Roger said: “ If it will help I’ll undertake to see as little as possible of her over the next months. Much the best way is to leave it alone, then it may cool off of its own accord.”
“I’d be grateful,” Sir Percy said slowly, “if at any rate you’d not see her at all until this action is over. There’s bound to be a lot of unpleasant Press publicity, which I wouldn’t want Marion involved in.”
“I’ll do my best.”
They went out to the lift. As they walked together through the discreetly-lit chandeliered foyer Roger said: “ There’s an irony in all this, you know.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Only that I brought this libel action partly to satisfy you.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Shorn.”
“Well, the natural thing was to ignore this silly challenge that Don Marlowe flung at me. My editor told me to. My friends told me to. But I had just met you and had a great respect for your opinion—and you seemed to think it unsatisfactory to leave it there. It would have been easier and less expensive for everyone if I had.”
“Possibly in the——”
“But I didn’t. I went ahead. So I am shortly going to run into the expense and the ‘unpleasant publicity’ you speak of, chiefly to clear myself in the eyes of someone to whom it clearly couldn’t have mattered less.”
They got near the door and stopped. Sir Percy waved away a liveried attendant. “That’s not strictly true, Shorn; really it’s not. It does matter, it must matter, not only to me but to everyone. Personally, I don’t think you could honourably have refused to bring this action; and if you went ahead partly because I said what I did, then I’m glad. My favourable view of your talents hasn’t changed in the least since then. You ought to know that. But where Marion comes in you touch a very sensitive spot, a very sensitive spot indeed. She’s all I have, and I want her to be happy. It’s the most important thing of all, and I’m not at all sure yet that she would be happy with you. That’s not a criticism of you as a person but of circumstances as they exist. I hope you don’t mind my frankness.”
“I admire you for it.”
“Well, there it is, there it is.” They passed through the revolving doors and stood on the step. It was a fine night. “ I’m sorry about this. I’m sorry it has had to happen. Ah, I see my car is just down the street. No, don’t bother, doorman, I’ll walk to it.”
“Good night,” Roger said.
They shook hands. “ I hope your action will go well. I believe it is still very important—for all of us.” Laycock tapped Roger’s arm. “Good night.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Joanna turned down an engagement for the sixth of October. She made her plans and could only leave the outcome to decide itself. A feeling of fatalism had sedimented in her mind.
The auction began at 10 a.m. The big low living-room was quite full, the people the usual mixed bag. Some recognised her and wished her good morning, others stared enviously and then lost interest.
She had a catalogue and took a careful note of what each piece fetched and who bought it. When she didn’t know or couldn’t catch the names she put Mrs A. or Mr B. against the item. Occasionally she bid but she bought nothing.
By lunch much of the important stuff had gone, and over a hasty lunch in a café she summed up her findings. Local people had bought quite a lot, especially a Mrs Carter who had a shop in Midhurst. A selective buyer was a Mr Barnard whom she didn’t know. After lunch she went back and followed the sale until the end. The last item went about 5.30.
The next morning she drove down again and was in Chichester by eleven. She went into the offices of the auctioneer and asked to see him. She said: “ I wonder if you could be so very kind as to help me? I was at the sale yesterday but missed buying one or two personal things that my husband wanted. Most of those things seemed to have been bought by a Mr Barnard. We thought we might inquire if he would re-sell them. Could you give me his address?”
“Well, yes, certainly, Mrs Marlowe. But I have to tell you that Mr Barnard was representing Thorpe, Mills and Thorpe, a firm of solicitors. I don’t think he was buying for himself.”
“Then perhaps you could give me the address where these things were to be sent?”
“Fred, where were those things for Barnard to go? Got the address?”
“Sure, wait a minute.” The auctioneer’s clerk came out with a book, which he thumbed through. “Here it is, ma’am Mrs Beaconsfield, Chatterton House, Hurtmore Road, Godalming.”
It was about an hour’s drive, and then she had to find the house. It was on the outskirts of the town, set back in its own grounds among beeches and pines; but when you got to it it was quite small, brick-built, with leaded panes and a tiled veranda.
She had left the car in the road and walked up the gravel path. The house looked deserted and she half hoped it might be; but she pulled the bell and almost at once someone opened it, and at once she knew that her search was ended.
Narissa Delaney was a tall woman, and looked taller for being two steps higher than her visitor. She was dark, with a broad white forehead and wide finely shadowed cheek-bones, a sensuous but composed mouth, rich black hair winged back.
“Mrs Beaconsfield?”
“Yes?”
“I am Joanna Marlowe.”
Her expression did not change. “Yes?”
“You are Mrs Delaney, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Joanna followed the other woman into a sitting-room looking out over the back lawn.
“How did you trace me?”
“I went to the sale yesterday and took note of the man buying most of Sir John’s personal things.”
“He had instructions not to say.”
“He didn’t say. I got your address from the auctioneer.”
