For a time neither spoke. Goodbody again looked out of the window at the gardens. That morning he had been in discussion with the firm’s accountants. Despite the handsome rooms overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields and every outward appearance, the situation of the firm of Goodbody & Co. was not healthy. Indeed, the accountant had used the word desperate. So Spenser’s offer was more than welcome. It could be just what was needed. It could be a lifesaver. ‘Ledbury,’ he said reflectively.
‘Ledbury,’ Spenser repeated.
Goodbody rose. ‘Ledbury and I have the habit of dining once each month at Penns Club where we are both members. It so happens that tonight is one of those evenings. Let me see what I can do, Mr Spenser.’
Chapter Three
On the last Wednesday night of every month many members of Penns, the dining club in Hanover Square, avoided the place for it was on those Wednesday nights that Mordecai Ledbury dined there. It was the custom that, when at dinner, members sat at a round table in the dining room in the order in which they had given their orders for food. No one chose his own seat, which was decided by chance, and older members had too often undergone the experience of finding themselves seated next to Mordecai Ledbury and suffering from his irascible conversation. The only sensible course was to eat silently and swiftly, and retire to the ante-room as soon as possible. Newer members who found themselves Mordecai Ledbury’s dinner neighbours and who attempted to make conversation rarely repeated the error.
There was a further inconvenience on these Wednesday evenings, for when members arrived they often found their way down the narrow stairs blocked by Ledbury as he slowly descended from the entrance hall to the ante-room, awkwardly manipulating his two sticks with one hand, the other on the banister. Should any of the newer members try to assist, they were waved aside with a snarl, for all were forced to follow as Mordecai Ledbury made his difficult progress. When at last he reached the ante-room, he moved with his crablike gait to a table by the fire, where the steward brought him his pint of champagne in a silver tankard. He drank neither spirits nor table wine, only vintage champagne. There he would sit, awaiting the only member of the club who would join him – Oliver Goodbody, who alone seemed prepared to tolerate his company. If Goodbody did not appear, Mordecai sat in solitary silence until he went into the dining room, where his entry was greeted with an immediate exodus. He never had a guest. His only company in the club was Oliver Goodbody.
On this Wednesday evening Goodbody had arrived first and took his place at the small table in the corner of the room. He ordered a whisky and soda, and waited. Outwardly he presented his usual appearance of distinguished imperturbability, but inwardly he was feeling anxious. Much depended on this evening.
The club, because it was ‘Ledbury day’ as some called it, was comparatively empty. Soon he heard the clatter of Mordecai’s progress down the stairs and the buzz of talk from the small group of members who were queuing patiently behind him. He watched as, reaching the anteroom floor, Ledbury advanced slowly across the room to join him, while the members who had been forced to queue on the stairs hastily ordered their dinner from the steward and disappeared into the dining-room.
They made an odd couple: Oliver with his distinguished, aquiline features and silver hair; Mordecai misshapen, saturnine complexion, his head bald except for a few strands of jet-black hair plastered across the crown. The steward, unbidden, having brought Mordecai his usual tankard of champagne and, having allowed time for Mordecai to take a gulp, as was his manner in drinking the wine, Oliver Goodbody began, ‘I had an interesting visitor to my office this afternoon.’
Mordecai grunted over the rim of his tankard.
‘Ralph Spenser, the Managing Director of News Universal,’ Goodbody added.
‘Rum company you keep,’ said Mordecai.
‘He came with a proposition.’
Mordecai grunted again. ‘They’re bad people. What did he want?’
‘He wants you.’
Mordecai lowered his tankard on to the table. ‘Me? What does he want with me?’
‘Your services as counsel.’
Mordecai banged the tankard on the table, making an elderly but new member sitting across the room look up, startled, from behind his newspaper. ‘My services as counsel! After the attacks I’ve made on their rag and that Afrikaner villain?’ He drank. ‘Have they taken leave of their senses?’
‘No. They assume what you have said about them in court was in the course of your professional duty to your then client.’
Mordecai snorted.
