“You’re sure this is the one you saw coming out of Mr. Sudderby’s house?”
“Quite sure. He was directly under the street lamp.”
“Right,” said Knox. “You lot can go, and thank you very much. You six, I’ll want your names and addresses, and someone to identify you, then you can go home, but you’re to stay home when you get there. You may be wanted as witnesses, or there may be other charges. Do you understand that?”
The six signified with a murmur that they understood, and Sergeant Appleby herded them away. They seemed subdued.
“What are you going to do with me?” said the fair-haired boy.
“You’ll be charged, and brought up in front of the Magistrate this morning.”
“What’s the charge?”
“Larceny from a dwelling-house.”
The boy thought it out.
“You mean you think I stole that money.”
“That’s the idea.”
“I suppose it’s no use telling you it was given to me.”
“You can tell the court that. If they believe you, that’ll be all right, won’t it?”
“It happens to be true.”
“What would Mr. Sudderby give you two hundred pounds for?”
The boy said, with a perfectly straight face, “He was fond of me.”
“It’s as crazy a case as I’ve ever come across,” said Inspector Knox to Anthony, when the boy had been taken off. “We went straight up, and found the whole gang of them, packing up to go. Ten minutes later, and they’d have gone. And once they’d gone, I don’t believe we’d have seen hide or hair of them again.”
“The police in London would have been able to trace them, surely.”
“The others, perhaps. I’m not so sure about that boy. He’s a card, is Eric.”
“Eric?”
“That’s the only name we know. The other boys don’t know any more about him than we do. He’s the boss. He organises the outings. When the outing’s over, they don’t see him again, till next time.”
“If he organises things,” said Anthony, slowly, “he must do it from somewhere. He must write letters. In fact, I seem to remember Mr. Sudderby told me he’d had quite a correspondence with him.”
“So he did,” said the Inspector. “We found some of the letters when we were looking over the house last night. They were all written from the rectory at St. John’s Church, Southwark. I had a word with the rector on the telephone this morning. He knows almost as little about Eric as we do.
“He used to let him use the church room to organise his Sunshine Boys, and the rectory as an accommodation address.”
“Then all you know about him is his Christian name?”
“I don’t know even how old he is.”
“If he’s under age, surely it’s for him to object,” said Anthony. “If you give it a bit of a splash in the papers, his parents will come forward quick enough.”
“I expect they will,” said the Inspector. “But it’s not the way we like doing things. Suppose his father turns out to be a Member of Parliament, or someone like that.”
Anthony considered the matter. Eric had spoken in the curious, flat, classless accent which was the product of universal education and universal television. He might have come from any sort of home.
“Have you traced that £200 yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I may be able to save you some trouble. Have a word with Councillor Southern. I think you’ll find he lent £200 to Mr. Sudderby yesterday. Were they new notes?”
“Brand new, and in series.”
“Then you shouldn’t have much difficulty identifying them. Mr. Southern drew them from his own bank yesterday, and if they’re a new issue, the bank should have a note of the numbers.”
“It’ll be nice to be able to check something,” said Inspector Knox.
As Anthony was going, a thought struck him. “Where’s Inspector Ashford?” he said.
“At home,” said Knox. “A touch of gastric trouble. The court is sitting at eleven. A special session, just to deal with this case. You’ll have to give evidence of identification, and I’ll ask for eight days remand.”
After the court proceedings Anthony went to his office, letting himself in with his own key. Since it was Saturday morning the whole building was quiet and empty. He got out the files of the planning appeal and settled down to do some work on them. The hearing was on top of them, and he was sadly behind in his preparations. Two of the witnesses were London experts, suggested by Powell. They had submitted preliminary proofs, but their evidence needed a lot of sifting out and co-ordinating. Really, he ought to see each of them separately, with Counsel, and run through what he was going to say. And the witnesses were in London, and he was in Barhaven. And they had precisely two clear days to do it in.
Anthony got out his diary and found Dudley Powell’s home number.
A woman answered the telephone and said that Mr. Powell was out, but would be back for his lunch at any moment. Anthony guessed that this must be Mrs. Powell and introduced himself. Mrs. Powell said, “Oh, yes. I’ve heard about you. We really are keen on the idea of coming to Barhaven, you know. The boys haven’t stopped talking about it since we told them. Do try to find us a house.”
Anthony said he would do his best. He thought Mrs. Powell sounded rather nice.
Half an hour later Powell came through and Anthony explained the problem to him.
“Why don’t you come up here on Monday morning,” said Powell, “and stay the night with us? We could give the witnesses a preliminary canter on Monday and you could be back in your office by Tuesday lunch-time to settle up any last-minute paper work.”
“Could you really put up with me?”
“I’m sure we could. Hold on a moment.” Anthony heard him shouting at his wife. Then he came back, and said, “That’s fixed. I expect you at the office about midday on Monday.”
When Anthony put down the receiver he sat quite still for a few moments. He thought that it would be nice to have a partner who could do some of his thinking for him; and, even more, that it would be fun to have a wife you could shout at and who would arrange, at a moment’s notice, for a stranger to stay the night.
