Copyright & Information

Death Has Deep Roots

First published in 1951

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105206	9780755105205	Print
0755131827	9780755131822	Kindle
075513219X	9780755132195	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. “The plot,” wrote Keating, “is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: “I always take a latish train to work,” he explained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Part One

Chapter One

By nine o’clock the queue was long enough to engage the attention of two policemen. At ten it contained enough people to fill the Central Criminal Court three times over. Two more policemen arrived and latecomers, who had now no choice of a seat, were directed to the front of the building where they might have the pleasure of watching the legal celebrities as they arrived.

“There’s something about a woman, I mean – a murderess,” said Baby Masterton to Avis – they were standing about tenth in the queue. “You know what I mean. Just to see her standing all alone in the dock.”

“It’s such a long time since we’ve had a real woman – not awful old bags like Mrs. Wilbraham or that Carter creature who chopped up her grandson – but a girl. French too.”

“Then, you know, if she did do it – I mean, pretty cold-blooded. Even if they don’t hang her they’ll sentence her to death. There’s something about a girl being sentenced to death. You know what I mean.”

Mr. Ruby, who was twentieth in the queue – he had attended so many of these functions that he was able to gauge to a nicety the moment of his arrival and had even managed to get a proper breakfast, which was more than most of the queue had done – turned to the untidy young man next to him and said, “Your first murder trial, I expect.”

“Well, yes,” said the young man. “As a matter of fact, it is. I don’t get much opportunity for this sort of thing you know – live in Doncaster. But being up in London for a few days – I say, though, how did you know—?”

“Your camera,” said Mr. Ruby with a dry smile. “If you try to take that inside the court you’ll find yourself in the dock, not the public gallery.”

“My goodness,” said the young man, hurriedly slipping the camera strap off his shoulder. “How very lucky I happened to speak to you – what had I better do with it?”

“I should put it in your pocket, or hand it to the attendant at the door. He’ll look after it for you.”

“Well, thank you,” said the young man. “It’s really very kind of you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Mr. Ruby. “I go to a lot of these criminal trials. In fact, I should describe myself as rather a student of the forensic science. Now this one should be particularly interesting. There’s no doubt, I think, that the girl’s guilty – but with Claudian Summers prosecuting and Poynter for the defence – they’re both Silks, of course – I think we shall see some great cut and thrust.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose we shall,” agreed the young man. Indeed his eyes were already alight, as one who waits to hear a geste or a tale of ancient chivalry. “Both K.C.’s you say?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ruby. “You’d hardly expect anything less than a leader in a capital case. But Poynter’s a magician with a jury. If the prisoner is guilty – and I say, from reading the proceedings at the police court I can hardly see how she can be anything else – then she couldn’t have a better counsel than Poynter. I’ve seen every man and woman in the jury in tears – all twelve of ’em – before he’d finished with them.”

“And with Claudian Summers for the Crown, she’s going to need all the defending she can get—oh, here comes a photographer.” Mr. Ruby straightened his bow tie and smoothed his thinning hair.

The press, having time on their hands before the arrival of the principals, had turned their attention to the queue and were getting some human stuff for the center pages. The man and woman at the head of the queue had already revealed, for the benefit of the five and a half million registered readers of the Daily Telephone, that their names were Edna and Egbert Engleheart, that they came from East Finchley and that they had already been waiting five hours and forty-five minutes, when, on a signal that the judge was arriving, the pressmen vanished as suddenly as they had come.

“They’re opening the door,” said Mr. Ruby. “Come on, we shall get a good seat.”

This was optimistic if taken as describing the seat itself which was as hard as teak and as narrow as a legal distinction; but they certainly had a good view of the court. The box-shaped room, looking oddly fore-shortened as seen from above; the benches at the back for the legal hangers-on (“My God,” said Baby. “Young Fanshawe pretending to be a law student or something.” “If anyone takes him for a lawyer,” said Avis, “they’ll mistake me for the Queen of Sheba.” “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said Baby)—in the middle the dock, enormous and, as yet, empty. Then the cross-benches, steadily filling with wigged and gowned counsel and dark-coated solicitors.

“Lord bless me,” said Mr. Ruby, suddenly leaning forward and gripping his companion by the arm, “what’s happening?”

The young man was pardonably startled. It crossed his mind that someone might be attempting a last-minute rescue of the prisoner. Mr. Ruby, after several shots, got his pince-nez from their case and focused them on the foremost cross-bench.

“My God, so it is,” said a middle-aged man on the right. “There’s no mistaking him, is there? I thought Summers was leading for the Crown.”

