“And afterwards?”
“For a week after that I spent most nights at the bungalow.”
“Was your wife not surprised that you did not sleep at home?”
“Not unbearably.”
“And how did the situation at Bourne End disintegrate?”
“I went down one night and found that she had gone.”
“What did you think had happened to her?”
“Well she had been growing very bored for the last day or two—she found housekeeping fun for about three days but not more, and there wasn’t much to do down there—so when I found she had gone I took it that she was tired of me and had found someone or something more exciting.”
“You learned later where she had gone, and why?”
“Yes.”
“You heard the girl Betty Kane give evidence today?”
“I did.”
“Evidence that she had been forcibly detained in a house near Milford.”
“Yes.”
“That is the girl who went with you to Copenhagen, stayed there for a fortnight with you, and subsequently lived with you in a bungalow near Bourne End?”
“Yes, that is the girl.”
“You have no doubt about it?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
There was a great sigh from the crowd as Kevin sat down and Bernard Chadwick waited for Miles Allison. Robert wondered if Betty Kane’s face was capable of showing any emotion other than fear and triumph. Twice he had seen it pulse with triumph and once—when old Mrs. Sharpe crossed the drawing-room towards her that first day—he had seen it show fear. But for all the emotion it showed just now she might have been listening to a reading of Fat Stock prices. Its effect of inward calm, he decided, must be the result of physical construction. The result of wide-set eyes, and placid brow, and inexpensive small mouth always set in the same childish pout. It was that physical construction that had hidden, all those years, the real Betty Kane even from her intimates. A perfect camouflage, it had been. A façade behind which she could be what she liked. There it was now, the mask, as childlike and calm as when he had first seen it above her school coat in the drawing-room at The Franchise; although behind it its owner must be seething with unnameable emotions.
“Mr. Chadwick,” Miles Allison said, “this is a very belated story, isn’t it?”
“Belated?”
“Yes. This case has been a matter for press-report and public comment for the past three weeks, or thereabouts. You must have known that two women were being wrongfully accused—if your story was true. If, as you say, Betty Kane was with you during those weeks, and not, as she says, in the house of these two women, why did you not go straight to the police and tell them so?”
“Because I didn’t know anything about it.”
“About what?”
“About the prosecution of these women. Or about the story that Betty Kane had told.”
“How was that?”
“Because I have been abroad again for my firm. I knew nothing about this case until a couple of days ago.”
“I see. You have heard the girl give evidence; and you have heard the doctor’s evidence as to the condition in which she arrived home. Does anything in your story explain that?”
“No.”
“It was not you who beat the girl?”
“No.”
“You say you went down one night and found her gone.”
“Yes.”
“She had packed up and gone?”
“Yes; so it seemed at the time.”
“That is to say, all her belongings and the luggage that contained them had disappeared with her.”
“Yes.”
“And yet she arrived home without belongings of any sort, and wearing only a dress and shoes.”
“I didn’t know that till much later.”
“You want us to understand that when you went down to the bungalow you found it tidy and deserted, with no sign of any hasty departure.”
“Yes. That’s how I found it.”
When Mary Frances Chadwick was summoned to give evidence there was what amounted to a sensation in court even before she appeared. It was obvious that this was “the wife”; and this was fare that not even the most optimistic queuer outside the court had anticipated.
Frances Chadwick was a tallish good-looking woman; a natural blonde with the clothes and figure of a girl who has “modelled” clothes; but growing a little plump now, and, if one was to judge from the good-natured face, not much caring.
She said that she was indeed married to the previous witness, and lived with him in Ealing. They had no children. She still worked in the clothes trade now and then. Not because she needed to, but for pocket-money and because she liked it. Yes, she remembered her husband’s going to Larborough and his subsequent trip to Copenhagen. He arrived back from Copenhagen a day later than he had promised, and spent that night with her. During the following week she began to suspect that her husband had developed an interest elsewhere. The suspicion was confirmed when a friend told her that her husband had a guest at their bungalow on the river.
“Did you speak to your husband about it?” Kevin asked.
“No. That wouldn’t have been any solution. He attracts them like flies.”
“What did you do, then? Or plan to do?”
“What I always do with flies.”
“What is that?”
“I swat them.”
“So you proceeded to the bungalow with the intention of swatting whatever fly was there.”
“That’s it.”
“And what did you find at the bungalow?”
“I went late in the evening hoping I would catch Barney there too—”
“Barney is your husband?”
“And how. I mean, yes,” she added hastily, catching the judge’s eye.
“Well?”
“The door was unlocked so I walked straight in and into the sitting-room. A woman’s voice called from the bedroom: ‘Is that you, Barney? I’ve been so lonely for you.’ I went in and found her lying on the bed in the kind of negligée you used to see in vamp films about ten years ago. She looked a mess, and I was a bit surprised at Barney. She was eating chocolates out of an enormous box that was lying on the bed alongside her. Terribly nineteen-thirty, the whole set-up.”
“Please confine your story to the essentials, Mrs. Chadwick.”
