“Yes.”
That was unexpected, and Robert was rocked back on his heels. If that was really true—that the girl had mentioned screaming before there was any question of the Sharpes being in trouble—then the evidence would be damning. Robert got up and walked restlessly to the window and back. He thought enviously of Ben Carley. Ben wouldn’t be hating this as he hated it, feeling inadequate and at a loss. Ben would be in his element; his mind delighting in the problem and in the hope of outwitting established authority. Robert was dimly aware that his own deep-seated respect for established authority was a handicap to him rather than an asset; he needed some of Ben’s native belief that authority is there to be circumvented.
“Well, thank you for being so frank,” he said at last. “Now, I’m not minimising the crime you are accusing these people of, but it is misdemeanour not felony, so why a warrant? Surely a summons would meet the case perfectly?”
“A summons would be in order certainly,” Grant said smoothly. “But in cases where the crime is aggravated—and my superiors take a grave view of the present one—a warrant is issued.”
Robert could not help wondering how much the gadfly attentions of the Ack-Emma had influenced the calm judgments of the Yard. He caught Grant’s eye and knew that Grant had read his thought.
“The girl was missing for a whole month—all but a day or two,” Grant said, “and had been very badly knocked about, very deliberately. It is not a case to be taken lightly.”
“But what do you gain from arrest?” Robert asked, remembering Mr. Heseltine’s point. “There is no question of these people not being there to answer the charge. Nor any question of a similar crime being committed by them in the interval. When did you want them to appear, by the way?”
“I planned to bring them up at the police court on Monday.”
“Then I suggest that you serve them with a summons to appear.”
“My superiors have decided on a warrant,” Grant said, without emotion.
“But you could use your judgment. Your superiors can have no knowledge of local conditions, for instance. If The Franchise is left without occupants it will be a wreck in a week. Have your superiors thought of that? And if you arrest these women, you can only keep them in custody until Monday, when I shall ask for bail. It seems a pity to risk hooliganism at The Franchise just for the gesture of arrest. And I know Inspector Hallam has no men to spare for its protection.”
This right-and-left gave them both pause. It was amazing how ingrained the respect for property was in the English soul; the first change in Grant’s face had occurred at the mention of the possible wrecking of the house. Robert cast an unexpectedly kind thought to the louts who had provided the precedent, and so weighted his argument with example. As for Hallam, quite apart from his limited force he was not likely to look kindly on the prospect of fresh hooliganism in his district and fresh culprits to track down.
Into the long pause Hallam said tentatively: “There is something in what Mr. Blair says. Feeling in the countryside is very strong, and I doubt if they would leave the house untouched if it was empty. Especially if news of the arrest got about.”
It took nearly half an hour to convince Grant, however. For some reason there was a personal element in the affair for Grant, and Robert could not imagine what it could be, or why it should be there.
“Well,” the Inspector said at length, “you don’t need me to serve a summons.” It was as if a surgeon was contemptuous at being asked to open a boil, Robert thought, amused and vastly relieved. “I’ll leave that to Hallam and get back to town. But I’ll be in court on Monday. I understand that the Assizes are imminent, so if we avoid a remand the case can go straight on to the Assizes. Can you be ready with your defence by Monday, do you think?”
“Inspector, with all the defence my clients have we could be ready by tea-time,” Robert said bitterly.
To his surprise, Grant turned to him with a broader smile than was usual with him; and it was a very kind smile. “Mr. Blair,” he said, “you have done me out of an arrest this afternoon, but I don’t hold it against you. On the contrary, I think your clients are luckier than they deserve in their solicitor. It will be my prayer that they are less lucky in their counsel! Otherwise, I may find myself talked into voting them a testimonial.”
So it was not with “Grant and Hallam hanging round his neck” that Robert went out to The Franchise; not with a warrant at all. He went out in Hallam’s familiar car with a summons sticking out of the pocket of it; and he was sick with relief when he thought of the escape they had had, and sick with apprehension when he thought of the fix they were in.
