The Caverel Claim

by Peter Rawlinson

  Harold Welby stirred. This was the kind of nonsense that made him dislike appearing in court, this clap-trap, this rhetoric. Braythwaite shouldn’t bother with it. Murray wasn’t a jury. He’d not be affected by sympathy or generosity. The woman and her family had only themselves to blame for their present plight. Or if not they, then certainly their lawyers. They should have taken more trouble to discover what had happened to the elder son, Julian, before allowing the woman and her husband to take up the inheritance. And that, Welby felt sure, was what Murray would be thinking.

  Willoughby Blake, however, was pleased. He liked the expression of sympathy for the family. The serious press would like it. It demonstrated the Claimant’s reasonableness and generosity.

  Percy now did what Welby thought he should have done earlier; he turned to the facts about Walter, 15th Baron Caverel and his first marriage which had been terminated by divorce. But before that divorce, Percy emphasised, the then Lady Caverel, Walter Caverel’s wife, had given birth to the son, Julian, who, he would demonstrate, was the father of the Claimant.

  On the bench Robert Murray made a show of attention. As was his rule he had read with care all the documents in the case, and in his chambers over the preceding evenings had made an extensive note of the facts alleged and the likely propositions of law. If counsel now addressing him at such length had been less senior and less respected than Sir Percy, Murray would have told counsel to get on with it. But Percy was a contemporary and a fellow Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn so Robert Murray allowed him licence while he himself turned his attention to observe the five persons sitting below him immediately in front of counsel.

  To his left was the silver-haired Oliver Goodbody, looking as usual, Robert Murray thought acidly, like a member of the bench of bishops, a species of which he, with his Wee Free associations, did not approve. Next to him was a military-looking man with a moustache, presumably a member of the family. He looked to be of the same ilk as the woman beside him who, presumably, was the mother of the infant respondent. She, he noted irritably, never kept still, fidgeting continually. Above all she looked typical of those upper-class Englishwomen with the manner and style of his wife and her friends, the type of woman who had so condescended to him when he was a young man and whom he so intensely disliked. Indeed in appearance she was a little like the young Freda herself, with the same English looks and, doubtless, the same superior and arrogant manner. When preparing himself for the case in his usual thorough manner he had looked up the Caverel family and seen that the mother of the infant had been born an Aberdower, only daughter of Lord Aberdower, Captain RN retired. Freda’s family would doubtless have been friends of the Aberdowers. Freda would have known them, as she would have known the Caverels. Perhaps she was even related to them? At the thought of Freda and her family and her friends and of how they’d treated him there surged up in him the resentment he never could suppress. As he examined Andrea Caverel, he echoed the thoughts of Harold Welby. She should have found out more about the older son before she and her husband had rushed into assuming the inheritance. She had only herself to blame.

  He shifted his gaze along the row to where the Claimant was sitting, noting her dark skin but fine, delicate features and the poise with which she kept so perfectly still, her eyes lowered on her hands. The man next to her, her solicitor presumably, whispered something in her ear and he saw her smile, a sudden, radiant smile. He liked the look of her as much as he disliked the look of the other.

  When Robinson had told him that the Claimant’s solicitors were Stevens and Co., he’d enquired and been told about them. Why and how, he wondered, had she got into their hands? She herself looked personable enough – indeed, he thought, she looked bonny. A black hereditary Baroness in the House of Lords, Robert Murray ruminated, among the English Caverels and the Aberdowers, alongside the family of his wife, the Baronbys. The prospect gave him not a little grim satisfaction.

  Percy Braythwaite had now reached the part of the story when the girl of fourteen had run away from her home in South Carolina and the woman who at that time she thought was her real mother. Murray looked up at the clock.

  ‘We’ll rise now for the luncheon adjournment,’ he said. ‘Two o’clock.’

  While the court was emptying, Mordecai stayed in his place. Oliver, Andrea and Nicholas stood in front of him. Mordecai looked over his shoulder. When he was certain no one could overhear him, he said savagely, ‘Where the devil is he?’