‘They want to retain you as a barrister. Not as a moralist, but as a QC who they believe holds himself out for hire like others in his profession.’
Mordecai snorted again.
Goodbody continued, ‘This Sunday their newspaper, the Sunday News, is publishing what they believe could lead to writs for libel. Extracts from the diaries of Francis Richmond.’
‘Richmond? He kept a diary?’
‘He did.’
‘And News intend to publish it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Who on earth would be interested? It’ll be nothing but yarns about him and his like.’
‘I haven’t read it myself but Richmond was a cultivated man who wrote several books and mixed much in society.’
‘I am sure he did. I once had to cross-examine a youth, a friend of his. Richmond was in court. Afterwards he made a scene and insulted me in the corridor. He didn’t like me.’
‘No more than does Digby Price.’
‘Well, then, how am I concerned?’
‘They have decided to publish extracts from the diary and they anticipate the possibility, even the probability, of writs from some of the people referred to.’
‘Very likely, if it’s as bitchy as he was.’
‘They want to retain you on behalf of the newspaper.’
Mordecai shouted over his shoulder, ‘George, bring me another drink.’ He turned to Goodbody. ‘Are they mad? Don’t they know what I think of them?’
Goodbody ignored the outburst. ‘They think you’d be the best man to represent them, despite what their proprietor may think of you. But that wasn’t all. The Managing Director, Spenser, also had another proposition.’ Goodbody waited as George brought a fresh tankard and returned to the bar. ‘He wants my firm to act as solicitors for the Corporation.’
Mordecai Ledbury stared at Goodbody and drank slowly, his black eyes fixed on his companion over the rim of his tankard. ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘they have got you to approach me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the bait to land me is that you and your firm will have the lucrative task of acting as their solicitors.’
‘Exactly.’ Goodbody leant back in his chair. ‘I am going to tell you what I would not tell another living soul. I’m in a bad way. I’ve had some hard financial knocks recently. The Caverel case and my support for that family cost me a great deal.’
‘You got too involved. I warned you,’ Mordecai growled.
‘I’ve had to sell my country house at Whitchurch. The firm has not been doing well. Frankly, we are in grave trouble. We, that is myself as well as the firm, face the possibility of going under.’
Mordecai looked at him. ‘Is it that bad?’
‘It is. As you know, I have no partners. It’s my money that has kept the firm going. But I can’t go on. I have a large overdraft, which the bank is pressing me to reduce. The modern trend in the solicitor world is for clients to abandon small family firms like mine in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and take their business to the legal factories with a hundred partners in the City or the West End. Up to now we have managed to retain a few of the old clients, like Richmond whose estate I handled, but they are dying, as he did.’ He paused. ‘The truth is that my situation, both personally and professionally, is desperate.’
Mordecai looked down at the tankard he was holding between his hands. ‘I am sorry to hear it.’
He meant it, because Mordecai Led
bury had few friends. There were some women who now and then petted him and asked him to their dinner parties. One or two had once loved him, for despite his appearance he knew how to talk to women and these few had discovered the generosity and kindness beneath the distorted exterior. Oliver Goodbody was the only man he recognised as a friend. In his professional life, Mordecai used his chambers in King’s Bench Walk solely for conferences, working mainly from home in Albany where he kept his books. He wouldn’t even have been able to recognise any of the men and women who were members of his chambers. The only person he dealt with there was Adams, his clerk. Very rarely did he go to the Inner Temple for a dinner, possibly once or twice in a year. Oliver Goodbody was the sole friend he met regularly.
The Wednesday dinners were important to Mordecai.
‘This offer by News Universal could be the saving of the firm – and of me. The retainer, which extends to whether or not there are any actual writs, would be very lucrative.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘And they want you, Mordecai,’ Goodbody repeated. ‘I know you are not doing as much business as you used to,’ he added.
Mordecai stared at the wine in his tankard. ‘I do enough,’ he muttered. ‘Enough to pay the bills. I don’t need much.’
