Tragedy at Law

by Cyril Hare

  “And ruin yourself?”

  “My good woman, I am ruined already—and for life, I may remind you. All I want to do now is to get what compensation I can for it.”

  “Which is precisely what you won’t get if you go on the way you are now,” snapped Hilda. “Let’s leave sentiment out of this, and discuss it as a pure matter of business. Everybody knows that you are the standing example of an artist who is a good business man too.”

  Sebald-Smith, who had dissipated most of his very large earnings in the wildest speculations, swallowed this gross untruth with gusto.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let’s talk business, by all means. But I warn you, I set a pretty high value on this hand of mine.”

  “It’s not a question of how much it is worth, but how much there is to give you. A bankrupt debtor is no use to anyone. Now listen. Either you force my husband off the Bench or you let him stay there, earning his salary. I’m going to tell you just how much you can expect in either event, and your solicitors can satisfy themselves that I am speaking the truth.”

  Hilda had her case cut and dried. Into the pianist’s ears she poured an endless stream of figures and calculations, entering into every detail of the Judge’s past, present and future financial position, providing for every possible contingency. The gist of her argument was, of course, the impossibility of the Judge’s being able to provide immediately any sum remotely approaching adequate damages for the injury he had inflicted, and the folly of taking action which would deprive him of the only source of income from which future payments could be made.

  Sebald-Smith listened, at first incredulously and rather resentfully, then with interest and finally with resignation as the flood of words poured over him. It was obvious to Hilda that what she said was taking effect. He was evidently beginning to look upon the matter in a new light. For the time being, at any rate, he had laid aside the crude ideas of revenge which had at first obsessed him, and was considering the question from a purely financial aspect. To give their due to the solicitors acting for either side, very much the same arguments had already been quietly suggested by Michael to Messrs. Faraday, Fothergill, Crisp & Co., and they had in their turn passed these on to their client. The fact remained that Sebald-Smith had been impervious to words of reason when expressed by his advisers and a good deal more prepared to attend to them when spoken by Hilda. Hilda, while giving herself due credit for her charm and persuasiveness, knew quite well what was the main reason for her success. She was able to develop her argument unopposed. The lawyers’ letters, on the other hand, were read by somebody else besides the man to whom they were addressed—a somebody who could be relied upon to garnish them with a spiteful commentary of her own; a somebody, moreover, who would certainly be even far more interested in humiliating Hilda through her husband than in securing damages for Sebald-Smith. It was Hilda’s one hope that she could succeed in so far convincing Sebastian of the good sense of what she was now saying that he would stand up to the pressure which Sally Parsons was certain to put upon him as soon as she returned.

  In all, Hilda’s interview with Sebald-Smith lasted for the best part of an hour. When she left, it was with the feeling that she had succeeded in her mission. Sebastian had been brought to agree in principle that it would be futile in his own interests to make public property of the Judge’s fall from grace. He had promised to write to his solicitors instructing them to settle the matter on the best terms possible. He was naturally unwilling to take on trust the figures with which Hilda had plied him (a neatly written copy of which she was careful to leave with him) but she assured him that Faraday and Co., would be given the fullest opportunity to verify them at their leisure. She had been unable to extract a final decision from him, but this was more than she had ever allowed herself to hope for. He had promised to consider the question afresh in the light of her arguments and to take proper advice upon it, and with this she was well content.

  Hilda thought it wise to refuse Sebastian’s invitation to stay to lunch, but she accepted a glass of sherry, and they parted good friends. His parting words to her stuck in her mind.

  “You have certainly fought the good fight for that husband of yours,” he said. “I’m glad to think you find him worth all the trouble. Or is it only your own flesh-pots you are fighting to preserve?”

  It was the second time in a few days that someone had suggested to her that the bond between her and the Judge was essentially only one of common interest.

  “At any rate,” she reflected with pride, “nobody has ever suggested that I haven’t been faithful to him.”

  *

  The party at the lodgings that evening was more cheerful than it had been for some time. It was as though a dark shadow had been lifted from the household. Hilda, on her return, had said two words in private to the Judge which had caused his frozen dignity to thaw into something approaching common humanity. He was unusually talkative at dinner and alluded more than once to the fact that Derek was Marshall by name and Marshal by occupation. As for Derek, he had his own sources of contentment. He had successfully completed a sonnet which embodied two new and highly effective similes, and he had received an exceptionally long letter from Sheila. True, the letter was chiefly remarkable for an exhaustive account of an embittered dispute between the Sister at the hospital and the Red Cross Commandant concerning some missing Thomas’s splints, which to an unprejudiced mind would not have seemed of any great or general interest; but Derek’s mind was highly prejudiced, and he was happy. The general atmosphere of relaxation affected even Savage, who served the port with an air of cringing geniality. Whether it extended to Beamish was known only to the contestants at a dartboard near by, whither he had repaired very early in the evening.