“Inspector Grant seemed to have a very personal interest in executing that warrant,” he said to Hallam as they went along. “Is it that the Ack-Emma has been biting him, do you think?”
“Oh, no,” Hallam said. “Grant’s as nearly indifferent to that sort of thing as a human being can be.”
“Then why?”
“Well, it’s my belief—strictly between ourselves—that he can’t forgive them for fooling him. The Sharpes, I mean. He’s famous at the Yard for his good judgment of people, you see; and, again between ourselves, he didn’t much care for the Kane girl or her story; and he liked them even less when he had seen the Franchise people, in spite of all the evidence. Now he thinks the wool was pulled over his eyes, and he’s not taking it lightly. It would have given him a lot of pleasure, I imagine, to produce that warrant in their drawing-room.”
As they pulled up by the Franchise gate and Robert took out his key, Hallam said: “If you open both sides I’ll drive the car inside, even for the short time. No need to advertise the fact that we’re here.” And Robert, pushing open the solid iron leaves, thought that when visiting actresses said “Your policemen are wonderful” they didn’t know the half of it. He got back into the car and Hallam drove up the short straight drive and round the circular path to the door. As Robert got out of the car Marion came round the corner of the house, wearing gardening gloves and a very old skirt. Where her hair was blown up from her forehead by the wind it changed from the heavy dark stuff that it was to a soft smoke. The first summer sun had darkened her skin and she looked more than ever like a gipsy. Coming on Robert unexpectedly she had not time to guard her expression, and the lighting of her whole face as she saw him made his heart turn over.
“How nice!” she said. “Mother is still resting but she will be down soon and we can have some tea. I—” Her glance went to Hallam and her voice died away uncertainly. “Good afternoon, Inspector.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Sharpe. I’m sorry to break into your mother’s rest, but perhaps you would ask her to come down. It’s important.”
She paused a moment, and then led the way indoors. “Yes, certainly. Has there been some—some new development? Come in and sit down.” She led them into the drawing-room that he knew so well by now—the lovely mirror, the dreadful fireplace, the bead-work chair, the good “pieces,” the old pink carpet faded to a dirty grey—and stood there, searching their faces, savouring the new threat in the atmosphere.
“What is it?” she asked Robert.
But Hallam said: “I think it would be easier if you fetched Mrs. Sharpe and I told you both at the same time.” “Yes. Yes, of course,” she agreed, and turned to go. But there was no need to go. Mrs. Sharpe came into the room, very much as she had on that previous occasion when Hallam and Robert had been there together: her short strands of white hair standing on end where they had been pushed up by her pillow, her seagull’s eyes bright and inquiring.
“Only two kinds of people,” she said, “arrive in noiseless cars. Millionaires and the police. Since we have no acquaintances among the former—and an ever-widening acquaintance with the latter—I deduced that some of our acquaintances had arrived.”
“I’m afraid I’m even less welcome than usual, Mrs. Sharpe. I’ve come to serve a summons on you and Miss Sharpe.”
“A summons?” Marion said, puz
zled.
“A summons to appear at the police court on Monday morning to answer a charge of abduction and assault.” It was obvious that Hallam was not happy.
“I don’t believe it,” Marion said slowly. “I don’t believe it. You mean you are charging us with this thing?”
“Yes, Miss Sharpe.”
“But how? Why now?” She turned to Robert.
“The police think they have the corroborative evidence they needed,” Robert said.
“What evidence?” Mrs. Sharpe asked, reacting for the first time.
“I think the best plan would be for Inspector Hallam to serve you both with the summonses, and we can discuss the situation at greater length when he has gone.”
“You mean, we have to accept them?” Marion said. “To appear in the public court—my mother too—to answer a—to be accused of a thing like that?”
“I’m afraid there is no alternative.”
