“Well, I’m in fish and chips,” said Mrs Carpenter. “You know, right at the end of Portobello Road. Frying I do for the missus when she’s busy and potatoes, my life, I’m sick of the sight of potatoes. Well, dear, it’s a queer district; there’s some funny ’uns about, that’s true. Lots of niggers, some of them in their big chromium cars, it don’t seem right. And Teddy Boys. Well, I’ll look out. Dark young man, black hair falling over his forehead, possibly a limp. But it’s not likely, dear, is it? If he’s one of that sort, he’ll lie low, won’t he? And a tall young man with a long neck? I’ll do my best.”
“You can never tell,” said Mrs Dean. “That’s what I say. You can never tell. But it’s them streets leading off where the wide boys live. I’ve a sister in dry cleaning. They come in there. Press this suit; dye this coat; mend this tear … and like as not the tear’s been made by a razor. Yes, I’ll ask my sister. She knows everything that happens in her street. You wouldn’t believe.”
“Well, dear, I don’t know as I’m likely to see ’im,” said Miss Porteous. “I’m in the Ladies Convenience just by the bridge. Mind I ’ear a lot. Is ’ e fond of girls? Girls come in there for a chat, or if they’ve someone they want to shake off. But in the daytime it’s quiet. Too quiet for me. And lonely, like. Sometimes not sixpence in a morning. But I’m leaving end of this month. I got a smashing job at the Knightsbridge one. There you’re busy all day. It don’t leave you time to get depressed.”
Mrs Richter said: “I help in the little shop where newspapers are sold and cigarettes and curling pins—oh, and chewing-gum and pencils and all those things. Yes, it is near the railway. All day long we are hearing the trains whistle. Many people come in and out. I will watch and I will listen.”
“I’m at the Crown,” said Mrs Knight; “ just round the corner from Telford Road. Scrubbing, most of it is—that and washing glasses. My dear life, we get some types! It don’ do to ask questions! But I’ll listen. Oh, yes. I’ll listen. There ain’t much go on in that area we don’t hear about sooner or later. I’ll tell the barmaid to keep her ears open too.”
When she left, Bennie walked home and telephoned Don to say she would be round later. Then she looked through the telephone book and found that both Peter Waldo and Lady Waldo were in the book. She phoned Peter Waldo’s number but there was no reply. She rang Lady Waldo. Lady Waldo, said an impersonal voice, was in Portugal. Could she speak to Peter Waldo? No, the impersonal voice was sorry, Peter Waldo was not there, and rang off.
On Sunday evening Roger met Marion for a drink at a little bar where they had been twice before. It was usually quiet and they could talk. He hadn’t seen her to speak to privately for some days.
After he had ordered drinks he said: “Darling, it’s so lovely to be with you again. I hope in a week or two when all this is out of the way we shall be able to see more of each other, and openly, not as if there were something to be concealed.”
She was wearing a hat with a brim which in the shadowy light of the bar hid the expression in her eyes. “Roger, I felt so awful on Friday. I could hardly stay in the court.”
He shrugged, nettled by her tone. All week-end he had been on edge. “Law courts are always like that. Who was it said, ‘Private litigation is the civilised equivalent of war and should be expected to be conducted with heat.…’ What did your father think of it all?”
“He didn’t seem very happy about it.” (Sir Percy had said: “The more I see of this case the less I care for it.”)
They had started off on the wrong foot tonight. Every-thing she said irritated him. She and her father … oh, God, how they bored him.…
She said: “ You were wonderful in the box. But things get twisted round so. Have you to face Doutelle again tomorrow?”
“Yes, but that’s nothing to worry about.”
“You mean there is something else?” She was learning to read inflexions in his voice in a way few other women ever had.
“Well, yes, I’m afraid so. Mrs Delaney, the woman that Sir John Marlowe was to have married, has decided to come forward at the last moment and give evidence. It’s going to put a very different complexion on the case from what I imagined a week ago.”