  That night it was Derek’s turn for the second watch. Consequently he was awake when the rest of the household was beginning to stir. It naturally followed that he was shaved, bathed and dressed by the time that the postman made his early morning delivery. It was, of course, pure coincidence that he happened to be standing in the hall at the moment when the letters were pushed through the slit in the front door. A man of mature years does not hang about waiting for the post in that way, even if he does happen to be in love. At the same time, he felt that it was a very fortunate coincidence indeed when the first thing that he saw, lying face upwards on the mat, proved to be a deliciously fat envelope addressed to him in Sheila’s straggly hand. He picked it up and then glanced cursorily at the rest of the post. There was nothing else for him, but he observed with interest a very small, untidy brown paper packet, addressed to the Judge in roughly printed capitals. He examined it with interest. After the episode of the chocolates, anything coming through the post for the Judge was, he felt, a proper object of suspicion, and this, for some reason or other, seemed to him particularly suspicious. He was trying to decipher the postmark when he heard footsteps approaching.

  One does not want to be found at an unreasonably early hour investigating postal matter addressed to somebody else. Acting on the spur of the moment, Derek slipped the little parcel into his pocket and was half-way up the stairs before the approaching servant had reached the hall. Once in his room he naturally enough turned his attention first to his letter.

  It is, perhaps, always a mistake to read letters on an empty stomach unless one is quite sure that their contents will be agreeable. Derek had every reason for expecting nothing but the purest pleasure from this particular letter, but by the time he had finished reading it he had no appetite for breakfast left. It was not that it was lacking in affection. On the contrary. It began with the words, “Derek darling,” the adjective being underlined twice. But it continued ominously, “We are in awful trouble!” and this time the adjective received three underlinings. Derek’s natural disquiet at this introduction was not allayed by the fact that when he had finished the letter he was still entirely in the dark as to what the nature of the trouble was. It related to Daddy—hitherto a dim figure on the horizon, whom
he had never met and to whom he had given little thought—so much was clear. But what Daddy’s trouble was, and why it should affect Sheila and apparently Derek himself, even a second and third re-reading of the letter failed to determine. It was, according to Sheila, “too Dreadful”, apparently too dreadful to be put into precise words. She asserted several times that so far as she was concerned it would make No Difference to her feelings for him but at the same time she gloomily contemplated the possibility of never being able to look him in the Face again. If on his side, he never wanted to have anything more to do with her she would absolutely Understand. Which was considerably more than her correspondent did.

  The only conclusion that Derek could come to was that in some unspecified way Daddy had succeeded in bringing disgrace upon his family. He tried to fortify himself with the reflection that, as Sheila said of herself, it would make no difference to him. At the same time, he would have felt a good deal more confident even on that point, if he had known what it was that was to make no difference. It is somewhat difficult to disregard with lofty chivalry a blot on the family scutcheon unless you can see the blot. Daddy might merely have run off with somebody else’s wife. On the other hand he might have been arrested for murder, or, worse still, have been discovered to be a fifth columnist in disguise. It was all most unsettling.

  Gloomily Derek descended for breakfast, gloomily he toyed with his food and gloomily accompanied the Judge to Court. It was not until, sitting in his place on the bench, he put his hand in his pocket to take out and read once more the mystifying letter, that he found the parcel which he had put there some hours before. Until that moment he had entirely forgotten its existence.

  Having found it, he was rather at a loss to know what to do with it. Obviously, he had no right to have it in his possession at all, and the morning’s spirit of suspiciousness which had induced him to examine it in the first place had long since evaporated. If he were to be found waylaying what was probably a perfectly normal and innocent package intended for the Judge, his position would be, to say the least of it, awkward. Meanwhile, what the devil was he to do with the thing?

  He took it out of his pocket, and under cover of the ledge in front of him stole a look at it. He noticed that the string, which was loosely tied, had nearly slipped off one corner. It would obviously be perfectly easy to take it off without even untying the knot. Well, since he had already gone so far, he might as well go the whole hog. After all, there was always a chance….

  He left the bench quietly and went into the stuffy little apartment at the back which was his lordship’s retiring room. There was the inevitable policeman at the door, but luckily the authorities had not gone so far as to station one inside. As Derek expected, the string slipped easily off the brown paper. Inside the paper was a cardboard soap-box. Inside the box was the corpse of a mouse. Attached to its neck by a piece of string was a label on which, written in the same crude capitals as the address, Derek read:

  “WHEN THE CAT’S AWAY——”

  “Anyhow,” Derek said to himself a few minutes later, as he listened to one of Flack’s most florid speeches, “I bet I’m the only man who ever sat on the bench of a Court of Justice with a dead mouse in his pocket.”

  Chapter 14

  REFLECTIONS AND REACTIONS

  It was the interval between tea and dinner. Barber, who had declared his intention of preparing a reserved judgment, was (as a stealthy reconnaissance proved) slumbering in an arm-chair in the smoking-room. Derek judged this to be a good opportunity to show the parcel and its contents to Hilda. She examined it with the greatest interest and, he was glad to note, seemed to think that he had acted quite properly in waylaying it on suspicion. It was clear that she attached a certain significance to the unpleasant little incident, which to Derek was as pointless as it was disgusting; but she seemed unwilling to tell him what it was.