‘Enough for your vintage champagne, your apartment in Albany, and your holidays at the Danieli in Venice? None of that comes cheap.’
‘I told you, I have enough, more than enough.’
‘My managing clerk is a good friend of Adams, your clerk. A retainer such as News Universal is now offering, he says, is what you need at this time in your professional life.’
‘It’s what Adams needs, you mean. He takes his ten per cent. He’s a greedy old woman.’
‘You’re not getting any younger, Mordecai.’
‘Leave me out of it,’ Mordecai said roughly. ‘I told you I’m all right and I am. I don’t need News Universal. I dislike everything about them. They respect nothing and nobody. They corrupt every civilised standard this country once stood for. They pander to the lowest instincts of the modern yob. Left to myself, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.’ He paused, studying the grave, handsome face opposite him. ‘Left to myself, I said.’ He paused again, then added, ‘So it’s a package they want. You – provided they get me.’ Oliver nodded. ‘Not one without the other?’ Oliver shook his head. Mordecai leant back in his chair. ‘So if I refuse, I ruin a friend; if I accept I have to sup with the devil.’
‘You exaggerate, Mordecai, as you always do. This is a perfectly straightforward retainer.’
Mordecai emptied his tankard. The steward approached with his notebook.
‘You have ordered?’ Mordecai asked. Goodbody nodded. Mordecai did so and when the steward had gone they sat in silence.
‘Spenser’, said Goodbody after a time, ‘is a respectable and competent man of business.’
‘Price isn’t respectable. I don’t like Price.’
‘Neither does he you. Spenser and I will keep Digby Price away from you as much as we can. This is business, Mordecai. That is all it is, good, professional business.’
‘It is certainly good for you.’
Goodbody leant forward. ‘Mordecai, listen to me. Quite apart from me, you hold yourself out for hire in accordance with the rules of your profession, especially the rule which you barristers call the cab-rank rule and which requires you to accept the brief from whomsoever it is offered, irrespective of your personal prejudices and private opinion of the offerer or the subject in dispute, provided’ – Goodbody paused — ‘always provided, you are offered an adequate fee. And the fee in this matter will, I am sure, be more than adequate.’
‘I’m sure that it will.’
Goodbody said quietly, ‘And it could save me, literally save me. I don’t like to do this but I am appealing to you as a friend.’ Again there was a moment of silence, longer than the previous one.
‘Is what you’ve told me about your troubles the truth?’ Mordecai asked at last.
‘It is.’
‘And this retainer is that important for you?’
Goodbody nodded.
‘You are asking a lot.’
‘I know. I’m sorry to do it and I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to and you were not a friend.’
There was silence while Mordecai stared into his tankard and swirled his champagne. At last, he said, ‘I am your friend.’ Then he began to smile. It was a smile that lit his whole twisted face. It was not often seen but it was this expression that turned the ugly, saturnine face into something almost radiant, this smile that had captivated the women whose interest and affection for him so surprised those who could only see a crippled, humpbacked figure with fierce, darting black eyes and a snarl upon the thin lips. The sudden, surprising smile and the voice – the tone of the voice – those were the weapons which made Mordecai Ledbury so effective an advocate … and, for a very few, despite his appearance, so seductive a lover.
‘You are quite the tempter,’ he said finally, ‘to remind me of my professional duty, but what has decided me is not that. I don’t care a damn for the rules. But I do care about you, my friend. Very well. You can tell them I consent. I shall not enjoy doing what I have to do but I’ll do my best to disguise it.’
‘Which means you’ll do very little. But Spenser is a realist. He won’t mind. So long as they have you on their side.’
Mordecai picked up his sticks and stumbled to his feet.
Goodbody said, ‘I’m very grateful, Mordecai. I hope you know how grateful.’
‘And I hope you know what you’re letting us in for,’ Mordecai grunted.
Goodbody took his arm and they went slowly towards the dining room. As they got to the entrance two members came out, talking together and laughing, nearly knocking into Mordecai and Goodbody. The two stood aside and one, a tall, dark young man in his early forties said, ‘I’m sorry, Ledbury, we didn’t see you.’