“Why? Why, Roger? What is she going to say?”
“Well, she will obviously give her own version of events. How far the jury will believe her is another matter. But it will count enormously against us.”
Marion was looking at him in alarm; but he determined at that moment not to tell her any more. He had dropped the warning; that would have to do. He would certainly not tell her of the morning when he had left Michael and gone to his solicitor and there found Mr Cobb so confounded with Mrs Delaney’s evidence that he seemed on the point of suggesting that the case be withdrawn. But they had gone across to see Mr Lytton and fortunately Mr Lytton had been altogether more comforting. He had said: “ I’ll not pretend this isn’t a tremendous broadside. It’ll be touch and go now instead of an easy victory; but I still by no means rule out the possibility of our carrying the day. In fact I think we will. What sort of a woman is this Mrs Delaney? You’ve not seen her? No. Well, although all she is going to say, and these letters, and the evidence of this man, Lippmann—although all that will in itself be quite shattering at first, there may be a lot of holes to be picked when I cross-examine her. Why, for instance, has she been so reluctant to come forward? Do you mean to say she has nothing to hide? What will the jury really think of this dubious woman in Marlowe’s life? I consider now it will be touch and go.”
Marion said anxiously: “ What are you thinking, dearest?”
“Is your father corning tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
He bought more drinks. “ Come home with me, Marion. We haven’t been together for so long.”
She looked at him. “ Dearest, I’d adore to, but I mustn’t. I only slipped out as it was.”
He put his hand over hers. “This isn’t going to make any difference to us?”
“Of course it won’t. How could it?”
“Even if the case didn’t turn out so well?”
“I don’t mind what happens so long as you don’t personally come out of it badly.”
They talked on for about half an hour. She tried once or twice to steer the conversation back to the action, but he headed her off. Eventually when it was nearly time to go she said:
“I know you don’t want to talk about it. You even say we shouldn’t. But there is one thing I feel I must know. Who did give you those letters, the Marlowe letters?”
He smiled a little. In a queer way he had warmed towards her again, just because of her anxiety for him. “ Won’t you trust me?”
“Of course.” But now she looked put out.
“It involves someone else, as the judge guessed. I don’t like letting another person down. Even a journalist has his own particular honour in matters like this.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Roger. If you don’t say anything more the jury will assume you stole the letters or got them by some fraud. My father will too.”
Her father would too.
Marion said: “It isn’t good enough, that someone should shelter behind you and let you take the blame. Is it a woman?”
“.… No.”
“Another journalist?”
“Yes.”
“Then bring him into court and make him explain.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
She made a little impatient movement. “Everything that’s been said so far, all that Doutelle has said is aimed at your reputation. If they can make you out a thief and a cheat you automatically lose the action.”
He got up and passed money across the counter. “ It’s so clever of you, Marion, to see the issues so clearly. You should have been a lawyer.” He got this far smoothly, not meaning anything, then hesitated. Why not? Could one not.… “In fact I don’t mind telling you about it, but you’ll see it really shouldn’t go any further.”
She waited, watching
him with an attentive but loving gaze.
He said: “A colleague of mine—I don’t propose to give his name even to you—is writing a book on famous murder trials and wanted some details of one trial in which Marlowe appeared for the defence, so he went to see John Marlowe last December by appointment and interviewed him on it.”
Roger took his change, looked at it unseeingly, slipped it into his pocket.
“Go on,” said Marion.
“Well, after the interview John Marlowe offered him his notes and papers on the case to take away. This journalist naturally accepted them, and it wasn’t until two weeks later that, looking through them, he found that as well as the notes were some letters. He thought of returning them right away but decided he’d send them back when he returned the notes. Before he could do that John Marlowe died. In March, hearing I was doing something on John Marlowe, he handed the letters to me.”
“But dearest,” Marion said, “ why didn’t you say that in court? There’s nothing whatever discreditable to you in it, and not really anything very terrible about the other journalist!”
