The Franchise Affair (10 page)

Marion's face lost a little of its bleak look, and even Mrs. Sharpe's thin back looked less rigid. What had seemed a disaster might be, after all, the means of their salvation.

“And what can we do in the way of private investigation?” Mrs. Sharpe asked. “You realise, I expect, that we have very little money; and I take it that a private inquiry is a spend-thrift business.”

“It does usually run away with more than one had bargained for, because it is difficult to budget for. But to begin with I am going, myself, to see the various people involved, and find out, if possible, on what lines any inquiry should be based. Find out what she was
likely
to do.”

“Will they tell you that?”

“Oh, no. They are probably unaware themselves of her tendencies. But if they talk about her at all a picture must emerge. At least I hope so.”

There was a few moments' silence.

“You are extraordinarily kind, Mr. Blair.”

Victoria Regina had come back to Mrs. Sharpe's manner, but there was a hint of something else. Almost of surprise; as if kindness was not one of the things she had normally met with in life; nor expected. Her stiffly gracious acknowledgement was as eloquent as if she had said: “You know that we are poor, and that we may never be able to pay you adequately, and we are not at all the kind of people that you would choose to represent, but you are going out of your way to do us the best service in your power, and we are grateful.”

“When do you go?” Marion asked.

“Directly after lunch.”

“Today!”

“The sooner the better.”

“Then we won't keep you,” Mrs. Sharpe said, rising. She stood for a moment looking down at the paper where it lay spread on the table. “We enjoyed the privacy of The Franchise a great deal,” she said.

When he had seen them out of the door and into their car, he
called Nevil into his room and picked up the receiver to talk to Aunt Lin about packing a bag.

“I suppose you don't see the
Ack-Emma
ever?” he asked Nevil.

“I take it that the question is rhetoric,” Nevil said.

“Have a look at this morning's. Hullo, Aunt Lin?”

“Does someone want to sue them for something? It will be sound money for us, if so. They practically always settle out of court. They have a special fund for the—” Nevil's voice died away. He had seen the front page that was staring up at him from the table.

Robert stole a look at him over the telephone, and observed with satisfaction the naked shock on his cousin's bright young features. The youth of today, he understood, considered themselves shock-proof; it was good to know that, faced with an ordinary slab of real life, they reacted like any other human being.

“Be an angel, Aunt Lin, and pack a bag for me, will you? Just for overnight. . . . ”

Nevil had torn the paper open and was now reading the story.

“Just London and back, I expect but I'm not sure. Anyhow, just the little case; and just the minimum. Not all the things I
might
need, if you love me. Last time there was a bottle of digestive powder weighing nearly a pound and when in heck did I ever need a digestive powder! . . . All right then I
will
have ulcers. . . . Yes, I'll be in to lunch in about ten minutes.”

“The blasted
swine!”
said the poet and intellectual, falling back in his need on the vernacular.

“Well, what do you make of it?”

“Make
of it! Of what?”

“The girl's story.”

“Does one have to
make
anything of it? An obvious piece of sensationalism by an unbalanced adolescent?”

“And if I told you that the said adolescent is a very calm, ordinary,
well-spoken-of school-girl who is anything but sensational?”

“Have you seen her?”

“Yes. That is why I first went to The Franchise last week, to be there when Scotland Yard brought the girl to confront them.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, young Nevil. She may talk hens and Maupassant with you, but it is me she turns to in trouble.

“To be there on their behalf?”

“Certainly.”

Nevil relaxed suddenly. “Oh, well; that's all right. For a moment I thought you were against her. Against them. But that's all right. We can join forces to put a spoke in the wheel of this—” He flicked the paper—”this moppet.” Robert laughed at this typically Nevil choice of epithet. “What are you going to do about it, Robert?”

Robert told him. “And you will hold the fort while I am gone.” He saw that Nevil's attention had gone back to the “moppet.” He moved over to join him and together they considered the young face looking so calmly up at them.

“An attractive face, on the whole,” Robert said. “What do you make of it?”

“What I should
like
to make of it,” said the aesthete, with slow venom, “would be a
very nasty mess.”

T
he Wynns' home outside Aylesbury was in a countrified suburb; the kind of district where rows of semi-detached houses creep along the edge of the still unspoiled fields; self-conscious and aware that they are intruders, or smug and not caring, according to the character their builders have given them. The Wynns lived in one of the apologetic rows; a redbrick string of ramshackle dwellings that set Robert's teeth on edge; so raw they were, so crude, so hang-dog. But as he drove slowly up the road, looking for the appropriate number, he was won over by the love that had gone to the decoration of these regrettable objects. No love had gone to their building; only a reckoning. But to each owner, as he took over, the bare little house had represented his “sufficient beauty,” and having found it he served it. The gardens were small miracles of loveliness; each succeeding one a fresh revelation of some unsuspected poet's heart.

Nevil really ought to be here to see, Robert thought, slowing down yet once more as a new perfection caught his eye; there was more poetry here than in a whole twelve months of his beloved
Watchman
. All his clichés were here: form, rhythm, colour, total gesture, design, impact . . .

Or would Nevil see only a row of suburban gardens? Only Meadowside Lane, Aylesbury, with some Woolworth plants in the gardens?

Probably.

Number 39 was the one with the plain green grass bordered by a rockery. It was also distinguished by the fact that its curtains were invisible. No genteel net was stretched across the window-pane, no cream casement cloth hung at the sides. The windows were bare to the sun, the air, and the human gaze. This surprised Robert as much as it probably surprised the neighbours. It augured a nonconformity that he had not expected.

He rang the bell, wishing that he did not feel like a bagman. He was a suppliant; and that was a new role for Robert Blair.

