The Advocate's Wife (4 page)

Sir William sipped his claret thoughtfully, then delicately dabbed his lips with his napkin.

‘And in that context, Forster, Inspector Box is a man worth cultivating. He knows all about your distinguished connoisseur, who, at this very moment, is being lauded to the skies by the Duke of Connaught at the National Gallery. But come, that’s no longer any business of ours: Davidson did the murder, and Davidson will hang.’

Sir William’s eyes shifted their gaze from the young advocate
and fixed themselves for a few moments on the tablecloth. Forster saw a frown pucker Sir William’s brow.

Finally the great barrister seemed to notice his companion again. He gave him an encouraging smile.

‘There, now, I’ve told you something you didn’t know. But don’t let it upset you. You did splendidly today. A worthy
opponen
t in the making. So do as I say, and cultivate the police. It’ll pay you dividends.’

When Sir William finally left the Carlton Club, he summoned a cab, and told the driver to take him to 14, Bideford Lane, Montague Place. The cabbie turned the horse’s head, and made off at a brisk trot towards Marylebone.

Adelaide would scold him for missing the girls’ departure! No, not scold – that was quite the wrong word. Whatever possessed him to use it? Adelaide was not that kind of woman. She would simply grow insufferably calm and polite, and for the rest of the day she would experiment with little sarcasms at his expense. She would stop the game tomorrow, but he would have been made to feel uncomfortable at his neglect of family duties.

Quite right, too! Whatever chiding came his way, he deserved! It had been wonderful having the girls and their husbands to stay for the week, helping them to celebrate their Silver Wedding. And Baby would be home from Paris today – a delightful bonus. But the celebration had clashed awkwardly with the Davidson trial, and there could be no question of
dereliction
of duty in that matter.

So, he’d missed luncheon at home, because he wanted to hear what young Forster had to say, and he’d miss not only the
departure
for Cannes of Mary Jane and her husband, but also that of Lydia and John Bruce for their home in Northampton. And Adelaide would be cool and detached, hiding her anger behind that infuriating aloofness. Still, surely he’d be back for afternoon tea? Baby would have arrived home by then. She and her mother would have so much to chat about that he might sneak into his own house unobserved, and so unscolded….

How kind! thought Mrs James Hungerford. Sir William is coming to tell me the result of the trial. Coming personally. She had heard the grating of iron tyres at the kerb, and had seen Sir William Porteous getting out of his cab. That was him now, executing a vigorous assault on the front-door knocker.

Anticipating her little maid, who was busy upstairs, Mrs Hungerford hurried out into the passage, and opened the front door.

‘Sir William! How very kind of you to call.’

Sir William took Mrs Hungerford’s hand. She thought: How infinitely sad he looks…. He’s eyeing my black dress, and the jet mourning beads that Mother left me. He seems so sad – almost anguished, as though my sorrow were his, too.

As Mrs Hungerford invited him to sit down on a velvet chair near the window of her front sitting-room, she saw Sir William’s eyes swiftly appraising the room and its contents. Well, he was more than welcome to do so. They were not wealthy, but they were comfortable people. He was admiring the Sheraton desk in the window…. She’d left it open, and some of poor James’s papers were spread out, together with some old family
miniatures
, and his watch.

‘My dear Mrs Hungerford,’ said Porteous, ‘I have come to tell you that justice has been done. My small efforts have not been in vain, and your husband’s murder will now be avenged.’

Mrs Hungerford went very pale, and was silent for a moment. She felt quite overcome by the earnestness of his words.

‘You are too kind, Sir William. I have been very much moved by your personal interest and concern. After all, we had no claim upon you—’

‘Oh, but you did! You had the claim of an innocent party for justice. Your husband was innocent of any crime. He had no association with criminals. And yet he was done to death. The widow cried out for justice, I was the instrument of that justice.’

‘You are too kind,’ Mrs Hungerford repeated. She motioned towards the open desk. ‘At a time of great agony and worry, you sent a cheque…. Such kind and selfless men as you, Sir William, are rare.’

She saw a very becoming blush suffuse the ample features of
the great advocate. He looked modestly to the floor and said nothing.

