"He soon will be."
This time there was no mistaking the note of menace in her voice. 'Not exactly a devoted niece,' said Justin to himself. 'Doesn't seem to like uncle much. Now why? And what's it all about? Some family quarrel?'
"Is it on your uncle's behalf you've come?" he said aloud, knowing perfectly well it wasn't. "Is it something he might do that troubles you?"
"Something he's done, sir."
It was a riddle, but he had already begun to guess.
"Some action of his?"
"Yes."
'Some crime?' he wanted very much to add. But at this point his professional rectitude overcame him. It was one thing to encourage the girl to confide in him, but quite another to invite her to make accusations which might lead her and others into trouble. He had no right to ask such questions: he had a duty to listen, that was all.
So for a moment silence fell on the office, behind whose door Harris could be heard announcing his presence and state of watchfulness with sundry coughs and clearings of the throat. Miss Binns looked down at her lap. Justin regarded the wall behind his client's head, on which hung a cartoon of Lord Esher, Master of the Rolls,
an inspiring and conscience-encouraging sight. If the silence prolonged itself much longer he felt sure that his clerk would mount some rescue operation and ruin everything, but Lord Esher's gaze, gentle yet restraining, was there as a reminder of the better path. And like most good actions, which are usually wise ones, this silence paid a handsome dividend. Suddenly the client spoke. "You'll remember the night of the crime, sir?"
In Smedwick parlance 'the crime' was the Massingham burglary and had remained so in spite of the fairly constant efforts of the local criminals. So spirited an attempt to despatch a cleric with a blunderbuss had struck a new note, as crimes must do if they are to be remembered; crime being very like haute couture in this respect. Justin of course knew this and replied at once: "You mean what happened at Massingham?"
"That I do, sir."
"Yes, I remember it."
"Do you mind that early that morning the Poliss called at where I lived? At Geordie Sugden's place, sir."
"I think I heard of it."
"I mind they called about five o'clock. I lived downstairs with me Grannie—that was Geordie Sugden's mam, sir. And Geordie, he lived upstairs wi' his missus, and still does."
Her voice, once so hesitant, had become quick and light. No need to prompt her now: not even the entry of Mr Harris could have stopped her.
"Well, I heard Poliss go up, sir, and then they come down after a bit, and it got light, and when it got light George Sugden's wife, sir, she come running down and she says to me and me Gran that the Poliss would come back, and when they did we was to say her man had niwer stirred out a step that night."
Justin waited.
"But he had, sir," Miss Binns said; "he'd been out a while. It were about four in the mornin' when I heard him come in."
"Did you tell Mrs Sugden what you knew and what you'd heard?" asked Justin, taking up the thread.
"Yes, sir."
"Did you ask why she made you such a request?"
"I did."
"What did she say to that?"
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THE MASSINGHAM AFFATB
"That blood were thicker than water, sir. That her man was in trouble. That she hoped he hadn't murdered anyone."
"Indeed!"
"And then she come down again, sir—it were mornin' then; it'd be nine or more. And she says to me Grannie and me that Geordie and his mate had been out at Mr Verney's seekin' about the room, and the old man had heard 'em and come downstairs and that they'd fired a gun."
"Who was his 'Mate'?"
"Don't know, sir."
Now Justin was a man who usually got his priorities right. He did not enquire why his client, a niece of Sugden's, had come with this story, since he guessed that some family row had blown up. What was required was to take the evidence formally; so while Harris coughed himself almost into a decline in the outer office he set himself to get the client to make her statement in legal shape, with the sequence correct and her signature at the foot of it. In this way, without pressing the witness, he discovered that on the night before the crime Sugden had been wearing a light grey coat, and that this coat had been destroyed by Sugden and his wife in the small hours. There were also hints of other evidence and certain names were given, including that of a roadman called Green who had lived on the same stairhead as Sugden, though he had since moved.
In retrospect and alone, Justin sat down and thought what he should do about his most recent client. He was no longer excited by what he had heard. It seemed to him probable that the evidence he had so laboriously taken down was no more than a tissue of lies born of some grudge or feud, and he had a horror of such things. Furthermore, though he was a man of wide sympathies and something of a rebel at heart, he was no Crusader; having in him a strong leaven of north-country caution, which is in the last analysis a dread of being made to look foolish.
