The tone of his voice got me. ‘‘ There’s no doubt about the robbery. There’s doubt as to what was stolen. I don’t believe for a minute he ever had any kolinskies or sables.”
‘‘You think Collandi’s a swindler?’’
‘‘I do.”
‘‘That’s only your opinion, isn’t it?’’
‘‘I’ll change it when I see his invoices.”
‘‘Perhaps that won’t be necessary.”
It was plain what he meant. He was pressing Reckitt to have me withdrawn from the case. From the first words the meeting had gone racing downhill. Charles came across.
‘‘Hullo, what’s the matter with you two?’’
McDonald put down the comb. ‘‘ Branwell’s suffering from an excess of zeal. Success must have gone to his head.”
I said: ‘‘What the hell d’you mean by that?’’
I heard two other men come into the place talking. Charles put a hand on my arm. ‘‘Gently, brothers, gently.”
McDonald said: ‘‘I should have thought the answer obvious.”
‘‘I’d like to hear it.”
‘‘Well … I meant the success you’ve had in marrying money.”
I hit him. I’d really lost my temper and put more weight behind it than I thought. He cannoned into one of the men who had just come in, took a couple more steps and then sat down on the floor, holding his jaw.
‘‘You damned fool,’’ said Charles, grabbing my arm again.
I knew Marshall and Ainslie slightly. Marshall went over and helped McDonald to sit up. Ainslie, who’d nearly had his spectacles knocked off, jerked them back and made some protest.
I shook off Charles’s arm and went over to McDonald. Marshall straightened up excitedly to fend me off, but I only wanted to help McDonald to his feet.
He wouldn’t take my hand but went on dabbing at his mouth, which was trying to bleed. The other three seemed all to be talking at once.
McDonald said: ‘‘This all fits in with the rest. It’s what I might have expected.”
‘‘It’s what you asked for,’’ I said. ‘‘Only I’m sorry because you’re an older man.”
He rolled over on his knees and got up. His mouth was puffing out but he was all right. He turned his back on me and got his handkerchief out and then began struggling into his coat. Marshall went to help him.
Ainslie said: ‘‘Well, I’ve heard of some peculiar places for a free fight.…”
I turned then and went out, Charles Robinson following. I suppose I must have looked white or a bit peculiar because people stared at me as I went through the restaurant. I got out on the pavement, and tried to remember what I’d intended doing after lunch.
Charles said: ‘‘ If I were you I’d write him an apology. It’s not very dignified but——’’
‘‘Apology be hanged. He’s already had one.”
‘‘Well, you don’t want more trouble on your hands—especially now.”
I looked at Charles. ‘‘Do you believe it, this rumour that’s going about?’’
He flushed. ‘‘Should I be here with you if I did?’’
I said: ‘‘He started it, didn’t he, that rumour? I wish I’d broken his neck.”
Charles said shortly: ‘‘This row won’t help you if it gets out. It doesn’t matter who provoked it. You’re both hot-tempered devils. I’ll go back now to see him, before he does anything silly. I’ll do my best to keep him quiet.”
I remembered where I’d been going then and caught a bus for Hammersmith.
Chapter Twenty One
Just outside the Law Courts Victor Moreton got on the same bus. Everything seemed to be crowding on me that day, and at first I was only aware that somebody had taken the opposite front corner seat and was shaking the rain off his umbrella. A lot of thoughts later a heavy voice said:
‘‘Good afternoon, Branwell.”
I hadn’t seen him since the inquest. He looked over-size in the bus, and the grey light made his skin look poor. I muttered some sort of reply.
He said: ‘‘Dreadful day. I don’t know why all the taxis seem to go off the streets at the first hint of rain.”
I put my hand up to my hair and found it wet. ‘‘Yes.”
‘‘Sorry I didn’t write while you were away. Been very busy. I believe Mother wrote, didn’t she?’’
‘‘Yes. It didn’t matter. How is she?’’