“He is – he is,” said Mr. Ruby impatiently. “He’s just come in – that’s him talking to the usher—” He indicated a thin, slight figure, standing by the door. “Macrea must have been brought in for the defence – or else – where’s Poynter? He can’t have refused the case at the last moment.”

In the midst of this speculation the prisoner suddenly appeared in the dock. One moment it was empty, the next moment she was sitting there, with the wardresses on chairs behind her.

“I see what you mean,” said Baby to Avis. “But you must admit she’s got a certain sort of chic. Does she speak English?”

“Oh yes, quite well. They had an interpreter at the police court but they didn’t have to use him. She’s got a funny sort of accent.”

At this point the clerk to the court got up from his desk in front of the judge’s rostrum and was observed to go across and have a confabulation with Mr. Summers; who took off his wig, scratched his fine grey hair with a long forefinger, and then replaced his wig slightly askew.

“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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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—”

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

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.

Chapter Two

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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.”

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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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.

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.

Chapter Three

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.”

Thousands of French girls did as much,” agreed Nap. “I don’t think it makes it any less creditable. It certainly didn’t make it any less unpleasant for them when they were caught – as Vicky was.”

Nap paused for a moment and looked out of the breakfast-room window, over the sensible, sunlit, rose garden: and tried to re-create in his mind something of life as he had known it in France during those times: the hate and the fear, the hysterics and the exaggeration and the heroism.

“Here’s where we’ve got to be careful,” he said, “because things which happened at that time always seem, somehow, to get a bit twisted in the telling. From what I know of the way things were worked, I should imagine that Père Chaise’s farm was really a sort of flytrap. The old man was much too noisy to be a conspirator. You can bet your bottom dollar the Gestapo knew all about him. But they let him alone, for the time being, until something really worthwhile should turn up. And in August of 1943 it did turn up, in the form of a British agent – a young and very inexperienced agent, I’m afraid, called Wells – a Lieutenant Julian Wells. I expect the planners in London had their eye on the Basse Loire. It lay in the flank of the turning movement in Normandy which must already have been on their map boards. Quite a lot of agents were flown in. Some were lucky; some weren’t. Wells had been told that his first job was to contact the British officer who was running the district – a very tough and crafty character called Thoseby – Major Eric Thoseby.”

“Yes,” said Nap. “But he didn’t do it, that was just the trouble. He must have been dropped a bit off-course. He had to do the best he could for himself, and he holed up at the Père Chaise farm; he was there for about three weeks, hidden under a haystack, whilst the local Maquisards went to look for Thoseby. Unfortunately, before they could contact him – he happened to be across the Swiss border – the Gestapo descended on the farm and roped everyone in. Père Chaise and two other men were shot. Vicky, as being somewhat less deeply involved, was locked up whilst they made their minds up about her.”

“That’s just it,” said Nap. “We don’t know. After a raid of that sort the German policy was to keep the different prisoners separate. They could work on them better that way. One would believe the other had said things – and so on. Of course they told Vicky that they’d got Wells. They had a very good reason to think that they could influence her through him.”

“I mean,” said Nap slowly, “that it soon became apparent that Vicky was going to have a child. Once she knew it was coming, she made no bones about it. She said it was Wells’s child. And to do her justice, she has stuck steadily to that story ever since.”

“One of them must have been a fast worker,” said Mr. Rumbold. “Two perfect strangers of barely three weeks’ acquaintance—”

“Well, do you know, I can believe that part of it easily enough,” said Nap. “They were both living under tension – a hothouse sort of life; these things were apt to happen much more quickly than they might in normal times.”

“And the Germans,” said Mr. Rumbold, “believing this, used threats about what they would do to Wells in order to get information out of this poor girl.”

“Good Lord, no.” Nap looked mildly at his father. “They could have got any blessed information they wanted out of her in five minutes, with a blowlamp. In any case, I don’t suppose she knew anything useful. As I said, she wasn’t deeply involved. The few actual Maquisard locations which she knew about would have been changed within half an hour of the news of her arrest. No, it was rather more than that. They wanted her to work for them. Then they would have released her and used her as a decoy. But if they were going to play that game they needed a good permanent hold over her. Hence Wells.”

