The Advocate's Wife

by Norman Russell

  Lady Porteous finally found her voice. She had been standing near the fireplace, but now she sat down. She placed her hands in her lap, and cast her eyes down to the floor.

  ‘Why do you bring up these youthful follies now? It is true that I became pregnant, and that I married Sir William. Yes, he received me “at fortune’s alms”, and I am thankful that you have caused me to remember that saving grace after all these years. Of course he knew that I did not come to him as a maiden, but he knew nothing of your part in the affair. You chose to discard me, but I did not choose to betray you. My eldest child was born in due time, and my husband always accepted her as his own.’

  Gideon Raikes leaned back in his chair with a lounging insolence, as though the elegant mansion in Queen Adelaide Gate was his own. He looked very handsome, and his smile gleamed with even teeth.

  ‘I went into insurance, you know,’ he said. ‘And I have a very valuable insurance policy at my house in Grosvenor Square. Do you remember a letter? Ah! I see you do. No, don’t faint: it will do no earthly good, and could lead to your exposure. I have that letter – the valuable policy I spoke of! “Dear Gideon, I am pregnant with your child. You must help me, or I will be cast out. Have mercy upon me”, et cetera. Do you remember, proud woman?’

  There was no reply from the cringing figure in the chair.

  ‘Now: Sir William Porteous, QC, your husband, is pursuing a vendetta against me. That was always a dangerous thing to do – dangerous, and ill-advised. By some odd chance Sir William Porteous, QC, has met with a disabling accident. You must go to him, and tell him to desist. I want a legal, written document from him, apologizing for his persecution of me, and acknowledging that he has been entirely mistaken in his opinions. If he can also declare his belief that I am as pure as the driven snow, that would also be to your joint advantage.’

  ‘And if I refuse to do your bidding?’

  ‘Then I will send him your snivelling letter, and a missive of my own, to tell him that his much-loved eldest daughter Mary Jane, now Countess of Avoncourt, is in fact the love-child of his spotless wife and Gideon Raikes. See how you will live with that!’

  Lady Porteous had gone white with fear. She looked at Raikes with increasing horror. She ventured a reply.

  ‘Sir William will stand by me. Even with that knowledge, he will not desert me. I will tell him the truth.’

  ‘Tell him, by all means. Indeed, I see no other course of action if you are to persuade him to write that document. But do not try to bluff your way out of this situation. There are two other people you have not thought of, who will find the truth of your eldest daughter’s conception unwelcome.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘One is the Queen. You are one of her courtiers. How long do you think that position will be vouchsafed to you when Her Majesty learns the truth?’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘The other is your daughter herself. If you do not procure that document from Sir William Porteous, QC, I will tell your daughter’s husband. The Earl of Avoncourt’s pride of pedigree is legendary. He will cast your daughter off without a moment’s thought.’

  Lady Porteous’s voice came in a whisper.

  ‘But she is your daughter, too. Surely you would not do such a thing?’

  ‘I care only for two things in this life: wealth, and art. One buys the other. Of human life I care nothing. I will do all that I have said, and more. With that document in my hands I am impregnable. Without it, you and your child are ruined, and there will be no guarantee of Sir William’s future safety. Who knows what may happen? We live in dangerous, murderous times.’

  Gideon Raikes took his watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped open the lid. The little jester nodded and bowed, and the fingers showed that it was nearly 11.30. He laughed.

  ‘Well, madam, I will take my leave. I will give you one week in which to comply with my wishes. After all, it is not much that I am asking from you. Simply a piece of paper signed by your husband – I can call him that now, I suppose, without fear of assault? Come to my house in Grosvenor Square a week today at eight o’clock in the evening, bringing the document with you. In return I will give you the incriminating letter. After that we need not see each other ever again. You and Sir William can adjust your domestic lives as seems best to both of you. Ring the bell.’

  When the footman came in, Lady Porteous seemed to have regained her composure. The colour had returned to her face, and she had resumed her normal bearing.

  ‘Mr Raikes is leaving, Roberts.’