  ‘He should be here soon,’ Oliver replied.

  ‘Soon! What does that mean? When did you last hear from him?’

  ‘A message a week ago, a telephone call from Istanbul. I haven’t spoken to him personally for a fortnight.’

  ‘We face an offensive and hostile judge, the time for evidence is approaching and you have supplied me with not an iota of material with which to cross-examine.’

  Andrea was next to Oliver, listening. Mordecai looked up and saw the anxious expression on her face. He stretched out his hand and took hers in his. His twisted face broke into a smile, one of those rare smiles which few were fortunate enough ever to witness. It was as though the sun had suddenly broken through a bank of black cloud.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Lady Caverel,’ he said gently. ‘It will be all right. I promise it will be all right.’ He patted her hand. ‘Go now and have a glass of wine. But don’t be back late, or that rude Scotsman will be angry.’ And he smiled again.

  On their way out Andrea said to Nicholas, ‘He’s very extraordinary. When he smiles, everything changes.’

  ‘For the better, I hope. It could hardly be for the worse. The judge doesn’t like him.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘When he smiles.’

  In court, Oliver said to Mordecai, ‘I have booked an interview room across the corridor.’

  ‘You promised me that the little man would be here when the case began,’ Mordecai said as he struggled out of the bench. ‘He’s not. And you said he was the best.’

  ‘He is the best, and he will be here.’

  On the table in the interview room, Freeman, Goodbody’s clerk, had left a plate of sandwiches, a large thermos and three cups. Oliver poured the coffee. Mordecai took a flask from the inside pocket of his court coat and added the liquor to his coffee. Oliver cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Do you think that wise?’

  ‘It’ll help me keep my temper with that confounded Scotsman.’ Mordecai drank and fell back into a chair. ‘And face the task you’d landed me with – using up time until your wretched little man gets here, if he ever does. The Scotsman won’t like it, he won’t like it at all. Our only hope is that windbag Braythwaite won’t cut anything short. With any luck he’ll last out the afternoon.’

  When the court resumed, Percy Braythwaite dealt only sketchily with that part of the Claimant’s life between her arrival in Europe and the advertisement in the newspaper which led to her return to Charleston. All he said was that as a child she had been a talented singer and, after some training as a dancer in Atlanta and New Orleans, she had commenced a career on the stage in the cities of Europe. She was driven to scrape a living by performing in clubs.

  It was this part of Fleur’s story that had always troubled him. He knew Robert Murray would not look happily on anyone who performed in night-clubs, so he had decided to leave the details to be described, in what Stevens hoped would be a sanitised form, by Fleur herself. She, Percy believed, would be better able to charm Sir Robert Murray. So he passed on rapidly to the advertisement in the Herald Tribune, Fleur’s return to Charleston, the old lawyer, the revelations in her mother’s letter and the steps that had been taken to verify her parents’ marriage and her own birth. He took his time, and it was towards the end of the afternoon session before he concluded. He then told the judge that before he called the Claimant to elaborate on her history he would be calling various official witnesses who would produce documents proving the marriage of Walter Caverel to Julian’s mother and the decree of divorce whi
ch had terminated that marriage.

  The judge interrupted him. ‘Have not these matters been agreed between the parties?’

  ‘No,’ Percy replied. ‘Everything has to be proved. The respondent has agreed to nothing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Mordecai answered him from his seat. ‘Because there is primary, better evidence of Walter Caverel’s marriage than –’

  Murray swung his head round and interrupted angrily. ‘If you wish to address me, Mr Ledbury, please have the good manners to do so when standing and not when you are seated.’

  Mordecai struggled slowly to his feet, making an even greater show of the effort. For a moment he stood, swaying slightly and supporting himself with both hands on the desk in front of him, his large head bowed. There was complete silence in court which seemed to last a long time before he raised his head and very slowly began to speak.