“No. On one occasion, when she was getting difficult, they produced one of his boots, covered with blood—”

“I don’t know,” said Nap. “I really don’t know… the gentle Gestapo I knew would have been more likely to have shown her one of his boots with the foot still in it. Even that wouldn’t have proved anything. You could fake a boot just as easily as you could fake a foot. On balance I’m inclined to think they did have him, but he came to pieces in their hands, so they buried him quietly. Anyway, nothing’s been seen of him since. Time went on, and in the end she had the child, actually in the Gestapo prison hospital, just before D-Day. I don’t suppose it was exactly like a high-class London nursing home, but I think they were reasonably efficient. It was a boy, called Jules – an afterthought for ‘Julian’ perhaps. Then D-Day happened – and she was moved back with a lot of other prisoners, to a place near Strasbourg. They didn’t take her into Germany. Might have been better if they had. You know what France was like during the last year of the war. The baby must have had a hell of a time. He was never very strong. Vicky’s one idea was to get hold of Major Thoseby. She had two reasons for this, she says. He knew about her work with the Resistance, and might have persuaded the British Army authorities to look after the baby. Also he might have known where Wells was. Anyway, that’s her version of it, and it’s got to be borne in mind, in view of what happened later. She never caught up with Thoseby. As soon as his part of France fell he was flown back to London and he got an immediate job on the War Crimes Commission and spent most of the next three years in Germany.

“After the war things didn’t improve much in France, and Vicky often thought of coming to England. She speaks quite good English, and she still hoped to find Thoseby. Then, in that very lean and very bitter spring of 1947 something did happen – it was sad, but in a way it made things easier. The child died. Vicky took what money she had, wangled her permit and came over and began looking for a job. There she struck oil almost at once – a man called Sainte who came from the same Basse Loire province. She didn’t know him – but he happened to have known Père Chaise. He was running a hotel on Pearlyman Street, near Euston. He knew something of what Vicky had been through – and gave her a job and looked after her. It wasn’t entirely charity. She worked hard for her keep. The French take a pretty realistic view of what constitutes a good day’s work for a woman.”

“No. It didn’t give her too much time to think about things. Any spare moments she did get were spent pestering the War Office for news of Thoseby – and Wells.”

“Judging from the upshot,” said Mr. Rumbold dryly, “she anyway succeeded in contacting Major Thoseby.”

“In fact,” said Nap, “Thoseby found her. The French run an organisation in London – the Société de Lorraine – which keeps an eye on all the French who, for one reason or another, decided to stay on here after the liberation. It’s a sort of offshoot of their Embassy, and it has an office in Charles Street. Thoseby called in at this office when he was on a visit from Germany. He saw the name of Victoria Lamartine and asked the clerk about her. The clerk then remembered that Vicky had been inquiring about a Major Thoseby, did an unusually lucid bit of putting two and two together for a bureaucrat and turned up her address, the upshot of which was that Thoseby wrote to Sainte and booked a room at his hotel for the night of March fourteenth. He wrote on March twelfth, but I gather there was some difficulty at first in fitting the time in, as Thoseby was due back in Germany on the sixteenth and he was busy all day at the War Office. However, that’s the way he arranged it, and he wrote this letter to Sainte, who, of course, told Vicky. On the fourteenth Thoseby telephoned to say he would be at the hotel sometime that same evening.”

“Various versions of what happened on the evening of March fourteenth can be found in the depositions at the police court—”

And read them he did, from beginning to end, without any comment, whilst Nap sat on the window seat and smoked his pipe and thought about a number of things.

“This case has been remarkably well cobbled,” said his father at last. “That’ll be Claudian Summers. He started life as a Chancery draftsman and he’s got a most damnably logical mind.”

“You know,” went on his father, “there’s only one person who could have done this.”

“That’s rather what Spence and Company thought,” said Nap, “and I rather gather that’s why they’ve had the case taken away from them.”

“When you say that,” said Mr. Rumbold gently, “you display to my mind a misunderstanding of the role of a legal adviser. I am prepared to take on this case, because I think that I ought to help anyone who went through what Miss Lamartine did, particularly when it was the result of her efforts – even indirect efforts – to help this country. Also I happen to be old – fashioned enough to think that a woman in distress ought to be helped. Especially when she is a foreigner and about to be subjected to the savage and unpredictable caprices of the English judicial system—”Nap had noticed before, in one or two men of his father’s age, a certain conditioning of their adjectives, the result, no doubt, of five years of Churchillian oratory—“but you must not imagine that we are playing the heroes of this melodrama to Spence’s villain. The only real difference between Spence and me is that I happen to be prepared to do some work on this case, whilst he is not. He is quite plainly prepared—” Mr. Rumbold ruffled over the depositions—“to go to the jury on what amounts to an admission of guilt with a plea in extenuation. Now I – assisted by you, Nap – am going to contest every step of the way. We’re going to fight a long, dirty blackguarding campaign in which we shall use every subterfuge that the law allows, and perhaps even a few that it doesn’t – you can’t be too particular when you’re defending. If we can’t get witnesses of our own we must shake up their witnesses. If we can’t shake them, we must discredit them. We’ll have to brief the counsel best suited to such tactics—”

“That old windbag,” said Mr. Rumbold. “If we mean business it would be about as much good putting him up against Claudian Summers as it would be for you or me to bowl legs breaks to Bradman with a ping-pong ball. That’s exactly what I meant when I said that they weren’t prepared to do any real work. If you look at the paper you’ll see Poynter’s got two more cases in the same list. And no doubt he’ll find time to do all three of them, the way he prepares them. No. If we mean business, there’s only one man for our money and that’s Macrea.”

