“They’ve already got Poynter.”
“That old windbag,” said Mr. Rumbold. “If we mean business it would be about as much good putting him up against Claudian Summers as it would be for you or me to bowl legs breaks to Bradman with a ping-pong ball. That’s exactly what I meant when I said that they weren’t prepared to do any real work. If you look at the paper you’ll see Poynter’s got two more cases in the same list. And no doubt he’ll find time to do all three of them, the way he prepares them. No. If we mean business, there’s only one man for our money and that’s Macrea.”
“Would he take it?”
“I’ve already had a word with his clerk on the telephone. Just on the chance. I think he’ll take it. I hope he will. There’s no one I’d rather have with me in a roughhouse. We’ll get him to ask for a postponement. In the circumstances Arbuthnot can hardly refuse it.”
“Wouldn’t it be better still to get an adjournment?”
“I’d thought of that. But I don’t think these adjournments do a case any good. Bound to create prejudice. Besides I can’t honestly think of anyone I’d rather take the case in front of than Arbuthnot. He’s strict, but very very fair. And he does decide cases on facts, which is a good deal more,” Mr. Rumbold added libelously, “than you can say for all of ’em.”
“We’re going to have to work fast.”
“Fast and hard,” agreed Mr. Rumbold. “You and me and anyone else we can rope in. What we must have is facts. Good hard provable facts. There’s nothing here but wind and water.” He shook Mr. Spence’s dossier angrily in the air. “Nothing solid at all.”
“Where do we start?”
“We’ll start with the girl herself. We’ll both go and have a word with her tomorrow afternoon – I want to spend most of the morning with Macrea. We shall have to do something about guaranteeing his fee, too. What’s the present arrangement?”
“I gather that Spence’s costs were being paid by Vicky’s employer, M. Sainte. I also gather that he wasn’t a particularly rich man and funds were running a bit low.”
“Which accounts, no doubt, for his lack of enthusiasm,” suggested Mr. Rumbold uncharitably. “Well, we won’t worry too much about our fees, but we shall have to fix Macrea.”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” said Nap. “If it comes off, it might solve the financial difficulties. There’s a sort of M.I.5. fund – a very privy purse – for cases like this. I know the chap at the War Office who might be able to pull the strings.”
“Splendid,” said Mr. Rumbold.
He had no objection to pulling any number of strings provided they worked in his direction.
Chapter Four
Mr. Hargest Macrea had his chambers on the east side of King’s Bench Walk. He was their real, though not their titular head. His name appeared no higher than fourth on the long list in the hallway; but Sir Ernest Puckeridge, the expert on Privy Council Appeals, now devoted most of his time to the cultivation of tomatoes under glass; Judge Trimble had long ago sunk into well – merited oblivion by way of the County Court Bench; whilst Mr. Barter – Shaw (who confined himself to written opinions on canon law) had been quite mad for years.
Macrea was not a specialist. If called upon to define his pursuits he would have said that he specialised in advocacy. For a quarter of a century he had been bickering profitably with judges of every type from the rare heights of the House of Lords down to the earthy depths of the Land Tribunals. Be the going firm and the hedges stiff he had never yet refused to join in the hunt. He was the possessor of a Scots accent, which was apt to become more marked as the hearing grew more acrimonious (for he had early discovered that there was nothing which annoyed the opposition more than to have the name of their client repeatedly and markedly mispronounced). But his greatest single weapon was his monocle. It was a monocle of peculiar distortion and its application had more than once unnerved a recalcitrant witness. In addition he possessed a truculent intellect and a remarkable memory. Mr. Rumbold had been sending him briefs for more than twenty years.
That Sunday afternoon, following a telephone call, both the Rumbolds had a word with him in his Surrey home. Macrea tore the heart from the pile of documents with trained rapidity and his conclusion was the same as Mr. Rumbold’s had been.
“We want facts,” he said. “I’ll read the papers more carefully this evening, and I’ll make your application for you tomorrow, but if we’re going to achieve anything we shall want more facts. You can’t go out shooting without ammunition.”
“I rather thought,” said Nap, “that I might get a line on both those military witnesses through Uncle Alfred. He knows General Rockingham-Hawse in Establishments.”
“Cedarbrook? Yes, that’s quite a good idea.”
“What about the hotel people? The proprietor and waiter and—what’s her name?—Mrs. Roper. We’ve got to shake her evidence or we might as well pack up.”
“I had an idea about that, too,” said Nap. “What about McCann?”
“Who’s he?”
“Well. He keeps a pub in Shepherd Market – I met him first in the army, and we’ve done one or two jobs together since. He’d do anything for a bit of excitement.”
“Sounds a broad-minded man,” said Macrea. “See if he’ll do it for you. Nothing official, mind. Just an inquiry to see what he can pick up. That leaves the main field clear for you.” He thought for a moment and then said gently, “You’ve got to find Wells.”
This blunt statement of the problem produced a pause.
“Wells,” said Mr. Rumbold. “The idea about Wells seems to be that he’s dead.”
“It hasn’t been proved,” said Macrea. “And even if he is dead he may have left some things – some sort of message. I take it,” he added with a shrewd glance at Mr. Rumbold, “that the line we are going on is that everything this girl says is true.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Rumbold.
