The Tumbled House

by Winston Graham

  “What he said is not true.”

  The judge lowered his pen. “You think it is not true of or you know it is not true?”

  “I know it is not true. Although he may have been untidy. John would never have allowed a letter of mine to be among his professional papers.”

  The judge said: “ That may be a reasonable supposition, but surely it is only a supposition.”

  “Have you any other reason for thinking this?” asked Mr Doutelle.

  Mr Lytton rose with an injured air and said: “My Lord, in view of your earlier rulings, I can only formally object to this line of questioning.”

  The judge nodded and, fingers on bottom lip, looked at Mrs Delaney who was hesitating for the first time since she entered the box.

  “A considerable number of letters disappeared at one time,” she said.

  “What letters?” Doutelle prompted.

  “Oh, some dozen letters in a box. These two that Mr Shorn produced were among them.”

  “Have you any explanation of how they came to disappear?”

  “Mr Shorn made his way into the house on a pretext and took them.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I saw him there.”

  “Was that before or after Sir John’s death?”

  “After. Two months after.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Delaney.”

  As the court rose Don whispered: “Can you take Bennie back to tea. I’ll join you later.”

  “Where are you going to do?”

  He smiled and patted her wrist. “I’ve got to see someone.”

  The figure of the last witness walked ahead of them along the stone passages to the main staircase and the hall. As people fanned our Don followed Mrs Delaney but made no attempt to catch up with her. She came out of the Law Courts, crossed the street and walked west. At Waterloo Bridge she was held up by the traffic lights, and he kept his distance until the lights changed. As she turned in at the Savoy Hotel two reporters attempted to speak to her but she would have nothing to do with them.

  She went into the lobby of the hotel, and he thought she was going to her room, but after some hesitation she walked right through and came out on the Embankment side. The commissionaire asked her if she wanted a taxi but she shook her head. She crossed to the Embankment and took out a cigarette. Don came up with her then and flicked open his lighter.

  She started very slightly, then nodded and bent her head to the flame. “Thank you.”

  He said: “I suppose technically you’re not supposed to discuss the case.”

  “So the judge said.”

  “When I heard you in the witness-box this afternoon I was sorry I had forced the issue.”

  “Why.”

  “It seemed a bad business to have intruded on you.”

  “On the other hand,” she said, “when I came to give evidence I was glad your wife had found me.’

  “As I said to you the other evening, all this has made me feel as if I hardly knew Dad the way I ought to have done.”

  “Does any son ever know is father, or father his son? In rare cases perhaps and then it is very fine. But often, so often, not.”

  “We never quarreled.”

  “Oh, no, I am not saying that. He always spoke of you—and your sister—with great affection.”

  They stood looking over the Thames. Don said: “He was so wrong not to marry you! I still don’t understand that. If you only have two years, why lose two years?”

  She smiled slightly. “ When you were giving evidence this morning I thought how much like him you were, the same flashes of humour, the same impatience—only you at present are less tolerant—the same ability to gain people’s liking without seeking to. That is really why I am glad now I came forward. But I am not sure, if it came to the point, you would not act exactly as he did. Would you marry someone, desiring them and yet knowing that if you took them you might die in the act of love? Would you marry someone offering them only the prospect of caring for your invalidism, when you expected to offer them a full and happy life?”

  Don said after a minute: “ I don’t know.”

  “Of course I agree with you. I did everything to persuade him. But that was how he was. Perhaps all of us are in some degree the poorer for pride.”

  “When this is over,” he said. “ I hope you’ll—continue the friendship with us all.”

  She inclined her head again. “I shall be glad to.”

  A tug hooted as it slid through the water. Don said: “I was interested to know that Roger Shorn had come by those letters in some different way from what he claimed.”

  “Yes,” she said, but did not go on.

  “How did you come to see him at the cottage?”

  “Mr Marlowe, do you know, whether it is proper or improper to do so, I would rather not say. I would have greatly preferred to say nothing of it in court, but foolishly I allowed mention of it to slip out and your solicitor was most insistent then that I should give evidence on it.”

  “Why.”

  “He said it could be of vital importance. So I said that I would go as far as I wanted and no further,”

  “I don’t know if you’ll be pressed for more detail tomorrow.”

  “Mr Whitehouse said he thought if Roger Shorn had a conscience about it he would tell his counsel not to pursue the matter. If he does I shall say what I wish to say and no more.”

  As Joanna and Bennie got back to the house Bennie said: “Ever since last week when Don had his interview with Mrs Delaney I’ve felt pretty sick about it. Why didn’t Dad tell us? I could very well have given up my job and gone home to look after him—and would have done willingly. He knew I would. I left home in the first place partly because I felt he didn’t need me. I was doing nothing there. He was always so busy and so smiling and so self-reliant, working all day and half the night, taking a case in Bristol and then one in Birmingham and then rushing back for a Court of Appeal in London, and so on. I hardly saw him.”

  “Perhaps that’s why, when things went wrong, he felt he couldn’t claim you back.”