"Do you know George Sugden?" he enquired of his clerk on the way out to luncheon. "I mean his record and so on?"
"I believe he has a record, sir. I have read of it."
"That was his niece you showed out a while ago."
Mr Harris nodded. It was clear that he had invested her with criminal connections from the start. "Is she a client, sir? Shajl I open a file?"
"There's only this statement. You'd better read it yourself and then put it in the safe. I don't want young Spinks to see it."
"Very good, sir."
"And don't be alarmed. I'll probably take no action on it."
He returned an hour later, confident of finding gloom in the outer office and the silence of disapproval. It was Harris's maxim that only long-established firms could afford black sheep among the clients; newcomers must beware of them and discourage all but the 'good-class work'. Wasn't Miss Binns pre-eminently the wrong sort? Justin wondered. He feared very much she was. Yet the clerk's face, instead of being reproachful, was bland and welcoming. Either a miracle of character transformation must have taken place or some outstandingly good news had reached the office during the last hour: a client of the right sort, perhaps, with a deed box fit to stand beside those of Sir Miles Curvis, Mr Freeze-Urquhart and Colonel Deverel, whose names in bold white lettering adorned a corner of the office where the light fell best.
"Miss Deveral called, sir. I showed her in," Harris announced in his most unctuous voice.
So that was it. Justin took fright at once, exclaiming: "My God! Has she been waiting long?"
"Not long, sir. Ten minutes or so. I offered to fetch you, but Miss Deverel said she was quite content to wait."
He gave a sigh of relief, glanced quickly in the mirror to straighten his tie, and went in to his fiancee with what he hoped was the right blend of devotion and professional gravity. "Dearest Georgina . . ."
She was standing by the window: a pale girl of medium height, blessed with the rather Junoesque bust and carriage expected of Victorian young ladies. Good money had been spent on them. Her dress was of mauve brocade, wide at the hips and with a pronounced bustle; she wore a hat tilted at an alarming angle—an equestrian effect—surmounted with a feather sweeping back over her brow; and her hands were hidden in a muff. The effect was charming, expensive, perhaps a little daunting with its suggestion of claims and expenses to come.
Justin began at once to apologise: he was in excellent practice. "Dearest, I've kept you waiting, you can forgive me? If I'd only known. Were you so uncomfortable?" Compunction seized him as he saw that this must indeed be true since the ass Harris, that confoundedly economical ass, had all but let the fire go out on this chill
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winter afternoon. She must be half starved with cold. But the thought and the question gave him his opportunity too and he embraced it eagerly, coming close to her and taking her hand where the grey of a glove projected from the tight curls of the astrakan muff.
"What must you think of me?"
"That you're hardly the best of managers," she said, accepting him, but not effusively. "Not very comfort-loving."
"My dear, I know, but in an office . . ."
"Why should an office be so different?" She was looking round the room, and he could see that her gaze was not kind as it lighted on the dusty textbooks in the case whose glass had not been washed these many months, the deed boxes, even the diplomas, which he now observed were hung askew and somewhat off-centre. "Well? Why should it be?" she said with a trace of irritation. "You're the master here."
Justin would never have put it like that; he would never even have thought it in relation to the office boy Spinks, let alone his managing clerk, in whose aura he was endeavouring to improve himself. "I suppose I am," he answered mildly. "Only really we're a team." He liked the phrase and repeated it, feeling that it would appeal to her also, since it was one he had often heard her father use. "Yes, we're a team, that's it, that describes it. I leave the day-today arrangements to old Harris. . . ."
"And he decides how warm you feel! Ridiculous. No, it is not a small matter. You have too great a tendency to be put upon. Why, I don't know."
She was studying him, standing back a little, her hand still in his, and her determination to change his nature at the first available moment could hardly have been more evident. Somehow it seemed to him that all those close to him, including Harris, were staking out similar claims.
"You're the same at home," she accused him.