“To tell you the truth,” Roger said candidly, “ I thought it would seem too lame altogether. And I’m not willing to get the other fellow in trouble.”
“But there’s no trouble you can get him into! Dearest, you must tell them that in court tomorrow!”
“I’m not sure. I may.”
“I’ll tell Daddy. I must. It’s only fair. You don’t mind that?”
“You can if you want to.”
“I certainly do!”
Chapter Thirty-One
On the Monday Bennie was on the Paris run. When she got home she rang the hostel, but none of the women had anything to report. Then she rang Don.
He said: “Bennie? We missed you. You have a comforting warm presence sitting next to me on that hard bench.”
“What happened, darling?”
“We finished with Roger eventually at half past eleven, but the plaintiff’s case didn’t close until twenty past four. After Roger left, witnesses were called to give evidence of the way some of the words were understood by them when they read the verses. Then Lord Kinley was called. Apparently Dad shared a taxi with him one night about the time of his retirement, and Kinley said to him how self-sacrificing he thought it was of Dad to give up his career in mid-stream to devote his life to philosophy. Apparently Dad replied irritably that he had never intended that his behaviour should appear self-sacrificing, and that he had not retired at all willingly, and felt himself a fraud. Kinley took it seriously, so in that respect Roger was right. Kinley repeated it after the city dinner. Then came Miss Chislehurst, who was vindictive about the whole thing. Whitehouse said the judge was pretty lenient about what he admitted, so we hope he’ll be of the same mind when it’s our turn.”
“Did Miss Chislehurst say anything fresh?”
“No. Doutelle in cross-examination got out of her the fact that she knew nothing of her brother’s friendship with Dad until her brother was taken ill and that when she came to look after him old Chislehurst was already paralysed and hardly able to talk. Then they called Dr Lehmann who wrote the article for The Observer, comparing the two books. Borgward cross-examined him for the one or two facts necessary to our case.”
“Will Mrs Delaney be giving evidence tomorrow?”
“I think so. It rather depends how long they take over me.”
“Poor you. Thank Heaven I haven’t to go into the box. How long will it all last, do you think?”
“Whitehouse thinks Wednesday. It’ll be an impossible situation if it doesn’t end then because I’ve that important concert in Edinburgh on Thursday. Joanna missed part of this morning for a rehearsal of The Lady’s Not For Burning, and it’s being televised on Wednesday so she may miss that as well. I haven’t seen Michael in court at all, by the way.”
“No,” said Bennie. “He’s away on business.”
Don said: “ Oh, there was one other thing. Doutelle returned to the attack about the two letters this morning. The lawyers had a good squabble about the issues raised in the pleadings or something. However the judge eventually allowed Doutelle’s questions, and Roger suddenly brought out a story about how he got the two letters, or how he says he got them. Some journalist, he says, whom he refuses to name, interviewed Dad on the Cobham case and Dad gave him his notes and papers on the case, and by accident included in the file some of his private letters. Dad died before the journalist could return the letters, so the journalist passed them on to Roger.”
“Daddy was untidy about filing things, but I shouldn’t have thought he would be as casual as that.”
“Doutelle’s view is that Roger has had the week-end to invent an excuse and this is it. Oh, here’s Joanna. Do you want to talk to her?”
“Yes, please.”
Towards 10 p.m. Bennie said she was going out for a walk, but refused Pat’s offer to go with her. She sat in an espresso bar for a time making up her mind, and then she took a taxi to the Middle Pocket.
The same trek up the office stairs, distant music incongruous and unspecified, the door, marked “Council for European Affiliation”; inside, the brassy blonde was standing before the chromium-framed mirror examining a pin-head mole on her neck.
Bennie said: “I’ve been here before with Michael Shorn; you remember? I’m not stopping tonight but I have a message for Dick Ballance. Could you let me in?”
Blue eyes peered through slits in the mascara. Bennie put ten shillings on the table.
“All right, dear. How long’ll you be?”