Mrs Hungerford picked up the watch, only half realizing what she was doing. Sir William was watching her with a kind of expectant interest. She held out the watch towards him.

‘This was his watch,’ she said.

‘And you are giving it to me!’

Mrs Hungerford was suddenly embarrassed. What on earth should she do? There had been a tone of infinite appreciation and thanks in Sir William’s voice. It hadn’t been a question, it was a statement, a belief that she wished to give him an intimate and personal token of her gratitude for his services.

She placed the watch in his pink, pudgy hand, noting idly the number of rings he wore, some set with precious stones. He put the watch away in one of his waistcoat pockets. Had he realized that it was the very watch for which her husband had been murdered?

‘Will you take some refreshment?’

He could see that she was embarrassed – that would be part of his forensic skill, she thought, to detect the various moods and emotions that people hid behind the formality of their words.

‘Thank you, Mrs Hungerford,’ he said, ‘but no. I must get back to my house in St John’s Wood, where more labours, alas, await me! Meanwhile, remember: if you need help, or if you need advice – I am at your service. You must think of me in future as a friend.’

He bade her goodbye with infinite charm.

Mrs Hungerford resumed her seat at the open desk. Her mind was far away in earlier times, and she jumped slightly as the door opened to admit a girl of twenty or so.

‘Was that Sir William Porteous, Mother? How kind of him to call.’

‘Yes, Kate, it was…. It’s very embarrassing, really, though he’s so thoroughly kind. I gave him your papa’s watch. I was holding it, you see, when Sir William was talking to me, and I just said, “This was his watch”. “And you’re giving it to me”, Sir William said. He thought I’d looked it out in order to make him a present of it! So what could I do? I had to give it to him, and of
course, I was so grateful for what he’d done, and so touched that he had come to visit us.’

‘Well, Mother, that’s all right. That man murdered Papa in order to steal his watch, so I’m sure Sir William is more than welcome to it.’

‘You’re right, my dear, and I’m glad to be rid of it. There was a curious tale attached to that watch. Your father found it, you know. One day I’ll tell you the whole story.’

Mr Gideon Raikes leaned back against the leather upholstery of his carriage, and listened to the rhythmic trot of the horses taking him back home to Grosvenor Square from the National Gallery. It had been a grand affair. The Duke of Connaught had shown himself surprisingly knowledgeable about medieval art. Surprising, really, considering that His Royal Highness was a professional soldier.

The Director of the National Gallery had formally named the new Medieval Room the Raikes Salon. Raikes, in his turn, had presented to the gallery his own collection of Italian primitives.

The carriage skirted Piccadilly Circus, and turned into Regent Street. His eye caught a newspaper vendor’s placard, and he frowned in anger. ‘Albert John Davidson found guilty.’ The fool! He would hang, and the world would be well rid of him. He had no time for mindless brutes and bunglers.

Sir William Porteous QC would be preening himself in front of his cronies in one or other of the clubs in Pall Mall. Well, pride, so they said, came before a fall. Porteous was becoming a dangerous nuisance.

The carriage turned out of Brook Street into Grosvenor Square, and drew to a halt in front of Raikes’s imposing
residence
. A footman emerged to let down the carriage step, and an imposing, white-gloved butler appeared at the door, to bow Raikes into the house. It was at moments like this that he felt the glamour of his own peculiar powers. He was a man of substance, principal owner of one of the most successful
insurance
companies in Britain, and a renowned patron of the arts.

The butler preceded him up the wide staircase, past Botticelli’s Coronation of the Virgin, glowing in its gilt frame
above the half-landing, and bowed him with supreme deference into his fascinating library on the first floor, where he housed his renowned collection of rare bindings and illuminated manuscripts. Over the course of many years, Raikes had turned the substantial town house, which was usually swarming with connoisseurs, into a magical palace of art and sculpture.

The library formed an ideal setting for its owner, who was himself a parchment-pale man in his fifties with wavy hair
illuminated
by tints from the palette of his hairdresser. He was very handsome, and dressed in beautiful clothes of foreign cut. There was a suggestion of perfume about him.

