by Janet Tanner
A smile curved his thick lips as he turned away from the window, reaching regretfully for the file he should be working on. It wasn’t a day for work. It was a day for going for a nice motor-car ride with a pretty girl and a well-stocked picnic hamper. The sort of day …
A tap on the door interrupted his thoughts and there she was—the stenographer.
“Mr Thorne …”
“Ah, come in, Miss … ah …”
“There’s a gentleman to see you Mr Thorne. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he says it is most urgent …”
“Ask his name and tell him to wait …” He broke off in surprise as the door was flung open and a man entered the room—the same man he just had seen crossing the square. “ Just a moment!” he demanded. “Where do you think you are going?”
Ted faced him across the desk. “I’ve come to see you. My name is Ted Hall.”
“Ted Hall!” Recognition flashed across his flaccid features. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the girl. “ Well, you’d better come in, I suppose. What do you want?”
“To talk to you about Becky.”
A nerve jumped in Rupert’s cheek. “Becky,” he repeated woodenly.
“Yes. I want to know why she died.”
“Now how should I know?” Rupert blustered.
“Because I think you were the cause of it!” Ted flung at him.
Rupert was brick-red now. “That’s a serious accusation, Hall.”
“It’s a serious matter. What did you give her, eh?” Ted demanded. “What was it her father was asking about at her funeral—and the doctor wanted to know about too? Was it …”
He was interrupted by a commotion on the stairs outside, footsteps, and the stenographer’s voice raised in protest. Then the door opened again, and to his surprise Jack came into the room.
“What are you doing here?” Ted asked, startled, and Rupert Thorne seized his opportunity.
“Get out of my office, the pair of you! I have no wish to talk to either of you! And if you don’t leave at once, my girl will call the police …”
“The police, is it?” Ted went around the desk to him, pushing Jack aside. “ Oh, I’d like to see you call the police, I would. If you call the police, there’s a thing or two I should like to say to them, and after that, they’ll be asking you some very awkward questions!”
The colour drained from Rupert’s face. For a moment he stared at Ted, his eyes bright with fear and hatred, then he stabbed the air with a trembling finger. “ Don’t you threaten me! If you stir up trouble, it’ll be Becky who will suffer. I shall tell them what she was really like—crazy for a man, any man—throwing herself at whoever came her way until she got what was coming to her. And then begging me for something to get rid of her bastard. I should never have helped her. I should have left her to rot …”
At that point, Ted hit him. His fist connected square with his jaw. “ You bastard!” he spat at him, and would have hit him again if Jack had not intervened, catching at his arm.
“Ted, no!”
Rupert Thorne sat down heavily in his padded chair, one hand coming up to caress his bruised jaw bone, and his eyes, wide and shocked, stared at Ted strangely.
“Leave him!” Jack said again.
Ted jerked his arm free, a tremor running through his body. Then he leaned forward so that he towered over the hunched figure of Rupert.
“I hope you rot in hell, you filthy bastard!” he said.
Then he swung round and marched out of the office, with Jack following, past the fluttering stenographer, down the stairs, and out into the undisturbed peace of King James’ Square.
SERGEANT EYLES came knocking at the front door of number eleven, Greenslade Terrace, soon after Charlotte had cleared away the breakfast things next morning.
Bluff and unsmiling he stood there on the path, waiting while she fetched Ted to the door. He knew the Halls, had known them for years, and didn’t like what he had to do.
Ted, who had slept the clock round, came downstairs at his mother’s insistent calling.
“Morning, Sergeant. You’d better come in. Mam says you want a word with me.”
The sergeant stepped into the doorway, his bulk shutting out the morning sunshine.
“From what I’ve been told, you went to Bristol yesterday afternoon, to the office of a solicitor, a Mr Rupert Thorne.”
Ted groaned. The bugger had actually had the gall to go to the police about it, then, just because he’d taken a swing at him.
