s told Quinton who he thinks his father is.”
The Commander chewed an unlit pipe quietly for a time. Then he sighed. “I suppose it could have happened at any time . . . How did Quinton react?”
“I think he’s quite intrigued, and with the extradition business seemingly petering out on him, he’s not being so upright about legal confidences. But—” And he repeated what Quinton had said about high-level legal string-pulling.
“The bloody Palace!” The Commander jumped to the same conclusion. “And now I suppose every lawyer in the land is asking why the Palace is interested in this gutter arsonist. God save the King from his well-meaning friends.” At least the Bureau, Ranklin reflected, was not well-meaning: it was trying to strengthen its position by doing the King a favour. Good, honest self-interest, and if the King didn’t know about the favour, the Commander would likely find ways of telling him.
However, there wasn’t much to be done about that right now, so he asked: “Is there any way of keeping Quinton quiet?”
“As a lawyer he should be able to keep a secret. But how do you make sure, with a man who likes to be thought a gentleman?” And after a time, a slow, self-satisfied smile spread around his pipe-stem. Ranklin knew the signs: the Commander was going to be devious.
* * *
Having missed lunch the previous day, Ranklin arrived at Clarges Street just in time to miss it again. “And a very tasty one, too,” O’Gilroy assured him. “Can I pour ye a cup of coffee.?”
He and Corinna were sitting alone at the dining table, he with an expression of cont
ented innocence, Corinna with a smug, cat-got-the-cream look. Ranklin knew this meant, for him, Bad News.
She said: “Conall, could you nip along to the kitchen and ask them to whip up more coffee? – if they can fit it in before cutting our throats (Berenice is there trying to stir up the menials to revolt). I want a word with Matt.”
O’Gilroy stood up. “Ye know what she’s got in there? – a bottle of absinthe.”
Corinna nodded. “She made me send out for it. She was surprised I didn’t have it around.”
“And a third drunk already. That girl’s not going to see thirty, this rate.”
“A child of her age and place,” Corinna said sententiously. “Shut the door behind you.”
It was a big flat, almost divided in two: Reynard Sherring’s set of rooms and Corinna’s. If you got lost, a glance at the decor put you right. Sherring favoured rich, dark clutter, Corinna liked clean-cut brightness – except for her bedroom, which had a rather soggy feminine luxury, as if she wanted somewhere to slump away from her good taste.
They moved to Corinna’s drawing-room, and she began: “I’ve been having some fascinating talks with Berenice. I won’t say she’s not so bad when you get to know her, because I think she’s worse. She’s got the makings of intelligence – she came of a reasonable lower-middle-class family in Cherbourg, I guess that ties up with Grover in his Atlantic liner days – anyhow, she knows just enough to think she knows everything, and I’m corrupt and old – old! – I don’t mind being corrupt . . . And incidentally she told me about who Grover says his father was.”
Ranklin had half seen this coming, but there had still been a spark of hope that it wasn’t. He nodded resignedly.
“You poor little bunny,” she said, suddenly maternal. “Running around wiping up after your King when you should be deciding the Fate of Nations.”
“Look, nothing about this is proven.”
“It seems odd that a prince – he was, then, wasn’t he? – didn’t take proper precautions . . . But I suppose things weren’t as advanced in those days.”
Ranklin, who didn’t think things were very advanced now, repeated: “I tell you: nothing is proven.”