Mrs. Wynn surprised him even more than her windows did. It was only when he had met her that he realised how complete a picture he had built in his mind of the woman who had adopted and mothered the child Betty Kane: the grey hair, the solid matronly comfortable figure, the plain broad sensible face; perhaps, even, an apron, or one of those flowered overalls that housewives wear. But Mrs. Wynn was not at all like that. She was slight and neat and young and modern and dark and pink-cheeked and still pretty, and had a pair of the most intelligent bright brown eyes Robert had ever seen.

When she saw a stranger she looked defensive, and made an involuntary closing movement with the door she was holding; but a second glance seemed to reassure her. Robert explained who he was, and she listened without interrupting him in a way he found quite admirable. Very few of his own clients listened without interrupting; male or female.

“You are under no obligation to talk to me,” he finished, having explained his presence. “But I hope very much that you won't refuse. I have told Inspector Grant that I was going to see you this afternoon, on my clients' behalf.”

“Oh, if the police know about it and don't mind—” She stepped back to let him come past her. “I expect you have to do your best for those people if you are their lawyer. And we have
nothing to hide. But if it is really Betty you want to interview I'm afraid you can't. We have sent her into the country to friends for the day, to avoid all the fuss. Leslie meant well, but it was a stupid thing to do.”

“Leslie?”

“My son. Sit down, won't you.” She offered him one of the easy chairs in a pleasant, uncluttered sitting-room. “He was too angry about the police to think clearly—angry about their failure to do anything when it seemed so proved, I mean. He has always been devoted to Betty. Indeed until he got engaged they were inseparable.”

Robert's ears pricked. This was the kind of thing he had come to hear.

“Engaged?”

“Yes. He got engaged just after the New Year to a very nice girl. We are all delighted.”

“Was Betty delighted?”

“She wasn't jealous, if that is what you mean,” she said, looking at him with her intelligent eyes. “I expect she missed not coming first with him as she used to, but she was very nice about it. She
is
a nice girl, Mr. Blair. Believe me. I was a schoolmistress before I married—not a very good one, that is why I got married at the first opportunity—and I know a lot about girls. Betty has never given me a moment's anxiety.”

“Yes, I know. Everyone reports excellently of her. Is your son's fiancée a school fellow of hers?”

“No, she is a stranger. Her people have come to live near here and he met her at a dance.”

“Does Betty go to dances?”

“Not grown-up dances. She is too young yet.”

“So she has not met the fiancée?”

“To be honest, none of us had. He rather sprang her on us. But we liked her so much we didn't mind.”

“He must be very young to be settling down?”

“Oh, the whole thing is absurd, of course. He is twenty and she is eighteen. But they are very sweet together. And I was very young myself when I married and I have been very happy. The only thing I lacked was a daughter, and Betty filled that gap.”

“What does she want to do when she leaves school?”

“She doesn't know. She has no special talent for anything as far as I can see. I have a notion that she will marry early.”

“Because of her attractiveness?”

“No, because—” she paused and apparently changed what she had been going to say. “Girls who have no particular bent fall easily into matrimony.”

He wondered if what she had been going to say had any remote connection with slate-blue eyes.

“When Betty failed to turn up in time to go back to school, you thought she was just playing truant? Although she was a well-behaved child.”

“Yes, she was growing bored with school; and she had always said—which is quite true—that the first day back at school is a wasted one. So we thought she was just ‘taking adventure' for once, as they say. ‘Trying it on' as Leslie said, when he heard that she hadn't turned up.”

“I see. Was she wearing school clothes on her holiday?”

For the first time Mrs. Wynn looked doubtfully at him; uncertain of his motive in asking.

“No. No, she was wearing her week-end clothes. . . . You know that when she came back she was wearing only a frock and shoes?”

Robert nodded.

“I find it difficult to imagine women so depraved that they would treat a helpless child like that.”

“If you could meet the women, Mrs. Wynn, you would find it still more difficult to imagine.”

“But all the worst criminals look innocent and harmless, don't they?”

Robert let that pass. He wanted to know about the bruises on the girl's body. Were they fresh bruises?

“Oh, quite fresh. Most of them had not begun to ‘turn' even.”

This surprised Robert a little.

“But there were older bruises as well, I take it.”

“If there were they had faded so much as to be unnoticeable among all the bad new ones.”

“What did the new ones look like? A whipping?”

“Oh, no. She had actually been knocked about. Even her poor little face. One jaw was swollen, and there was a big bruise on the other temple.”

“The police say that she grew hysterical when it was suggested that she should tell them her story.”

“That was when she was still ill. Once we had got the story out of her and she had a long rest it was easy enough to persuade her to repeat it to the police.”

“I know you will answer this frankly, Mrs. Wynn: Has there never been any suspicion in your mind that Betty's story might not be true? Even a momentary suspicion?”

“Not even a momentary one. Why should there be? She has always been a truthful child. Even if she hadn't, how could she invent a long circumstantial story like that without being found out? The police asked her all the questions they wanted to; there was never any suggestion of accepting her statement as it stood.”

“When she first told her story to you, did she tell it all in a piece?”

“Oh, no; it was spread over a day or two. The outline, first. And then filling in the details as she remembered them. Things like the window in the attic being round.”

“Her days of coma had not blurred her memory.”

“I don't think they would in any case. I mean, with Betty's kind of brain. She has a photographic memory.”

Has she indeed! thought Robert; both ears erect and wide open.

“Even as a small child she could look at the page of a book—a child's book, of course—and repeat most of the contents from the picture in her mind. And when we played the Kim game—you know? the objects on the tray—we had to put Betty out of the game because she invariably won. Oh, no, she would remember what she saw.”

Well, there was another game in which the cry was “Growing warm!” Robert remembered.