  ‘Yes, madam. Would you come this way, sir?’

  Gideon Raikes gathered his hat and stick, bowed quite charmingly to Lady Porteous, and left the room. She heard the front door open and close, and presently the sound of hooves as Raikes’s carriage moved off from the kerb.

  Was it her fancy, or had the door to the writing-room just been quietly closed? Probably her imagination. She glanced in the mirror above the fireplace. She looked very fine and imperious, and she watched herself break into a smile. Then she laughed.

  Hadrian Melchett Lardner, still standing stunned behind the writing-room door, turned pale at the terrible sound of that laugh.

  13

  From Leicester Square to Petty Allmain

  Leicester Square was swarming with crowds of people released from the daily grind, and determined to enjoy themselves. The front of the Alhambra music hall blazed with electric lights, and a throng of men and women crowded round the doors. The Empire theatre, not to be outdone, employed a barker, a stout, ruby-nosed man with staring eyes, who shouted out the evening’s attractions to the passers-by.

  A thin rain was falling, and the air reeked of horse-droppings. Somewhere near the Leicester Lounge a shrill female voice could be heard calling for repentance. ‘Save our Land from Sin!’ it cried, but few people seemed to take any notice.

  ‘Jack!’

  Sergeant Knollys, who had been about to enter the foyer of the Alhambra, his ticket clutched in his hand, turned round to see a man in a dripping oilskin beckoning to him from the mouth of an alley beside the theatre. A mingled smell of fried sausages and coffee came from a barrow, tended by a poor-looking, bearded man, whose thin suit was turning ragged. The man in the oilskin held some kind of sandwich in one hand, and a mug of steaming coffee in the other.

  ‘Sergeant Boyd! What brings you out in the rain tonight? Are you going to the theatre?’

  George Boyd shook his head. He glanced for a moment at the stallholder, who walked away a discreet distance down the alley. Knollys looked at the stall, where a handwritten notice advertised ‘Bread and saveloy, 1d. Coffee, a halfpenny.’ There was a little urn on the barrow, and a kind of oven stood on the pavement nearby. A dozen slices of white bread, each containing a sausage, were displayed for sale. The whole flimsy edifice was sheltered from the rain by a contraption of string and canvas.

  ‘I’ve no time for frivolity tonight, Jack,’ said George Boyd. ‘I’m following a man called Barney Dwyer, who’s on his way to break in to a pawnshop and rob the owner. That’s what he intends to do, but me, and a few other stout hearts, will stop him. He’ll be coming through the square in ten minutes or so. Meanwhile, I’m getting wet here, eating a saveloy, and washing it down with coffee.’

  George Boyd clumsily manoeuvred a battered cap from a pocket somewhere beneath his oilskin, and pulled it forward over his brow. He looked, thought Knollys, irredeemably cheerful.

  ‘Saveloy? You’ll get poisoned, eating them. They’re made of brains, you know. Or so they say. You don’t know what goes into one half the things they sell on the street.’

  ‘Well, thanks for that information, Sergeant Knollys. I’ll stop eating saveloys forthwith. But aren’t you going to ask me why I called you over here?’

  ‘Why did you call me over here?’

  ‘To tell you a little snippet of information. Gideon Raikes left his house in Grosvenor Square at ten thirty this morning, and was driven in his carriage to Sir William Po
rteous’s house in St John’s Wood. He was admitted to the house, stayed for half an hour and then was driven back home. One of my folk came in and told me that. Will you tell Mr Box?’

  ‘I will. Thank you very much, George. It’s certainly something to think about. And the best of luck with Barney Dwyer.’

  ‘Luck doesn’t come into it, Jack. We’re not in Prince Frederick Mews tonight! Here’s my man now, turning into the square from Irving Street. Time to disappear.’

  Sergeant Jack Knollys settled into his seat in the stalls, and peered through the cigarette smoke at the stage. A man in evening dress was welcoming them to the Alhambra, which, he said, was a touch of old Castile in the heart of the Empire. Knollys let his mind wander elsewhere.

