“Excelsior!” said Marion. “The Watchman snatching the torch from the failing hands of the Ack-Emma is a charming picture.”
“Climbing into the Ack-Emma’s bed,” Ben Carley had called it; but the sentiment was the same.
“Have you spies in the Watchman office, Mr. Blair?”
Mrs. Sharpe asked.
“No; it was Nevil who got wind of it. They are going to print a letter from his future father-in-law, the Bishop of Larborough.”
“Hah!” said Mrs. Sharpe. “Toby Byrne.”
“You know him?” asked Robert, thinking that the quality of her tone would peel the varnish off wood if spilt on it.
“He went to school with my nephew. The son of the horseleech brother. Toby Byrne, indeed. He doesn’t change.”
“I gather that you didn’t like him.”
“I never knew him. He went home for the holidays once with my nephew but was never asked back.”
“Oh?”
“He discovered for the first time that stable lads got up at the crack of dawn, and he was horrified. It was slavery, he said; and he went round the lads urging them to stand up for their rights. If they combined, he said, not a horse would go out of the stable before nine o’clock in the morning. The lads used to mimic him for years afterwards; but he was not asked back.”
“Yes; he doesn’t change,” agreed Robert. “He has been using the same technique ever since, on everything from Kaffirs to Crèches. The less he knows about a thing the more strongly he feels about it. Nevil was of the opinion that nothing could be done about the proposed letter, since the Bishop had already written it and what the Bishop has written is not to be contemplated as waste-paper. But I couldn’t just sit and do nothing about it; so I rang him up after dinner and pointed out as tactfully as I could that he was embracing a very doubtful cause, and at the same time doing harm to two possibly innocent people. But I might have saved my breath. He pointed out that the Watchman existed for the free expression of opinion, and inferred that I was trying to prevent such freedom. I ended up by asking him if he approved of lynching, because he was doing his best to bring one about. That was after I saw it was hopeless and had stopped being tactful.” He took the cup of coffee that Mrs. Sharpe had put out for him. “He’s a sad come-down after his predecessor in the See who was the terror of every evil-doer in five counties, and a scholar to boot.”
“How did Toby Byrne achieve gaiters?” Mrs. Sharpe wondered.
“I assume that Cowan’s Cranberry Sauce had no inconsiderable part in his translation.”
“Ah, yes. His wife. I forgot. Sugar, Mr. Blair?”
“By the way, here are the two duplicate keys to the Franchise gate. I take it that I may keep one. The other you had better give to the police, I think, so that they can look round as they please. I also have to inform you that you now have a private agent in your employ.” And he told them about Alec Ramsden, who appeared on doorsteps at half-past eight in the morning.
“No word of anyone recognising the Ack-Emma photograph and writing to Scotland Yard?” Marion asked. “I had pinned my faith to that.”
“Not so far. But there is still hope.”
“It is five days since the Ack-Emma printed it. If anyone was ever going to recognise it they would have by now.”
“You don’t make allowances for the discards. That is nearly always the way it happens. Someone spreads open their parcel of chips and says: ‘Dear me, where did I see that face?’ Or someone is using a bundle of newspapers to line drawers in a hotel. Or something like that. Don’t lose hope, Miss Sharpe. Between the good Lord and Alec Ramsden, we’ll triumph in the end.”
She looked at him soberly. “You really believe that don’t you,” she said as one noting a phenomenon.
“I do,” he said.
“You believe in the ultimate triumph of Good.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose because the other thing is unthinkable. Nothing more positive or more commendable than that.”
“I should have a greater faith in a God who hadn’t given Toby Byrne a bishopric,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “When does Toby’s letter appear, by the way?”
“On Friday morning.”
“I can hardly wait,” said Mrs. Sharpe.
Chapter 15
Robert was less sure about the ultimate triumph of good by Friday afternoon.
It was not the Bishop’s letter which shook his faith. Indeed the events of Friday did much to take the wind out of the Bishop’s sails; and if Robert had been told on Wednesday morning that he would bitterly regret anything that served to deflate the Bishop he would not have believed it.
His Lordship’s letter had run very true to form. The Watchman, he said, had always set its face against violence and was not now, of course, proposing to condone it, but there were occasions when violence was but a symptom of a deep social unrest, resentment, and insecurity. As in the recent Nullahbad case, for instance. (The “unrest, resentment, and insecurity” in the Nullahbad case lay entirely in the bosoms of two thieves who could not find the opal bracelet they had come to steal and by way of reprisal killed the seven sleeping occupants of the bungalow in their beds.) There were undoubtedly times when the proletariat felt themselves helpless to redress a patent wrong, and it was not to be marvelled at that some of the more passionate spirits were moved to personal protest. (Robert thought that Bill and Stanley would hardly recognise the louts of Monday night under the guise of “passionate spirits”; and he held that “personal protest” was a slight understatement for the entire wrecking of the ground floor windows of The Franchise.) The people to be blamed for the unrest (the Watchman had a passion for euphemism: unrest, underprivileged, backward, unfortunate; where the rest of the world talked about violence, the poor, mentally deficient, and prostitutes; and one of the things that the Ack-Emma and the Watchman had in common, now he thought about it, was the belief that all prostitutes were hearts-of-gold who had taken the wrong turning)—the people to be blamed for the unrest were not those perhaps misguided persons who had demonstrated their resentment so unmistakably, but the powers whose weakness, ineptitude and lack of zeal had led to the injustice of a dropped case. It was part of the English heritage that justice should not only be done but that it should be shown to be done; and the place for that was in open court.
