The Franchise Affair (30 page)

Robert sat doodling on Miss Tuff's nice fresh blotting-paper. A herring-bone pattern; very neat and decorative. “You see what this means, don't you? We are sunk.”

“But you have this,” Ramsden protested, indicating the printed scrap of paper that had come with the watch.

“That merely destroys the police case. It doesn't disprove Betty Kane's story. If the Sharpes are ever to be rid of this thing the girl's story has to be shown to be nonsense. Our only chance of doing that is to find out where she was during those weeks.”

“Yes. I see.”

“I suppose you have checked on private owners?”

“Planes? Oh, yes. The same thing goes there. We have no photograph of the man, so he might be any one of the hundreds of private owners who went abroad with female companions in the specified time.”

“Yes. Pretty well sunk. Not much wonder Ben Carley was amused.”

“You're tired, Mr. Blair. You've been having a worrying time.”

“Yes. It isn't very often a country solicitor has something like this dumped on his shoulders,” Robert said wryly.

Ramsden regarded him with what amounted on the Ramsden visage to a smile. “For a country solicitor,” he said, “it seems to me you're not doing badly, Mr. Blair. Not badly at all.”

“Thanks,” Robert said, really smiling. Coming from Alec Ramsden that was practically an O.M.

“I shouldn't let it get you down. You've got an insurance against the very worst happening—or will, when I get that printed evidence.”

Robert flung down the pen he had been doodling with. “I'm
not interested in insurance,” he said with sudden heat. “I'm interested in justice. I have only one ambition in life at this moment. And that is to have Betty Kane's story disproved in open court. To have the full account of what she did during those weeks made public in her presence and duly backed up by irreproachable witnesses. What are our chances of that, do you think? And what—tell me—what have we left untried that could possibly help us?”

“I don't know,” Mr. Ramsden said, seriously. “Prayer, perhaps.”

T
his, oddly enough, was also Aunt Lin's reaction.

Aunt Lin had become gradually reconciled to Robert's connection with the Franchise affair as it moved from the provincial-unsavoury to the national-celebrated. It was, after all, no disgrace to be connected with a case that was reported in
The Times
. Aunt Lin did not, of course, read
The Times
, but her friends did. The vicar, and old Colonel Whittaker, and the girl at Boots and old Mrs. Warren from Weymouth (Swanage); and it was vaguely gratifying to think that Robert should be solicitor for the defence in a famous trial, even if the defence was against a charge of beating a helpless girl. And of course it had never even remotely shadowed her mind that Robert would not win the case. She had taken that quite placidly for granted. In the first place Robert himself was so clever; and in the second Blair, Hayward, and Bennet could not conceivably be connected with a failure. She had even regretted in her own mind, in passing, that his triumph would take place over at Norton and not in Milford where everyone might be there to see.

So that the first hint of doubt came as a surprise to her. Not a shock, since she still could not visualise the prospect of failure. But definitely as a new thought.

“But, Robert,” she said, sweeping her foot round under the
table in an effort to locate her footstool, “you don't suppose for a moment that you are going to
lose
the case, do you?”

“On the contrary,” Robert said, “I don't suppose for a moment that we shall win it.”

“Robert!”

“In trial by jury it is customary to have a case to put to the jury. So far we have no case. And I don't think that the jury is going to like that at all.”

“You sound quite pettish, dear. I think you are allowing the thing to get on your nerves. Why don't you take tomorrow afternoon off and arrange a golf four? You have hardly golfed at all lately and it can't be good for your liver. Not golfing, I mean.”

“I can't believe,” Robert said wonderingly, “that I was ever interested in the fate of ‘a piece of gutta-percha' on a golf course. That must have been in some other life.”

“That is what I say, dear. You are losing your sense of proportion. Allowing this affair to worry you quite unnecessarily. After all, you have Kevin.”

“That I take leave to doubt.”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“I can't imagine Kevin taking time off and travelling down to Norton to defend a case that he is fore-ordained to lose. He has his quixotic moments, but they don't entirely obliterate his common sense.”