‘I’m hardly invisible, Foxley,’ Mordecai said, limping into the dining room. ‘This isn’t a dance hall.’
Patrick Foxley looked at his companion and smiled. ‘That’s Mordecai Ledbury. As disagreeable as ever. He comes here some Wednesdays with that oily solicitor, Oliver Goodbody.’
They settled down to a glass of port in the ante-room. ‘We’re safe for a time – while Ledbury is eating,’ Patrick said.
‘How is Claire?’ the other asked. He needn’t have, for he knew very well how Claire was. Tearful and resentful.
Patrick shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I haven’t seen her recently.’
‘You’ve broken up?’
Patrick nodded. ‘It’s all very civilised,’ he added.
Not according to Claire. Not according to her stories about how rude he was to her friends; about how his career in the law came before everything; about how little time he kept for her.
‘She has her own life in TV,’ Patrick went on. ‘I believe she’s hoping to become one of the presenters on some news programme. It’s an odd world, her world, the media world. I never fitted in.’
His companion sipped his glass of port. No, he thought, you didn’t. The elegant and clever Patrick Foxley, Eton and New College, Oxford, and the Bar. And Claire’s friends, irreverent, sceptical, tieless, designerstubbled, propping up another kind of bar, the bar at Television Centre. One glance at Patrick Foxley, one word from him and they assumed he was condescending to them. When, in fact, he was just being exactly what he was: as he was to everyone, including, it was said, the judges. It was a wonder he and Claire had lasted so long. Or had got together in the first place.
‘She resented that I never got on with her friends but I found them very chippy. I suppose they thought the same about me.’
More than chippy. He represented everything they wanted to destroy. And Claire had never understood that.
‘Then there’s work. I have to work most nights, sometimes into the small hours preparing for next day in court. So it wasn’t easy f
or either of us. It’s best that it’s over.’
‘You’ve a lot on at the moment?’
‘Yes. I’ve just broken into the libel work. There’s not much of that but what there is of it is always fascinating.’
‘And now you’re a bachelor on the town?’
Patrick laughed. ‘Not much on the town. Too busy. I’ve got my eye on the position of that old fellow in there.’ He gestured with his head towards the dining room. ‘Ledbury is the king of the libel bar. I aim to knock him off his perch.’
At the table in the dining room, Mordecai shook out his napkin. ‘That obstreperous young man who nearly knocked me over is Foxley.’
‘The young QC? I’ve heard about him,’ said Goodbody.
‘Yes. He took silk two or three years ago and fancies himself inordinately. They say he’s after my crown. He’ll have to fight to get it.’ He peered down at his potted shrimps. ‘The pepper,’ he growled at his neighbour on the other side. ‘Have you reserved the pepper pot for yourself alone? Or are you prepared to share it?’
Part Three
Chapter One
On Sunday morning, at 8.30 precisely, Sylvia Benedict woke in her four-poster bed in the vast bedroom of her country house, Wainscott, and rang the bell for breakfast. She always breakfasted in bed, both here and at Eaton Square in London. At Wainscott at weekends the men guests breakfasted at 9 in the dining room; the women in their rooms. This weekend she had seven guests, three couples and an extra man, a young novelist with whom she was much intrigued.
Within five minutes of her ring her tray appeared. Coffee and orange juice, one slice of toast and honey, and the Sunday papers. She poured the coffee and spread the first of the newspapers on the bed beside her tray. It was a tabloid and she leafed through it as she sipped the juice and the coffee; then threw it aside. The next was the Sunday News. At the top, on its flaghead, her attention was caught by the flyer for the Review section. ‘The diaries of Francis Richmond.’
She lowered the coffee cup poised at her lips. Francis Richmond’s diary? Francis kept a diary? Francis Richmond’s diary in the papers? She threw the rest of the newspaper aside and turned swiftly to the Review section to learn what her old friend had to say about the world in which he had lived and the friends who inhabited it.
The Richmond Diary Page 5