  “But he only had to say. I can’t bear to think of him sitting in that cottage for two years waiting for death.”

  “He didn’t. Give him credit for that.”

  When don came in Bennie was telephoning, and Joanna stood a moment in the shadows watching him. But she could tell from his expression that he still didn’t know.

  They talked over the case for a few minutes, and then Joanna said: “ I don’t think I can go through with that play tomorrow, Don. It means I shall be away from the court most of the day.”

  “Well, there’s not much to come, except the two counsels’ speeches and the judge’s summing up.”

  “And a trifling matter of the verdict.”

  “Ah, yes. The young man feels his pockets and wonders what’s to pay.”

  ‘I don’t think he’ll have to pay.”

  “It depends.” In spite of all the evidence today, he suspected that the impression Roger had made still lingered with the jury. How far was personality going to count with then in a case of this sort?

  “I’d rather drop out of the play. They can get someone else. They’d have to if I were ill.”

  “But you’re not. There’s such a thing as breach of contract Anyway, thank Heaven the thing isn’t running into Thursday. The concert in Edinburgh would have been a nightmare if it had.”

  “You’d have gone?”

  “What else could I have done? That’s why I feel you must carry on tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” she said, “ we must all carry on tomorrow.”

  “What is it, darling? What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing,” she said, smiling now but smiling past him as if he were no longer part of her life.

  It was the second time Bennie had phoned Marlborough House today. It was Sister Frey’s day off but she got in touch with one of the probationers who at lunch time was able to tell her that there was no message for her fro
m any of the inmates. The same answer now.

  After she had hung up she stayed about an hour with Don and Joanna but would not stop to supper. She couldn’t settle in company, theirs or anyone’s. Even Pat’s would be irksome and Pat was at home tonight. She felt lost, desolated, spent as if nothing in life she had ever done had been worth a damn, as if all the things she had not done were all that had ever been worth while. She should have been closer to her father instead of going off on her own, so that he would automatically have told her of his illness as he had automatically told Narissa Delaney—a woman who had come from nowhere and gained his confidence and love in a few months And she should have married Michael when he asked her in May, instead of hanging back like something out of Jane Austen. If they had been married none of this would have happened, none of this second and even worse failure. None of it.

  She began to wait east, turned, into-the Park and made across it in the direction of Marble Arch. It was a fine evening, but the sunset had been watery.

  Half-way across the Park she thought she was being followed. There were a lot of people about as the rush hour wasn’t yet over, but most of them were crossing in the opposite direction, taking short cuts from their offices. The rumble of the traffic down Park Lane was like trains going over distant bridges. All around the sky was pink with reflected light; only here and there was there darkness in the shadow of great trees.

  She stopped under one of them and waited. A man sauntered nearer, but there was a fork in the path and he chose the opposite fork. She watched him go until his figure disappeared among other figures.

  She walked down Oxford Street, again seeming to push against a tide of people coming the opposite way. Once she stopped at a window when there was a good reflection, but there was no sign of anyone with an interest in her. She walked as far as Oxford Circus and turned up towards Langham Place. In Portland Place she began to look at numbers.

  Peter’s flat was in a big block with an attendant in an office in the vestibule, but she saw Waldo among the names on the second floor and walked up. She found the door and pressed the bell.

  No answer. Difficult to tell if there was any light. She knocked. No answer. She pressed the bell again.

  A door opened suddenly behind her.

  A bony middle-aged man with bright black eyes and a pipe. “Can I help you?”

  “I was looking for Mr Waldo.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t find him. Down, Pollie. Stop it, old girl.” He pushed a dog back with his foot and half closed the door. His eyes looked her over. “He’s had an accident. He’s in Middlesex Hospital.”

  “Oh.… I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, a sort of accident. The police came and told the concierge. Apparently he was beaten up.”

  “Beaten up? Peter Waldo—”

  “Nobody seems to know quite what happened. Some children found him lying on Clapham Common.” The man took his pipe out of his mouth. “ You a relative of his?”

  “No. Just a friend.”

  “Well, he’s in Middlesex Hospital with a broken rib and multiple injuries to his face and head. They say he’ll probably be all right but he’s not to see visitors yet.”

  “I … thank you. When did it happen?”

  “Must have been last Wednesday or Thursday. That’s his bitch I’m keeping in. Heard her whining and scratching when I got in from the B.B. C. on Thursday evening. Poor little beggar was starving. So she’s been with me ever since. Shall you be going to see him?”

  “I—may be.”

  “I shall go as soon as he’s on the visiting list. I only thought if you saw him first to let him know his dog’s all right.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Bennie. “ I’ll do that.”

  She went back down the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Wednesday was wet. A south wind brought fine misty rain hanging indecisively over the city, which stirred like as animal waking in its own steam. Buses splashed through the glittering pools. As the baritone bell of Big Ben struck nine, congeries of umbrellas like a mass of insects newly hatched were crawling across the bridges and down the main streets. A smudge of smoke from a barge on the river drifted undispersed; seagulls rose above it flapping their; wings and crying.