“But Kevin promised to come.”

“When he made that promise there was still time for a defence to materialise. Now we can almost count the days to the Assizes and still we have no evidence—and no prospect of any.”

Miss Bennet eyed him over her soup spoon. “I don't think, you know, dear,” she said, “that you have enough faith.”

Robert refrained from saying that he had none at all. Not, anyhow, where divine intervention in the Franchise affair was concerned.

“Have faith, my dear,” she said happily, “and it will all come right. You'll see.” The charged silence that succeeded this evidently worried her a little, for she added: “If I had known you were doubtful or unhappy about the case, dear, I should have said extra prayers about it long ago. I am afraid I took it for granted that you and Kevin would manage it between you.” “It” being British justice. “But now that I know you are worrying about it I shall most certainly put up some special petitions.”

The matter-of-fact application-for-relief tone with which this was uttered restored Robert's good humour.

“Thank you, darling,” he said in his normal good-natured voice.

She laid the spoon down on her empty plate and sat back; and a small teasing smile appeared on her round pink face. “I know that tone,” she said. “It means that you're humouring me. But there's no need to, you know. It's I who am right about this, and you are wrong. It says quite distinctly that faith will move mountains. The difficulty always is that it takes a quite colossal faith to move a mountain; and is practically impossible to assemble so large a faith, so mountains are practically never moved. But in lesser cases—like the present one—it is possible to have enough faith for the occasion. So instead of being deliberately hopeless, dear, do
try
to have some confidence in the event. Meanwhile I shall go along to St. Matthew's this evening and spend a little time praying that you will be given a piece of evidence tomorrow morning. That will make you feel happier.”

When Alec Ramsden walked into his room next morning with the piece of evidence, Robert's first thought was that nothing could prevent Aunt Lin taking credit for it. Nor was there any hope of his not mentioning it, since the first thing she would ask him at luncheon, in bright confident tones, would be: “Well, dear, did you get the evidence I prayed for?”

Ramsden was both pleased with himself and amused; so much
could be translated, at any rate, from the Ramsden idiom into common knowledge.

“I had better confess frankly, Mr. Blair, that when you sent me to that school I had no great hopes. I went because it seemed to be as good a starting-place as any, and I might find out from the staff some good way of getting acquainted with Rees. Or rather, letting one of my boys get acquainted. I had even worked out how we could get printed letters from her without any fuss, once one of my boys got off with her. But you're a wonder, Mr. Blair. You had the right idea after all.”

“You mean you've got what we wanted!”

“I saw her form mistress, and was quite frank about what we wanted and why. Well, as frank as need be. I said Gladys was suspected of perjury—a penal servitude affair—but that we thought she'd been blackmailed into giving her evidence, and to prove it was blackmail we needed a sample of any printed letters she ever wrote. Well, when you sent me there I took it for granted that she would not have printed a single letter since she left the kindergarten. But the form mistress—a Miss Baggaly—said to give her a minute to think. ‘Of course,' she said, ‘she was very good at drawing, and if I have nothing perhaps the visiting art-mistress might have something. We like to keep good work when our pupils produce it.' As a comfort for all the duds they have to put up with, I suppose, poor things. Well, I didn't have to see the art-mistress, because Miss Baggaly hunted through some things, and produced this.”

He laid a sheet of paper down on the desk in front of Robert. It appeared to be a free-hand map of Canada, showing the principal divisions, towns and rivers. It was inaccurate but very neat. Across the bottom was printed DOMINION OF CANADA. And in the right-hand corner was the signature: Gladys Rees.

“It seems that every summer, at breaking-up time, they have an exhibition of work, and they normally keep the exhibits until
the next exhibition the following year. I suppose it would seem too callous just to toss them out the day after. Or perhaps they keep them to show to visiting big-wigs and inspectors. Anyhow, there were drawers full of the stuff. This,” he indicated the map, “was a product of a competition—'Draw a map of any country from memory in twenty minutes'—and the three prize winners had their answers exhibited. This was a ‘third equal.' ”

“I can hardly believe it,” Robert said, feasting his eyes on Gladys Rees's handiwork.