  ‘As I have not previously appeared in your lordship’s court nor had the pleasure of your lordship’s acquaintance, your lordship may not have noticed that I do not have the great good fortune, so particularly enjoyed by your lordship, of having sound limbs.’ Murray flinched and a slight flush came over his craggy features. Mordecai went on remorselessly, ‘The highest judges in the land, sitting in the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords or in the Privy Council, have the consideration to appreciate that for me to stand to object or to reply promptly is not always possible because of the time it unfortunately takes me to get to my feet. They invariably show consideration of my disability, for which courtesy I, as a cripple, am always greatly obliged.’

  He emphasised the word cripple, and the flush on the judge’s face deepened. In his wish to put the interloper from the Queen’s Bench Division in his place, he had been over-hasty. He had not realised how disabled Ledbury was.

  ‘Mr Ledbury,’ he said, for once hesitantly, ‘I, I didn’t appreciate. I’m sorry –’

  ‘As your lordship can surely observe, it takes time and effort for me to raise myself to my feet.’

  Murray realised the depth of his mistake and that he’d have to make amends. ‘Of course, of course, Mr Ledbury. I quite understand. I should not have interrupted you. As I said, I did not appreciate your difficulties. What was it you wished to say?’

  Mordecai bowed. The judge’s obvious discomfiture had given him an opening. He had one eye on the clock. This could take up time, at least sufficient time to postpone the start of any evidence until the next day.

  ‘I wished to explain to your lordship that if Sir Percy is going to tender a witness to produce documents to prove the celebration and then the termination of Walter Caverel’s marriage, there is better evidence, first-hand evidence, available to him. For there is present in this court a person who from her personal experience can give direct evidence of both those events.’

  Then he said loudly, without turning, jerking up an arm behind him, the sleeve of his black robe fluttering, his finger pointing to where the Senora was sitting, ‘I refer to the lady sitting behind Sir Percy, the lady who married Walter Caverel and was divorced from him.’

  Everyone turned to look at her and the Senora gave a little squeak and turned and buried her head on Mrs Campion’s shoulder, to that lady’s considerable embarrassment.

  Mordecai went on, ‘She is seated in the fourth row near to a Mr Willoughby Blake, a notorious publicist who before the cause has come to trial has been orchestrating the public campaign to promote the claim of the plaintiff and to denigrate the family.’

  Percy leaped to his feet. ‘My learned friend’, he said, ‘has no right to say such a thing. He has no right to make such offensive allegations. It is quite improper.’

  ‘It was a statement of fact,’ Mordecai snarled at him.

  ‘It is merely abuse, and grossly unfair. And as to what witness I choose to call, that is a matter for me, not for him.’

  Murray saw the chance to re-establish his bruised authority. He tapped gently on his desk with his pencil. ‘Gentlemen, please restrain yourselves.’ He turned to Mordecai and for the first time addressed him with civility.

  ‘Mr Ledbury, I think you will agree that Sir Percy has the right, within of course the rules, to select whichever method he chooses to present his evidence. The choice is his. What attention or weight I may give to the fact that he may have declined to call a particular witness who might have been able to give more direct evidence will be a matter for me.’

  ‘If you please,’ said Mordecai, and sat down.

  His purpose had been to sting Braythwaite into calling the grandmother as his first witness and before the formal witnesses. If Braythwaite did, then there would be no worry over using up time until Mr Rogers arrived because the evidence of the grandmother and her cross-examination would inevitably be lengthy.

  It was four o’clock and Murray was known to be prompt to rise at the end of a session, not because he wanted to get away to his own amusements but because he could then spend several hours in his room studying the law, or reading the documents, or even preparing a judgement in another case. ‘As you have completed your opening, Sir Percy,’ he now said, ‘this seems a convenient time to rise. You may begin the evidence tomorrow. Ten thirty, tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Is he here yet?’ Mordecai hissed to Oliver.

  ‘No,’ Oliver replied, ‘not yet.’

  Mordecai cursed. ‘Then we must pray that Braythwaite decides to call the grandmother as his first witness. If he doesn’t, we’re in trouble.’