“All right,” said Macrea. “I just wanted to be sure. Well, the way to break the prosecution case wide open would be to produce Wells in court, to swear the child was his. That would dispose of the motive, and half their case – the stronger half – would fall to the ground.”
“If he’s alive.”
“Even if he isn’t,” said Macrea, “there’s a chance that he may have written – I suppose it was possible to send messages from Occupied France.”
“Oh, yes,” said Nap. “It wasn’t a twice-daily collection, but it was fairly reliable.”
“Well, then, if he wrote to anybody during those three or four weeks, he’d have been bound to mention the girl. Or he may have left a diary. People did that sort of thing. You’ll have to find out all you can about the French side of it.”
“The real question is, where do we start?”
“Start with the girl,” said Macrea.
Accordingly, on Monday afternoon, after Macrea, as has already been related, had made his successful application for a week’s postponement, Nap again visited Holloway Prison, accompanied this time by his father.
They found Vicky in excellent spirits. She had, it appeared, been most favorably impressed by the judge.
“Homme très sympathique,” she observed.
Mr. Rumbold agreed with her. Six months before he had heard him pronouncing sentence of death in just that cultivated, articulate, considerate voice. He did not, of course, mention this, but brought the conversation quickly round to the subject of his visit.
“Julian? He is still alive.”
“You haven’t heard from him—?”
“No. But I feel it. It is a matter, you understand, that one is bound to feel. A man who has been one’s lover.”
“Quite so,” said Mr. Rumbold. “It had occurred to me to wonder if, during that time, when he was – when he was staying with you, did Lieutenant Wells give you any information which would enable us to trace his past life.”
“He was orphaned – poor boy.”
“Yes. We knew that. The military authorities
have given us such data as they had in his records, date and place of birth and education, and so on. But the detailed records only start when he joined up, in 1940. He left his public school in 1937. Those are the three years we are most interested in. He must have made some friends. What did he do? How did he earn his living?”
“He spoke of a School of Preparation.”
“A School of Preparation.” The Rumbolds looked at each other thoughtfully.
“The School of Preparation of Saint Augustine.”
“Sounds Anglo-Catholic,” said Mr. Rumbold. “I’ll have to get hold of Father Pasteur.”
“He was a professeur at this school.”
“Good gracious me,” said Mr. Rumbold. “I should hardly have thought – at that age – he had only just left school himself you say.”
Light dawned.
“You mean he was a master – at a preparatory school.”
“A preparatory school, yes.”
“St. Augustine’s Preparatory School for Boys. Boys prepared for all the leading public schools and the Royal Navy. A staff of graduates and a lady matron. Whilst every effort is made to develop a boy’s natural abilities, ‘cramming’is not encouraged.”
“You know it, then?”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Nap. “It’s one of the better known prep schools. It’s not far from Winchester, I believe.”
“Well, that’s one line,” said Mr. Rumbold cheerfully. “It really sounds very promising. It covers just the time we want – after he left school, and before he joined the army. Now what about the other side – your side of the story, mademoiselle. France.”
“Of that,” said Vicky, “I will tell you all.”
Chapter Five
“So you see,” said Nap. “It’s really a three-man job.”
“It has the look of it,” agreed Major McCann.
“I shall have to go across to Angers, as soon as I’ve arranged the necessary contacts. My father will be up to his eyebrows in the legal work. We wanted you to look up these people in England – down at Winchester.”
“I haven’t just all the time in the world to go stravaiging about England for you. However—”
He looked at his wife.
“It can’t take more than a week. If we don’t do it in a week, we shan’t do it at all.”
“Hmph.”
“Go on,” said his wife. “You’re spoiling for it. There isn’t all that much work to do, now the summer’s over and the Americans have gone home. I can manage for a week. I managed alone for five years before I married you.”
“Well, then.” McCann stirred his tea thoughtfully. “Give us the strength of it.”
They were sitting in the landlord’s parlor, on the first floor of the Leopard; which, as you know, is one of the Shepherd Market houses. It was a comfortable little room, designed equally for eating, working and sitting, and the first fire of autumn was alight in the grate.
“There’s one thing we’ll have to get clear,” said McCann at the end of Nap’s recital. “How do we stand with the police?”
“I should like notice of that question,” said Nap. “I think that we stand where the defence in a capital charge always stands. The police are as equally bound to help us as they are to help the prosecution.”
“I should have thought,” said Kitty McCann, “that human nature being what it is—”
“Yes, I know. I know what you’re going to say. The police have got the case up, and they don’t want to see it flop. But honestly, I think that most police officers take the reasonable view that a miscarriage of justice does them more harm – in the end – than an acquittal. I’m fairly confident that would be Hazlerigg’s view—”
“It isn’t Hazlerigg’s case, is it?”
“No. It’s a chap called Partridge. Inspector Partridge. The D.D.I. of that division. I don’t know him at all.”
“And you wouldn’t mind me seeing Hazlerigg – you’ll remember he’s a friend of mine.”