She seemed half intimidated by his shortness, half resentful at his lack of championship. And Hallam, as he handed the document to her, seemed to be aware of this last and to resent it in his turn.
“And I think I ought to tell you, in case he doesn’t, that but for Mr. Blair here it wouldn’t be a mere summons, it would be a warrant; and you would be sleeping tonight in a cell instead of in your own beds. Don’t bother, Miss Sharpe: I’ll let myself out.”
And Robert, watching him go and remembering how Mrs. Sharpe had snubbed him on his first appearance in that room, thought that the score was now game all.
“Is that true?” Mrs. Sharpe asked.
“Perfectly true,” Robert said; and told them about Grant’s arrival to arrest them. “But it isn’t me you have to thank for your escape: it is old Mr. Heseltine in the office.” And he described how the old clerk’s mind reacted automatically to stimulus of a legal sort.
“And what is this new evidence they think they have?”
“They have it all right,” Robert said dryly. “There is no thinking about it.” He told them about the girl being picked up on the London road through Mainshill. “That merely corroborates what we have always suspected: that when she left Cherrill Street, ostensibly on her way home, she was keeping an appointment. But the other piece of evidence is much more serious. You told me once that you had a woman—a girl—from the farm, who came in one day a week and cleaned for you.”
“Rose Glyn, yes.”
“I understand that since the gossip got round she doesn’t come anymore.”
“Since the gossip—? You mean, the Betty Kane story? Oh, she was sacked before that ever came to light.”
“Sacked?” Robert said sharply.
“Yes. Why do you look so surprised? In our experience of domestic workers sacking is not an unexpected occurrence.”
“No, but in this case it might explain a lot. What did you sack her for?”
“Stealing,” said old Mrs. Sharpe.
“She had always lifted a shilling or two from a purse if it was left round,” supplemented Marion, “but because we needed help so badly we turned a blind eye and kept purses out of her way. Also any small liftable articles, like stockings. And then she took the watch I’d had for twenty years. I had taken it off to wash some things—the soap-suds rise up one’s arms, you know—and when I went back to look for it it had gone. I asked her about it, but of course she ‘hadn’t seen it.’ That was too much. That watch was part of me, as much a part of me as my hair or my fingernails. There was no recovering it, because we had no evidence at all that she had taken it. But after she had gone we talked it over and next morning we walked over to the farm, and just mentioned that we would not be needing her any more. That was a Tuesday—she always came on Mondays—and that afternoon after my mother had gone up to rest Inspector Grant arrived, with Betty Kane in the car.”
“I see. Was anyone else there when you told the girl at the farm that she was sacked?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so. She doesn’t belong to the farm—to Staples, I mean; they are delightful people. She is one of the labourer’s daughters. And as far as I remember we met her outside their cottage and just mentioned the thing in passing.”
“How did she take it?”
“She got very pink and flounced a bit.”
“She grew beetroot red and bridled like a turkeycock,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because she will say on oath that when she was working here she heard screams coming from your attic.”
“Will she indeed,” said Mrs. Sharpe, contemplatively.
“What is much worse, there is evidence that she mentioned the screams before there was any rumour of the Betty Kane trouble.”
This produced a complete silence. Once more Robert was aware how noiseless the house was, how dead. Even the French clock on the mantelpiece was silent. The curtain at the window moved inwards on a gust of air and fell back to its place as soundlessly as if it were moving in a film.
“That,” said Marion at last, “is what is known as a facer.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“A facer for you, too.”
“For us, yes.”
“I don’t mean professionally.”
“No? How then?”
“You are faced with the possibility that we have been lying.”
“Really, Marion!” he said impatiently, using her name for the first time and not noticing that he had used it. “What I am faced with, if anything, is the choice between your word and the word of Rose Glyn’s friends.”
But she did not appear to be listening. “I wish,” she said passionately, “oh, how I wish that we had one small, just one small piece of evidence on our side! She gets away—that girl gets away with everything, everything. We keep on saying ‘It is not true,’ but we have no way of showing that it is not true. It is all negative. All inconclusive. All feeble denial. Things combine to back up her lies, but nothing happens to help prove that we are telling the truth. Nothing!”