“Five minutes.…”
Down the beaver-boarded passage into the bar. As she got there the gramophone finished and Dick began to play a slow sleep-walking rhythm. The dim lights had been made even dimmer, and a spot-light changing colour focused on the four couples moving over the floor. She waved away the Cypriot waiter and edged round to the piano.
Dick didn’t look up until her shadow fell on the keys. Then she saw that he instantly knew her. He missed a beat.
“Holy snakes, I thought you was my conscience, pussy-footing up behind me like that.” He turned back to the piano and caught up the slow sweet rhythm. The dancers were clinging tightly to each other like all-in wrestlers in the last stages of exhaustion.
“I came to see if you could help me.”
He went on playing in the bass while he reached with his right hand for the cigarette smouldering at the end of the keys. “Who brought you, sister?”
“I came by myself.”
“Holy snakes.” He finished the piece and the lights went up. Mild clapping, but he split his face in a grin and waved his purple palms to show there was no more. The dancers drifted back to their seats. Bennie, suddenly realising she might look like a singer who had come to do a turn, dragged a chair forward and sat on it.
“Dick, do you know where Michael is?”
He said, almost before she had finished speaking: “Haven’t a notion! If I had I’d say, you bet. I’d tell you this very instant! Believe me.”
“He’s in trouble, and he once said you were the sort of person who could always fix things—and I thought perhaps you’d fixed something for him.”
“His little joke! Me fix things! Well, I tell you I haven’t seen Michael for weeks and weeks and weeks.”
“Or Peter Waldo?”
Dick put his cigarette down. “I hear he’s going to be out of town for quite some time. They tell me so.”
“Who told you so?”
Dick laughed outright. “ Little birds. But I haven’t seen Peter now for weeks and weeks and weeks. They don’t come here no more.”
He began to play again. Half-way through, a boy with close-set eyes and a turtle-neck sweater came from the bar and asked Bennie to dance. She smiled and said no. She sat through the dance. When it was over she said:
“Supposing you see anything of him, Dick, will you let me know? I’ll give you my address.”
“Sure, sure, anything you
say. Why don’t you go dance with that boy? He’s all right. He’ll have you a good time.”
She passed him an old envelope. “ If you do find him I’ll give you ten pounds.”
“Thanks, thanks. Now I guess I got to play again.”
It was no use. For some reason Dick was treating her like a piece of hot coal. Well, she had done all she could. She got up to go, and then saw the faces of the three men sitting at the nearby table. Until now they had been screened by the raised lid of the piano. One of them was Boy Kenny, another was the tall man in the raincoat she had seen outside Michael’s flat.
She moved a couple of steps, hesitated. In the moment of her seeing him Boy had just taken a wet stub from his mouth and was lighting a fresh cigarette from it. He was looking at her. Something hadn’t improved his appearance or his expression since they last met.
Her mind flew over the situation and decided there was some reason why she should not ask Boy. She went on.
She went on, glad to be gone. At the door the boy in the turtle-neck sweater overtook her again, wanted to take her home. She said no again, more firmly, and slid out.
Mr Doutelle made a very short speech on the following morning, saying that he had a number of witnesses to call and that he would reserve most of his remarks for his closing address. He spoke only for fifteen minutes and then called Mr Donald Marlowe.
Don went to the witness-box, wishing he might have held a baton just for comfort. The court looked different from up here. He was on a level with the judge, very close, staring at him man to man. The judge had reddish hair going grey; perhaps that explained his freckled, farmer-like skin. His wig wasn’t on straight, and he had cut himself in shaving.
Don looked down at Doutelle and listened to the first question. After stumbling over the answer and trying to clear his throat and hearing his voice at first too loud and then too soft, he let go a little and found it all came fairly easily, since he knew the general trend the questions would take. The same story over again. His “indignation and anger” at reading the articles, his “discovery” of Moonraker’s identity, his wish to “clear his father’s name”. Listening to himself, it all sounded depressingly stale, as if the months of waiting had taken the sap out of it.
The Tumbled House Page 32
