“Would you ask the witness to be more explicit?” said Macrea.
“It seemed quite clear to me,” said Mr. Summers. “She heard a thud, followed by several screams.”
“No doubt,” said Macrea, “but it wasn’t what she said. She said she heard ‘a scream – several screams.’“
“As you wish,” said Mr. Summers. “Perhaps you would say again what you heard.”
“I heard a thud, followed by several screams.”
‘Thank you. Will you go on.”
“I ran out and listened. The door of Major Thoseby’s room was ajar. The screaming was coming from inside. I pushed the door open and looked in. The prisoner was standing, looking down at the floor where Major Thoseby’s body was lying.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“Nothing that I could understand. It was mostly screaming. I cannot exactly remember what I did next. I think I knelt to look at the body – I did not touch it. I could see that Major Thoseby was dead. Then Monsieur Sainte arrived. He told me to stay in my room until the police came.”
Thank you,” said Mr. Summers.
“Mrs. Roper,” said Macrea. “I am going to start by asking you a question which I put to a previous witness. Are you an accurate observer?”
“Yes, I think so. As good as most.”
“You realise how necessary it is that your evidence should be absolutely accurate?”
“I should hope so.”
“Very well. I will call your attention to your recent answer given to my learned friend. You stated that you heard a thud, followed by several screams.”
“Yes.”
“Followed, how soon?”
“Almost immediately.”
“By how many screams?”
“Really – I couldn’t say. Two or three.”
“Not one long, continuous scream – but two or three separate screams?”
“Yes.”
“Quickly, one after the other?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I see,” said Macrea. “I asked, of course, because my learned friend in his opening speech – he must I assume, have been following your evidence – spoke of one very loud scream, followed by further screams. Monsieur Sainte in his evidence says that he heard—” Macrea rustled back the heavy pages of his brief in a court which had fallen suddenly silent—“one very loud shout or scream.’ You are quite certain that it was ‘two or three’ screams that you heard?”
“Well – yes.”
“Quite certain?”
“That is my recollection.”
“But you think now that you may have been mistaken?”
“I may have been.”
“Very well. I would like to go on to the next point. You say that the walls between the two bedrooms were so thick that you could not hear conversation?”
“Normal conversation.”
“Normal conversation, of course. And on this occasion you had your wireless set on.”
“I had it turned down.”
“Yes, you turned it down when the footsteps came along the corridor. But not off.”
“No, not off.”
“You were able to hear the footsteps in the corridor all right?”
“Yes. The corridor has no carpet.”
“Quite so. But Major Thoseby’s room has?”
“I—yes. I believe it has.”
“And although there was this thick wall, and this carpet, and your wireless set on, you were able to hear this ‘thud.’“
“Yes.”
“Is that not rather remarkable?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I am assuming – it has not been stated – but the suggestion is that this ‘thud’ was Major Thoseby falling to the floor. He was not thrown down – he collapsed. On to the carpet – whilst your wireless was on – with a wall between you so thick that you could not hear the human voice through. But you heard the thud quite easily.”
“Well – not easily.”
“You mean you barely heard it?”
“You might say that.”
“It might not have been a thud at all?”
“It was a thud.”
Then why do you say you barely heard it. Were you listening for it?”
“I—no—really. You’re confusing me.”
“The simple remedy for confusion is to tell nothing but the truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
“Very well. Now going back to those footsteps in the passage. You heard them stop outside Major Thoseby’s door? And you heard the door open?”
“Yes.”
“How long between the opening of the door and the scream – I beg your pardon – the screams?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Let me assist you.” Macrea took out his watch. “The door is opening now. Tell me when the screams are due.”
The silence in court was complete.
“Now,” said the witness.
“Seven seconds—” Macrea shut his watch with a snap. “Rather an impetuous young woman, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, there wasn’t time for much conversation, was there? She must have marched straight in and stuck a knife into Major Thoseby before he had time to say so much as good evening.”
“It may have been a little longer.”
“1 see. It may have been a little longer. You are certain that you are not making the whole thing up.”
“No, I am telling you the truth, just as it happened.”
‘The court will be glad to have your assurance on the point. Let me revert to the very first question you were asked. What is your name?”
The reaction to this question was disproportionate. Mrs. Roper went first red and then white. She made no immediate attempt to answer.
“It’s quite a simple question.” Macrea was blandness itself. “People usually have one name at a time. Perhaps you could tell the court what your name is.”
“Gwendolyne Roper.”
“That is your present name?”
“Yes.”
“Was it formerly Gwyneth Roper?”
“Yes.”
“And before that Gwyneth Roberts?”
“Yes.”
“What was your father’s name?”
“I don’t know.” The witness gave this answer in a very low tone of voice.