“Yes. Sorry. Well, we had the usual exchange—”
“The usual?”
“Yes. The what-are-you-doing-here stuff. The wronged-wife and the light-of-love, you know. But for some reason or other she got in my hair. I don’t know why. I had never cared very much on other occasions. I mean, we just had a good row without any real hard feelings on either side. But there was something about this little tramp that turned my stomach. So—”
“Please, Mrs. Chadwick!”
“All right. Sorry. But you did say tell it in my own words. Well, there came a point where I couldn’t stand this floo—I mean, I got to a stage when she riled me past bearing. I pulled her off the bed and gave her a smack on the side of the head. She looked so surprised it was funny. It would seem no one had ever hit her in her life. She said: ‘You hit me!’ just like that; and I said: ‘A lot of people are going to hit you from now on, my poppet,’ and gave her another one. Well, from then on it was just a fight. I own quite frankly that the odds were all on my side. I was bigger for one thing and in a flaming temper. I tore that silly negligée off her, and it was ding-dong till she tripped over one of her mules that was lying on the floor and went sprawling. I waited for her to get up, but she didn’t, and I thought she had passed out. I went into the bathroom to get a cold wet cloth and mopped her face. And then I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. I had cooled off by then and thought she would be glad of something when she had cooled off too. I brewed the coffee and left it to stand. But when I got back to the bedroom I found that the faint had been all an act. The little—the girl had lit out. She ha
d had time to dress, so I took it for granted that she had dressed in a hurry and gone.”
“And did you go too?”
“I waited for an hour, thinking Barney might come. My husband. All the girl’s things were lying about, so I slung them all into her suitcase and put it in the cupboard under the stairs to the attic. And I opened all the windows. She must have put her scent on with a ladle. And then when Barney didn’t come I went away. I must have just missed him, because he did go down that night. But a couple of days later I told him what I had done.”
“And what was his reaction?”
“He said it was a pity her mother hadn’t done the same thing ten years ago.”
“He was not worried as to what had become of her?”
“No. I was, a bit, until he told me her home was only over at Aylesbury. She could quite easily cadge a lift that distance.”
“So he took it for granted that she had gone home?”
“Yes. I said, hadn’t he better make sure. After all, she was a kid.”
“And what did he say in answer to that?”
“He said: ‘Frankie, my girl, that “kid” knows more about self-preservation than a chameleon.’ ”
“So you dismissed the affair from your mind.”
“Yes.”
“But it must have come to your mind again when you read accounts of the Franchise affair?”
“No. It didn’t.”
“Why was that?”
“For one thing, I never knew the girl’s name. Barney called her Liz. And I just didn’t connect a fifteen-year-old school-girl who was kidnapped and beaten somewhere in the Midlands with Barney’s bit. I mean, with the girl who was eating chocolates on my bed.”
“If you had realised that the girls were identical, you would have told the police what you knew about her?”
“Certainly.”
“You would not have hesitated owing to the fact that it was you who had administered the beating?”
“No. I would administer another tomorrow if I got the chance.”
“I will save my learned friend a question and ask you: Do you intend to divorce your husband?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“This evidence of yours and his is not a neat piece of public collusion?”
“No. I wouldn’t need collusion. But I have no intention of divorcing Barney. He’s fun, and he’s a good provider. What more do you want in a husband?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Robert heard Kevin murmur. Then in his normal voice he asked her to state that the girl she had been talking about was the girl who had given evidence; the girl who was now sitting in court. And so thanked her and sat down.
But Miles Allison made no attempt to cross-examine. And Kevin moved to call his next witness. But the foreman of the jury was before him.
The jury, the foreman said, would like his lordship to know that they had all the evidence they required.
“What was this witness that you were about to call, Mr. Macdermott?” the judge asked.
“He is the owner of the hotel in Copenhagen, my lord. To speak to their having stayed there over the relevant period.”
The judge turned inquiringly to the foreman.
The foreman consulted the jury.
“No, my lord; we don’t think it is necessary, subject to your lordship’s correction, to hear the witness.”
“If you are satisfied that you have heard enough to arrive at a true verdict—and I cannot myself see that any further evidence would greatly clarify the subject—then so be it. Would you like to hear counsel for the defence?”
“No, my lord, thank you. We have reached our verdict already.”
“In that case, any summing-up by me would be markedly redundant. Do you want to retire?”
“No, my lord. We are unanimous.”
Chapter 23
We had better wait until the crowd thins out,” Robert said. “Then they’ll let us out the back way.”
He was wondering why Marion looked so grave; so unrejoicing. Almost as if she were suffering from shock. Had the strain been as bad as all that?
As if aware of his puzzlement, she said: “That woman. That poor woman. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Who?” Robert said, stupidly.