  He made his stumbling way out of court, waving aside all those in his path with his stick.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Andrea said to Nicholas.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  ‘I thought our QC was right to say what he did.’

  Nicholas took her arm. ‘Perhaps. Let’s have tea at my club, after we’ve braved the mob at the entrance.’

  In the taxi when they reached Admiralty Arch, Andrea said, ‘I want some air, so I’ll walk from here. I don’t want any tea. I’ll see you tonight for dinner.’

  She hurried off into St James’s Park, went across the bridge over the lake and walked towards the Palace on the path beside Birdcage Walk. She made her way to Hyde Park Corner, then through the tunnel into the park. She walked along the Serpentine towards Kensington Gardens where she would pick up a taxi to take her to her cousin Fay in Egerton Gardens where she was staying.

  The late afternoon was warm and sultry. She pulled off her hair band and thought about Nicholas. She knew how much she relied on him at Ravenscourt, and she knew how much Ravenscourt meant to him. If they lost the case, he would be bereft, but he wouldn’t have to leave his home. The dower house was his, inherited from his mother whose father, the last great Caverel, had bequeathed it to her. It was not part of the estate.

  Andrea stood for a moment by the Serpentine, watching the rowers on the lake and thinking of her own childhood in London before she went to Africa. If they lost the case Oliver had warned there’d be very little money. Robin had left none. What then would Francis’ childhood be? When the thunderbolt of the claim had fallen she’d been in a bad way. But when the woman journalist had insulted her and the campaign in the press against the family had been mounted and she’d discovered that some of her own servants were betraying her, she’d become angry. This was Francis’ and her battle. Now she’d fight for Francis like a tigress. She thought of her grandfather whom she had loved so dearly, murdered in Kenya. He’d have told her to fight, fight to the end.

  As she searched for a taxi she thought over the day in court and of the two barristers. Theirs so handsome and personable; mine so ugly and twisted. The Princes of Light and Darkness. But however nice theirs might be, she knew he was on the side of Darkness. Hers, for all his ugliness, was the Prince of Light.

  But it was the judge who worried her most. For all his learning, his appearance of strength and sternness, he was just the kind to be taken in by a pretty face. He’d like the Claimant, she knew he would; a
nd she knew he wouldn’t like her. She’d sensed that from the way he’d been looking at her. Why? Probably he hates people like us and what we stand for. Now only the ugly, crippled barrister can save us from him. She thought of the smile which lit up the twisted face, and the memory of it made her feel better.

  * * *

  After court, Oliver returned to his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and spent several hours on the telephone. One call was to the Maritim Grand Hotel in Berlin. That was as close as he came to tracing Mr Rogers. After leaving Berlin, Mr Rogers had gone back to Istanbul. Where he had stayed when he was there, no one knew. And that was over a week ago.

  It was after eight before he got to Anne’s flat and she gave him his whisky-and-soda.

  ‘When must he get here?’ she asked after Oliver had told her why he was so late.

  ‘When the young woman gives her evidence.’

  ‘Will that be tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if he’s not?’

  Oliver drank from his glass. ‘It will be the end,’ he said. ‘The end for the Caverels – and the end of Ravenscourt.’

  He didn’t add what she knew he was thinking – the end also for himself.

  28

  When he left court, Percy Braythwaite was not so happy as he had been two hours earlier. Murray’s snapping at Ledbury and Ledbury’s effective response would oblige Murray to be more polite to him from now on, and the advantage Percy had as a regular practitioner in Murray’s court had been reduced. He consoled himself by remembering Ledbury’s reputation – sooner or later there’d be a quarrel. Any truce between Ledbury and Murray would not last.

  What was concerning him more was Murray’s hint over the inference he might draw if the ‘best’ or ‘primary’ evidence of Walter’s marriage and Julian’s birth, that is to say the evidence of the grandmother, was not tendered early on, and as Percy walked to the robing-room he pondered whether he ought not to call the old lady before the formal witness who would produce the certificates of Walter Caverel’s marriage, the birth of Julian and the divorce.