“Miss Baggaly was right about her being good with her hands. Funny, when she stayed so illiterate. You can see where they corrected her dotted capital I's.”

You could indeed. Robert was gloating over the place.

“She has no mind, the girl, but a good eye,” he said, considering Gladys's idea of Canada. “She remembered the shape of things but not the names. And the spelling is entirely her own. I suppose the ‘third equal' was for the neat work.”

“Neat work for us anyhow,” Ramsden said, laying down the scrap of paper that had come with the watch. “Let us be thankful she didn't choose Alaska.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “A miracle.” (Aunt Lin's miracle, his mind said.) “Who is the best man at this sort of thing?”

Ramsden told him.

“I'll take it up to town with me now, tonight, and have the report before morning, and I'll take it round to Mr. Macdermott at breakfast time, if that's all right with you.”

“Right?” said Robert. “It's perfect.”

“I think it might be a good idea to finger-print them too—and the little cardboard box. There
are
judges who don't like handwriting experts, but the two together would convince even a judge.”

“Well,” Robert said, handing them over, “at least my clients are not going to be sentenced to hard labour.”

“There's nothing like looking on the bright side,” Ramsden commented dryly; and Robert laughed.

“You think I'm ungrateful for such a dispensation. I'm not. It's a terrific load off my mind. But the real load is still there. Proving that Rose Glyn is a thief, liar, and blackmailer—with perjury thrown in as a sideline—leaves Betty Kane's story still untouched. And it is Betty Kane's story that we set out to disprove.”

“There's still time,” Ramsden said; but half-heartedly.

“About all there is time for is a miracle.”

“Well? Why not? They happen. Why shouldn't they happen to us? What time shall I telephone you tomorrow?”

But it was Kevin who telephoned on the morrow; full of congratulations and jubilation. “You're a marvel, Rob. I'll make mincemeat of them.”

Yes, it would be a lovely little exercise in cat-and-mouse play for Kevin; and the Sharpes would walk out of the court “free.” Free to go back to their haunted house and their haunted existence; two half-mad witches who had once threatened and beaten a girl.

“You don't sound very gay, Rob. Is it getting you down?”

Robert said what he was thinking; that the Sharpes saved from prison would still be in a prison of Betty Kane's making.

“Perhaps not, perhaps not,” Kevin said. “I'll do my best with the Kane over that howler about the divided path. Indeed, if Miles Allison weren't prosecuting I could probably break her with it; but Miles will probably be quick enough to retrieve the situation. Cheer up, Rob. At the very least her credit will be seriously shaken.”

But shaking Betty Kane's credit was not enough. He knew just how little effect that would have on the general public. He had had a large experience lately of the woman-in-the-street and had been appalled by the general inability to analyse the simplest statement. Even if the newspapers were to report that small
bit about the view from the window—and they would probably be much too busy reporting the more sensational matter of Rose Glyn's perjury—even if they reported it, it would have no effect on the average reader. “They tried to put her in the wrong but they were very quickly put in their place.” That is all it would convey to them.

Kevin might successfully shake Betty Kane's credit with the Court, the reporters, the officials, and any critical minds who happened to be present; but on the present evidence he could do nothing to alter the strong feeling of partisanship that Betty Kane's case had aroused throughout the country. The Sharpes would stay condemned.

And Betty Kane would “get away with it.”

That to Robert was a thought that was even worse than the prospect of the Sharpes' haunted life. Betty Kane would go on being the centre of an adoring family; secure, loved, hero-worshipped. The once easy-going Robert grew homicidal at the thought.

He had had to confess to Aunt Lin that a piece of evidence had turned up at the time specified in her prayers, but had pusillanimously refrained from telling her that the said evidence was good enough to destroy the police case. She would call that winning the case; and “winning,” to Robert, meant something very different.