He frowned. ‘‘Not well. The shock … I mean to send you a wedding present as soon as I have time to look round.” He went on twisting his umbrella round in his fat capable hands. ‘‘But this month … Of course one doesn’t serve on Royal Commissions purely out of altruism; but if I’d known the work involved … Have you found a flat?’’
I told him. I felt grateful to him just for behaving in a normal way, as if our marriage was a natural thing and not a plan to rob the dead or steal the crown jewels. As the bus raced up Waterloo Place I moved to share the seat with him. We talked, and I began some apology for not being at his brother’s funeral, but he didn’t seem to have thought anything of it. I felt much inclined to tell him the truth, to blurt it all out from beginning to end.
He said: ‘‘I get off at Hyde Park Corner. Sarah knows where I live. I hope you’ll come round some time.”
‘‘Thank you very much. We’d like to.”
He made a note of our address, and I rubbed my knuckles, which were sore. ‘‘There’s one thing I wanted to ask you,’’ I said. ‘‘Was Tracey badly burned when you saw him?’’
He looked at me, and you could see the sharp legal mind taking over.
‘‘Badly enough. Why?’’
‘‘How did you identify him? Was it quite a job?’’
‘‘Oh … not particularly. His clothes, his shoes, his figure. It couldn’t have been anybody else. What are you suggesting?’’
‘‘Did you notice if his signet ring was still on his finger?’’ There was a pause. ‘‘I’m not absolutely certain. May I ask again what your point is?’’
‘‘Would you recognize it if you saw it?’’
‘‘Of course.”
‘‘Is this it?’’ I asked, handing him the ring.
He took it and turned it over, looked inside. ‘‘Yes. I suppose Sarah had it.” He passed it back to me as if he were glad to get it out of his hands.
‘‘This is your stop,’’ I said. ‘‘Do you mind if I don’t explain now?’’
Our eyes met as he got up. ‘‘If you want to see me at my chambers you’d better ring my clerk. Or my home address after seven.”
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said.
As I watched him moving off across the pavement with his rather in-toed, fastidious walk, I realized he was the third person I’d asked that question. Now I’d got the answer.
It was all I could do to think straight about ordinary things; but when I reached Hammersmith there had been a new development. The thieves had been caught two hours before in actual possession of some of the furs. Abel was triumphant, and I had to share his car as far as the police-station at Stepney; but when we went in we found that nothing had been recovered but the cheap skins, compensation for which I’d never been contesting. Abel worked up a good show of indignation when I pointed this out to him; but I felt at my most mulish and left him there no nearer settlement than before.
I got back to the hotel about five. It was early, but I felt too sore and ragged to face the office again that day. By now no doubt they’d have heard of the scuffle with McDonald. News of it would spread the rumour twice as fast.
I didn’t really expect Sarah to be in when I got home—she’d said she would take the car and move some of her own personal belongings from her father’s home to the new flat—and sure enough the room key was on its hook.
All the same it was the first time, and a feeling of flatness joined all the others as I walked towards the lift. To-day of all days I needed her. There was a sheer physical void.
It was one of those self-operating lifts, an
d I’d just pressed the button to bring it down when a man came to me and said:
‘‘Mr. Branwell?’’
He was thin and grey-haired and wore rimless spectacles that clipped on his nose. He looked like a retired bank cashier.
‘‘Yes,’’ I said.
‘‘I wonder if—perhaps a word or two … I don’t know if your wife will have mentioned me. My name is Jerome.”
Chapter Twenty Two
I said: ‘‘You don’t take sugar, do you? My wife told me that too.”
He smiled, showing a gold tooth and a gap. ‘‘Very kind. I carry saccharine. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
I stirred my tea. McDonald had been the first tangible fact. This was the second. I was feeling wolfish.
‘‘You’re a solicitor, Mr. Jerome?’’
‘‘That is so.” He fiddled in a waistcoat pocket and brought out a little round tablet.
‘‘On or off the rolls?’’
The tablet disappeared into the cup and left three small bubbles on the surface of the tea. ‘‘Off. A gross miscarriage of justice in March 1937.”
‘‘You remember your dates but not your appointments.”