Gideon Raikes took his seat behind a gilt French Baroque desk in the centre of the library, and looked in silence for a moment at a man who stood to the right of the fireplace, biting voraciously into a leg of chicken. A plate of salad, and a silver salt cellar, had been placed on the end of the mantelpiece, near to one of a pair of Sevres porcelain vases.

Percy Liversedge looked very much out of place in the exotic surroundings of Raikes’s house. He was a large man, who looked as though he had been reluctantly confined in his tight serge suit. Men like Percy, thought Raikes, would feel less
inhibited
if Society permitted them to wear animal skins. His squeezed-up face and puffy eyelids had earned him the
nickname
of Percy the Pug.

‘So, Percy,’ said Raikes, ‘Albert John Davidson will hang. I can’t say that he’s much loss. He was dangerously stupid, silencing the inconvenient James Hungerford instead of simply retrieving the watch that our client had requested. I wonder who our client was? These things are done so discreetly! I assume poor Albert John Davidson will keep his lips sealed? He’s not likely to blab on the scaffold, is he?’

Percy Liversedge tossed the gnawed chicken bone into the plate of salad, and wiped his fingers on a handkerchief. At the same time, he pulled the bell rope that hung near where he was standing.

‘Blab? No fear of that, Mr Raikes. He done the murder, and he’ll pay for it. He exceeded his brief, and must take the
consequences
. Besides, he’s got a wife and bairns. If he keeps mum, as
he signalled from the dock that he would do, he knows they’ll be looked after. If he blabs – well, he also knows that accidents can happen.’ The door opened, and the immaculate butler appeared.

‘Brucchiani,’ said Liversedge, ‘remove this plate, if you’ll be so good.’

‘Certainly, Mr Liversedge. I trust everything was to your
satisfaction
?’

‘It was. Very nice. Very tasty.’

Brucchiani deftly cleared the mantelpiece, bowed to both men, and silently retired. The great connoisseur was frowning. Speaking about Albert John Davidson had made him think again of Sir William Porteous.

‘Sir William Porteous,’ observed Gideon Raikes, ‘receives plaudits from all sorts and conditions of men as a matter of course. He will have received a few more for today’s work at the Old Bailey. But there are some folk, Percy, among whose number I would include myself, who are growing tired of his continuing successes. I’m beginning to wonder whether he isn’t ripe for a fall. It’s just a thought. A philosophical speculation, as it were.’

The connoisseur darted a keen glance at Percy, and then looked out of the window.

Percy Liversedge still stood where Raikes had first seen him. He was content to stand virtually motionless until told to do otherwise. That disciplined stillness, thought Raikes, was part of his deadly nature. Murder sat lightly on his broad shoulders, and it was certain death to cross him. Percy the Pug, they called him. Ravening Wolf would be more to the point.

‘I take it, guvnor,’ said Percy, ‘that you’re just thinking aloud? I don’t suppose I was meant to hear what you said? About Sir William Porteous, you know.’

‘You’re right. I didn’t, in fact, say anything at all. So you heard nothing. Least said, Percy, soonest mended.’

Raikes fished out a slim gold hunter watch from his waistcoat pocket and opened the cover. Part of the escapement was visible through a crystal window, and a little enamel jester eternally nodded his head. It always made Gideon Raikes smile. He snapped the watch shut and returned it to his pocket.

‘Nearly two o’clock. Mr John Ruskin is coming at half past to
look at my Venetian oils. I don’t think he’s very well. He looks terribly frail.’

Raikes’s mind seemed to wander for a moment. He bit his lip and drummed his long slim fingers on the table. He was making up his mind to broach an unpleasant topic.

‘Percy, you know what Porteous’s next brief is, don’t you? He’s prosecuting in the Mounteagle Substitution affair. He skirted very near me in this last business of the shooting of James Hungerford, but if he delves deep enough into Mounteagle he’ll lay everything bare. That will be the end for me. And for you.’

Percy the Pug moved ponderously across the hearthrug to the other side of the fireplace, where he fixed his eyes on a round miniature of Charles I. He made a sound halfway between a sigh and a leering laugh.

‘Well, now, guvnor, you know how things are shaping in that direction. We’re all doing our bit, you included, if I may say so without disrespect. It’s all going very smoothly. Smooth as oil. Prestidigitation is what they call it: the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. So, don’t you worry!’