“I’ve already had a word with his clerk on the telephone. Just on the chance. I think he’ll take it. I hope he will. There’s no one I’d rather have with me in a roughhouse. We’ll get him to ask for a postponement. In the circumstances Arbuthnot can hardly refuse it.”

“I’d thought of that. But I don’t think these adjournments do a case any good. Bound to create prejudice. Besides I can’t honestly think of anyone I’d rather take the case in front of than Arbuthnot. He’s strict, but very very fair. And he does decide cases on facts, which is a good deal more,” Mr. Rumbold added libelously, “than you can say for all of ’em.”

“Fast and hard,” agreed Mr. Rumbold. “You and me and anyone else we can rope in. What we must have is facts. Good hard provable facts. There’s nothing here but wind and water.” He shook Mr. Spence’s dossier angrily in the air. “Nothing solid at all.”

“We’ll start with the girl herself. We’ll both go and have a word with her tomorrow afternoon – I want to spend most of the morning with Macrea. We shall have to do something about guaranteeing his fee, too. What’s the present arrangement?”

“I gather that Spence’s costs were being paid by Vicky’s employer, M. Sainte. I also gather that he wasn’t a particularly rich man and funds were running a bit low.”

“Which accounts, no doubt, for his lack of enthusiasm,” suggested Mr. Rumbold uncharitably. “Well, we won’t worry too much about our fees, but we shall have to fix Macrea.”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” said Nap. “If it comes off, it might solve the financial difficulties. There’s a sort of M.I.5. fund – a very privy purse – for cases like this. I know the chap at the War Office who might be able to pull the strings.”

He had no objection to pulling any number of strings provided they worked in his direction.

Chapter Four

Mr. Hargest Macrea had his chambers on the east side of King’s Bench Walk. He was their real, though not their titular head. His name appeared no higher than fourth on the long list in the hallway; but Sir Ernest Puckeridge, the expert on Privy Council Appeals, now devoted most of his time to the cultivation of tomatoes under glass; Judge Trimble had long ago sunk into well – merited oblivion by way of the County Court Bench; whilst Mr. Barter – Shaw (who confined himself to written opinions on canon law) had been quite mad for years.

Macrea was not a specialist. If called upon to define his pursuits he would have said that he specialised in advocacy. For a quarter of a century he had been bickering profitably with judges of every type from the rare heights of the House of Lords down to the earthy depths of the Land Tribunals. Be the going firm and the hedges stiff he had never yet refused to join in the hunt. He was the possessor of a Scots accent, which was apt to become more marked as the hearing grew more acrimonious (for he had early discovered that there was nothing which annoyed the opposition more than to have the name of their client repeatedly and markedly mispronounced). But his greatest single weapon was his monocle. It was a monocle of peculiar distortion and its application had more than once unnerved a recalcitrant witness. In addition he possessed a truculent intellect and a remarkable memory. Mr. Rumbold had been sending him briefs for more than twenty years.

That Sunday afternoon, following a telephone call, both the Rumbolds had a word with him in his Surrey home. Macrea tore the heart from the pile of documents with trained rapidity and his conclusion was the same as Mr. Rumbold’s had been.

“We want facts,” he said. “I’ll read the papers more carefully this evening, and I’ll make your application for you tomorrow, but if we’re going to achieve anything we shall want more facts. You can’t go out shooting without ammunition.”

“I rather thought,” said Nap, “that I might get a line on both those military witnesses through Uncle Alfred. He knows General Rockingham-Hawse in Establishments.”

“What about the hotel people? The proprietor and waiter and—what’s her name?—Mrs. Roper. We’ve got to shake her evidence or we might as well pack up.”

“Well. He keeps a pub in Shepherd Market – I met him first in the army, and we’ve done one or two jobs together since. He’d do anything for a bit of excitement.”

“Sounds a broad-minded man,” said Macrea. “See if he’ll do it for you. Nothing official, mind. Just an inquiry to see what he can pick up. That leaves the main field clear for you.” He thought for a moment and then said gently, “You’ve got to find Wells.”