  Gideon Raikes must have gone to see Lady Porteous. Which meant that Raikes was worried. He’d failed in his attempt to kill Sir William, and wouldn’t dare try to stage an encore. So he was going out on some new tack to keep Sir William quiet. Lady Porteous … According to that ledger clerk whom Mr Box had seen, there’d been some kind of understanding between Raikes and Lady Porteous in their younger days. What was Raikes up to? Bribery, perhaps, or blackmail. No; not bribery. You bribed with money, and the Porteouses were very wealthy. Blackmail, then – buying Raikes’s silence in return for Sir William Porteous backing off? It could be that. But silence about what?

  The man in evening dress left the stage, and presently, with a thunderous clash of cymbals, followed by a lively overture from the orchestra, the evening’s entertainment began. First, the Four Nolans flung themselves around on trapezes suspended dizzily above the auditorium, to gasps and screams from the audience. Then Mr Billy Nash, the celebrated comedian, reeled off a barrage of jokes that doubled up some of the customers in their seats. He smiled jovially at people who were literally gasping for breath, then staggered off the stage, tripping himself up as he disappeared into the wings to the sound of wild applause.

  Blackmail … Perhaps Raikes knew something to Lady Porteous’s disadvantage, something damaging enough to buy her husband’s silence. The secretary, Lardner, would have been there at the house in Queen Adelaide Gate when Raikes called there. Lardner. What did he know about Sir William Porteous and his wife?

  The Great Maximo was next, a tall, thin man who performed conjuring tricks with handkerchiefs, feathers and cards, and who was beginning to attract ill-natured jeers until a little woman in tights and a ballet-skirt bounced on to help him. A lot of water was splashed about, after which the Great Maximo performed a creditable sand-dance.

  That secretary, Lardner, had possibilities. A secretive sort of man. A man who’d keep his own counsel. He’d know whether or not Lady Porteous had any guilty secrets, but wild horses wouldn’t drag that knowledge from him.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Hetty Miller!’

  Claps and roars of approval came from the audience. Miss Hetty Miller was everybody’s favourite. She was a mistress of light comic patter, with the occasional saucy remark directed at the gallery, leading to a programme of typical music-hall songs sung in a sweet but powerful voice. There was always an encore for every song, in which the audience were invited to join. ‘Come along, now!’ she would say, coaxingly, and everyone would slowly sing, rocking from side to side through the choruses.

  After she had sung a number of familiar favourites, Miss Hetty Miller announced that she would finish with something new. The orchestra struck up a romantic lead-in, and she sang the latest ballad to grace the music-hall stage.

  ‘Who was the girl in the green silk dress?’

  I asked the wild waves of the sea:

  Was she swept from a deck in the storm’s distress?

  Oh, tell her tale to me!

  And in my fancy, the waves replied,

  ‘No storm washed her ashore:

  By the hand of a cruel man she died,

  Adrift for evermore.’

  ‘All together, now:

  ‘Who was the girl in the green silk dress?’

  I asked the wild waves of the sea:

  Was she swept from a deck in the storm’s distress?

  Oh, tell her tale to me…

  Sergeant Knollys could tell them her tale. Amelia Garbutt, lady’s maid, garrotted – strangled with a silk scarf from behind, and her body disposed of in a canal. They had seen her grave, with its stark epitaph – ‘Known to God’ – inscribed on the wooden cross.

  And in my fancy, the waves replied,

  ‘No storm washed her ashore:

  By the hand of a cruel man she died,

  Adrift for evermore.’

  There came a crescendo from the orchestra, a thunder of cheers from the audience. Half bowing, half curtsying, Miss Hetty Miller left the stage. And now Mr Wilkie Pino would play the xylophone. Sergeant Jack Knollys left him to it, excused himself to the people sitting in the same row, and made his way through the foyer and out into Leicester Square.