“What good does he think it would do anyone for the police to waste time preparing a case that they were foreordained to lose?” Robert asked Nevil, who was reading the letter over his shoulder.
“It would have done us a power of good,” Nevil said. “He doesn’t seem to have thought of that. If the Magistrate dismissed the case the suggestion that his poor bruised darling was telling fibs could hardly be avoided, could it! Have you come to the bruises?”
“No.”
The bruises came near the end. The “poor bruised body” of this young and blameless girl, his lordship said, was a crying indictment of a law that had failed to protect her and now failed to vindicate her. The whole conduct of this case was one that demanded the most searching scrutiny.
“That must be making the Yard very happy this morning,” Robert said.
“This afternoon,” amended Nevil.
“Why this afternoon?”
“No one at the Yard would read a bogus publication like the Watchman. They won’t see it until someone sends it to them this afternoon.”
But they had seen it, as it turned out. Grant had read it in the train. He had picked it off the bookstall with three others; not because it was his choice but because it was a choice between that and coloured publications with bathing-belle covers.
Robert deserted the office and took the copy of the Watchman out to The Franchise together with that morning’s Ack-Emma, which had quite definitely no further interest in the Franchise affair. Since the final, subdued letter on Wednesday it had ceased to mention the matter. It was a lovely day; the grass in the Franchise courtyard absurdly green, th
e dirty-white front of the house glorified by the sun into a semblance of grace, the reflected light from the rosy brick wall flooding the shabby drawing-room and giving it a smiling warmth. They had sat there, the three of them, in great contentment. The Ack-Emma had finished its undressing of them in public; the Bishop’s letter was not after all as bad as it might have been; Alec Ramsden was busy on their behalf in Larborough and would without doubt unearth facts sooner or later that would be their salvation; the summer was here with its bright short nights; Stanley was proving himself “a great dear”; they had paid a second short visit to Milford yesterday in pursuance of their design to become part of the scenery, and nothing untoward had happened to them beyond stares, black looks, and a few audible remarks. Altogether, the feeling of the meeting was that it all might be worse.
“How much ice will this cut?” Mrs. Sharpe asked Robert, stabbing her skinny index finger at the correspondence page of the Watchman.
“Not much, I think. Even among the Watchman clique the Bishop is looked at slightly sideways nowadays, I understand. His championship of Mahoney didn’t do him any good.”
“Who was Mahoney?” Marion asked.
“Have you forgotten Mahoney? He was the Irish ‘patriot’ who put a bomb in a woman’s bicycle basket in a busy English street and blew four people to pieces, including the woman, who was later identified by her wedding ring. The Bishop held that Mahoney was merely misguided, not a murderer; that he was fighting on behalf of a repressed minority—the Irish, believe it or not—and that we should not make him into a martyr. That was a little too much for even Watchman stomachs, and since then the Bishop’s prestige is not what it was, I hear.”
“Isn’t it shocking how one forgets when it doesn’t concern oneself,” Marion said. “Did they hang Mahoney?”
“They did, I am glad to say—much to his own pained surprise. So many of his predecessors had benefited from the plea that we should not make martyrs, that murder had ceased to be reckoned in their minds as one of the dangerous trades. It was rapidly becoming as safe as banking.”
“Talking of banking,” Mrs. Sharpe said, “I think it would be best if our financial position were made clear to you, and for that you should get in touch with old Mr. Crowle’s solicitors in London, who manage our affairs. I shall write to them explaining that you are to be given full details, so that you may know how much we have to come and go on, and can make corresponding arrangements for the spending of it in defence of our good name. It is not exactly the way we had planned to spend it.”
“Let us be thankful we have it to spend,” Marion said. “What does a penniless person do in a case like this?”
Robert quite frankly did not know.
He took the address of the Crowle solicitors and went home to lunch with Aunt Lin, feeling happier than he had at any time since he had first caught sight of the Ack-Emma’s front page on Bill’s desk last Friday. He felt as one feels in a bad thunderstorm when the noise ceases to be directly overhead; it will still continue, and probably still be very unpleasant, but one can see a future through it whereas but a moment ago there was nothing but the dreadful “now.”
Even Aunt Lin seemed to have forgotten The Franchise for a spell and was at her woolly and endearing best—full of the birthday presents she was buying for Lettice’s twins in Saskatchewan. She had provided his favourite lunch—cold ham, boiled potatoes, and brown betty with thick cream—and moment by moment he was finding it more difficult to realise that this was the Friday morning he had dreaded because it would see the beginning of a Watchman campaign against them. It seemed to him that the Bishop of Larborough was very much what Lettice’s husband used to call “a busted flush.” He couldn’t imagine now why he had wasted a thought on him.
