Death Has Deep Roots (2 page)

“This really is extraordinary – quite inexplicable,” said Mr. Ruby. He was sidling backward and forward along the limits of his narrow perch like an agitated parrot. “There’s Mackling – he’s a company counsel, you know—” he indicated a tubby little man in the tiewig of a junior, who was talking to Macrea, whilst Macrea was shaking his head backward and forward in an emphatic manner—“and what on earth—”

“Pray silence,” said the clerk suddenly, in a very loud voice. “Everybody will stand.”

Mr. Justice Arbuthnot appeared from the door in the rear of the rostrum, bowed slightly to the leaders, who bowed back, and took his seat. He was a healthy-looking, middle-aged person with kindly grey eyes and a very long protruding nose. In plain clothes he looked like a farmer or a sporting squire. He was a good lawyer for all that, and an excellent and impartial judge.

“I understand that there is an application,” he said.

“If your lordship pleases—” said Mr. Macrea.

“Very well, Mr. Macrea.”

“Your lordship has, I believe, been informed of the circumstances. The prisoner decided very recently – in fact at midday on Saturday – that is, the day before yesterday – for private reasons, to change her legal advisers.”

The pressmen scribbled busily and wondered what was up.

“I myself,” went on Macrea, “was only instructed yesterday morning. In the circumstances, therefore, we have taken the somewhat unusual course of asking that this case be postponed to the end of your lordship’s list.”

“The accused is, of course, perfectly entitled to change her legal advisers at any time,” said the judge. “I ought, I think, to be enlightened on one point. Was her reason for requiring this change that she was dissatisfied with the way in which her case was being conducted?”

“In a general way, no. That is to say, neither she nor anyone else imputed anything in the nature of negligence or impropriety to the very eminent firm and persons concerned with her defence. It was simply that she disagreed with their view of the correct policy to be adopted.”

“I quite understand, Mr. Macrea. I won’t press you any further. Your application is granted.”

“I am much obliged.”

“You are certain that in the circumstances you would not rather ask for an adjournment to the next session. If I take this case at the end of the list – let me see – it is a short list – it may not give you more than eight days at the most to prepare your case.”

“That should be quite sufficient, my lord,” said Macrea. “I should have made it plain that we are not greatly at variance over matters of fact in this case – which has, indeed, been very carefully prepared by our eminent predecessors. It is just a certain shift in emphasis—”

“I quite understand, Mr. Macrea.”

“How excruciatingly polite they are,” said Baby. “What does it all mean?”

“In that case—” suggested the judge.

There was an immediate general post in the front benches, and out of the turmoil Mr. Madding rose to his feet. He cast a speculative eye over the packed gallery, inextricably wedged on their comfortless seats, and announced with barely concealed satisfaction that the matter before the court arose out of an application under Section one hundred and ninety – four Subsection two of the Companies Act 1948.

The trouble, as Macrea had indicated, had started two days before, at eleven o’clock on the Saturday morning.

Noel Anthony Pontarlier Rumbold, the junior partner in his father’s firm of Markby, Wragg and Rumbold, Solicitors, of Coleman Street, was at his desk in his office, conscientiously filling in a corrective affidavit for the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. Markby, Wragg and Rumbold was the sort of small firm in which all the partners could, and quite often did, fill in inland revenue affidavits all by themselves.

Since it was Saturday morning, the office was comparatively empty.

Mr. Rumbold, senior, was in Scotland. He was engaged, like some persistent middle – aged admirer, in courting a golf handicap whose figure increased remorselessly with the years. Mr. Wragg was at Golder’s Green arranging, without enthusiasm, for the cremation of a client who had at long last died, leaving behind her a codicil in which she had thoughtfully revoked the charging clause in her will.

The telephone rang and Nap picked up the receiver.

“It’s Chalibut and Spence, sir,” said the desk sergeant. “They hadn’t got any reference and they wouldn’t say what it was about, so I thought I ought to put them through to you.”

“All right, sergeant,” said Nap. “It may be an agency job. Put them through, will you. Hello. Yes. Mr. Rumbold, junior, here.”

“I’m afraid this is going to be rather difficult to explain, over the telephone,” said a thin voice. “This is Mr. Spence speaking. The matter’s rather urgent. I wondered if I could possibly come round and have a word about it.”