Mrs Delaney took down a silver cigarette-box, offered it to Joanna, who took one. “ What can I do for you?”
“Thank you.… No, I have a light.” Joanna felt herself over-coloured in this sombre room. The trees were growing too near the windows. “I came to see you about the libel action.”
Mrs Delaney put her cigarette in a long holder and took her time over lighting it.
“I have been away. Since March until nearly September I have been in the Bahamas.”
“I thought that might be the explanation.”
“Of what?”
“You’ll know about the articles in The Gazette—about my I husband’s father.”
“I have heard of them, yes.”
“And of the action that’s pending?”
“Something.” The tone was not helpful.
“Mrs Delaney, I think perhaps you could do more than anyone to contradict some of the things said about him in those articles.”
“I don’t know everything that was said in the articles.”
“You know we’ve been trying to trace you?”
Mrs Delaney looked at her visitor. “Haven’t we met before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, well.… Perhaps it is the photographs I have seen.” The liquid brilliance of the eyes was filmed. “Yes, I knew you were trying to trace me.”
“This libel action starts next week—Monday or Tuesday. I’d like you to see my husband before then.”
“What good would it do?”
“You must want to disprove these lies about John Marlowe, if you know them to be lies.”
“My memory of John Marlowe is complete. I know and understand what he was. Why should I care what people say of him?”
“Doesn’t his reputation mean anything?”
“Reputation? Words in the mouths of a few trivial people. Why should I sully my memories by dragging them out in a court of law for the papers to paw over? I have had enough of newspapers.
Your husband should have taken no notice. By forcing this action he is playing them at their own game.”
“And hoping to win.”
Mrs Delaney shrugged. “ I suppos
e now you know where I am you can force me to appear even if I don’t want to.”
“Well.… we’d rather have you as a friendly witness.”
“I am neither friendly nor unfriendly. Only a little disgusted with so much that life has brought.”
Joanna said: “Are you willing to help us?”
“How do you know that anything I said in the law court would be favourable to you?”
“A woman doesn’t collect the personal things of a man she dislikes. Nor——”
“Nor?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But I remember now. I saw you at the cottage last February, didn’t I, with a man; you called in one Sunday and nearly caught me. I have a key of the house and had gone there for a few minutes, as I did once or twice about that time, just to be there alone.”
“Yes,” said Joanna.
“I slipped out of the back and then came round and saw you as I passed the window.”
“It was rather a shock.”
Mrs Delaney moved quietly across the room, sat on the arm of a chair by the window. The filtered light fell on her face and showed the fine lines like arrow heads at the corners of her eyes. “There is another reason why I have not come forward. After John’s death I was so upset that I only wanted to get away. When I came back I changed my name to avoid being persecuted.”
“By the Press do you mean?”
“No. By my ex-husband. Robert Delaney.”
“I’m sorry.”
“When I married him my father settled a trust fund on us jointly. When I began to divorce him, Robert at first said he would not defend. Then when he found that if he was the guilty party he would lose his interest in the trust, he chose to fight. That was when I met your father-in-law. Afterwards … after I had won, Robert pestered me for what he considered his rights, though he no longer had any legal claim. In those days I had a lot of money, so I agreed to make him an allowance equal to the amount he would have had through the trust. Then I lost my money.…” She shrugged. “Now that I have some of it back I know that as soon as Robert can find me he will begin all over again.”
“I see.”
“If I once go into court.… And almost certainly my appearance would be useless.…”
“I wish you’d let Don judge that.”
“He is sure to clutch at any straw.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you? … I wonder about that.… It’s strange that I never met him. His sister was enchanting, though so young. I used to think that they were neglectful of their father until I found it was part of a deliberate policy on his part to give them absolute freedom, indeed, slightly to keep them at arm’s length. He was going to invite them down—and you—one day to tell you he intended to many me. You had just become engaged to his son, hadn’t you—three years ago this month?”
“Yes. We were engaged on the first of October and married on the thirtieth of November.… Why did you never marry him, then?”
“He never told you?”
“No.”
“Nor his children?.… I knew he did not at the beginning, but I thought sometime he would have let it out.”
“No.”
Mrs Delaney said: “He was a strange man, full of contradictions. Witty—serious minded. Easy-going—stiff backed. Principled— earthly. Perhaps after all it will be a good thing if I meet his son.”
“Thank you. I think you should.”
“But no promises. I will keep all that to decide when we meet.”
“Could it be today sometime? If you are going to give evidence it’s urgent he should know what it is.”
Mrs Delaney tapped her fingers.
“Tomorrow evening?” said Joanna.
“… Very well. Tomorrow. Tell him he can come after dinner—about nine. Will you come with him?”
“I think you should have this talk alone.”
They went to the door together. Mrs Delaney said: “Who was the man you were with that day in February? That wasn’t John’s son.”
“.… Don was away until April.” Joanna pulled on her gloves, sliding the black kid fingers. “ That was Roger Shorn, the man who wrote the articles in The Sunday Gazette.”