“Is it correct, then, that for the first twenty years of your life you were known as Gwen Rochester – that being the name you were given in the institution where you were brought up?”
“M’lord,” said Summers, “I must—”
“I presume, Mr. Macrea, that these questions are on the point of character?”
“I shall make myself quite plain, I hope,” said Macrea. “I am going both to character and credibility.”
“Very well, then.”
“Did you, at about the age of twenty-five – your name at that time, I believe, was Gwyneth Roberts – consort with a man called Hogan? And was this man, just before the war, sent to penal servitude for robbery with violence?”
“Yes. It was nothing to do with me.”
“You were not indicted with him,” agreed Macrea. “Did you, in or about 1943, under the name of Roker associate with a Polish soldier called Pakosch – and was Pakosch subsequently deported and were you joined with him in these proceedings?”
“I was acquitted.”
“On a technicality, yes. But is it not true that the magistrate warned you to obtain some proper employment and were you not subsequently directed, under wartime legislation, to work in a munitions factory – a direction incidentally which you neglected to comply with?”
“I—yes.”
“Are you not, at the present, an associate of a man known to the police as a person who deals in illegally imported currency?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you have never met with or spoken to a Mr. Stimmy?”
�
�I may have done, at some time or other, I forget.”
“Your memory cannot be very reliable. Were you not with him last weekend?”
“It’s a lie.”
“And the weekend before?”
“What’s it to do with you?”
“Mrs. Roper. How do you earn your living?”
Mrs. Roper said something in a very low voice, which the judge asked her to repeat.
“I said, I’ve got money put by.”
“I see. How much money? Roughly how much?”
“Hundreds of pounds.”
“A thousand pounds? Is that about it?”
“Yes, about that.”
“It must be very judiciously invested.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I will try to make myself clear. How much does the Family Hotel charge for a week’s board and lodging?”
“Six guineas a week.”
“And I suppose you have other expenses?”
“Certainly.”
“Would it be fair then to say that you spend ten pounds a week – in all?”
“I expect that would be about it.”
“In round figures that would be £500 a year – quite a good income from an investment of £1,000.”
“My lord,” said Mr. Summers. “I must object to this quite irrelevant inquiry into witness’s means. Is my learned friend making any financial implication—”
“I think that the implication is quite clear,” said Macrea. His voice was hard and high, the reporters’ pencils scurried and squeaked. “I suggest that this witness is a criminal and the associate of criminals. That she has lived since her youth by crime. That she is supported by a man known to be a professional criminal. And that her evidence is generally about as reliable as evidence from such a source might be expected to be.”
“I think you must leave this to the jury, Mr. Macrea.”
“I will willingly do so. I have just one more question.” He turned again to Mrs. Roper who, her dignity gone and her face white, was clinging to the rail in front of the witness box as though she derived some comfort from its physical support. “Perhaps you would tell the court – the matter appears to have been overlooked in previous examination – what exactly did you discuss with Monsieur Sainte when you visited him in his private room that evening at a quarter to ten—?”
“I don’t think she really fainted,” said Macrea callously to Mr. Rumbold as they went out of court. “She needed a good curtain and thought she might get a bit of sympathy from the jury.”
“I wonder what they’re making of it.”
“It’s difficult to say. I think they’ve reached a stage where they don’t really believe anything.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction, anyway,” said Mr. Rumbold.
He hurried off to put through a long – distance call to Angers.
Chapter Twenty
On Tuesday morning Nap visited the hotel desk on his way down to breakfast and was handed a ten page cablegram. It was from his father and contained, in compressed form, the evidence given in court on the previous day.
He studied it whilst his coffee was percolating.
A good deal of it was old stuff but there were one or two names and facts which were new.
He concentrated on that part of the evidence which dealt with the events of September, 1943. It occurred to him that there were some people and places that might be verified.
Accordingly, after breakfast, he caught the local train, which for a pleasant hour crawled from station to tiny station eastward along the banks of the Loire and finally brought him to Saumur.
Here he made certain inquiries, arriving back at Angers for a late lunch.
The results of his morning’s work were negative, and yet not unsatisfactory. He had found, for instance, that no one seemed to have any recollection at Saumur of a Monsieur Sainte, hotel proprietor. Nor was there any hotel which could be said to correspond even roughly to the description given in evidence: “On the river front at Saumur, near to the main road bridge . . . it had been completely destroyed by a bomb.” Saumur had suffered from bombing, it was true, but most of the damage had been done in the station area. On the south bank by the bridge there were no hotels. On the north bank there were several hotels, but none had been bombed. There was no Rue du Pont.
Nap pondered these things as he filleted his truite Angevine. He found them interesting but inconclusive.
He became aware that a waiter was hovering.