He smiled again. ‘‘I never keep appointments, Mr. Branwell. I see my clients when the—the impulse takes me.”
‘‘You mean your victims?’’
‘‘Well … There isn’t as much difference as you’d think. Terms aren’t really important, are they? No, nothing to eat, thank you. I daren’t touch it.”
I said: ‘‘ Do you jab yourself with a needle every morning?’’
‘‘Yes. One suffers a certain wastage of flesh. It’s difficult to find a new place.” He buttoned his coat, and the buttonhole needed stitching. ‘‘Now, having answered all your questions …”
‘‘Not all. Who sent you?’’
A page boy came in and walked across the room. ‘‘ Calling Mr. Inglethorpe. Calling Mr. Inglethorpe.” A fat man in a check suit got up as if something had pricked him, and went out with the boy.
Mr. Jerome said: ‘‘If I told you that, there’d be no point in my coming … would there? The purpose of a go-between.… But you can negotiate with me in every good faith. I have full power.”
‘‘Full power of blackmail?’’
He swallowed stringily and put his cup down. ‘‘ I’m too long used to the wickedness of men, Mr. Branwell. Blackmail, arson, fraud, murder. People commit them whether one likes it or not … and we have to consider the consequences. One doesn’t necessarily condemn.”
‘‘No. One makes a living.”
‘‘Precisely.”
He thought he saw my eyes wandering and looked quickly round. But I was only looking for Sarah. He said with sudden energy: ‘‘I’m glad your wife has told you. In the first place We were anxious to save her any embarrassment if she had kept the guilty knowledge to herself. But of course one——’’
‘‘Why d’you suppose she had this knowledge and not me?’’
‘‘My instructions——’’
‘‘Or that either of us had any knowledge at all?’’
‘‘Oh, my dear sir.…”
Four ladies came into the lounge, chattering about a film they’d seen, pulling off their gloves, piling their furs and their bags, talking too long and too loudly.
I said: ‘‘And now that she’s told me I suppose you feel—quite safe and among friends.”
He tightened his lips disapprovingly. ‘‘ What I feel is a little beside the point.”
‘‘And what is the point?’’
‘‘Twenty thousand pounds.”
I drank my own tea. ‘‘ I don’t know what you take us for, Mr. Jerome; but you come here with some cock-and-bull story of an insurance fraud and, without any sort of proof either that there was such a fraud or that we were in it, you expect my wife to hand over this money as if you were picking up a guinea for the church funds. When was the last time it was as easy as that?’’
He took off his glasses. The mark on his nose where they pinched looked sore. He put them back and refocused, knowing well enough that my eyes hadn’t moved off him.
He said: ‘‘ My client has ample proof of the fraud. Details of how each of the paintings was disposed of and whose hands they passed through. He also has details of how the fire was prepared. Tracey Moreton was a common swindler. And his wife. You—at the very least—are an accessory after the fact.”
‘‘Tell your client to come round himself. There’s always tea going.”
Mr. Jerome got up. I saw he was sweating. ‘‘By Tuesday put a note in the Personal Column of the Daily Telegraph. Just, ‘Accept, O. B.’ We shall want the money in cash, but I’ll communicate with you later about that.”
‘‘And if I don’t play?’’
‘‘It would be a very unhealthy situation. Can you afford to face a police inquiry?’’
‘‘Yes, there is that.”
He glanced at me. ‘‘ Don’t underrate me, Mr. Branwell. Although I’m getting up in years—I’m well able to take care of myself.”
‘‘And if we paid—how long before your next visit?’’
‘‘There’ll be no other demand. We are not greedy.… But in any case, if I may say so you’re not in a position to bargain. I should certainly settle and have done with it.”
‘‘You would?’’
‘‘Yes, I certainly would.”
I watched him go. He walked on his toes, as if it had paid him all his life to tread quietly. His striped trousers were shabby and too long. As he reached the outer door of the hotel I got up and followed him.
