The Tumbled House

by Winston Graham

  “Quite,” said Lytton, screwing up his eyes. “ Very well, we’ll do what we can.”

  “I’ll meet you in court,” said Roger, and advanced towards Marion with a warm and disarming smile.

  Mrs Delaney today was in a black and white silk suit, with a black Baku straw hat. As she went into the witness-box, her eyes briefly met Don’s; she gave him the faintest of smiles and looked for Joanna. But Joanna was at Wood Green.

  Mr Lytton got up looking tired and elderly, as if the night had been too short for him.

  “Mrs Delaney, were you Sir John Marlowe’s mistress?”

  She looked at her questioner with dignified contempt. “ Yes.”

  Although this was the answer he wanted, it seemed to put him off his stroke, as if he had expected to have to trap her into the admission. He was several seconds looking at his brief.

  “Are you telling the court that your divorce should never have been made absolute because of your misconduct with the man who represented you then?”

  “I am saying nothing of the sort. I did not become Sir John’s mistress until May, 1956. Then it continued four months until he was ill.”

  “Mrs Delaney, I see that you obtained your divorce on the 14th February. And you say you called to see Sir John to thank him for his efforts on your behalf two weeks later. That would be the 28th February?”

  “About that. I am not sure as to the day.”

  “You are not sure as to the day. But it would be about the 28th?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not more than, say, two or three days either side?”

  “Not more than that.”

  “Yet in the letter from you to Sir John produced in this court on Friday, beginning ‘Darling John’ and telling him that knowing him was like a new life—this letter was dated the 12th March. Correct?”

  “If it is on the letter it is right.”

  “Well, if you will count from the 28th February to the 12th March you will find it is thirteen days, even allowing for Leap Year. Right?”

  “Yes.…”

  “Mrs Delaney, isn’t it asking a lot of the court to expect them to believe that in less than a fortnight your relationship with a distinguished barrister ripened from the formal call of practically a stranger, into an intimacy in which you wrote a letter to him beginning ‘Darling John’?”

  “It may be asking a lot. It happens to be true. I do not know if you appreciate it, Mr Lytton, but it really does not take a very long time to fall in love.”

  Lytton blinked in her direction. “ You were both passionately in love, in fact?”

  “I said, we fell in love.”

  “I don’t wish to press you too far, Mrs Delaney, but I put it to you that you were intimate with Sir John Marlowe in January of that year, before your divorce case ever came on.”

  “That is not true.”

  Mr Lytton looked at his brief.

  “Did you influence Sir John at all in his attitude towards Mr Chislehurst?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “But you must have discussed it together?”

  “Of course we discussed it. And Sir John did everything he could to meet Mr Chislehurst’s complaints.”

  “Do you think he really did? In the great honour and publicity that must have come to him in the last eighteen months of his life, did he ever mention Mr Chislehurst’s name to the Press?”

  “No. Because Mr Chislehurst had forbidden him to do so.”

  “Did you never suggest to him that sometimes one must break one’s undertaking in order to give honour where honour is due?”

  “No. When it was clear that the book was going to be such a tremendous success, John wrote again to Mr Chislehurst and asked his permission to include a new preface for the third edition making his position clear. Mr Chislehurst replied that in his view he had had no part in the book.”

  “Don’t you think that after he met you Sir John had very little care or attention to spare for this old clergyman’s objections?”

  “I do not.”

  “You would agree that after he met you Sir John moved in a somewhat different society from what he had been used to?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I mean a gambling, race-going society unsuitable to a distinguished barrister and potential judge?”

  “John mixed in no such society. My husband did. When I left him I left it.”

  “What about these house-parties you gave? Whom did you invite to them?”

  “People I liked.”

  “People whom you had known when you were still married to Robert Delaney?”

  “All my husband’s friends were not of one sort. And since we had been living our own lives for some years, I had a number of friends who were not his.”

  “Was not Stanley Salem a constant visitor at your house in the old days?”

  “I can only tell you he was never admitted to my house after my divorce.”

  “But at the time of the divorce?”

  “At the time of the divorce I was living apart from my husband and never saw Salem.”

  “Did he come to the Divorce Court?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Why do you suppose, if Salem never knew Sir John, that he should deliberately lie when he came out of prison, saying that he had been discharged by Sir John because of their friendship?”

  “It depends how the question was put to him,” said Mrs Delaney, glancing at Roger. “But in any case, as you have heard, it was his custom to claim friendship with the great. No doubt he is doing well in South America now on his intimate friendship with the Spanish Royal Family.”

  “I am only trying to arrive at the truth, Mrs Delaney. I can understand a trickster claiming friendship with the great when he has something to gain. What had Stanley Salem to gain by telling a lie about a dead man?”

  “I can only repeat what I have said: it depends a great deal on how the question was put to him. There are leading questions in life as well as in court. I do not know what malice may have moved in him.”

  “Is it true that you lost a great deal of money at the time of the Suez crisis?”

  “Yes. Most of my money is in Egypt.”