It was in this mood that he went back to the office. And it was in this mood that he picked up the receiver to answer Hallam’s call.
“Mr. Blair?” Hallam said. “I’m at the Rose and Crown. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. Inspector Grant’s here.”
“At the Rose and Crown?”
“Yes. And he’s got a warrant.”
Robert’s brain stopped functioning. “A search warrant?” he asked stupidly.
“No; a warrant to arrest.”
“No!”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But he can’t have!”
“I expect it’s a bit of a shock for you. I admit I hadn’t anticipated it myself.”
“You mean he has managed to get a witness—a corroborative witness?”
“He has two of them. The case is sewn up and tied with ribbon.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Will you come over, or shall we go to you? I expect you’ll want to come out with us.”
“But where? Oh, yes. Yes, of course I shall. I’ll come over to the Rose and Crown now. Where are you? In the lounge?”
“No, in Grant’s bedroom. Number Five. The one with the casement window on the street—over the bar.”
“All right. I’m coming straight over. I say!”
“Yes?”
“A warrant for both?”
“Yes. For two.”
“All right. Thank you. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
He sat for a moment getting back his breath, and trying to orientate himself. Nevil was out on business, but Nevil was not much of a moral support at any time. He got up, took his hat, and went to the door of “the office.”
“Mr. Heseltine, please,” he said, in the polite formula always used in the presence of the younger staff; and the old man followed him into the hall and out to the sunlit doorway.
“Timmy,” Robert said. “We’re in trouble. Inspector Grant is here from Headquarters with a warrant to arrest the Franchise people.” Even as he said the words he could not believe that the thing was really happening.
Neither could old Mr. Heseltine; that was obvious. He stared, wordless; his pale old eyes aghast.
“It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it, Timmy?” He shouldn’t have hoped for support from the frail old clerk.
But shocked as he was, and frail, and old, Mr. Heseltine was nevertheless a law clerk, and the support was forthcoming. After a lifetime among formulae his mind reacted automatically to the letter of the situation.
“A warrant,” he said. “Why a warrant?”
“Because they can’t arrest anyone without one,” Robert said a trifle impatiently. Was old Timmy getting past his work?
“I don’t mean that. I mean, it’s a misdemeanour they’re accused of, not a felony. They could surely make it a summons, Mr. Robert? They don’t need to arrest them, surely? Not for a misdemeanour.”
Robert had not thought of that. “A summons to appear,” he said. “Yes, why not? Of course there’s nothing to hinder them arresting them if they want to.”
“But why should they want to? People like the Sharpes wouldn’t run away. Nor do any farther harm while they are waiting to appear. Who issued the warrant, did they say?”
“No, they didn’t say. Many thanks, Timmy; you’ve been as good as a stiff drink. I must go over to the Rose and Crown now—Inspector Grant is there with Hallam—and face the music. There’s no way of warning The Franchise because they have no telephone. I’ll just have to go out there with Grant and Hallam hanging round my neck. And only this morning we were beginning to see daylight, so we thought. You might tell Nevil when he comes in, will you? And stop him doing anything foolish or impulsive.”
“You know very well Mr. Robert, I’ve never been able to stop Mr. Nevil doing anything he wanted to do. Though it has seemed to me that he has been surprisingly sober this last week. In the metaphorical sense, I mean.”
“Long may it last,” Robert said, stepping out into the sunlit street.
It was the dead period of the afternoon at the Rose and Crown and he passed through the hall and up the wide shallow stairs without meeting anyone, and knocked at the door of Number Five. Grant, calm and polite as always, let him in. Hallam,
vaguely unhappy-looking, was leaning against the dressing-table in the window.
“I understand that you hadn’t expected this, Mr. Blair,” Grant said.
“No, I hadn’t. To be frank, it is a great shock to me.”
“Sit down,” Grant said. “I don’t want to hurry you.”
“You have new evidence, Inspector Hallam says.”
“Yes; what we think is conclusive evidence.”
“May I know what it is?”
“Certainly. We have a man who saw Betty Kane being picked up by the car at the bus stop—”
“By a car,” Robert said.
“Yes, if you like, by a car—but its description fits that of the Sharpes’.”
“So do ten thousand others in Britain. And?”
“The girl from the farm, who went once a week to help clean The Franchise, will swear that she heard screams coming from the attic.”
“Went once a week? Doesn’t she go any longer?”
“Not since the Kane affair became common gossip.”
“I see.”
“Not very valuable pieces of evidence in themselves, but very valuable as proof of the girl’s story. For instance she really did miss that Larborough-London coach. Our witness says that it passed him about half a mile down the road. When he came in sight of the bus-stop a few moments later the girl was there waiting. It is a long straight road, the main London road through Mainshill—”
“I know. I know it.”
“Yes; well, when he was still some way from the girl he saw the car stop by her, saw her get in, and saw her driven away.”
“But not who drove the car?”
“No. It was too far away for that.”
“And this girl from the farm—did she volunteer the information about the screaming?”
“Not to us. She spoke about it to her friends, and we acted on information, and found her quite willing to repeat the story on oath.”
“Did she speak about it to her friends before the gossip about Betty Kane’s abduction got round?”