  Despite the clinging rain, London seemed at its brightest that night. The gas-lit streets attracted crowds of people to the theatres, and to the glittering shop windows of Bond Street and Oxford Street. Knollys sat back in the cab that he had hailed in Leicester Square and thought of Hetty Miller’s song. It happened like that, sometimes: an account of a murder in a provincial newspaper was picked up by a ballad-maker, and turned into a sentimental song. Evidently that had happened in the case of Amelia Garbutt. It didn’t seem decent, somehow.

  The cab clattered to the right at Orchard Street and made its way swiftly along Baker Street on its way towards Regent’s Park and St John’s Wood. Knollys recalled the earnest, stooping figure of Lardner sitting opposite them in the office a week earlier, telling them about Mounteagle’s subtle infestation of his employer’s accounts. Lardner probably knew what had passed between Lady Porteous and Gideon Raikes, but it would be pointless to ask him.

  It was not good police practice to call unannounced on an innocent person connected with an investigation. Nevertheless, Knollys would go to St John’s Wood and ask to see Mr Lardner. If he declined, Knollys would go away without fuss. If he agreed, all well and good. A little conversation would do no harm.

  The cab finally drew up at Sir William Porteous’s house in Queen Adelaide Gate. Despite its master’s grave state, the mansion blazed with light, and the sergeant felt slight qualms at approaching the front door. It was opened by a liveried footman, and Knollys immediately announced himself, and the purpose of his visit.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Knollys, to see Mr Lardner, if he’s willing to receive me.’

  The footman glanced quickly at the visitor in a way that evidently told him all he needed to know about his rank and station. He stood aside, and motioned Knollys into the spacious hall.

  Absorbing the embrace of costly woods and metals, cut glass and deep-piled carpets, Knollys wondered silently how some people could be so very rich.

  The footman disappeared into the rear portion of the house, and Knollys stood at the hall table, still clutching his hat and gloves. He briefly caught sight of his own reflection in a long gold-framed mirror, and noted the puckered scar across his face. He cleared his throat and squared his massive shoulders.

  A door to his left suddenly opened and a woman’s voice said to someone in the room behind it, ‘It really is no trouble, Lady Salisbury. I’ll fetch it for you immediately.’

  A lady came out into the hall and stopped on seeing Knollys standing awkwardly near the closed front door. The detective bowed slightly, though not before the lady had noted the admiration in his eyes.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe we have met. I am Lady Porteous.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Knollys, ma’am, from Scotland Yard. I’ve called to see whether Sir William’s secretary, Mr Lardner, will grant me an interview. I’m waiting for your footman to return.’

  ‘I’m sure he will see you, Mr Knollys. My husband has many friends in the Police Force. I am just on my way to fetch a book for a guest. Ah! Here’s the footman now.
Roberts, when someone calls and you admit him to the house, you really must take his hat and gloves and place them on the table. Do it now, please.’

  As the blushing footman silently obeyed her, Adelaide Porteous bowed to Knollys and swept up the wide staircase. A proud and beautiful lady, whose eyes betrayed that she had very recently received a profound shock. Jack Knollys could see the terror held back behind the aristocratic reserve. Yes, Gideon Raikes had some vile hold over her.

  ‘If you will come this way, sir, Mr Lardner will receive you.’

  Roberts led the detective to a small, cosy little room at the rear of the house. Lardner rose from a chair near the fire, where he had been reading a newspaper, and shook hands with the detective.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Knollys. But take off that wet greatcoat first, and hang it behind the door. It’s rather cramped in here, I’m afraid! This is Sir William Porteous’s little hideaway. The “snug”, we call it.’

  Knollys did as he was told and joined the secretary at the fire. An attractive sort of man, he thought, courteous and self-effacing, but firm of purpose. That hunched stoop told of a tendency to consumption of the lungs. Lardner suddenly rose.

  ‘I wonder whether you’d join me in a glass of stout? It’s an unusual sort of drink to encounter here at Queen Adelaide Gate, but I find it a wonderful restorative.’

  The secretary left the room for a few moments, returning with a tray on which reposed a china jug and two glasses. He poured the stout into the glasses, and passed one to the detective.

  ‘Now, Mr Knollys, what can I do for you?’