  “So that, apart from the bar of his illness, marriage to you would be a much less attractive proposition for Sir John than it had been?”

  “That is an offensive suggestion that I don’t need to reply to.”

  “I think, Mr Lytton,” said his Lordship, “that the witness has some justification for that answer.”

  “I beg your Lordship’s pardon.”

  “It is not I whom you have offended.”

  Counsel did not take the hint. “ Mrs Delaney, about the many letters and documents which were in the cottage at the time of Sir John’s death, you say that you went through these and took away whatever you chose?”

  “I took some letters away which seemed to me personal and private, or letters with which I had been personally concerned.”

  “Why?”

  “They were—a link. They were all I should have left.”

  “On whose authority did you take the letters?”

  “On whose authority? Nobody’s but my own.”

  “Do you know that the property of a deceased person belongs in effect to the legatees?”

  Mrs Delaney said: “I have always regarded myself as his next of kin—in everything but name.”

  “Have you ever offered the relatives or beneficiaries access to these documents which you—appropriated?”

  “No.”

  “Yesterday, Mrs Delaney, you disputed Mr Shorn’s account of how two letters came into his possession. Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “You dispute it, and furthermore say that at some time after Sir John’s death you saw him personally take the letters?”

  “I didn’t say I saw him taking them. I saw him in the cottage.”

  “Ah, that’s rather different, isn’t it When did you see him there?”
r />   Chapter Thirty-Four

  Joanna said: “If I perform what they say I can perform I should have got safely away from here as fast as you bat your eyelid.”

  “Ok, indeed; could you indeed?”

  “They say I have only to crack a twig, and over the springtime weathercocks, hail and gale——”

  “Cloudburst,” said the prompt.

  Joanna clicked her ringers. “Cloudburst, hail and gale, whatever you will, come leaping fury foremost.”

  “The report may be exaggerated, of course, but where there’s smoke.…”

  Joanna said: “ They also say that I bring back the past; for instance, Helen comes, brushing the maggots from her eyes, and, clearing her throat of several thousand years, she says, ‘ I loved …’ but cannot any longer remember names. Sad Helen.” She dried up. “I’m sorry. I knew these lines backwards last night.”

  “We’ll break for a few minutes,” said Ronnie Graveney, who was producing. “No good over-working the old cells. What was it like, Bert?”

  “O.K.,” said Bert. “But I don’t want Miss Sullivan to turn away as she makes that speech. We’re keeping it as a close-up.”

  Joanna nodded. “All right. I’ll remember.”

  One of the stage hands brought Joanna tea, and she wandered off, script in hand, into the darkness of the auditorium. She went up the stairs to the circle of the one-time theatre and sat under a light trying to read her lines.

  Can you be serious? I am Jennet Jourdemayne and I believe in the human mind. Dress rehearsal at three-thirty. Down below there was an argument about a piece of scenery. Lights burned on an empty stage. It looked as gloomy and shoddy and unreal as that, other place. Each was equally a shadow show.

  Would there among the millions who stared at her face tonight be anyone able to see behind it into the non-pattern of emotions and impulses and certainties and self-doubts which she knew as herself?

  Footsteps behind her. “All right now, dear?” Ronnie Graveney sank into the next seat.

  “I’ll be all right tonight.”

  “I’m sure you will. Bad luck they should both be on the same day. I expect your mind’s at the Old Bailey.”

  “The Law Courts.”

  “Yes. Actually it’s quite a break for us—sure to put our audience figures up, and that’ll please the sponsors.” He added broodingly: “I’ll never forget when we did a short thing with old Martha Green. She’d only ten lines to say but her memory box had rusted up about the date of the Crimean War. We had to print the lines on a blackboard and hold them up behind the mike. I thought she was going to ask for her glasses to read ’em!”

  “Ronnie,” she said. “I’m expecting a phone call at half past one. I expect I can take it in the manager’s office?”

  “Of course, dear. I’ll fix that. Look, would you like time off to phone now? I’m an agreeable little beast.”

  “I couldn’t get through at present, and Don has promised to ring me.”

  “O.K.… What’s that?” he shouted at the stage, “Wait a jiffy, I’ll be down.”

  When he had gone she put her cup down and lit a cigarette. Her script opened at another page. Do you think I can go in gaiety tonight under the threat of tomorrow? If I could sleep——

  Don lunched with Bennie, and with Henry de Courville who turned up suddenly beside them and said he had been in court most of yesterday and today. They discussed the action, or rather Henry talked about it, and someone vaguely owing allegiance to Don’s mind and voice observed the courtesies on his behalf. Mr Doutelle had made the closing speech for the defendant and Mr Lytton for the plaintiff. It remained for the judge to sum up. Henry was of the opinion that Don would win handsomely, but Don said Whitehouse was still dubious The Wright-Gladstone action had been almost a walk-over, and yet even after the judge had summed up very one-sidedly in favour of the Gladstones the jury had taken two and a half hours to make up its mind.