He went back to his papers. The case had been a muddle before, but one or two pieces seemed to be falling into place at last.
As the shape of the coming battle looked clearer through the mist of depositions and plans and notes and letters the memory of James Sudderby’s tormented face faded a little.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Anthony Shifts his Base
BOROUGH OF BARHAVEN-ON-SEA
“The Councillors representing the undermentioned Wards being due to retire by rotation, the vacancies so created will be filled, by ballot, on Friday next, July 29th. Nominations of candidates, qualified for election, and duly proposed and seconded, have been handed to the Deputy Returning Officer as follows:
WARD
CANDIDATES
The Liberties
William Law
Robert Stitchley
Victoria Park
Ralph Masters
Gerald Lincoln-Bright
Raymond Leofric Southern
Harold Joseph Hopper
Marine East
John Evelyn Crawford
Arthur James Ambrose
Marine West
Leonard Ames Mossman
Christopher Sellinge
Polling stations will be open from 6.30 a.m. until 8 p.m.
Anthony read this announcement on his way to the station on Monday morning. He stopped for a moment to study the Christian names. Who would have suspected Southern of being a Leofric? Or Crawford of being an Evelyn? There was something else about the notice which interested him. It was only when the train was drawing into Victoria that he pinpointed it. It was the expression “Deputy Returning Officer”.
The person who actually dealt with the nomination papers was, as he knew, little Mr. Pitt, at the Tow
n Hall. So Mr. Pitt was probably the “Deputy Returning Officer” referred to. In that case, who was the Returning Officer? Anthony suspected that he knew the answer, and if he was right, it led to a further and even more perplexing question.
He got off his bus at the end of Chancery Lane and made for the Law Society’s Hall. It took him a few minutes to locate the point he wanted. He looked up a couple of cases in the Law Reports, jotted down the citation references in his diary and went on his way.
Dudley Powell said, “You look uncommonly thoughtful this morning.”
“I was thinking,” said Anthony, “how very little law a solicitor in general practice actually knows. He does a bit of conveyancing and probate work, and dabbles in tax and estate duty problems. But think of all the stuff he probably never touches from the moment he takes his Final – Municipal Law – Ecclesiastical Law, Patent, Agency, Sale of Goods, Bills of Exchange—”
“What do you think Counsel are for?”
“Counsel are very useful if you know what the problem is. But supposing you don’t even realise that there is a problem?”
Dudley inspected Anthony closely, and then said, “You look to me as if you need a good iron tonic.”
“As a matter of fact, I have been having rather a time of it lately.”
He told him about it as they walked towards the Temple. Powell listened in silence, and said at the end, “How perfectly bloody. I suppose your Town Clerk was homo, and the boy was blackmailing him.”
“It looks like that. The funny thing is, that I’ve known him for years. I never had any idea.”
“People never do. Here we are. We’ve got Breamore, the planning man, this morning, and Colonel Passmore, the drainage expert, is coming along this afternoon. You’ll enjoy Passmore. What he doesn’t know about sewage isn’t knowledge.”
Mr. Breamore was small and round, had plenty of auburn hair, worn rather long, and looked like a junior don. He arrived carrying a big, black cylinder of maps. These soon escaped, and, as the morning wore on, covered Mr. Hiscoe’s tables, bookcases, chairs and, finally, whole areas of his carpet. Mr. Breamore bounced from map to map. As he went Sandling seemed to expand in front of Anthony’s eyes into a Metropolis, larger than Blackpool, shinier than Brighton, noisier than Southend.
Mr. Hiscoe prodded, from time to time, with a question and finally dismissed him.
“A very sound man,” he said, “but inclined to get carried away. We must hope he will stand up to cross-examination.”
After lunch, with Colonel Passmore, a thin, bald man with a corvine face and an attractive, bass speaking voice, they plunged into another world, a private world of pumpage and pipage, with its junctions and termini and catchment areas; a world in which sewage ceased to be sewage and was transformed into effluent, a thing of strange beauty, with a subterranean life of its own.
It was four o’clock when they surfaced.
“I think we might have some tea now,” said Powell.
“There’s one question I’d like to find out the answer to, now I’m here—only I don’t suppose it’ll be possible to fix it in time.”
“Name it,” said Powell, “and I guarantee we’ll find someone to answer it. In this square mile of London you can find an expert on any topic, from Welsh Church Law to Chinese divorce.”
“This is Municipal Law.”
“Money for jam.”
He disappeared into a call-box and came out five minutes later.
“Miss Spurling, who has her Chambers at No. 15 King’s Bench Walk, will be delighted to see us. She is in court at the moment, but her clerk says she will be free by five o’clock, so we’ve time for a cup of tea after all.”
Miss Spurling wore rectangular spectacles and had thick black eyebrows which met over the bridge of her nose. She listened attentively to Anthony’s exposition, studied the papers he had brought with him and consulted a volume from the bookshelf. Then she said, “It’s a curious point. But I should say, quite definitely, that you were right. The position could be rectified, of course, if the Mayor resigned before the election.”