“From London?”
“Yes, monsieur. The instrument is in the office. If monsieur would step this way—” Nap was pleased to detect a certain note of respect, The Hotel de La Reine was plainly not used to guests who received ten – page cablegrams with their breakfast and personal telephone calls from England with their lunch.
Over the wire his father’s voice came thinly, and with intermittent clarity.
“We’ve only just heard,” it said. “We thought you ought to know. Camino was in France for most of the war.”
“Who was?”
“Camino – the Italian waiter in the hotel. He was in the Angers district, too.”
“Any address?”
“No, but an Italian shouldn’t be difficult to trace. How are you getting on?”
“I’m going round in circles at the moment,” said Nap frankly, “but I may have something for you soon.”
Over the line he thought he heard his father sigh.
After lunch he thought he would take a walk and try to straighten out his ideas.
The midafternoon quiet of a provincial town lay upon Angers. He strolled along the main street, past the barracks and the offices of the Administration, and at the end of it he came, a little unexpectedly, upon the Jardin Planteölogique et Zoölogique. He pushed through the turnstile, made his way along the neatly kept path and sat down on a bench under a cedar tree, in front of a cage full of dispirited monkeys. He had to sort things out.
He was far from clear as to the final answer but some of the components in the puzzle were falling into place. The person round whom the whole thing revolved was little Maître Gimelet, the attorney. Maître Gimelet had lied to him almost every time he had opened his mouth; and behind him was Monsieur Sainte who had lied about his residence in Saumur, and behind him were the brothers Marquis who had stood surety for Monsieur Sainte when he came to England and who had employed Maître Gimelet to sell their farm.
What was the connecting link? What was the common factor which joined them to Major Thoseby and Lieutenant Wells – and to the grim proceedings now holding the stage at the Old Bailey?
The only possible indication which he had yet had was that it was all, somehow, connected with the currency racket. Mrs. Roper was the associate of a man called Stimmy who dealt in smuggled currency. And, if Madame Delboise was to be believed, he himself, immediately he had moved toward the Loire, had run into the people who managed the French end of the business.
There were a lot of questions to be answered, but terribly little time for the answers to be found.
He sat there until the sun disappeared and the chill of the autumn evening forced him to move.
Back in the hotel he found to his annoyance that he had been called twice on the telephone.
Not from England – a local call.
As he was talking the bell went again. It was a man’s voice. He was calling, he said, on behalf of Madame Delboise. He regretted that he had missed Monsieur Rimbault on the previous occasions. He had some information for him. It was not of a nature to be freely discussed over the telephone.
“All right,” said Nap. “Where are you?”
“Number 115 Rue de Piste. A wine merchant’s shop.”
“I’ll be right along,” said Nap.
When he had rung off he thought for a moment and then asked for the number that Madame Delboise had given him.
He recognised her voice at once. Shortly he repeated the conversation which he
had just had.
“Very curious,” said Madame Delboise. “It is true that I have some information for you, but so far as I am aware none of our people have telephoned you. I did not think that anyone but myself knew your number. Also I have never heard of the—where was it?”
Nap repeated the address.
Madame Delboise asked him to hold on. In a few minutes she was back. “The message did not come from here,” she said.
“All right,” said Nap. “I thought that was it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think I’d better go along and see what it’s all about. We’ve got to cut our corners if we’re going to get to the answer in time.”
“All right,” said Madame Delboise. “Only wait, if you please, half an hour before you set out. If you are asked why you did not come at once say that you were delayed by a long – distance call from England.”
By the time he got out into the street it was dusk – a clear autumn evening with a frosty twinkle of stars.
The Rue de Piste turned out to be a long road, which straggled out into the countryside northward, and by the time he had reached Number 115 he was almost clear of the town. It was a moderate-sized house of pink stucco, built, he guessed, since the war. Shop below and house above. The shop windows were closely covered with white iron shutters and seemed to be in darkness.
There were lights showing in the first floor.
Nap discovered a side door and pressed the bell.
For a minute or more nothing happened and he thought that he had not been heard. Then an outside light went on over the porch and footsteps came slowly along the hall. The door was opened by a very small, very old woman, dressed in black.
“Madame Delboise?”
She peered up at him blankly.
“Madame Delboise asked me to come here.”
“You are Monsieur Rimbault?”
“Yes.”
“Follow please,” said the old woman.
She did not go back into the house as Nap had expected. Instead she threw her shawl over her head and hobbled quickly away up the alley which separated the house from its neighbour. She did not trouble to look back.
Nap had no choice but to follow her, but he could not help reflecting that if Madame Delboise’s rescue party was stationed in a car down the road it was going to have to think and move fast. The alleyway they were going up was far too narrow for any wheeled vehicle.
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