  About half-way through lunch Don excused himself, saying he had promised to ring Joanna. When he had gone there was an embarrassed silence. Henry said: “ It’s years since I saw your last, Bennie. D’you remember I came to stay with your father and you were home for the holidays, looking perfectly ravishing even though you were then only in your middle teens?”

  Bennie smiled. “Mr Chislehurst was there.”

  De Courville hesitated. “ Don looks pretty upset at the moment. I hope he won’t allow all this to get him down.”

  “I hope not.

  “I take it he didn’t know Roger had been at the cottage with Joanna in February?”

  “I really have no idea.”

  “My dear, Henry said gently, “I’m not inquiring out of vulgar curiosity. I have Don’s well-being very much at heart—both professionally and because he s my friend.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bennie said miserably. “I know that. It’s just that I haven’t the heart to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  Don was coming back.

  “I had to ring Joanna,” he said to Henry. “I promised to ring her about one-thirty. She’s doing a television play. But of course I’ve told you.

  “Don,” Henry said, “I was having a chat with the Administrator this morning and he was saying how pleased everyone was with your six-months’ season at the Opera House.”

  “Oh,” said Don. “Good.”

  “As it happened Maria was there at the time, and she said she thought we couldn’t afford to lose touch with you now.”

  Bennie said quickly: “ Does that mean——” and stopped.

  Henry looked full into her dark eyes and smiled. “It mean simply what it says, that we shan’t lose touch with him. There’s no appointment going as yet, but we shall certainly use him as a guest conductor as the opportunity arises.”

  “Don.…”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you been listening?”

  “Yes.… I’m glad to hear it.”

  Henry said: “It naturally won’t be what you’ve been doing since May, but it will be something. I thought you’d be pleased to know that your efforts hadn’t gone unappreciated.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Thanks for telling me.”

  Silence fell. Don finished his beer and turned the glass slowly round on the table.

  Bennie said: “ Is dame Maria’s the deciding voice in these things?”

  “No. But it’s pretty influential.”

  Another silence. Don pulled back his cuff to look at his watch. “Quarter to. We’ll have to be moving.”

  As they got up Bennie took Don’s arm. He smiled at her, looking at her properly for the first time. “When this libel action is over, in a couple of days or so—if it ever is over—we’ll celebrate. You, and Henry, and.… We’ll have a party and celebrate whatever’s left to celebrate. Now I think perhaps we’d better get back to see if the judge has made up his mind.…”

  The court was full of creaks. It seemed that all the benches might have been specially designed to protest at the presence of strangers. So the people at the back had to strain their ears to catch what the judge said. Before he came in his clerk had turned his chair diagonally so that he was facing the jury, and he talked to them in a conversational manner, as if across a fireside.

  “All actions for libel,” his Lordship was saying, “ are actions concerned with reputation; but this case goes further by involving within itself the reputation of a second person, a man no longer living and able to speak on his own behalf. This in fact is a libel action within a libel action, and both parties have—in effect—sought defence in justification.

  “The first thing, however, it is necessary for me to tell you is that this action does not succeed or fail by the degrees to which the imputations against Sir John Marlowe succeed or fail. This is an action brought by one man, Roger Shorn against another, Donald Marlowe, who has called him a liar, a coward and a jackal, and a disgrace to his profession. The defence is justification. That means that the defendant says: I am justifie
d in writing this because what I wrote was in substance true. That does not mean that every single word must be true, but it does mean that the gist and substance of the charges made in the verse and the letter, as understood by ordinary people, is true. If you are reasonably satisfied that Roger Shorn has behaved in a way which merits his being called a liar, a coward and a jackal, and a disgrace to his profession, then he can have suffered no damage by being called it, and his action falls to the ground. The law will not permit a man to recover damages for injury to a character which he does not or ought not to possess.

  “I very much hope, members of the jury, that you will find it necessary to pronounce upon the reputation of Sir John Marlowe as it has come under examination in this action. You are of course entitled to say anything or nothing according to your estimate of the evidence which has been put before you and you are entitled to disregard anything I may say on the subject. But I will tell you that during the four days of this hearing I have asked myself more than once whether there is another man among us who could have suffered similar calumny after his death and emerged from it all with such unblemished repute?”

  Mr Justice Alston did his raising and shifting ritual. “ However, I must repeat that this case is not decided by whether Sir John Marlowe was utterly guiltless of stealing literary work or whether he was utterly guiltless of unprofessional conduct in his legal career. If this were an action brought by Sir John Marlowe while still alive against Roger shorn, and if Mr Shorn pleaded justification and his statements were shown to be untrue, Mr Shorn would be liable to pay very heavy damages no matter how responsible his motives for writing the articles might be. But that is not the case. It is Sir John Marlowe’s son who has called Mr Shorn a liar, a coward, a jackal and a disgrace to his profession. You are asked to decide whether that is true. In effect, you are asked to decide whether Mr Shorn, with the data then in his possession, had reasonable and sufficient grounds for supposing what he did about Sir John Marlowe. If you consider he had such reasonable and sufficient grounds, and if you consider that he acted in a responsible and conscientious way, then it is to some extent beside the point that he should have been mistaken.”