“Yes, Sergeant, I was there. But if he’s making accusations, there’s a thing or two I’d like looked into myself. If he says …”
“Hang about, hang about!” the sergeant interrupted. “ Mr Thorne isn’t saying anything.”
“Oh!” Ted was nonplussed. “Then what …”
The sergeant rolled his lips together slowly until little globules of saliva appeared.
“Mr Thorne’s saying nothing,” he said at last, “ because he’s dead.”
“Dead? Rupert Thorne?” Ted repeated, his expression more puzzled than shocked.
“That’s right, dead,” the sergeant repeated. “And from what I can make of it, you caused his death by striking him in the face, Ted. I shall have to ask you to come along down to the police station with me—right away if you please.”
Ted stood silent, too stunned to argue, but Charlotte, who had overheard, came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron.
“What’s this? What’s going on, Sergeant?”
“A man is dead, Mrs Hall,” the sergeant told her, grim-faced. “Your Ted is believed to have caused his death. That’s murder. And unless I’m much mistaken, that’s what he’ll be charged with. Now come on, young feller-me-lad, let’s get going.”
“Wait!” Charlotte caught at his sleeve. “Are you going to keep him there?”
“Not for long, I shouldn’t think. He’ll be detained until our inquiries are complete, then he’ll be released on bail I shouldn’t wonder, until the quarter sessions or assizes. Now, if you’re ready, young Hall …”
He stepped back out into the sunshine, and Charlotte could only watch helplessly as a subdued and shaken Ted was led away down the hill.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sergeant Eyles was wrong. There was no bail for Ted. After he had been up before the magistrates to be charged, he was taken off in the Black Maria to Stack Norton Prison, ten miles away.
There would be a post-mortem straight away, and the inquest would be opened for purposes of identification only. But after that it could be weeks, or even months, before the workings of justice lurched their way through a resumed inquest to an assize or quarter session. And until that happened, they were going to keep Ted locked up between weekly court appearances, as Charlotte was told when she called at the police station for the fourth time in two days.
“Best thing you can do for him is fix him up with a solicitor,” Sergeant Eyles advised in his slow drawl.
“I see. Well, p’raps we should.”
They had discussed it last night, sitting around the kitchen table in a family council of war, and Jack, who had come home immediately when he had heard the news, had said much the same thing.
“Look, Mam, he’s got to have a solicitor. Somebody to look after his interests.”
“I admit I’m beat when it comes to something like this,” James said. “But you’ve had a good education, Jack. You’re well up with it all.”
“Not with anything to do with the law, Dad,” Jack told him. “This is a serious thing. It’s not like going to court for getting rowdy after a few too many on a Saturday night. It’s murder he’s charged with. If you ask me, he ought to have somebody there even when they open the inquest, to make sure everything’s done as it should be.”
They sat in silence for a moment or two, digesting it. Then James asked, “ What’s it going to cost?”
“Oh, never mind the money!” Charlotte said impatiently. “Our Jack’s right. We shall have to ask Mr Clar
ence. He can give us advice, and if somebody has to go along to the court, he can go. That’ll save our Jack getting involved.”
“But, Mam, I am involved,” Jack put in. “I think you should get Mr Clarence in, of course I do, and the sooner the better, but that’s not going to let me out. I was there. I saw what happened. They’ll want me to give evidence to the coroner, at any rate. They told me that when they took my statement.”
“Well, of course you’ll want to get up and say what happened, whether they want you to or not,” James put in. “It’s a good job you were there, Jack.”
Charlotte said nothing. Privately, she was not sure she agreed, and in the last twenty-four hours she had found herself regretting that she had summoned Jack to the scene. Being involved in something like this wouldn’t do him any good at all, either at college or when he came to look for a job. As far as helping Ted, she couldn’t see that Jack’s evidence was either here or there. For surely anyone with a grain of sense must know there had been some kind of mistake. Ted was slightly built; Rupert Thorne had been a bull of a man. It was madness to say Ted could have killed him with one blow.