“By all means,” said Nap. “Let me have a look at my book. I’m not doing anything much on Monday morning.”

“I’m afraid it won’t wait until Monday morning,” said the thin voice.

“Oh, I see.” Nap was uncomfortably conscious that he had arranged to catch the 12:15 from Waterloo.

“I could be with you in ten minutes. Our office is in Old Broad Street. I wouldn’t have troubled you unless it had been urgent.”

“That’s all right,” said Nap. “Will it take long?”

“Yes,” said the thin voice. “Yes. I expect it will.”

“Hell,” said Nap. His wife, though the sweetest of women, had old-fashioned ideas about mealtimes.

Ten minutes later Mr. Spence arrived. He seated himself carefully, took a large number of papers out of his briefcase and started to talk. Once or twice Nap tried to interrupt the flow, rather in the spirit of an amateur plumber trying to deal with a burst main. He soon gave up. Mr. Spence intended to get it all off his chest.

“Yes—but—I say,” said Nap at the end. “You know we’re not—we don’t specialise in criminal work.”

“Neither do we,” said Mr. Spence wearily. “We took this matter up as a kindness to this client, and – between you and me – without any very great hopes of getting our costs back. Now it seems to have rebounded on our own heads.”

“She wants to change—”

“She was very definite about it. She wishes to instruct new solicitors and to brief new counsel.”

“But why pick on us?”

“I was coming to that,” said Mr. Spence. He selected a fresh sheet of paper from the pile. “It would appear that Major Thoseby was acquainted with you and often spoke of you and your firm.”

“Eric Thoseby,” said Nap. “Good heavens!”

How a name can unlock a door, thought Nap; a whole series of doors, so that the hearer looks, for a startled moment, backward down the corridor of the past. A tunnelled and a distorted view but, at the end of the corridor, clear and sharp and unexpected.

A warm June afternoon on the cricket field. The smell of a motor-mower; the maddening, indescribable, never-forgotten sound of an old leather cricket ball on a well-oiled cricket bat. That was the first picture. Then a country house, near Basingstoke, in the autumn of 1942. Coming into the lounge and suddenly recognising a back. “Good heavens, sir, fancy seeing you.” “Young Rumbold, isn’t it. What are you doing here?” The same as you, sir, I expect.” That was the sort of way people cropped up in wartime. That house near Basingstoke was one of the training schools for the Free French Forces and their helpers. Nap was a learner – he was due to spend some months near Besançon before D-Day. Major Eric Thoseby was already an old hand, installed and in charge of the Basse Loire, but now home for a short spell of Staff talks and a refresher course in the new daylight sensitive fuse. A café in Sedan, in August, 1944—

“I beg your pardon,” he said, becoming aware that Mr. Spence was asking him a question. “I was thinking – by the way, how does Thoseby come into it?”

“He was found,” said Mr. Spence patiently, “in March of this year, in a hotel in Pearlyman Street. He had been stabbed with a knife. That is the crime of which Mademoiselle Lamartine is accused.”

“I see,” said Nap.

The affair had come quite close to him, and he was thinking about it properly now.

“If she killed Eric Thoseby,” he said, “I should be the last solicitor in London to undertake her defence.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Spence. “The basis of her defence, of course, is that she did not kill him.”

“Of course. That’s the only line she could take.”

“Not quite,” said Mr. Spence. “Our case, if I might speak perfectly frankly, would have been that it was not proved that she had killed him – and even if she had been found guilty of killing him, that she had a certain measure of justification.”

“I see,” said Nap. He also saw why Miss Lamartine had wanted to change her professional advisers. “What is the next move?”

“She wants to see you.”

“Now!”

“There is very little time to spare,” said Mr. Spence. “As I was telling you, the trial opens at the Central Criminal Court on Monday – the day after tomorrow.”

“There certainly isn’t,” said Nap. “Are you coming with me?”

“I have made all the necessary arrangements,” said Mr. Spence. “But I’m afraid I shall not be able to accompany you. It is her express desire that she should see you alone.”

An hour later Nap was talking across a bare table to Victoria Lamartine.

It was an interview which, by all the rules, should have been dramatic, even passionate. It was, in fact, businesslike and quite short. Mademoiselle Lamartine did almost all the talking and the measure of her success was that Nap, who had come to the interview determined to say No, went away twenty minutes later with a full promise of assistance.