There was a short pause. An assessment was going on between two adult, highly intelligent women. It was as subtle and as silent as the onset of frost.
Joanna said: “He was driving me home from a friend’s house and we called in at the cottage. He claimed then to be an admirer of Don’s father. But while we were there, though I didn’t know it at the time, he took some letters; he has used these as a basis for some of the statements he has made. I don’t know what they were but I imagine they were from George Chislehurst.”
“George Chislehurst,” said Mrs Delaney. But she was not thinking of what she said.
Joanna looked up. Her eyes were cool and steady. “My husband doesn’t know of my visit with Roger Shorn. I think he wouldn’t understand.”
Mrs Delaney’s gesture was a polite disclaimer of responsibility. “But I take it, in view of your coming here, that your loyalty is still to your husband?”
“Yes.…”
“Don’t you think you should tell him?”
“No.”
“Well, there is no reason why I should, Mrs Marlowe.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said in the same level tone. “ That’s what I wanted to know.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Wipe that dirt off your eyebrow,” said Peter. “We don’t want to overdo it. How does this hat look?”
“All right,” Michael said. “How long have we got?”
“Ten minutes.”
They sat side by side in an old lorry in a private garage in Brook Green. Michael broke a cigarette and put one half behind his ear. The other half he lighted.
This was the job. During the last two weeks they had made their plans, cautiously, with intelligence and attention to detail. The idea seemed to Michael well thought out, impudent maybe but not inherently risky. He was more sure of its success than he had been of either of the others.
A Mr and Mrs Bernard Gilbert lived at 241 Sloane Street. Gilbert was in oil, and they had a big house in Kent where they spent every week-end. During the last four years Mrs Gilbert had been prominent in the sale rooms buying anything that took her fancy. Much of this no doubt was now in Kent; but, since they gave dinner-parties in London, a good deal was bound to be in the house in Sloane Street.
All this by itself meant nothing. What gave it significance was a demolition and rebuilding scheme for numbers 225-231 Sloane Street. Woodrit & Carlow was the firm employed, and a great gap already existed in the street where some of the buildings had come down. A high corrugated-iron barrier had been put up to keep the dust and rubble off the street, and behind it cranes worked and men dug and hammered and picked.
The houses due to come down were part of the same row as 241 but at the opposite end. The first two were already down, but the demolition of 229 had not yet begun, although it was now empty.
The employees of Messrs Woodrit & Carlow dropped tools the moment noon struck on a Saturday morning and by twelve-fifteen the site was usually empty.
“Right,” said Peter, and Michael started the engine and drove out of the garage. They had bought the old lorry cheap two weeks ago and had spent a good deal of time getting it up to look right. As they rattled up the King’s Road half past twelve was striking.
There was no way in to the demolition from Sloane Street, but Michael turned up Pavilion Road and then by way of the mews. At the entrance to the demolitions where the back gardens of the houses had been he went slowly so that if anyone was still about he could appear to be driving in to turn round.
But everyone had gone.
He drove bumping across the uneven ground, over a concrete path, past a pile of old mattresses, circled a mound of rubble and old window frames, avoided a flower-bed and stopped beside the gaping rain of a basement window. Propped against the wind
ow was a broken board: “J. Goldstein. Society Photographer, Studio Hours 10–5.”
They got out, lifted ladders from the back of the lorry, then pick-axe and shovel. Observed by the unobserving eyes of twenty houses round, they carried the ladders through the blitz-like debris of No. 227 and came to No. 229.
“It’s no good down here,” said Peter. “These basement walls are practically foundations. Up there, I should think.”
“Further back,” said Michael. “ We’ll be less on view from the road and the ladder’s on a better foundation.”
They carried the longer ladder back and propped it against the wall of the house where the floor joists of the ground floor of No. 227 had been. A piece of the floor at the back about three yards square still existed.
“I’ll start,” said Michael.
“No. Bring the other ladder. We’ll work together.”
As they climbed the ladders, so they raised themselves above the protective iron hoarding. By the time they were at the level where they wished to work they could not only be seen from all the houses but were in full view of people walking on the opposite side of Sloane Street.
Michael put his pick-axe down and took the half cigarette from behind his ear and carefully lit it. “ You, mate, or me? Who starts?”
“You pick, boy. I’ll shovel.”
Michael lifted his pick and brought it down with a thud into the wall.
Although the brick was for the most part weathered and hardened by time, it had corroded here and there so that, while his pick often didn’t make much headway, every now and then it would sink in to give him leverage. After ten minutes there was a small hole but he was sweating a lot.
“Take it easy,” said Peter. “Don’t forget you’re being paid by the hour.”
Michael straightened up and gave a hitch at his trousers. Some of the Saturday rush hour was thinning, and when it had all gone they would be much more isolated. As he looked about him two youths on the front of a 19 bus grinned at him and said something to each other. They were almost exactly on a level with him at twenty yards distance. He pulled his cap down an inch and began again.