  Hilda looked first at the legend on the label (which Derek had at her request removed from the mouse before she would consent to touch anything) and, having read it, said significantly, “Ah!”

  Derek waited for something more enlightening, but in vain.

  Next she examined the brown paper wrapping. This time she observed, “Addressed to him and not to me. Typical!”

  Derek was more and more puzzled.

  Hilda then turned her attention to the rather smudged postmark. “Can you make it out?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Derek, but it looks like ‘Rampleford’.”

  “Yes. I believe you’re right. And the time is—what?”

  “Something 45 p.m. It looks like a six to me.”

  “Six or eight,” said Hilda doubtfully. “We can find out what the time of the last collection is from the post-office here.”

  “Perhaps the police would do that for us,” Derek suggested.

  “I don’t think this is a matter we need trouble the police about. If it is what I think it is, I am sure we needn’t.”

  “Then you don’t think——?”

  “Would you be very kind, Derek, and fetch me a Bradshaw? Beamish has got one in his room, I know. And do dispose of that horrible object somewhere. It makes me quite sick to look at it.”

  Derek incinerated the mouse in the dining-room fire and duly fetched the Bradshaw. When he had brought it, Hilda thanked him prettily, begged him quite unnecessarily not to mention the affair to the Judge or anybody else, and retired with it and the exhibits in the case to her own room, leaving Derek gloomily wondering why females always had such a passion for secretiveness.

  Hilda had decided in her own mind at her first sight of the message attached to the mouse that Sally Parsons had sent it. It remained to see whether or not it was physically possible for her to have done so. If not, she concluded, so much the worse for possibility. But fortunately for her faith in her own instinct Bradshaw appeared to bear her out. She found that by leaving Trafalgar Square punctually at 2.15, Sally could have caught a fast train which would bring her in to Rampleford at 4.35. Supposing that she was met at the station, she would be home by five o’clock. Allow her half an hour in which to extract from Sebald-Smith an account of his visit from Hilda that morning, another half-hour in which to decide on a suitable retort and to prepare the parcel, she would be left with just sufficient time to make her way back to Rampleford in the dark and to reach the head post-office before 6.45.

  None the less, though the scheme seemed possible in theory, Hilda was doubtful whether it could have been accomplished in practice. For one thing, it allowed hardly any time for catching the mouse—unless, indeed, the charming creature kept a store of them all ready for distribution among her friends. More important, perhaps, was the obvious fact that however anxious Sally was to show her opinion of Hilda’s interference, and however nimble in devising her retort, she would be most unlikely to do anything about it until she had had some tea. After all, she had probably eaten nothing for lunch beyond a hasty snack at the National Gallery canteen; and Bradshaw did not credit the train with a restaurant car. Everything, therefore, depended on whether Derek was right in reading the postmark as 6.45. Until that could be determined the matter was still uncertain.

  Carefully locking away the label, box and paper, she went back to the drawing-room. There Derek looked up from the evening paper to inform her with an air of sulky martyrdom (which was completely lost on her) that he had rung up the post-office and discovered that the last collection for local delivery was, in fact, at 8.45. This put the matter beyond any doubt in Hilda’s mind. She received the news with such complacency that Derek, who had firmly determined not to oblige her ladyship by showing any curiosity at all, was provoked into asking further questions.

  “Do you think you know where this parcel came from?” he asked.

  “Yes. I am quite sure.”

  “And you still don’t want to tell the police about it?”

  “No, I don’t. Because, Derek, knowing what I know, I am certain that it has nothing to do with the threats agai
nst the Judge which we have been watching. This is just a nasty piece of vulgarity, directed against me, really—and I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you about it now.”

  “I must say I should have thought there wasn’t a great deal of difference between sending a dead mouse to a person and sending him a box of chocolates stuffed with carbide. But I dare say you know best.”

  And thereupon, somewhat moodily, Derek went upstairs to dress for dinner.

  Hilda had been so pleased at her own perspicacity in detecting the identity of the sender of the mouse (though, candidly, this was obvious enough, and obvious also that the sender had intended it to be so) that she had not yet seriously considered its implications. Now that she began to do so, however, she found some course for disquiet. In the first place, Derek’s comparison of this parcel with the other one which had caused so much trouble at Southington was clearly a justifiable one. There was an obvious difference between them. The first had been a carefully disguised form of attack, though not perhaps a very serious one; the second was an open piece of bravado. But none the less it certainly looked probable enough that one mind had conceived the two. And if so, that mind was the mind of Sally Parsons.

  From this it followed (Hilda’s thoughts ran on) that Inspector Mallett was right and she was wrong. Her theory that everything untoward which had happened during the course of the circuit must be traced to one source would not stand. Obviously, Sally Parsons was not responsible for an anonymous letter sent before the motor accident; and Hilda doubted whether she was likely to have procured someone to come to Wimblingham to give her a black eye. It was sufficiently galling to have to admit that her instinct had played her false. The fact also that there were now at least two enemies in the field gave her the uneasy sensation of being compassed about with dangers.