"Oh, come now."
"Yes you are. Doesn't Flo dictate to you?" (Flo was his elder sister, who kept house for him.) "And Mamie wheedles you. It's only me you're stubborn with."
At this stage he kissed her—chastely, for she had turned her face away from him, but definitely all the same. Not a sound came from the outer office: Cerberus was not on guard against this particular
THE QUEST: 1899
visitor, the daughter and heiress of the second grandest client the firm possessed.
"What can you be thinking of!" she cried. "You'll ruin the feather, and it is really very fashionable. No, you must listen. How do you think I'm here today? Emily came out with me."
"Dear cousin Emily, dear kind Emily," he said.
"Well, you may think that. She had some business of her own at the Assembly Rooms as it happened."
"We must provide more business for her: much, much more."
"Mama would be suspicious. You know how particular she and Papa are about such things. You should know. Only you're so lax yourself."
"My dear Georgina!" he cried, appalled at this new line of attack. "Whatever do you mean? Lax? Why it was you who came here today —not that there's the least harm in it," he added hastily and much too late.
"You see! You're sorry that I came."
He glanced up at the ceiling in despair, knowing that once again he had said the wrong thing and that this time there was no hope of restoring the position by gallant actions, for she had moved away from him and her hands were once more tightly tucked into the muff.
"I'd not have come at all," she went on before he could utter a word, "if I'd not had to; if you'd called yesterday as you were bid."
"I was detained in court. Surely you got the note I sent you?"
"But it was Papa who invited you. You see how lax you are, you have no social sense. Don't think it isn't noticed. It makes things difficult for me."
"My dearest, I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry."
The evident distress in Ins voice seemed to appease her and the expression in her eyes, which were of the same pale blue as her father's, became gentler. "You don't give enough thought to it," she chided him. "To being agreeable to Papa, I mean. You argue with him, which is strange when one thinks how you defer to Flo and to any whim of Mamie's, who is too free in my opinion. You could try with Papa to show more understanding of his point of view and to be less radical about things. You know how such ideas frighten him."
Justin was startled to find himself a Jacobin; he had always thought of himself as too conservative if anything; and the picture of the hard-bitten Colonel Deverel in terror of his ideas completed
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
the feeling of hallucination that was creeping over him. "I can't think you mean all that," he said lightly. "Radical indeed! I may have spoken up in court for some of his tenants once."
"It's your whole attitude, and Papa notices it. He's sensitive about these things. Of course, if you don't want to listen or to please him . . ."
"I want to please you. I want to make you happy."
She turned towards him, no longer petulant but radiant, holding out her hand in the beautiful grey glove. "And you do, Justin. You can—always. By just remembering what I've said."
"Ill try."
"Then you'll be sure to come to dinner on Friday night? And you shall take me to the Assembly Rooms next Wednesday. Giulio is singing, with Miss Campana—and cousin Emily if it comes to that."
From the window, a few minutes later, he was watching her elegant figure cross the market-place between the booths. It looked far too bucolic for her. The correct setting, he recognised, would be a lawn with elms in the background and a marquee from which came music and the sparkle of conversation. The ground would be terraced, falling to a lake fringed with reeds and white with water-lilies in bloom, on whose far shore stood a belvedere with a classical dome. Gardeners might be perceived with besoms sweeping diligently at the paths under the pollarded trees. There would be a lot of servants.
He had reached this point in his picture when she turned the corner between the butcher's shop and the chemist's, where the green and cherry coloured flagons glowed in the afternoon light, and disappeared from view. She would call at the Assembly Rooms for Emily, no doubt, and the carriage would meet them before dark to whisk them home along the Warbury Road. And on Friday he would see her again behind the mahogany at the Deverels' in the darkly panelled room, with the silver candlesticks on the table and old Deverel himself in his white waistcoat and vast expanse of shirt-front, like an ectoplasm in a spirit photograph. What a bore it would be.