As if echoing her thoughts, Jack said musingly, “ I can’t understand it. I’ve gone over and over it, and I still can’t. It didn’t look as if our Ted had even hurt him. He looked more surprised than anything. Then he just sat down in his chair and stared at us. It was a strange look, vacant almost. But I tell you this, and I’ll swear to it in any court in the land. Rupert Thorne was alive when we left him.”
“Could somebody else have gone in after you left?” Charlotte asked.
Jack shook his head. “Well, that I wouldn’t know. I suppose if there was more than one blow, it’ll come out at the post-mortem. But I don’t see how one blow could kill a man of his size, anyway. I’d have thought it would take a bullet or a hatchet to do that. It isn’t even as though he fell. No, he just sat there.”
The group around the table fell silent. There was nothing more to say, yet they were unwilling to leave one another, unwilling to move out of the bright pool of light thrown by the lamp.
At last, Charlotte got up, stirring the dying embers of the fire and swivelling the kettle on to the hob.
“How would we get by without a cup of tea? What this old pot has seen us through is nobody’s business.”
James got up then, stretching. “Ah, and it’ll see us through again. It’s not the end of the world you know, not yet.”
“Oh, how you manage to take everything so calm, I’ll never know!” Charlotte exploded. “ You’ll be telling us next, worse things happen at sea!”
“Well, so they do,” James said philosophically. “ It don’t do a bit of good, getting in a state, Lotty. Not one bit.”
Charlotte snorted impatiently.
“Dad’s right, you know,” Jack told her, taking the teapot out of her hand and spooning tea from the caddy into it “It doesn’t help anybody. But what will help our Ted is a good solicitor.”
Charlotte snatched the pot back again, irritated to have the task taken from her.
“Give that here, Jack. P’raps you’re right about that solicitor. We’ll have to see.”
“P’RAPS you’re right,” she said again next morning to Sergeant Eyles, and did not add that, to her, the calling in of a solicitor seemed like admitting the seriousness of what was happening.
Besides that, she had an inbred distrust of professional people, whom she considered looked down their noses at ordinary working folk. But what both Jack and Sergeant Eyles had said was true. Ted was in serious trouble, and perhaps it was time Arthur Clarence, the one and only solicitor in Hillsbridge, was called in.
She turned it over in her mind as she walked along the street, but even preoccupied as she was, she could hardly avoid noticing the way heads turned as she passed.
She knew what they were saying, of course—that they had always known Ted would come to no good—and the knowledge hurt. She had always been so proud of her family’s reputation, and the fact that none of them had ever been in trouble with the police. Now, she guessed there would always be somebody who would be ready to exaggerate out of spite or jealousy, the story becoming more distorted with each telling.
By the time she reached Mr Clarence’s office, her mind was made up. She would go and see him, and she would do it now, before her courage failed her.
The office was on the first floor, above a row of shops on the main street. For some reason it had always intrigued her, the impressive brass plaque on the wall, the steep flight of stairs leading to a murky unknown, the patterned glass windows bearing the legend Willoughby & Clarence—although only the oldest people in the town could remember a time when there had been a Mr Willoughby. Now it overawed her too, but with a quick, determined movement, she rang the bell beside the brass plate, pushed open the door, and started up the steep staircase.
Josia Horler, Arthur Clarence’s stooped and balding clerk, met her at the top, motioning her into the glorified cupboard that did duty as a waiting room. “You’ve come to see Mr Clarence, I dare say,” he said gravely, and she could tell he knew exactly why she was here.
He left her, and after a few minutes returned to show her into Arthur Clarence’s office, a small, frowsty room, cluttered with piles of musty, pink-ribboned documents. Behind the large, leather-topped desk sat Arthur Clarence. He rose to greet her, then sat down once more, pressing his fingertips together beneath his chin and regarding her solemnly from behind owlish spectacles.
“You want me to represent your son, Mrs. Hall. Is that it?”