  Roger found a letter in his post He turned to the end and saw it was signed “ P. Laycock.”.

  Dear Mr Shorn,

  I have listened to the evidence at your libel action for three days, but have another engagement for tomorrow. I think tomorrow will be the end, and I am writing to you before then, so that it shall not seem I am being influenced this way or the other by any verdict the jury may bring in.

  It is a bad thing, I think, for one man to sit in judgement on another’s actions, and I’m the last person to want to do anything like that. But, all the same, all appointments are to some extent a matter of judgement—evaluation as you might say—and after looking at the matter very carefully over the last three days I have come to the reluctant conclusion that you are not a man I would be happy to see in the editorial chair of The Globe, The Globe being the sort of newspaper that it is. I will say no more about the action than that, for it is not my business to do so.

  As however all my plans for putting money in The Globe were based on a reorganisation of the newspaper of your devising and in the expectation that you would be there as managing editor to carry it through, I have notified the Manders that I am not going ahead with the scheme; though I should be willing to think over a greatly modified scheme set out by Mr Burnett.

  If you would like to tell me what value you put on your services as adviser to me during the last few months I shall be glad to pay you.

  I am sorry about this.

  Yours sincerely,

  P. Laycock.

  Roger finished his breakfast and had a word or two with Mrs Smith before he left. Out in the street there was the usual wet-day scarcity of taxis. He raised his hand to three before he saw they were engaged.

  As he stood there he was taken by a sudden rather frightening feeling that because of the letter his position had been completely changed, that there had been a sudden divesting of regalia, as if he was appearing in plain clothes for the first time after a long term of authority and office. Unknown to himself, too much in his mind had come to conglutinate around the Laycock agreement. Now he was cut off—as if no longer the well-established, often-quoted, prosperous Roger Shorn but the man of earlier years, unknown and unregarded. The feeling didn’t make sense, because the letter took from him nothing he at present had; but he couldn’t escape it. Fifteen years of prosperity was a skin which had suddenly rubbed raw.

  When he got to the Central Hall of the Law Courts he found Mr Cobb, his solicitor, in conversation with Aubrey Lytton, who was winding his bit of brief tape and talking earnestly.

  “Oh, good morning, Mr Shorn,” said Cobb. “We were discussing the evidence given by Mrs Delaney yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yes?” said Roger, not encouragingly. He thought Cobb a weakling.

  Lytton said: “It will be a bad thing for its effect on the jury if we allow her evidence about the letters to remain unshaken.”

  “Perhaps you can shake it, then.”

  “I was hoping to have your guidance. Unless I know where I stand there’s always the danger of probing too far and getting the answer one doesn’t want.”

  Roger shook out his umbrella and propped it against the wall. The felling of failure was still strong in him. Yet the winning or losing of this action was no less important because of what he had already lost. In fact, from some personal compulsion of his own it now seemed that he could no longer afford a second failure.

  “Of course what she says is untrue.”

  “You mean that she didn’t see you at the cottage?”

  “I was there on one occasion after Marlowe’s death, but that was nothing more than a casual call and had nothing to do with the letters.”

  “Can you tell us about it?�
�

  Two brightly-dressed women went past. One said: “ But Charles swore he never even saw the marks on her neck while they were living together!”

  Roger said quietly: “It was in February. I had been spending the week-end with some people in Brighton. Mrs Marlowe was there—young Marlowe’s wife—and I drove her back to London on the Sunday afternoon. On the way she suggested we should call at Sir John’s cottage because she wanted to pick up a few things there to take back to London. We called there. She found the things and went on. That’s all.”

  “Did you go in yourself.”

  “Oh, yes, we stayed a couple of hours. I can only suppose this Delaney woman was in the garden. Mrs Marlowe thought at the time that she saw someone.”

  Mr Lytton looked at his fingernails and blew on them gently. He didn’t look at Roger. “I wish, of course, that we’d known of this before, but still … now that we do … I don’t think it will be necessary to recall you. We—er—want to cast doubts on this witness’s evidence on as many points as we can, but we shall have to tread delicately. She’s a very different person from what I had hoped.”

  Roger saw Marion come in at the big doors and pause looking about her.

  He said: “I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want to involve myself in any scandal with Mrs Marlowe, or her with me.”

  Now that he had said it in so many words Lytton looked at him. “ That is another reason why we must tread delicately. But, provided you—er—provided we have all facts, there is no need to leave that inference. You were then on friendly terms with the family. It was not unnatural to call at the Cottage.”

  Marion had still not seen them. She was short-sighted, and Roger realised that in a few years she would have to wear spectacles.

  He said: “ One never knows what a jury will think natural or unnatural”

  “Quite.”

  Mr Cobb looked at his watch. “ We’d better be moving.”

  Roger said: “ I’ve no particular wish to have my name linked with Mrs Marlowe’s in any way, but the winning of this case is more important to me now than it was even a week ago. I think I’ll have to give you freedom to use your discretion.”