Dusk was just falling. The crowds were still thick. He walked briskly down Davies Street in the direction of Piccadilly, and when he reached it he crossed to the south side and turned in the Princes Arcade. At Jermyn Street he went east to Lower Regent Street, and walked down to Trafalgar Square.
I’d never done any shadowing before, and I don’t know when he first saw me. I didn’t much care. I fancy he was making for Charing Cross Station, but he changed his mind and walked down Whitehall. It was helpful of him not to take a taxi.
At Whitehall he bought an evening paper and crossed Westminster Bridge. The rain was coming on again, and half way across he stopped to open his umbrella. I slowed but didn’t stop because it was better to be nearer in the dark.
At the other side he continued along Westminster Bridge Road and then turned to the right. He was a pretty good walker for his age and I couldn’t decide whether he was going somewhere or only trying to shake me off.
The streets were poor now, the way they are when you get off the main routes, and the rain was trickling off my hair. Mr. Jerome stopped to let a van turn out, and I caught him up a bit more. Was I trying to catch him, I wondered, or was he trying to let me?
We came to a blitzed area where there was nothing but the street going between rubble, and weeds and a hoarding or two, and in the distance pre-fabs. I put on a spurt and caught up with him and took his arm.
‘‘This isn’t your line,’’ I said. ‘‘Why didn’t you stick to keyholes?’’
He tried to pull his arm free. ‘‘You’ll do no good by following me like this!’’
I held him till he came to a stop. He glared at me, his face red and his pince-nez shaking.
‘‘Tell me who you’re working for——’’
Luckily it was raining and I heard the rubber shoes on the pavement behind me. I must have ducked at just the right moment, because the blackjack followed my head down and I got a stinging thump on the back of the neck that made things blur. I turned and lashed out with my fist and caught somebody in the face. It was the hardest crack I’d ever given anyone, and he disappeared somewhere among the rubble. Then I took to my heels after Jerome.
I caught him under a lamp. By now I’d given up caring whether there was anyone else about, and I gave him a shove that sent him on his knees. Then as he sprawled I grabbed his collar and hauled him out of the lamplight among the weeds and the broken bot
tles.
By the time I’d come to the shelter of a bit of wall he was sounding worse for wear. I propped him up against the wall and took him by the collar and squeezed.
‘‘Now.… The name of the man.”
‘‘Careful …” he got out ‘‘ My heart! Diabetic …”
‘‘Come on! Tell me.”
‘‘Can’t breathe.…”
‘‘The name of the man.”
He suddenly went limp on me and I let him slump. His face was the colour of the wall and I thought I’d gone too far. If he was dead I’d better go, and quickly.
Then a police whistle sounded. I got up, and at the same moment Jerome stirred. I knelt down again and grabbed him by the throat and shook him. His eyes rolled.
‘‘The name of the man.”
There were people in a knot under the farthest lamp where the buildings began again. One was a policeman, and he came along the blitzed street staring about him.
Mr. Jerome muttered: ‘‘No, my lord. No evidence at all. If we adjourn sine die …”
For a second his eyes seemed to focus then.
‘‘I swear to God,’’ I said, ‘‘that if you don’t tell me the name of the man, I’ll kill you now before help comes.” I gave him another squeeze, and his eyes fairly popped. He said something that sounded like ‘‘Hush!’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Fish,’’ he said.
‘‘Tell me the name.”
‘‘Telling you.… Fish. Fisher.…”
‘‘Clive Fisher?’’
He nodded, and I let him drop. I took a deep breath and stood up. The policeman saw me. I turned and ran. He shouted and came after me.
I ran through the rubbish and the rubble, jumping and leaping across it; came up with the pre-fabs as he blew his whistle again; a man came out of a door in shirt sleeves: by the time he’d taken his pipe out of his mouth I was past.
I was nearly garrotted on a clothes line, and I twisted among the shacks with their bits of gardens and their unseen booby traps. At the back of them was a nine-foot wall, part of the old buildings; I jumped at this but couldn’t get a foothold. Run along it, a rat looking for a way out. Voices and footsteps behind; a light from an open door gleamed on a helmet.