The sense of guilt induced by this and similar thoughts sent him back that afternoon much earlier than usual to his home in Laburnum Road. All its houses were tall and gabled in a biliously tinted brick. Trees adorned the street and there were gardens to front and rear planted with shrubs that rustled mournfully in the
wind. Here a few professional people still lived, though beyond, in the pleasantly wooded coastal plain, newer residences' were springing up, and Laburnum Road, like its neighbours which had once housed the haute bourgeoisie of Smedwick, had begun the process of gradual decay that had already overtaken the Georgian houses in Bewley and Pelegate. It would never degenerate into a slum— the bathrooms alone were sufficient to declare it—but it had come to resemble a lady of a certain age whose income has unaccountably shrunk. 'Genteel' was Mamie's word for it and a hurtful one to Flo, who was devoted to the place where her parents had lived and died. Under her anxious care 'The Laurels' had acquired a special gentility: its garden was gloomier and more heavily planted than other gardens, its paint was darker, the curtains more impenetrable, as though the house were trying to make a declaration on behalf of the whole neighbourhood.
Justin, coming through the spiked iron gate, found his heart sinking a little. He might not have to live there much longer, now that he and Georgina had all but settled on a house up the Warbury Road, but for some reason the very sight of 'The Laurels' had made him come to doubt his visions of a new life. That in one bound he could remove from it into the sphere of Colonel Deverel seemed more unlikely every day he trod the gravelled path between the clumps of pampas grass and let himself into the dark, narrow passage that smelt of bees-wax.
In the drawing-room Flo was waiting, tucked into her usual corner of the chesterfield, her small blonde head that reminded him of an angel in a Botticelli painting bowed over her needlework.
"How e
arly you're home, dearest. Such a surprise."
Neat hands stitched at the tambour, unhurriedly, never varying pace. In time some pattern would emerge and go to a bazaar to raise funds for one of the many causes for which the parish of St Bede's was famous. Yet how these pieces of rather joyless needlework raised money, or who purchased them, or what became of them, was always a mystery to him. He sat there glumly waiting for tea, hoping for crumpets. Soon it was time to light the gas, and the room, which had lain in shadow, showed itself in all its determined cosiness. He had only to reach out an arm to encounter a Chinese screen, a music stand, a leather pouffe, two Chinese vases, a workbasket, a rocking-chair, and a paperweight in the form of a dragon's claw. Above the mantelpiece, which was loaded with small
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THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
squatting idols and lacquer cups, hung a canvas of Highland cattle by a lochside at sunset, the peaks aglow in a fiery orange light.
"Was it a good day, dearest?"
It was normally at this time of the evening, when the gas had been lit and the curtains drawn, that the 'interrogatories' began. Flo never asked indiscreet questions, never expected names or details of cases, showed no interest in the profits of the business. But it was surprising how much she contrived to know about the office which she seldom visited and clients whom she never saw. Her memory was as prodigious as her appetite for news was insatiable. She had to be fed, and he had found that the easiest way to do it was to throw her some more or less indigestible scrap, like the shortcomings of the charwoman or Harris's notorious meanness. Today, however, he had a more generous tit-bit in store:
"Georgina called."
"How nice for you," she cried. "Dearest, now nice." She was really pleased for him: she seemed to have been born without jealousy. "How was she looking? Quite well, I hope, the dear girl."
For the next quarter of an hour he laboured to account for his Georgina point by point. The dress—or as much of it as he could remember—was commended highly. The muff was envied. Was it of astrakan? Had it a muff warmer? When Mamie at last descended from her bedroom, sprightly in yellow muslin, her opinion was enlisted and the matter thrashed out between experts who agreed only in blaming him for his imperfect observations of how Georgina had looked and what she had or had not worn. As always he was astonished by this strange ability of theirs to create passionate interests for themselves at second hand. Would they be the same after marriage? Would Georgina?—which was more to the point. What did she in her turn really think of the old-maidish, gossipy Flo and the immodest—or so it seemed to his brotherly gaze—creation in yellow muslin that was flouncing up and down the room? The shape of future quarrels arose like phantoms of horrible aspect between him and these dependants, present and future, who each in her separate way was unintelligible to him. How could he cope with the three of them in harness?
The Massingham affair Page 6