The Franchise Affair (28 page)

“I—don't—believe—it!” Ben said,
sotto voce
, while she was taking the oath. “You mean that child was on the loose for a month? I don't believe she's ever kissed anything but the book!”

“I'll bring witnesses to prove it,” muttered Robert, angry that even the worldly and cynical Carley was succumbing.

“You could bring ten irreproachable witnesses and still not get a jury to believe it; and it's the jury who count, my friend.”

Yes, what jury would believe any bad of her!

Watching her as she was led through her story, he reminded himself of Albert's account of her: the “nicely brought-up girl” whom no one would have thought of as a woman at all, and the cool expertness with which she attached the man she had chosen.

She had a very pleasant voice; young and light and clear; without accent or affectation. And she told her tale like a model witness; volunteering no extras, explicit in what she did say. The pressmen could hardly keep their eyes on their shorthand. The Bench was obviously doting. (God send there was something
tougher at the Assizes!) The members of the police force were gently perspiring in sympathy. The body of the court breathless and motionless.

No actress had ever had a better reception.

She was quite calm, as far as anyone could see; and apparently unaware of the effect she was having. She made no effort to make a point, or to use a piece of information dramatically. And Robert found himself wondering whether the understatement was deliberate and whether she realised quite clearly how effective it was.

“And did you in fact mend the linen?”

“I was too stiff from the beating, that night. But I mended some later.”

Just as if she were saying: “I was too busy playing bridge.” It gave an extraordinary air of truth to what she said.

Nor was there any sign of triumph in the account of her vindication. She had said this and that about the place of her imprisonment and this and that had proved to be so. But she showed no overt pleasure in the fact. When she was asked if she recognized the women in the dock, and if they were in fact the women who had detained and beaten her, she looked at them gravely for a moment of silence and then said that she did and they were.

“Do you want to examine, Mr. Blair?”

“No, sir. I have no questions.”

This caused a slight stir of surprise and disappointment in the body of the court, who had looked forward to drama; but it was accepted by the initiates without remark; it was taken for granted that the case would go forward to another court.

Hallam had already given his statement, and the girl was now followed by the corroborative witnesses.

The man who had seen her picked up by the car proved to be a Post Office sorter called Piper. He worked on a postal van
which the L.M.S. ran between Larborough and London, and he was dropped off at Mainshill station on the return journey because it was near his home. He was walking up the long straight London road through Mainshill, when he noticed that a young girl was waiting at the stop for the London coaches. He was still a long distance from her but he noticed her because the London coach had overtaken him about half a minute previously, before he had come within sight of the bus stop; and when he saw her waiting there he realised that she must just have missed it. While he was walking towards her but still some distance away, a car overtook him at a good pace. He did not even glance at it because his interest was concentrated on the girl and on whether when he came up with her he should stop and tell her that the London bus had passed. Then he saw the car slow down alongside the girl. She bent forward to talk to whoever was in it, and then got in herself and was driven away.

By this time he was near enough to describe the car but not to read the number. He had not thought of reading the number anyhow. He was merely glad that the girl had got a lift so quickly.

He would not take an oath that the girl in question was the girl he had seen give evidence, but he was certain in his own mind. She had worn a palish coat and that—grey he thought—and black slippers.

Slippers?

Well, those shoes with no straps across the instep.

Court shoes.

Well, court shoes, but he called them slippers. (And had every intention, his tone made it clear, of going on calling them slippers.)

“Do you want to examine, Mr. Blair?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

Then came Rose Glyn.

Robert's first impression was of the vulgar perfection of her teeth. They reminded him of a false set made by a not very clever dentist. There surely never had been, never could be, any natural teeth as flashily perfect as those Rose Glyn had produced as substitutes for her milk teeth.

The Bench did not like her teeth either, it seemed, and Rose soon stopped smiling. But her tale was lethal enough. She had been in the habit of going to The Franchise every Monday to clean the house. On a Monday in April she had been there as usual, and was preparing to leave in the evening when she heard screaming coming from upstairs somewhere. She thought something had happened to Mrs. or Miss Sharpe and ran to the foot of the stairs to see. The screaming seemed to be far away, as if it came from the attic. She was going to go upstairs, but Mrs. Sharpe came out of the drawing-room and asked her what she was doing. She said someone was screaming upstairs. Mrs. Sharpe said nonsense, that she was imagining things, and wasn't it time that she was going home. The screaming had stopped then, and while Mrs. Sharpe was talking Miss Sharpe came downstairs. Miss Sharpe went with Mrs. Sharpe into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Sharpe said something about “ought to be more careful.” She was frightened, she did not quite know why, and went away to the kitchen and took her money from where it was always left for her on the kitchen mantelpiece, and ran from the house. The date was April the 15th. She remembered the date because she had decided that next time she went back, on the following Monday, she would give the Sharpes her week's notice; and she had in fact done that and had not worked for the Sharpes since Monday April the 29th.

Robert was faintly cheered by the bad impression she was patently making on everyone. Her open delight in the dramatic, her Christmas Supplement glossiness, her obvious malice, and her horrible clothes, were unhappily contrasted with the restraint
and good sense and good taste of her predecessor in the witness box. From the expressions on the faces of her audience she was summed up as a slut and no one would trust her with sixpence.

But that did nothing to discount the evidence she had just given on oath.

Robert, letting her go, wondered if there was any way of pinning that watch on her, so to speak. Being a country girl, unversed in the ways of pawnshops, it was unlikely that she had stolen that watch to sell it; she had taken it to keep for herself. That being so, was there perhaps some way of convicting her of theft and so discrediting her evidence to that extent?