“Sit down, Marion,” her mother said. “A tantrum won’t improve the situation.”
“I could kill that girl; I could kill her. My God, I could torture her twice a day for a year and then begin again on New Year’s day. When I think what she had done to us I—”
“Don’t think,” Robert interrupted. “Think instead of the day when she is discredited in open court. If I know anything of human nature that will hurt Miss Kane a great deal worse than the beating someone gave her.”
“You still believe that that is possible?” Marion said, incredulous.
“Yes. I don’t quite know how we shall bring it about. But that we shall bring it about I do believe.”
“With not one tiny piece of evidence for us, not one; and evidence just—just blossoming for her?”
“Yes. Even then.”
“Is that just native optimism, Mr. Blair,” Mrs. Sharpe asked, “or your innate belief in the triumph of Good, or what?”
“I don’t know. I think Truth has a validity of its own.”
“Dreyfus didn’t find it very valid; nor Slater; nor some others of whom there is record,” she said dryly.
“They did in the end.”
“Well, frankly, I don’t look forward to a life in prison waiting for Truth to demonstrate its validity.”
“I don’t believe that it will come to that. Prison, I mean. You will have to appear on Monday, and since we have no adequate defence you will no doubt be sent for trial. But we shall ask for bail, and that means that you can go on staying here until the Assizes at Norton. And before that I hope that Alec Ramsden will have picked up the girl’s trail. Remember we don’t even have to know what she was doing for the rest of the month. All we have to show is that she did something else on the day she says you picked her up. Take away that first bit and her whole story collapses. And it is my ambition to take it away in public.”
“To undress her in public the way the Ack-Emma has undressed us? Do you think she would mind?” Marion said. “Mind as we
minded?”
“To have been the heroine of a newspaper sensation, to say nothing of the adored centre of a loving and sympathetic family, and then to be uncovered to the public gaze as a liar, a cheat and a wanton? I think she would mind. And there is one thing she would mind particularly. One result of her escapade was that she got back Leslie Wynn’s attention; the attention she had lost when he became engaged. As long as she is a wronged heroine she is assured of that attention; once we show her up she has lost it for good.”
“I never thought to see the milk of human kindness so curdled in your gentle veins, Mr. Blair,” Mrs. Sharpe remarked.
“If she had broken out as a result of the boy’s engagement—as she very well might—I should have nothing but pity for her. She is at an unstable age, and his engagement must have been a shock. But I don’t think that had very much to do with it. I think she is her mother’s daughter; and was merely setting out a little early on the road her mother took. As selfish, as self-indulgent, as greedy, as plausible as the blood she came of. Now I must go. I said that I would be at home after five o’clock if Ramsden wanted to ring up to report. And I want to ring Kevin Macdermott and get his help about counsel and things.”
“I’m afraid that we—that I, rather—have been rather ungracious about this,” Marion said. “You have done, and are doing, so much for us. But it was such a shock. So entirely unexpected and out of the blue. You must forgive me if—”
“There is nothing to forgive. I think you have both taken it very well. Have you got someone in the place of the dishonest and about-to-commit-perjury Rose? You can’t have this huge place entirely on your hands.”
“Well, no one in the locality would come, of course. But Stanley—what would we do without Stanley?—Stanley knows a woman in Larborough who might be interested to come out by bus once a week. You know, when the thought of that girl becomes too much for me, I think of Stanley.”
“Yes,” Robert said, smiling. “The salt of the earth.”
“He is even teaching me how to cook. I know how to turn eggs in the frying-pan without breaking them now. ‘D’you have to go at them as if you were conducting the Philharmonic?’ he asked me. And when I asked him how he got so neat-handed he said it was with ‘cooking in a bivvy two feet square.’ ”