“The girl’s mother: Can you imagine anything more frightful? To have lost the roof over one’s head is bad—Oh, yes, Robert my dear, you don’t have to tell us—” She held out a late edition of the Larborough Times with a Stop Press paragraph reading: THE FRANCHISE, HOUSE MADE FAMOUS BY MILFORD ABDUCTION CASE, BURNT TO THE GROUND LAST NIGHT. “Yesterday that would have seemed to me an enormous tragedy. But compared with that woman’s calvary it seems an incident. What can be more shattering than to find that the person you have lived with and loved all those years not only doesn’t exist but has never existed? That the person you have so much loved not only doesn’t love you but doesn’t care two hoots about you and never did? What is there left for someone like that? She can never again take a step onto green grass without wondering if it is bog.”
“Yes,” Kevin said, “I couldn’t bear to look at her. It was indecent, what she was suffering.”
“She has a charming son,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “I hope he will be a comfort to her.”
“But don’t you see,” Marion said. “She hasn’t got her son. She has nothing now. She thought she had Betty. She loved her and was as sure of her as she loved and was sure of her son. Now the very foundations of her life have given way. How is she to judge, any longer, if appearances can be so deceptive? No, she has nothing. Just a desolation. I am bleeding inside for her.”
Kevin slipped an arm into hers and said: “You have had sufficient trouble of your own lately without saddling yourself with another’s. Come; they’ll let us go now, I think. Did it please you to see the police converging in that polite casual way of theirs on the perjurers?”
“No, I could think of nothing but that woman’s crucifixion.”
So she too had thought of it as that.
Kevin ignored her. “And the indecent scramble for a telephone that the Press indulged in the moment his lordship’s red tail was through the door? You will be vindicated at great length in every newspaper in Britain, I promise you. It will be the most public vindication since Dreyfus. Wait here for me, while I get out of these. I shan’t be a moment.”
“I suppose we had best go to a hotel for a night or two?” Mrs. Sharpe said. “Have we any belongings at all?”
“Yes, quite a few, I’m glad to say,” Robert told her; and described what had been saved. “But there is an alternative to the hotel.” And he told them of Stanley’s suggestion.
So it was to the little house on the outer rim of the “new” town that Marion and her mother came back; and it was in the front room at Miss Sim’s that they sat down to celebrate; a sober little group: Marion, her mother, Robert, and Stanley. Kevin had had to go back to town. There was a large bunch of garden flowers on the table which had come with one of Aunt Lin’s best notes. Aunt Lin’s warm and gracious little notes had as little actual meaning as her “Have you had a busy day, dear?” but they had the same cushioning effect on life. Stanley had come in with a copy of the Larborough Evening News which carried on its front page the first report of the trial. The report was printed under a heading which read: ANANIAS ALSO RAN.
“Will you golf with me tomorrow afternoon?” Robert asked Marion. “You have been cooped up too long. We can start early, before the two-rounders have finished their lunch, and have the course to ourselves.”
“Yes, I should like that,” she said. “I suppose tomorrow life will begin again and be just the usual mixture of good and bad. But tonight it is just a place where dreadful things can happen to one.”
When he called for her on the morrow, however, all seemed well with life. “You can’t imagine what bliss it is,” she said. “Living in this house, I mean. You just turn a tap and hot water comes out.”
“It is also very educationa
l,” Mrs. Sharpe said.
“Educational?”
“You can hear every word that is said next door.”
“Oh, come, Mother! Not every word!”
“Every third word,” amended Mrs. Sharpe.
So they drove out to the golf course in high spirits, and Robert decided that he would ask her to marry him when they were having tea in the club-house afterwards. Or would there be too many people interrupting here, with their kind words on the result of the trial? Perhaps on the way home again?
He had decided that the best plan was to leave Aunt Lin in possession of the old house—the place was so much hers that it was unthinkable that she should not live there until she died—and to find a small place for Marion and himself somewhere else in Milford. It would not be easy, these days, but if the worst came to the worst they could make a tiny flat on the top floor of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet’s. It would mean removing the records of two hundred years or so; but the records were rapidly arriving at museum quality and should be moved in any case.
Yes, he would ask her on the way home again.
This resolution lasted until he found that the thought of what was to come was spoiling his game. So on the ninth green he suddenly stopped waggling his putter at the ball, and said: “I want you to marry me, Marion.”
“Do you, Robert?” She picked her own putter out of her bag, and dropped the bag at the edge of the green.
“You will, won’t you?”
“No, Robert dear, I won’t.”
“But Marion! Why! Why not, I mean.”
“Oh—as the children say, ‘because.’ ”
“Because why?”
“Half a dozen reasons, any one of them good by themselves. For one, if a man is not married by the time he is forty, then marriage is not one of the things he wants out of life. Just something that has overtaken him; like flu and rheumatism and income-tax demands. I don’t want to be just something that has overtaken you.”
“But that is—”
“Then, I don’t think that I should be in the least an asset to Blair, Hayward, and Bennet. Even—”
“I’m not asking you to marry Blair, Hayward, and Bennet.”
“Even the proof that I didn’t beat Betty Kane won’t free me of being ‘the woman in the Kane case’; an uncomfortable sort of wife for the senior partner. It wouldn’t do you any good, Robert, believe me.”