She was succeeded by her friend Gladys Rees. Gladys was as small and pale and skinny as her friend was opulent. She was scared and ill at ease, and took the oath hesitatingly. Her accent was so broad that even the Court found difficulty in following her, and the prosecution had several times to translate her wilder flights of English into something nearer common speech. But the gist of her evidence was clear. On the evening of Monday the 15th April she had gone walking with her friend, Rose Glyn. No, not anywhere special, just walking after supper. Up to High Wood and back. And Rose Glyn had told her that she was scared of The Franchise because she had heard someone screaming in an upstairs room, although there was supposed not to be anyone there. She, Gladys, knew that it was Monday the 15th that Rose had told her that, because Rose had said that when she went next week she was going to give notice. And she had given notice and had not worked for the Sharpes since Monday the 29th.

“I wonder what dear Rose has got on her,” Carley said, as she left the witness box.

“What makes you think she has anything?”

“People don't come and perjure themselves for friendship; not even country morons like Gladys Rees. The poor silly little rat was frightened stiff. She would never have come voluntarily.
No, that oleograph has a lever of some sort. Worth looking into if you're stuck, perhaps.”

“Do you happen to know the number of your watch?” he asked Marion as he was driving them back to The Franchise. “The one Rose Glyn stole.”

“I didn't even know that watches had numbers,” Marion said.

“Good ones do.”

“Oh, mine was a good one, but I don't know anything about its number. It was very distinctive, though. It had a pale blue enamel face with gold figures.”

“Roman figures?”

“Yes. Why do you ask? Even if I got it back I could never bear to wear it after that girl.”

“It wasn't so much getting it back I thought of, as convicting her of having taken it.”

“That would be nice.”

“Ben Carley calls her ‘the oleograph,' by the way.”

“How lovely. That is just what she is like. Is that the little man you wanted to push us off on to, that first day?”

“That's the one.”

“I am so glad that I refused to be pushed.”

“I hope you will still be as glad when this case is over,” Robert said, suddenly sober.

“We have not yet thanked you for standing surety for our bail,” Mrs. Sharpe said from the back of the car.

“If we began to thank him for all we owe him,” Marion said, “there would be no end to it.”

Except, he thought, that he had enlisted Kevin Macdermott on their side—and that was an accident of friendship—what had he been able to do for them? They would go for trial at Norton little more than a fortnight hence, and they had no defence whatever.

T
he newspaper had a field-day on Tuesday.

Now that the Franchise affair was a court case, it could no longer provide a crusade for either the
Ack-Emma
or the
Watchman
—though the
Ack-Emma
did not fail to remind its gratified readers that on such and such a date
they
had said so and so, a plain statement which was on the surface innocent and unexceptionable but was simply loaded with the forbidden comment; and Robert had no doubt that on Friday the
Watchman
would be taking similar credit to itself, with similar discretion. But the rest of the Press, who had not so far taken any interest in a case that the police had no intention of touching, woke with a glad shout to report a case that was news. Even the soberer dailies held accounts of the court appearance of the Sharpes, with headings like: EXTRAORDINARY CASE, and: UNUSUAL CHARGE. The less inhibited had full descriptions of the principal actors in the case, including Mrs. Sharpe's hat and Betty Kane's blue outfit, pictures of The Franchise, the High Street in Milford, a school friend of Betty Kane, and anything else that was even approximately relevant.

And Robert's heart sank. Both the
Ack-Emma
and the
Watchman
, in their different ways, had used the Franchise affair as a stunt. Something to be used for its momentary worth and
dropped tomorrow. But now it was a national interest, reported by every kind of paper from Cornwall to Caithness; and showed signs of becoming a
cause célèbre
.

For the first time he had a feeling of desperation. Events were hounding him, and he had no refuge. The thing was beginning to pile up into a tremendous climax at Norton and he had nothing to contribute to that climax; nothing at all. He felt as a man might feel if he saw a stacked heap of loaded crates begin to lean over towards him and had neither retreat nor a prop to stay the avalanche.

Ramsden grew more and more monosyllabic on the telephone, and less and less encouraging. Ramsden was sore. “Baffled” was a word used in boys' detective stories; it had not until now had even the remotest connection with Alec Ramsden. So Ramsden was sore, monosyllabic, and dour.

The one bright spot in the days that followed the court at Milford was provided by Stanley, who tapped on his door on Thursday morning, poked his head in, and seeing that Robert was alone came in, pushing the door to with one hand and fishing in the pocket of his dungarees with the other.

“Morning,” he said. “I think you ought to take charge of these. Those women at The Franchise have no sense at all. They keep pound notes in tea-pots and books and what not. If you're looking for a telephone number you're as likely as not to find a ten-shilling note marking the butcher's address.” He fished out a roll of money and solemnly counted twelve ten-pound notes on to the desk under Robert's nose.

“A hundred and twenty,” he said. “Nice, ain't it?”

“But what
is
it?” Robert asked, bewildered.

“Kominsky.”

“Kominsky?”

“Don't tell me you didn't have anything on! After the old lady giving us the tip herself. Mean to say you
forgot
about it!”

“Stan, I haven't even remembered lately that there was such a thing as the Guineas. So you backed it?”

“At sixties. And that's the tenth I told her she was on to, for the tip.”

“But—a tenth? You must have been plunging, Stan.”

“Twenty pounds. Twice as much as my normal ceiling. Bill did a bit of good too. Going to give his missus a fur coat.”

“So Kominsky won.”

“Won by a length and a half on a tight rein; and was that a turn up for the book!”

“Well,” Robert said, stacking the notes and banding them, “if the worst comes to the worst and they end up bankrupt, the old lady can always do a fair trade as a tipster.”

Stanley eyed his face for a moment in silence, apparently not happy about something in his tone. “Things are pretty bad, ‘m?” he said.

“Fierce,” said Robert, using one of Stanley's own descriptions.