“Yes … well … we thought …”
“I’m not at all sure I’m the person to help you,” he said seriously.
“Murder is a grave charge, and it’s not something I’ve had many dealings with. In many ways, Hillsbridge is a backwater, you know.”
“But we only want someone to keep an eye on his interests, Mr Clarence,” she explained. “ It was an accident—it wasn’t murder.”
Mr Clarence tapped his fingers together lightly. “ But to prove it, that’s the difficulty. When it comes to something like this, I don’t think I’m the person you require.”
“Are you saying you won’t take the case on, Mr Clarence?” she ventured.
“No, but I feel there may be someone else better able to help you than I.”
“In Hillsbridge?”
The fingers tapped together again. “I do see the problem. Anticipated it almost, you could say. I even took the liberty of making a few enquiries as to who is a good criminal lawyer …”
“Criminal!” Charlotte was on her feet, indignation making her bold. “ Ted is no criminal!”
“Mrs Hall, please don’t misunderstand me …”
“I don’t think I do, Mr Clarence! You won’t help because you’ve already made up your mind our Ted is guilty, and you won’t soil your hands with him. Maybe you’re even against him because Rupert Thorne was one of your own. Well, we can manage without grudging help of that sort. I’m sorry to have taken up your time!”
“Mrs Hall, please, don’t take it like this …” he protested.
“How else am I supposed to take it, Mr Clarence? No, don’t bother to see me out. I can find my own way.”
“But Mrs Hall …”
She hardly heard him. The blood was singing too loudly in her ears. The cheek of the man! The barefaced cheek, to call Ted a criminal like that! Oh, she’d show him they could manage without the likes of him, just as they always had. And when Ted’s innocence was proved, she’d tell everybody about the way that stuffed shirt Clarence had treated her!
She clattered down the stairs and into the street. It was a sultry day, and before she had gone far the sweat was prickling on her forehead, but her indignation drove her on. Even in the steepest part of the hill she did not falter, and it was only when she reached the corner of the rank that the mist before her eyes and the drumming in her ears made her slow down. As she did so, she realized she was trembling all over,
and her legs felt as heavy as lead. Her own weakness only added to her impatience, and she drove herself on, throwing open the scullery door and going into the house.
“Jack—James!” she called, but the effort of finding her voice on top of all the other efforts seemed suddenly too much. The room swam around her, and she groped her way along the stone sink and cupboard.
“James!” she called again. But there was no reply, and in the doorway her knees buckled. She clung to the frame, gasping. The settle was so close, yet it looked far away. Without much hope she took a step towards it. Then the ground came up to meet her with a rush, and the mists closed in around her.
CHARLOTTE WAS ILL.
She ‘hadn’t been right’ as James put it, since the day she fainted in the kitchen, although as soon as she came round, she had insisted on taking charge once more.
Try as James might to persuade her to go up to bed, she had refused to leave the settle in the kitchen, saying it would finish her to be cut off from the family at a time like this.
But clearly she was not well. Although it was high summer, she kept having bouts of shivering, and it hurt her to breathe too deeply.
She didn’t look well, either. Most of the time, her skin was too pallid, moist and lifeless, except when she seemed to burn up into a scarlet flush.
“It’s nothing,” she insisted, “ Just my time of life.”
James, knowing her as he did, was certain it was more than that. He had seen the pain in her face when she drew a deep breath; he’d seen her stop when she thought no one was looking, head down, hands splayed against the upper part of her chest. And he had heard her cough too when she exerted herself—a rasping cough that seemed to leave her breathless and shaken.
He told her she should pay a visit to the doctor, but she dismissed that suggestion as if it were the silliest thing she had ever heard.
“Doctor? We can’t afford a doctor’s bills at a time like this!”
“But Lotty, your health comes first …”
“I’ll be all right,” she said shortly, and he sighed with resignation. It was a waste of breath trying to tell Lotty what to do.