“No,” said Nap. “I’m sure we shouldn’t. He mayn’t be able to help, but it can’t do any harm. They’re bound to know that we shall work like beavers on such facts as we have got. Only – I shouldn’t be too explicit about the exact line we’re taking.”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself,” said McCann frankly. “On the facts you have given me there’s only one person could have done the job—”
“That’s what they all say,” agreed Nap. “I guarantee, though, that you won’t talk for ten minutes to this girl and go away thinking she’s guilty.”
“He’s very sensitive to atmosphere,” agreed Mrs. McCann. “He proposed to me the moment he saw my wine list.”
“I can well believe it,” said Nap. “I’d have done it for your clarets alone. Now this is the idea. If the girl is innocent – and we’re presuming she is – then there are two obvious lines. First we must destroy the motive put forward by the prosecution.”
“Produce Wells.”
“Yes. Or someone who heard from him after he was parachuted into France – someone to whom he may have mentioned Vicky.”
“I don’t think that’s awfully hopeful,” said McCann. “Even the most casual person would hardly write that sort of thing in a letter home, would he? ‘Last week I met a smashing girl called Vicky Lamartine and with any luck she should be having a child by me sometime next June—”
“There’s no need to be coarse, Angus.”
“I imagine he’d wrap it up a bit,” agreed Nap. “But I can’t be expected to tell you what we’ll find until we find it.”
“And your second line?”
“Well, that’s not quite so simple to explain. What I feel about it is this. You start from one indisputable fact, that Eric Thoseby was murdered. Now, in a general way, Eric was an easygoing sort of chap. People who met him rather liked him. I can’t imagine him making any mortal enemies – except in connection with his Resistance work. So far as that side of him was concerned, it was business first, business last, business all the time. He was amiable but absolutely and completely ruthless. Because he happened to believe in the job he was doing. Therefore, I think it’s a fair bet that if he made any mortal enemies we shall find the beginning of the trail on the Loire.”
“That’s fair enough,” said McCann.
“And another thing – we still want to know a great deal more about what actually did happen in September, 1943. All we’ve got to go on at the moment is a certain amount of hearsay and an account – admittedly rather a biased account – given us by Vicky herself. There may be people in the Maine-et-Loire district who know what actually happened – no one’s bothered to ask them yet. I don’t think you can blame the police for that – it just doesn’t happen to be part of their case.”
Kitty McCann finished the sock she was darning, rolled it into a ball and laid it with a heap of others on top of the cellar book on the big old-fashioned gramophone beside her chair.
Both men were silent with their own thoughts, and she addressed the remark to them equally.
“What are you going to do,” she said, “if all the facts you unearth show more and more clearly that Miss Lamartine did do the murder?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Nap sounded uncomfortable. “I suppose we’d have to pick out the ones that were least unfavorable and spring them on the other side at the last moment. Unexpected facts are better than no facts at all.”
“Blind ’em with science,” suggested McCann.
“I see,” said Mrs. McCann thoughtfully. “Yes – I suppose that’s what you’d have to do.”
Chapter Six
On Wednesday morning Major McCann called on Chief Inspector Hazlerigg at Scotland Yard.
It was the same room, the one he had been in a number of times before, with the waxed linoleum, the green filing cabinets, the neat, unused-looking desk. The only thing which was missing was the camp bed in the corner; the one which Hazlerigg used when times of stress forced him to eat and sleep and live with his work. I
t had been there during the days of the Fifth Column in 1938. McCann himself remembered it there when the Gilbert-Jacoby crowd was being liquidated. Its absence seemed, in a way, encouraging.
They shook hands, and McCann lowered himself into the easy chair facing the desk.
It was left to him to open the conversation.
“I wanted,” he said, “to have a word with you about the case of Mademoiselle Lamartine.”
“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “I understood you to say so on the telephone.”
It was not unfriendly, but to McCann, who knew Hazlerigg well, the tone of voice conveyed a warning.
Nevertheless he persevered.
“You remember young Rumbold – the solicitor you met in the Stalagmite Insurance Case – well, it’s his firm that has been instructed for the defence. They have to look through all the evidence as thoroughly as they can – on behalf of their client.”
“I thought a firm called Chalibut and Spence was acting for Miss Lamartine.”
“She changed her mind at the last moment,” explained McCann patiently. He was pretty certain that Hazlerigg knew this already, but if the inspector, for reasons of his own, wanted to take everything the long way round, McCann was quite willing to oblige him.
“Have you any idea why she should do such a thing?”
“I gather,” said McCann, “that she didn’t fancy the line they were taking.”
“Which was—?”
“Broadly speaking, guilty, under provocation, with a strong plea for the leniency of the court.”
“And the new idea? That is, if you’ve no objection—”
“The new idea,” said McCann slowly, “is that she didn’t do it at all.” It is possible that he surprised even himself. It certainly got through to Hazlerigg. The inspector deliberated for a moment, opened his mouth to answer and shut it again without saying a word, then climbed to his feet and went over to look out of the window, across the grimy buttresses of the Embankment, at the wind ruffling the waters of the Thames where a strong tide was making past Westminster Bridge.
Death Has Deep Roots Page 3