Victoria Lamartine was no beauty. She was nearer to thirty than twenty and her figure, in five years’ time, would be unhesitatingly described as dumpy. The skill with which her hair was done did not conceal the fact it was basically straight and mouse-coloured. But all, to Nap’s mind, was saved by the eyes. Not only were they kind eyes, but from them looked that intellectual honesty which would seem to be bred in the bones of a certain sort of French girl: a nation famed for looking on facts as they are.

“I appeal to you, Mr. Rimbault,” she said, and Nap was absurdly charmed, at the outset of the interview, by hearing his name in its original French form, “for you alone in London are a lawyer I can trust.”

“You are too kind.”

Mademoiselle Lamartine brushed this aside.

“First you must understand,” she said. “I did
not
kill Major Thoseby.”

“I see.”

“I did
not
have a child of him. I had a child, yes. A boy. He would now be five years old, but he died. He was
not
of Major Thoseby. He was of another man.”

“Yes.”

“I did
not
hate Major Thoseby. Why should I? The child was not of him. Why should I hate him?”

“Why indeed?”

“Now you understand.”

“Mademoiselle,” said Nap, “I understand nothing. If you would be so kind as to begin at the beginning, telling me, as concisely as possible, what has happened to bring you—” he waved a hand round with an infinitely delicate gesture—“to bring you here. Also, if it will assist you, pray speak in French.”

“
Voyons: un expośe.
”

She spoke composedly, with an indifference bordering on disinterest: as if she was a spectator of the misadventures she described. Nap, who spent a great part of his professional life in ordering facts into logical sequences, found time to admire the performance even whilst he listened intently to the performer.

It was a strange enough story.

At the end of it the girl asked, with the first hint of concern that Nap had yet detected in her voice and in her eyes, “You will help me?”

“Yes,” said Nap. He spoke absently. He had made the decision ten minutes before.

“Good. Then since I am now your client you may cease to call me Mademoiselle Lamartine. ‘Mademoiselle’ does not well become the mother of a child. And Lamartine is a name no Englishman can pronounce. Not even you, and your French is very good. I do not flatter you. But even you cannot place the stress evenly on the second syllable as it should go. Will you call me Vicky – or Victoria, if you wish to be more formal.”

“Vicky will do,” said Nap. “Now tell me one more thing. Why did you change your mind? About your lawyer, I mean.”

“It was after the first court – I do not understand your judicial system – it wants for logic.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Nap. “The police courts, I expect you mean.”

“Yes. The police court. It was that Mr. Poynter. When he spoke to the magistrate, I understood for the first time what he meant. To me he had always been most polite. ‘Yes, mademoiselle’—‘No, mademoiselle’—‘I am quite sure that what you say is the truth, mademoiselle.’ But to the judge – he said something quite else. He said, ‘This woman is guilty.’ Not in those words, but I could hear it in his voice. He said, ‘She is guilty. But because she is a woman and because she is a stranger to this country, and because she has had a child and has been deceived by this man who is older than she, you must not be too severe.’”

“That’s all right,” said Nap. “I thought that was it. I just wanted to be sure.”

He was not surprised. He had heard it himself, an hour before, in the thin tones of Mr. Spence.

A telephone call to Scotland brought the disgruntled Mr. Rumbold back to London on the night train, and on Sunday morning, after breakfast, father and son held council.

‘Tell me the story first,” said old Mr. Rumbold, “and then we’ll decide – about the other things.”

“Well,” said Nap, “it’s only her version – but, with that reservation, here it is. She’s French – Parisian. Like a lot of other French girls she had a filthy time during the Occupation. She hasn’t got much left in the way of family. Her father was dead before the war, and her mother, who stayed on in Paris, died some time in 1943 – phthisis, hurried along by under-nutrition, I gather. To start with, she herself didn’t do so badly. She’d been evacuated, in 1940, to an old friend of the family, near Langeais. He was a farmer. A farm meant food. Vicky earned her keep, I don’t doubt, by working in the house. The farmer – Père Chaise – was a thoroughly warmhearted, garrulous, unreliable supporter of the local Maquis. Vicky helped him in that too – just in the same way as she helped him about the house. Ran errands, kept watch, carried food to the ‘active’ Maquisards.”