“It would mean resigning the mayoralty.”
“Certainly. The other office derives, ex officio, from the mayoralty.”
“But it would put it right if the Mayor had resigned before polling day?”
“That was the point I was in some doubt about. But there’s a case – it’s on Parliamentary election law, but it seems to me quite valid in the context of Municipal Law. It is authority for the proposition that these honorary functions only hold good for the day of the election itself.”
“I wonder,” said Anthony, “if you could give me a short written opinion on that. It might be difficult, otherwise, for me—”
Miss Spurling smiled grimly and said, “I appreciate your position, Mr. Brydon. You shall have your written opinion. Who am I instructed by? Messrs. Moule Mainwaring, or yourselves?”
“You’d better send it to Moules. There’s no great hurry about getting it, as long as I know that it’s coming.”
“Curious, don’t you think,” said Powell, as they walked away, “that anyone should actually be keen to jump into bed with that woman.”
“Does someone?”
“Good heavens, yes. She’s been living with — for years. We thought he might give her up when he was made a High Court Judge, but not a bit of it.”
Anthony finished that evening playing four-pack racing demon with Powell and his two sons, losing tenpence in the process. He slept well and was back in his office by half-past two on the following afternoon. Ann said, “Mrs. Lord telephoned. Something about an appointment.”
“That’s right. I rang her up from Victoria.”
“She’s coming in at four o’clock.”
“And how has Barhaven been behaving in my absence?”
“Barhaven’s getting worked up,” said Ann. “The Progressives had a meeting at the Drill Hall last night. And it ended in a free fight.”
“Who fought who?”
“Some men from London. There were half-a-dozen of them – real East End tough boys. You know Walter – the man who takes visitors out lobster fishing—”
Anthony dimly remembered Walter, a huge man with a face the colour of a bar counter.
“One of the toughs butted him in the face, and Walter crowned him with a notice board.”
“It sounds like a keen meeting,” said Anthony. “What happened next?”
“The police turned up. They didn’t arrest anyone, though.”
“Didn’t—or wouldn’t?”
“Oh, I think they would have done, but the people who started the trouble had cleared off. The police scattered a few warnings round. I heard something else. Ashford’s been rusticated.”
“Inspector Knox said he had gastric trouble.”
“That’s only a cover story. He’s sulking, like Achilles. In his bungalow out at Cliffside.”
“How do you know?”
“One of Ambrose’s reporters went out to see him. Ashford kicked him down the front steps and threw his camera into the sea.”
“Start this story at the beginning. If someone has suspended Ashford from duty – and about time, too – it must be either the Chief Constable or the Watch Committee—which would mean Raymond Southern—”
“There’s an odd story going round,” said Ann. “People say there’s a Home Office Inspector in town, and that he’s taking evidence. No one quite knows who he is, or where he’s hanging out, but that’s the story, anyway.”
“One of the reasons Dudley Powell wanted to come to Barhaven,” said Anthony, “was because it was such a quiet place. Let’s see if we can’t deal with some of those letters.”
Mrs. Lord arrived punctually at four o’clock. She said, “I gathered from your telephone message, Mr. Brydon, that you had some advice for me. An urgent communication, or so I was informed.”
“It’s urgent in this sense,” said Anthony, “that if you decide to act on my advice, you will have to do
so before Friday.”
“Expound.”
“You remember telling me that you waived your emoluments as Mayoress.”
“That is correct.”
“It was only when I saw the election notices that I remembered something. As Mayoress you are ex officio Returning Officer in any election in which you are not, yourself, a candidate. It didn’t arise on the last two occasions, because you were a candidate—both times.”
Mrs. Lord considered this. Her face, which sometimes looked foolish in repose, was now as sharp as a needle.
“That’s quite correct,” she said. “This is the first year in which I have been Mayoress, but not a Council candidate.”
“As Returning Officer, you are paid a salary. It varies with the number of voters on the Register. It’s not a princely sum – in your case it would be something like nine pounds. But it has this peculiarity. It cannot be waived.”
“You mean I can’t say ‘no’ to it?”
“Not effectively.”
“Then how was I able to refuse my mayoral salary?”
“Because it wasn’t salary. It was honorary emoluments. They would only be paid to you if you claimed them. The Returning Officer is a post which carries a fixed salary. You could refuse the money, of course, but you’d still be entitled to it. You’d have been ‘in occupation of a paid office’.”
“You’re sure of all this?”
“When I was up in London yesterday, I took the opportunity of consulting learned Counsel on the matter. What I’m giving you is the gist of what I was told. I’ll be getting a written opinion soon, but I’m afraid it’ll only confirm it.”
There was a long silence. Mrs. Lord sat still. Even her hands had ceased to flutter. Her bright black eyes were focused on a point over Anthony’s shoulder. He thought, most of her vagueness is a front. She’s a very sharp old lady. She isn’t missing a trick.
The Crack In the Teacup Page 18